When Governing Means Lurching Between Phony Crises
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Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The vote last night in the House ofRepresentatives brought to a close the latest Washington masterclass in dereliction of duty. After a few days of arguing aboutwho won or lost, we can move on to the next manufactured crisis.
In itself, not much of a surprise, the fiscal-cliff dealavoids most of the tax increases and postpones almost all of thespending cuts that were about to be triggered. Throughout thisfarce, financial markets had refused to believe that the U.S.government would inflict a recession rather than strike a budgetagreement, especially because they knew that, all posturingaside, the distance between the two parties was small. Marketswobbled but didn’t collapse.