“Cliff” Notes: Businesses and Consumers Seem to Have Different Reads of the Economy
The so-called “fiscal cliff” isn’t technically supposed to hit until 2013, when a mixture of tax increases and spending cuts could potentially go into effect. However, participants in the U.S. economy seem to be of two minds about whether the fiscal cliff is going to happen, or is maybe already here. Businesses seem to be acting like the economy already has one foot in the abyss – we’ll call this the pessimistic case. American consumers, on the other hand, seem to be operating under the assumption that all the partisan issues will get fixed before we reach the edge – we’ll call this the optimistic case.
