财政悬崖也许只是耸人听闻

    削减支出和增加税收，将导致成千上万人瞬间失业（几百万美国人的工作都直接或间接地源于联邦政府的支出)，推动全美失业率从7.9%上升至9.1%。为此，CBO预测2013年实际GDP将下降0.5%，远不如2012年2.1%的增幅。预计明年上半年实际GDP将同比下降2.9%，将整个国家推入衰退，CBO估计其幅度堪比20世纪90年代初第一次海湾战争后美国经历的那次经济衰退(很不幸，有些人没有熬过那段苦日子）。CBO预计美联储将再次启动量化宽松，在公开市场买入美国国债，保持低利率——具有讽刺意味的是这个目的将通过凭空印钞完成(但似乎除了众议员罗恩·保罗，华盛顿没人在乎。)这个举措能够抵消政府支出缩减的影响，有助于提振市场，但可能还不足以抵消股息税和资本增值税增加的负面影响。

    这些听上去都很令人担忧，但CBO表示，美国将开始迅速调整、应对财政悬崖，如果政府没有掉下财政悬崖，预计2014年和2015年的经济增长将“重现活力”，推动经济产值回到它预测的水平。失业率将继续保持高位，但2014年第四季度将回到8.4%，然后继续慢慢下降，到2017年底降至更合理的5.7%。

    财政悬崖引发了很多恐慌，但它似乎并不是什么世界末日。不过，经济双重探底的短期冲击可能会带来一些意想不到的后果，CBO在预测中没有进行充分地量化分析。

    因此，如果什么也不干，美国国会和总统就假装从未有过《2011年国会预算案》(Congressional Budget Act of 2011）这回事，结果又会怎样？他们可以这么干，他们可以投票决定(无限期）延迟实施这个预算案，也可以通过另一部法案来取代预算案。要知道，美国国会是自加镣铐——它是有钥匙的，随时可以开锁。如果真的什么也不做，CBO预测美国经济2013年的增长率将为0.1%-3.3%。是的，范围很大，但这样的结果显然要好于财政悬崖情景下可能出现的0.5%降幅。失业率将保持约8%的水平直到2013年，然后逐步下降，到2014年底降至约7%。

    如果不掉下悬崖，CBO估计未来十年的赤字将总计增加7.7万亿美元（注意，单位可是“万亿”）。由此，美国的总负债到2023年将升至约24万亿美元，达到GDP的90%（这将是很高的负债比）。如果我们掉下悬崖，也别指望从此无债一身轻，到2023年美国的财政赤字仍将达到GDP的58%，因为社会保障和医疗保险相关成本猛增，将导致必需支出大增。

    因此，很难衡量掉下悬崖的好处。既然美国仍然会有相当高的预算赤字，全美负债可能仍会在今天的水平附近，掉下财政悬崖、承受短期的痛苦还值得吗？

    The cuts in spending and the increased taxes will cause thousands of people to lose their jobs pretty much overnight (millions of Americans owe their jobs directly or indirectly to federal government spending). This would push unemployment up across the country from 7.9% to 9.1%. As a result, the CBO projects that real GDP would drop by 0.5% in 2013 after growing by 2.1% in 2012. Real GDP would fall at an annual rate of 2.9% in the first half of next year, tipping the nation into a recession that the CBO figures would be similar in magnitude to the one the nation experienced following the first Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s (for those who didn't live through that, it was bad). The CBO anticipates that the Federal Reserve would engage in another round of quantitative easing and buy up bonds in the open markets to keep rates low – this would ironically be done by printing money out of thin air (but no one in Washington, save Rep. Ron Paul, seems to care about that). This counterweight to the spending cuts should help support the markets, but it probably won't be enough to counter the negative impact associated with the tax increases on dividends and capital gains.

    That all sounds pretty grim, but the CBO suggests that the nation would begin to rapidly adjust to the fiscal cliff, projecting that economic growth would "be brisk" in 2014 and 2015, pushing economic output back to where it projects it will be if the government doesn't head down the fiscal cliff. Unemployment would remain elevated but would fall back to 8.4% in the last quarter of 2014 and then drift down slowly to a more reasonable 5.7% by the end of 2017.

    For all the panic that the fiscal cliff has set off, it doesn't seem like the end of the world. But the short-term pain of having a double-dip recession could have a host of unintended consequences that aren't fully quantified in the CBO's projections.

    So what if nothing is done and Congress and the President just pretend that the Congressional Budget Act of 2011 never happened? They can do that by basically voting to extend implementation (indefinitely) or by just passing another law that would replace the Budget Act. Remember, it was Congress that handcuffed itself -- it still has the key to unlock the cuffs at any moment. If it does and nothing changes, then the CBO projects the economy would grow between 0.1% to 3.3% in 2013 – a wide margin, no doubt, but clearly a more desirable outcome than a 0.5% contraction associated with the fiscal cliff scenario. Unemployment would stall at around 8% through 2013 before eventually falling to around 7% by the end of 2014.

    By not going off the cliff, the CBO estimates that deficits over the next decade would rise by a total of $7.7 trillion (that's "trillion" with a "T"). That would bring the total national debt somewhere to around $24 trillion by 2023 which is equal to 90% of GDP (that's pretty high). If we go off the cliff, don't expect a clean slate, though, as the nation would still have a significant budget deficit equal to 58% of GDP in 2023 due to all the mandatory spending associated with the impeding explosion in costs emanating from Social Security and Medicare.

    This is where it becomes difficult to gauge the benefits of going over the cliff. Given that the nation would still be running a significant budget deficit, with a national debt that would probably still be around where it is today, is going over the fiscal cliff worth all the short-term pain?