Suzy Khimm, of the Washington Post‘s WonkBlog, reports on a new Gallup poll of American investors, which asks them what they fear the most:
More than unemployment, oil prices, the housing market, tight credit, or the euro zone crisis, investors believe that a politically divided federal government could hurt the US investment climate, according to a new Gallup poll that surveyed American adults with “investable assets of $10,000 or more”:
The second most common fear is the federal budget deficit. Altogether, this suggests that investors believe the recent political gridlock over the debt-ceiling and budget has been extremely harmful to the U.S. business climate. Presumably, they’re concerned that this could continue should President Obama be re-elected along with a GOP Congress, or vice versa.
Before the election, the Conservative line on coalition governments was much the same as the one these investors seem to hold: political divisions hamper the ability to make crucial economic decisions, which, especially in a depression, can lead to an inability to competently handle crisis. Two years on, those fears have been comprehensively put to bed. Far from coalition resulting in legislative gridlock, as divided government has in the US, this government has been the most radical in a decade.
The European debt crisis would obviously rank higher in a British version of this poll, but the interesting ones to see would be the relative positions of the budget deficit and unemployment rate. In both, the UK is now worse off than the US (when the deficit is expressed as a percentage of GDP, that is), but the narrative seems to be different on both sides of the Atlantic. Whereas the US has experienced its “jobless recovery”, now transitioning to a “growthless recovery”, the failure of the UK to experience the same levels of growth means that the unemployment rate often blends into the general gloomy economic background.
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