cnsnews (via bloomberg): Treasury Secretary Geithner: Lift Debt Limit to Infinity

[SnyderShrugged]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/trea...limit-infinity

CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday that Congress should stop placing legal limits on the amount of money the government can borrow and effectively lift the debt limit to infinity.

On Bloomberg TV, “Political Capital” host Al Hunt asked Geithner if he believes “we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Geithner said.

more at link

[twa]

Fire up the helicopters and stimulate me baby

[GoSkins561]

Make it rain!!!

[alexey]

I'm kind of torn on this doomsday device debt ceiling thing. On one hand it is a bit scary for it to exist. It can be misused, and going through this discussion every few years would be counterproductive.

On the other hand, it was used and now we are seriously talking about parties coming to the table and making difficult political choices. A rare achievement.

[Burgold]

Eek! That's all I have to say. Let's be honest... Congress needs a yoke and any brake available. I think if we removed the debt ceiling, even as much as it's become a partisan tool and bargaining chip, we would go crazy and head towards economic oblivion.

[twa]

Oblivion is such a cool word though

[Larry]

Well, yeah, I could see the argument that, logically, Congress already imposes a debt limit, every time they pass our spending and tax laws.

Don't want the debt going up? Pass a balanced budget.

Pass a budget that's underfunded by a Trillion dollars? Then you authorized the debt to go up.

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But then, there's the political aspect.

Yeah, I can see how the political unpleasantness of having to explicitly authorize more debt might, in theory, limit them a little. (Although I also think that history says that it doesn't.)

[morris84]

[mikered30]

Interesting that a tax cheat wants to have the ceiling raised to what ever we want.

[aREDSKIN]

Turbo tax is your friend or at least a get out of jail free card for some. And what is this debt anyways? Just a promise to pay you back? 16 Trillion and counting? Yea right. Good luck with that.

[DogofWar1]

The ceiling, prior to Obama, had basically been raised without any fanfare, literally no one paid any attention to it, and raising it was very routine.

If Congress actually decides to make the debt ceiling more than just a easily moved goalpost, then fine, but that requires them to actually make major changes on the deficit.

Good luck with that.

The best thing to do would be to actually come up with a plan to balance the budget within X years, calculate what the debt should be when we finally hit even, and set the ceiling at that point, plus another half trillion or so to take into account random expenses and the like. Of course, I have a better chance of winning the lottery than that happening anytime soon.

[Thiebear]

It's currently Infinity, we want a debt ceiling imposed.
He's got the argument backwards

When haven't we raised it? It's just getting to be larger chunks each time.
AND we aren't passing a budget (by law) so whats the worst that could happen? we hit 23trillion in this administrations

[TD_washingtonredskins]

Just announce that we are no longer operating at a deficit and throw a party for the nation!

[deejaydana]

I used to think that we had a chance of paying down our debt but if you look at the numbers and what it would take, literally from every last person, it's just never ever going to happen. We're more screwed than Greece in some respects. No party has a shred of political will to see it thru because they would then have to own the associated pain. I don't know what the path ahead is but it has to get ugly at some poi t even more so than it already has. I guess I'm the wet blanket but damn we're just hosed on this topic, why not raise the limit, it's essentially meaningless already.

[morris84]

I used to think that we had a chance of paying down our debt...

That's actually impossible and always has been; at least since the government decided to go with debt based currency. Interest is owed on top of every federal reserve note created, making it impossible to ever repay everything back down to zero.