When Republicans take over the Senate, we may be in for austerity as painful as a heroin addict experiences in withdrawal (complete with dead babies crawling on the ceiling nightmare hallucinations, etc.)
Because Republicans have a great track record of fiscal responsibility? I think not. (More) divided government may have that effect though.
There is more than one kind of Republican; the party is a three-legged stool.
The pro-business types are traditionally equated with fiscal conservatives, but have been deeply corrupted by crony capitalism despite most small enterprise owners still being honest.
The social conservatives are usually financially responsible unless they want to go to war against the enemies of Jesus, but they've Had Enough neocon foreign adventures for a while. Having Johnny Biblethumper come home in a coffin with nothing to show for his sacrifice tends to do that.
The libertarians are by definition rock-ribbed beast-starvers; that wing of the party is now ascendent thanks to Ron/Rand Paul and their TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party.
Given the disaster of Krugman's Obomanomics, many non-partisan voters now wish Romney and Ryan had been in charge for the last couple of years.
So we can hope for and reasonably expect the new Senate to reign in the crazy ZIRP/NIRP QE-Nth debt-monetization plunge-protection-team money printing crowd.
That (relative) austerity will tamp down the irrational exuberance of the stock market, and we may see money flowing back into hard assets like gold, BTC, and XMR.
This May I heard btc was going to be 5k in July.
