US "Fiscal Cliff" ist eine der größten Gefahren für die Weltwirtschaft

“The fiscal cliff is one of the three greatest threats that the global economy faces. It is hard to proclaim an information advantage regarding a process of political negotiation which has yet to begin. But we have been speaking with US firms for the past year about their own hiring plans and investment plans. And we find them generally deferring until after some clarity is delivered with regard to the fiscal environment.

This deferral of investment informs the cautious economic outlook we have for the US rather than an out-of-consensus view as to how the fiscal cliff is resolved. And this cautious economic view influences our current asset allocation.

There is further a risk that the process of negotiation is sufficiently noisy that it brings markets to discount a worse fiscal impact than is ultimately the case and this prospect of near term volatility demands some risk premium. But we believe that this risk premium is today present in risky assets like US equities and high yield corporate bonds, and we are for this reason not selling our holdings.

Given the meaningful uncertainty, there is still the possibility that markets will be more turbulent than even we anticipate. But the notion that it would be possible to buy risky assets at today’s valuations with no fiscal cliff on the horizon does not, in our view, stand scrutiny.”