David N. Farr
Analyst · Jeff Sprague
Yes, we're definitely in a defensive crouch. We have -- as you know, I refer to it not a defensive crouch, I'm talking about the reins. You hear me talking about pulling the reins. So we've got the reins way back. What we're going to need, not only do we need -- well, obviously, within the next 24 hours and hopefully sooner than later, get clarity on the election and who's going to be the next President of the United States, this great country. What we then need is, okay, we need the leaders of this country to get together and sort out how are we going to fix the long-term fiscal structure of our government. We can't afford what we're doing right now and we have to fix that. The leaders need to see that. And I think -- so there will be either a great -- depending on what party you're involved with, a great amount of excitement and then there will be -- or there will be a great "ugh." However, the big issue for all of us is what are we going to do in Washington relative to not only the issue relative to this nightmare fiscal cliff that's been set up by the inability of the Congress and the President to deal with this issue. But we also have to lay out what is the next 20-year or 15-, 20-year program to recover this country from a fiscal standpoint, get the spending back on track, get the income back on track and to encourage long-term investments. So you're going to see business CEOs will say, okay, we now know who the President is, okay now, what are you going to do in Washington? And then based on that, I think, if you had -- if we see a very positive pro-growth, pro-U.S investment environment, you would see sometime in the second half of 2013, starting to see things flow. People will not get carried away and start to say, hey, I'm going to go out and spend, up my spending by 20% because of this. You will see some impact in the second half of 2013 which would tee up, I think, a much stronger 2014, 2015. And that's -- Jeff, that's how I feel right now and I don't see any -- okay, Dave, spend 20% more next year because of election results tonight or 20% less. I don't see any impact. However, what I want to see is resolution to getting this country back on a sound fiscal spending income track, period. And that's what CEOs want.