Feldstein Says U.S. Fixing Cliff May Not Avoid Recession

Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein said the U.S. economy may fall into a recession next year even if Congress and President Barack Obama avert the full brunt of the so-called fiscal cliff.

“You are perilously close to the edge of another recession even if we don’t go over the fiscal cliff,” Feldstein said in a Bloomberg Television interview from New York. The end of payroll tax cuts will reduce gross domestic product by about 1 percentage point in 2013, and other tax increases and spending cuts may bring “over 2 percent of GDP tightening,” he said.