Just over a month from now, the United States will go over the proverbial fiscal cliff into a scary new world of higher taxes, reduced spending and austerity politics.

The potential for such a Congress-made calamity has provoked a sense of doom not only in Washington, DC, but also in financial markets where there is a pervasive fear that a fall off the cliff will create an immediate economic crisis. Practically everyone in Washington, from President Obama to House Speaker John Boehner, has expressed confidence that a deal can be reached by the end of the year to prevent this from happening.

Allow me to offer an alternative take: not only will a major deal not be reached by the end of the year, but one shouldn't be reached. For purely political reasons, both Democrats and Republicans have everything to gain by letting the United States fall off the cliff – and then pick up the pieces after 1 January.