The time bomb, if not defused in time, will explode on New Year's Eve. At midnight on December 31, the United States will have little to celebrate if Barack Obama, who rushed back from a short vacation in Hawaii to unravel the case, will not have found an agreement with the House and Senate to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, a term that has been echoing for months and that even today, in the last session of 2012, is worrying the financial markets all over the world.
But what exactly is this “fiscal cliff”? The expression has been in use since late 2010 and was forcefully revived in late February 2012 by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Speaking to the House, the US central banker said a "deep fiscal chasm of big spending cuts and tax hikes" would hit the country if politics didn't defuse risk by agreeing where to cut spending and how to raise taxes. .
The fiscal cliff had then been inserted into the system a few months ago on the basis of the Budget Control Act of August 2011, when President Obama and the Republican speaker of the House Boehner could not find an agreement on spending cuts and tax increases to be made to tackle the debt problem and reduce the deficit by 1.200 billion in ten years, promising to achieve it sooner after you. But now we are at the point, at the point of no return: from 1 January 2013 a series of tax breaks will expire, and automatic spending cuts will be triggered for precisely 1,2 trillion in ten years. To give an idea of the impact, this would mean that in fiscal 2013, between more taxes and less spending, there will be 600 billion less for the economy: 4% of US GDP. In other words, a guaranteed recession, with probably apocalyptic consequences for the economy and finance of the entire planet.
And that's not all: to this is added the problem of debt ceiling, returned to the conditions of August 2011. Treasury Secretary Geithner announced Wednesday night that the state has spent nearly all of the $16,394 trillion allowed under the 2011 settlement. On Monday, December 31, the threshold will even be exceeded, with a dramatic timing, and without a new agreement, the US risks bankruptcy.
President Obama will attempt a last minute deal with Republican B by todayoehner, who under pressure from the extreme wing of his party, that of the Tea Party to be clear, has already rejected an initial proposal to raise taxes on incomes above $400.000 a year. Boehner, under fire from the Tea Party - which is against any tax increase but whose votes at the same time will be decisive for his re-election as speaker of the House - has responded by proposing to raise taxes only for those earning over a million dollars . The fact is that his base itself rejected the initiative.
How will the newly re-elected president get out of the impasse? By focusing on the collaboration of the Senate, which given the complicated situation in the House could at least momentarily and partially give Obama some respite, reassuring the international community and the markets, as well as the two million unemployed who will see their benefits saved thanks to an initial intervention aimed at at least to avoid the most painful taxes and cuts. Indeed, it seems that in the Senate the clash between Democrats and Republicans is less insurmountable. By tonight (in the Italian night) we will have an answer: if it is negative, as many fear, the United States will have one foot on the precipice.
