It is always the end of the world with the Obama administration and raising the debt limit is no different

Failing to raise the debt limit is not the same thing as producing a default. It isn't even close. Failure to raise the debt ceiling simply means that government spending will be limited to the revenue that the government brings in and that no new debt can be issued. That doesn't imply a default.

Geithner said the consequences of failing to raise the debt limit, and an ensuing default, would be worse than the deep recession the country is still climbing out of.

"We’d tip the U.S. economy and the world economy back into recession, depression," he said. "It would make the last crisis look like a tame, modest crisis. It would have a permanent devastating damage on our creditworthiness as a country."

Geithner said "no responsible person" would court that kind of "tragedy," but in what may have been an allusion to President Barack Obama's 2006 vote as an Illinois senator against increasing the debt limit, the Treasury secretary added: "There's been a little bit of a tradition that people play politics with this."

Last week, Obama said his opposition to a debt limit raise in 2006 was a mistake. . . .