Save Time: Here's ALL You Need to Know About the Fiscal Cliff Negotiations – Ignore Everything Else

I’m going to lay out everything you need to know about the fiscal cliff negotiations. After reading this, you can ignore all of the media’s coverage of this topic as well as various politicians’ announcements pertaining to this subject. (Words: 575; Charts: 3)

So says Graham Summers (http://gainspainscapital.com) in edited excerpts from his original article* entitled The Only Thing You Need to Know About the Fiscal Cliff.

Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!) and www.FinancialArticleSummariesToday.com (A site for sore eyes and inquisitive minds) may have edited the article below for length and clarity – see Editor’s Note at the bottom of the page. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.

Summers goes on to say, in part:

All you need to know consists of just one sentence: Politicians are in charge of this issue. These are the same folks:

• who haven’t even produced a budget in four years,
• who have run $1+ trillion deficits for four years,
• who rarely if ever leave office as a result of their fiscal mistakes.

In simple terms, none of the people in this group will likely suffer any consequences if we do go over the cliff. Indeed, as far as options go, their best option would be for us to go over the cliff and then implement some targeted tax breaks in late 2013 early 2014 as they go into the 2014 Congressional elections.

The Situation from the Democrats’ Perspective

Obama was largely re-elected based a solid turnout for the Democrats and a lack of voter turnout for the GOP….(Romney took less votes that McCain!). With this in mind, Obama and the Democrats can easily argue that they have the mandate of the people for their policies.

If the GOP proves unwilling to go along with their proposals, Obama and the Dems can simply take us over the cliff, increase taxes on the wealthy (which would appease their voting base) and blame the failure to reach a solution as well as the ensuing economic mess on the Republicans (much as the Dems and Obama have blamed the terrible economy on Bush).

So, truth be told, Obama and the Dems really have very little to gain politically from solving the fiscal cliff.

The Situation from the Republicans’ Perspective

There is little incentive for the GOP to solve the fiscal cliff either. If they kowtow to Obama’s wishes, they’ll infuriate their base, and there’s no chance that they’ll convince Obama and the Dems to meet their demands of cutting spending….[Therefore,] the best thing they can do is simply refuse to address the problem, go off the cliff and then maintain a “we fought the best we could against insurmountable odds” stance.

Bottom Line

[As you can see from the above] neither the Dems nor the GOP are incentivized to solve the fiscal cliff.  Both parties are best off from a political standpoint having us go over the cliff and then fighting for some kind of tax breaks/ tax relief for their bases sometime in late 2013/ early 2014.

We ARE Going Over the Cliff & This Will Be the Likely Result

With the above in mind, we are very likely going over the cliff in a month’s time. The whole situation has echoes of the failed debt ceiling talks and subsequent market collapse of 2011. Indeed, the market’s action today looks virtually identical to its moves going into the Debt Ceiling talks in July/August 2011.

Here’s the S&P 500’s recent action:

Here’s what the market looked like going into the Debt Ceiling talks of 2011.

Here’s what followed:

Conclusion

I highly suggest preparing in advance.

*http://gainspainscapital.com/2012/12/04/the-only-thing-you-need-to-know-about-the-fiscal-cliff/ (If you’re an active investor looking for investment ideas on how to play this, I’ve recently unveiled a number of special investments to Private Wealth Advisory subscribers designed to produce outsized gains when we go over the fiscal cliff.)

Editor’s Note: The above posts may have been edited ([ ]), abridged (…), and reformatted (including the title, some sub-titles and bold/italics emphases) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. The article’s views and conclusions are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original article.

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