Stan Collender, the smartest guy...

...in Washington on the federal budget (that I know of), now thinks we have a 75 percent chance of going over the fiscal cliff. Writing in his blog today, Capital Gains and Games:

I've come to the conclusion that there's only a one in four chance that a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff will be enacted before January 1. It's far more likely we'll go over the cliff and then fix it retroactively in January than that it can be avoided completely.