These Are the People Who Will Save the System?

  As the fiscal cliff euphoria and start of the year buying fade, investors are waking up to the fact that fundamentally nothing was fixed in 2012.   Indeed, once could easily argue that the fiscal cliff “deal” is a great metaphor for 2012 as a whole: an enormous charade played by political leaders that ultimately solved nothing and in fact left everyone worse off.   Case in point, the “deal” has somehow managed to both raise taxes and increase the deficit deficit (by $4 trillion, no less). Economically, accomplishing this should have been virtually impossible. Washington managed to do it. Many words come to mind concerning this. “Success” is not one of them.   Yet even this situation pales in comparison to that occurring in Europe today. There the political leaders are now not only proclaiming that the “worst” is over b...