Stocks tumbled
again on fears of the rapidly approaching fiscal cliff in the United States and
a failure by eurozone finance ministers and the IMF to decide how Greece will
resolve its sovereign debt and pay off the
banksters at Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, Eurobank, and
other loan sharking institutions.
"This morning the reasons
du jour started out with Europe and the kerfuffle over Greece and then you have
the fiscal cliff," Michael Holland, chairman of New York-based Holland &
Co., told Bloomberg News.
"We're not out of the woods
yet," said Guillaume Duchesne, an equity strategist at BGL BNP Paribas SA in
Luxembourg. He added that a resolution of the financial crisis threatening to
extend the recession for the foreseeable future depends on the leadership
of Obama.
According to
Rep. John Fleming, we won't be getting out of the woods anytime soon, especially
with Obama at the helm. "It looks like we're going to have to go through the
same or similar pain [as Greece] to get real reforms," the Louisiana Republican
told the Daily Caller on Sunday.
He said that if the current economic trend is not reversed, "what's going to happen is there's going to be a day of reckoning that gets into a serious situation where we have to make tough choices." Prison Planet
Fleming told The
Daily Caller that, ever since President Barack Obama's re-election last Tuesday,
he has been advising Americans to play it safe financially because he believes
the economy - and the state of the country - may soon get much worse. The
Daily Caller Fleming said
he's telling concerned constituents and business owners to "not extend
yourselves in debt, make sure that you pay off things, don't get into debt with
credit cards, stay as liquid as possible. Don't take risks, and don't get into
debt. You need to stay less vulnerable economically over the next two to four
years, in hopes that the economy will sort itself out, and that Washington will
get its act together." The Daily Caller "What I fear is we're going
to be too late, and we're going to run into a Greece-like situation, where we
have riots and unemployment levels are up around 11 percent. That's what we've
been trying to avoid," Fleming said. The Daily Caller The so-called
"cliff" comes on Jan. 1, when several tax cuts expire, and severe cuts to
government spending are triggered. It's also been called "taxmageddon," because
an average American family will see their tax bill increase $3,700 next year.
ABC News In total, the
measures are set to automatically slash the federal budget deficit by $607
billion or approximately 4 percent of GDP between FY 2012 and FY 2013, according
to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CFR Any deal, all
agree, would have to include revenue increases as well as budget cuts. A key
question is whether any new revenue includes changes in tax rates -
specifically, an end to the Bush-era tax cuts for those earning more than
$250,000, which is what President Obama has been pushing and Rep.
Boehner says "no" to. Christian Science Monitor The IMF says the
U.S. economy could fall back into recession if Congress fails to avert the
package of tax hikes and spending cuts. Reuters
AGB/SM
- Latest News
- Top Hits