The crucial negotiations over the upcoming ‘fiscal cliff’ have been brought to a stalemate after US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned that will be no deal unless the Republicans accept the proposed tax hikes for the wealthy.
In a heated exchange House of representatives speaker John Boehner dismissed the Democrat backed plans, which aims to raise up to $1.6 trillion through tax hikes and spending cuts as ‘silliness’. He added that talks with President Obama’s administration had effectively gotten nowhere.
The two men’s opposing views were thrown to the forefront of the debate after each publicly demonstrated how entrenched their views were on national television. Mr Geithner told CNN’s State of the Union programme; “There’s not going to be an agreement without rates going up. There’s just not.” He called on Republicans to make a counter-offer to Obama’s plan.
Mr Boehner said that he was ‘flabbergasted’ by Geithner’s proposals. Talking to Fox news on Sunday he said; “What do you think would happen if we gave the president $1.6 trillion of new money? He’d spend it all.”
Mr Boehner says asking the top 2% of US taxpayers to pay more would deal a “crippling blow” to a fragile economy, and has criticised the Obama administration’s proposed spending cuts as inadequate.
Time is running out for the US government to find a solution. With time running out the markets are growing increasingly uneasy over the situation. It is thought that the ‘fiscal cliff’ could suck about $600 billion out of the nation’s economy and many economists are predicting that it could tip the USA back into recession.
The Pound to Euro exchange rate is currently trading at 1.2303
The Pound to US Dollar exchange rate is currently trading at 1.6051
The Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rate is currently trading at 1.5414
The Euro to US Dollar exchange rate is currently trading at 1.3042
The Euro to Pound exchange rate is currently trading at 0.8124
Comments are closed.