‘It’s mine, I spend it’: guessing the rapper’s thoughts about Obama’s fiscal cliff

The most stylish fellow passenger in Delta Air Lines’ business class cabin from Atlanta to Heathrow last week was a chap in shades and a hoodie with a couple of kilos of bling round his neck. Inquiries in the galley identified him as ‘2 Chainz’, a Georgia-born rapper whose real name is Tauheed Epps. I gathered he had invited the flight crew to call him Tad — and naturally I was keen to befriend him myself, but the Dracula’s-coffin configuration of Delta’s flatbeds made conversation all but impossible. So I was left trying to guess his thoughts on the issue of the ‘fiscal cliff’.

That is the impending crisis in which the expiry of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, combined with a federal spending squeeze also scheduled for January, will cause a sudden $600 billion shrinkage of the budget deficit that threatens to plunge the US economy, and possibly ours with it, straight back into recession unless compromise is reached to soften the impact.