dailyreckoning.com / By Eric Fry / December 31, 2012
Another fascinating year is drawing to a close…and clearing the stage for the next 365 days. What will lucky number 2013 bring? A Reagan-esque “Morning Again in America,” perhaps? Or maybe the grisly, gnarled wreckage of an economy that plummets over a fiscal cliff? Or maybe something in between?
Your editors have no idea, of course. But we do have one confident prediction for the year ahead: the bull market in state-sponsored terrorism will continue — not the kind that straps explosives onto a fanatical teenager and sends him into a crowded Iraqi marketplace to detonate himself into the laps of celestial virgins; the kind that straps fear-mongering catchphrases onto self-serving politicians and sends them into the public eye to terrify Americans into begging for “more government.”
“Fiscal Cliff” is just such a catchphrase. It is terrifying…and to the extent that it incites fear — bordering on hysteria — it promotes a subconscious desire for “more government.” Without more government, according to the Fiscal Cliff fear-mongers, the economy will implode upon itself like a black hole.
