US policy change could see us facing fiscal cliff

The election of Barack Obama for a second term as US president is, like a curate’s egg, a mixed blessing.

From a political perspective, it is good — it shows the US electorate is not willing to give credence to a party that has become more and more illiberal, more and more unwilling to engage in real-world politics, more and more entrenched in ideological purity, and less and less connected to the real challenges facing the US.

A reinvigorated Republican party, purged of its lunatic fringe, open to real reform on immigration and the economy, cannot be but a good thing for US politics and, by extension, the US and the global economies.