Barring a Debt Ceiling Solution, the US Will Begin Defaulting on February 15 2013

  We’ve now have just a little over 30 days until US breaches its debt ceiling.   We would have already done so, except Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner borrowed some $200 billion from emergency funds to buy a few weeks’ time (announcing that he’d be leaving his post before the actual ceiling was breached).   The “solutions” to the debt ceiling discussions range from outright insane ($1 trillion coins) to just staggeringly irresponsible (just get rid of any oversight and grow the debt without restriction).   Let us consider the facts.   The only reason the US is even having these discussions is because we’ve added $1+ trillion in debt to our balance sheet every year since 2008. The reason we were able to get away with this was because Congress hasn’t even implemented a budget since that time. Indeed, the last time a budget...