Geithner Is Kidding, Right?

"U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the government's borrowing needs would be substantially less than expected"

If he made that statement in front of an audience of Chinese university students, he would have been laughed out of the auditorium.  I'm thinking he forgot to take the speech that Robert Rubin had prepared for him and he was ad-libbing.  Clearly, his tax-dodging was a result of a complete lack of math skills.  The arithmetic is pretty simple:  when the Government increases its spending at an increasing rate, and at the same time revenues fall off even more quickly (I guess that's really simple calculus - sorry Tim), you have a situation which requires the Government to borrow at an increasing rate to make up for the gap between spending and revenues.

I guess if the Government were to pull out of Afghanistan, rescind the unemployment insurance extension, fire most of Obama's useless Czars plus staff, cut off FNM, FRE, GM, C, AIG and its other corporate welfare projects, shelve Obama's Stimulus 2...the list really goes on and on and on and on....I guess Tiny-Brain Tim could make a case that the U.S. might actually slow down its appetite for more Treasury debt and not look like a retard.

Until then Tim, stick with the speech your masters prepare for you.  Both you and your boss are terrible at speaking off-teleprompter.

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Speaking of the Devil - Welcome to Tim's "Animal Farm."  The Government released the details of the monthly budget for its first fiscal month of 2010.  Here's the details from Bloomberg News:

The Treasury's deficit totaled a no-surprise but still massive $176.4 billion in October, the first month of the government's fiscal year. The year-ago October deficit was $155.5 billion. Latest receipts are down a year-on-year 18 percent with outlays up 6%

Please note that "outlays" do not include the billions being spent on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  One of Obama's first acts as Presidents was to move the Fannie/Freddie expenditures "off budget."  If you want to really see how much the Government net outlays are, you need to watch the increase in Treasury debt outstanding.  I don't have that number handy but, as we all know, the Government is hitting the latest Treasury debt ceiling this month and will need to have the ceiling raised once again in December, or we won't be getting our unemployment checks or food stamps and Goldman won't be getting paid for doing God's work.