Once considered a sacred cow among the GOP, several conservative lawmakers, in recent days, have begun to renounce “The Pledge” as archaic and inappropriate for the current economic crisis.
With just over a month before the fiscal cliff is set to potentially deal a fatal blow to the U.S. economic recovery, another major problem is looming on the fiscal horizon: the debt ceiling.
Calling the fiscal cliff a “substantial threat,” Bernanke conceded that the central bank’s toolkit of monetary policies was beginning to lose its effectiveness after several years of on-and-off quantitative easing.
Then, last night after the markets closed, an alarming bit of news was published: Moody’s, one of the finance world’s biggest credit issuers, announced that France’s credit rating would fall to Aa1 from AAA.
American investors should keep these hard numbers in mind as they examine their investment strategies over the next few months.
Some fear a repeat of the 2011 debt ceiling talks that cost the United States a perfect credit rating and set the stage for this year’s conflict.
In a sign that the problems facing the European Union could escalate, the central executive branch of the 27-nation bloc announced that, for the second quarter in a row, gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk.
The stipulation, according to The New York Times, is actually an increase from the level requested by the president during previous negotiations in 2010 and 2011, which at the time only amounted to $1 trillion.
If you’re a U.S. investor with a stake in the stock market, you might want to consider hedging your wealth against a potential financial wipeout if a fiscal cliff deal collapses.