Budget Deal Is a Tipping Point for the US Economic Recovery

Curious Capitalist

Budget Deal Is a Tipping Point for the US Economic Recovery

By Dec. 11, 2013
image: The sun rises on a cloudy morning at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 13, 2012.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Whisper it—we may be at a tipping point in the US economic recovery. The announcement that U.S. budget negotiators have reached a provisional two-year deal to avert another government shutdown (which had been set to happen, sans deal, in early 2014) was fantastic news. For the last few years, government has been a headwind, rather than a help, to the recovery. If you’d have stripped the public sector out of the growth numbers over the last year or so, you’d find that the U.S. was already in a 3 percent growth economy, rather than the sluggish “New Normal” of 2 percent that we’ve all gotten used to. If this deal, which still has to be voted on in both the House and Senate, marks a move from gridlocked, partisan politics in Washington to something more constructive, that’s a big deal. Continue reading “Budget Deal Is a Tipping Point for the US Economic Recovery”

Greenspan fears US government set for more debt stalemate

BBC

Greenspan fears US government set for more debt stalemate

Alan Greenspan said the eurozone needed “consolidation politically”

Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that a repeat of the crisis that brought the country close to default is “perfectly conceivable”.

He told the BBC that he had not seen another situation in Washington where “compromise” seemed so far away.

Mr Greenspan confessed to sympathies with the aims of the Tea Party, the Republican faction that fought the government during debt ceiling talks. Continue reading “Greenspan fears US government set for more debt stalemate”

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