President meets with labor leaders as Congress returns today. Will they be able to find a compromise to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff”?

You read an honorable man wrong, as did a lot of other people, and now this country is doomed with Obama and his progressive agenda. I am not going to argue with you about Romney's qualifications and what he could, would or should have done because it is now moot. The "people" bought the soft-peddled Obama. It is funny that you portray Romney as Dracula; how very ironic.

Mitt Romney, a highly successful businessman -- as well as a generous, devoted family man I might add -- would have made some of the hard decisions which would have been necessary to pull this country back up on its feet. We are involved in so many different things now that it's not easy to keep track of everything. But you all have bought the notion that because Romney is so successful that he must have killed off a heck of a lot of people. Not so. The man went into failing businesses, mismanaged businesses, places that were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or worse. Yes, a lot of people lost their jobs in the reorganizations; however, in the long run, most of those businesses not only regained their strength and success but they actually expanded and, in the meantime, were able to hire back most if not all of their previous employees, as well as adding additional job openings in the marketplaces.

People fear conservatives. Why? Because they're so sure that conservatives are going to take away all their toys and dip into people's bank accounts and strip them down or whatever. You don't realize that Obama and his socialist cronies is doing just the same, only he doesn't give you lectures about personal responsibility, taking care of your own and making the hard choices in life. He puts money and favors into your outstretched hands with a huge smile, demonizes rich folks and promises to shave them down a few pegs, and while you're standing there like a dutiful child, he's embedded hidden taxes into your medical care, passes regulations to the tune of 65 new regs per day guaranteed to confuse and then strangle small businesses and big businesses alike. You see these things happening -- Hostess coming to mind right now? -- but you don't "see" them happening. You only see greedy capitalists out for the bottom line profits and down with labor.

Ah, yes, and then there are the labor unions. I imagine the unions involved with the Hostess bust, their representatives are still drawing big paychecks and maintaining their retirement funds intact. Obama loves unions. They got him reelected, you know, along with our minorities, both living and dead, legal and illegal. The Obama team talked a smooth, delectable line that was easily swallowed by a lot of people. Conservative lingo is a little off-putting to a lot of people, I totally understand that. But life is hard and full of hard choices. Mitt Romney would have guided America through those choices and, I assure you, would not have run over the "little guys" while doing so. Too bad the voters didn't give him the chance to prove his worth. I assure you, you aren't going to be happy with what is coming down the pike.

It depends on what you mean by the "fiscal cliff." It seems that common usage refers to a situation where the yearly deficit would have to drop..."Oh, the horror! Anything but that! We have to avoid it!" That's not the real cliff though: The real cliff will occur when the government can't fund itself with printed money anymore and the "road runs out."

Unless they're prepared to cut a trillion in spending, we will continue driving toward the cliff. They're not prepared to cut a trillion in spending, so we will continue driving toward the cliff...and eventually fly right off it. Once the world loses enough confidence in the dollar for OPEC to start taking other currencies for oil, international demand for the dollar will plummet.

Without exports to maintain demand, we will either see very high gradual inflation or sudden hyperinflation, keeping us from buying the oil we need to grow and transport food...and it will get quite ugly, possibly very quickly. At that point, we'll be faced with three options:

a.) Painfully adapt to our new role as a third world country, cut government spending by 90 %, and rebuild a production-focused economy from the ground up.
b.) Do something extraordinarily stupid like triple the size of the military and try to control the world's oil by force.
c.) Do something extraordinarily stupid like cave to global governance.

The second option isn't exactly sustainable, but it seemed to be Romney's preferred way of dealing with the situation (even though it would eventually cause World War III as the US, Israel, and a few allies fought against China, Russia, Iran, the entire Middle East except Israel, and their allies). I imagine Obama's preferred way of dealing with the situation may be the third option: I think he'd prefer to trade in dollars for a new IMF-created world fiat currency before the dollar implodes (kicking the can down the road until the world fiat currency imploded for the same reason). We could no longer print money beyond that point, so he'd either tax the crap out of everyone and bring the economy to a screeching halt in a vain attempt to balance the budget...or he could just let the government go bankrupt and demand regional or global government to "save us." Neither would be good news, but I think something like that is on the horizon if the dollar fails under Obama.

Spending cuts are necessary not only for fiscal sanity and the survival of the dollar but for the broader economy even discounting dollar issues: Most mainstream economists fail to understand that aggregate demand is not the be-all, end-all. There are several reasons for this, but here's one: Whenever the government spends money in a particular sector, it makes that sector more lucrative and diverts investment capital AWAY from all the sectors fueled by actual consumer demand. By spending money, government creates jobs in the short term, but these jobs carry an opportunity cost, and they produce less wealth that consumers demand than market-driven jobs...on a spectrum from being "slightly less efficient" to "as good as paying people to dig ditches and fill them back up," with an emphasis toward the latter. In short, government spending causes a mismatch between what the demand side wants and what the supply side is producing. Until this stops, along with other short-sighted policies, we will all continue getting poorer in the long term (except for government contractors and bankers).

In other words, we unfortunately NEED a recession - one that is not papered over while the underlying problems fester - in order for the economy to restructure itself around industries that consumers actually demand, in direct proportion to that demand...and using investment capital built on savings rather than the infinite money machine, so interest rates and lending more accurately reflect the underlying economy's capacity for sustainable spending instead of being set too low and contributing to the boom/bust cycle.