U.S. President Barack Obama recently met with congressional leaders in attempts to carve out a way to avoid falling off the quickly approaching fiscal cliff . If no deal is reached, President Obama and scores of economists warn, the U.S. is destined to plummet into a recession in 2013. Money Morning Global Investing Strategist Martin Hutchinson cautions that even if lawmakers avoid the fiscal cliff by the most likely scenario of raising taxes on wealthy Americans while leaving the majority of the budget deficit status quo, the short-term outlook for the health of the U.S. economy is far from rosy. "U.S. economic growth has been held back in the last few years by the blizzard of regulations coming out of Washington, and there's reason to believe there is an especially heavy storm of them in the next few months, having been held up before the election," said Hutchinson. And despite the easy monetary policies of Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, and the latest round of QE3 (dubbed QE Forever), "the U.S. economy is not going back to robust growth in 2013," Hutchinson added. Creating more money, he said, will just increase inflation. "In the long run, a recession is coming," Hutchinson warns. To continue reading, please click here...