The “fiscal cliff” has all the earmarks of a false flag operation, full of sound and fury, intended to extort concessions from opponents. Neil Irwin of the Washington Post calls it “a self-induced austerity crisis.” David Weidner in the Wall Street Journal calls it simply theater, designed to pressure politicians into a budget deal:

The cliff is really just a trumped-up annual budget discussion. ... The most likely outcome is a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and kicking the can down the road.

Yet the media coverage has been “panic-inducing, falling somewhere between that given to an approaching hurricane and an alien invasion.” In the summer of 2011, this sort of media hype succeeded in causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plunge nearly 2000 points. But this time the market is generally ignoring the cliff, either confident a deal will be reached or not caring.

The goal of the exercise seems to be to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, something a radical group of conservatives has worked for decades to achieve. But with the recent Democratic victories, demands for “fiscal responsibility” may just result in higher taxes for the rich, without gutting the entitlements.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1074251-fiscal-cliff-let-s-call-their-bluff?source=tracking_email_activity_alerts&ifp=0&v=1356871500