Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of October 5, 2012

Article Excerpt

The so-called “fiscal cliff”’ could turn out to be the 2013 version of Y2K. You may recall the Y2K scare of the late 1990s. Computer memory was vastly more expensive back then. To save memory space, computers used only two digits to designate a year—“92” in place of 1992, for instance. By mid-decade, some computer consultants theorized that millions of computers around the world would freeze or malfunction at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999, since they wouldn’t know whether the new year “00” was 1900 or 2000. Alarmists predicted this would cause a near-instant world-wide recession. However, nothing of the kind happened. Like Y2K, the fiscal cliff also kicks in at the end of the year. That’s because of an agreement that the U.S. Congress and President Obama reached in August 2011 aimed at cutting the U.S. federal budget deficit. If Congress and the president fail to meet specified deficit-cutting targets by December 31, 2012, drastic spending cuts and…