Alarms Grow Louder as Fiscal Cliff Draws Closer

This blog has been cross-posted at FixTheDebt.org.

It may not be as popular as Justin Bieber, but the fiscal cliff is getting plenty of notice as of late.

Today, sixteen financial industry leaders warned President Obama and Congress that they had to reach a bipartisan agreement to avoid the abrupt across-the-board spending cuts and tax increases due to kick in at year’s end as well as put the nation on a fiscally sound long-term course. Members of the Financial Services Forum signing the letter include the CEOs of Allstate, Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Edward Jones, Goldman Sachs, JP MorganChase, MetLife, Morgan Stanley, Prudential Financial, State Street, UBS and Wells Fargo.

The Fix the Debt Campaign praised the letter in a statement.

The letter reinforces the increasing drumbeat from business leaders that the fiscal cliff must be addressed, including the recent CEO Summit on Bloomberg TV. Fix the Debt Campaign co-founders Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles were also recently featured in a Nightly Business Report special on the subject (see video below).

Voters are also hearing more about the fiscal cliff, and the more they learn, the more concerned they become. In a survey sponsored by Center Forward, over half of respondents said they had heard a “great deal” or “some” about the fiscal cliff. And 64% said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned about its impact.

The survey makes clear that voters want to hear more about how the candidates will address the matter. They haven’t heard much so far on the campaign trail. The fiscal cliff has not been mentioned in any of the presidential or vice presidential debates so far.

The fiscal cliff cannot be ignored. That message is getting louder and louder as the cliff gets closer and closer.