At the outset, the arguments made by “deficit hawks” as to the necessity of spending cuts, a core piece of the “fiscal cliff,” is entirely fictitious. Public finances are not a current concern among investors. If they were, interest rates for government securities would not now be trending at historic lows....

the rationale behind spending cuts is entirely spurious and can be summarily dismissed.  The deficit crisis, as Paul Krugman rightly puts it, is no more than a phantom. Then why have “deficit hawks” propagated such an obvious hoax and why has there been a huge campaign of fear and disinformation promoting policies aimed at damaging the American public?

Hold your breath: it promotes the interests of the wealthy.

Perhaps the best example of this is the Campaign to Fix The Debt (CFD)...

Despite a valiant attempt to veil its true objectives, a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies has highlighted the real consequences of CFD’s proposals. Not only are social welfare programs on the chopping block, but the long list of CEOs who have thrown their weight behind the campaign would see enormous gains in wealth.  An example is the “$134 billion in [corporate] windfalls” that would result from a “territorial tax” proposal, a proposal that amounts to no taxation on foreign profits brought back into the United States. That translates, of course, into greater “elite entitlements”....

As the report points out, “Of the 63 Fix the Debt CEOs at publicly held firms, 24 received more in compensation last year than their corporations paid in federal corporate income taxes.” A grotesque fact that highlights the overwhelming levels of wealth at the top, a top that routinely avoids paying its taxes. And to add insult to injury, as the Huffington Post points out, “In 2011, $40 billion of taxpayer money was divided among just nine CFD member companies,” or in other words, the same CEOs now decrying the atrociousness of the public debt and the awfulness of social welfare programs have been raking in the public’s money for some serious welfare of their own