Debt Ceiling Doomsday: August 15th?

Zero Hedge does the analysis:

At this point, we expect Treasury to have less cash in early August than we thought previously...we now show Treasury with a negative cash balance of $15.5 billion on August 15, which implies that Treasury wouldn't have the resources to pay $30.6 billion in interest on that day.

Well, that's why we have a Treasury Secretary, right? To figure this stuff out and reassure the American people (and the markets) that we can work our way through this?

Right?

Despite persistent questioning from Chris Wallace, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner refused to acknowledge what his plans were just in case the debt ceiling is not raised before August 2nd. Insisting that his plan was only to get Congress to raise the debt ceiling, Geithner seemed to demonstrate just how fearful he is of what might happen by hesitating to even discuss the possibility of any contingency plan

Well, the Zero Hedge site offers a number of different ways that the Treasury Secretary can make money available to pay our bills for weeks to follow the August 15th drop-dead date. Is Geithner refusing to discuss them because he's not aware of them (scary), thinks we're too stupid to understand them (typical), or because he is quite closely aligned with Barack Obama's political philosophy of creating a new financial crisis here in order to bend the nation to his will, and his vision, of a high-tax, big-government American future?

You tell me...Jen Rubin reports, as of 8AM this morning:

A Republican aide e-mails me: “The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan. A short-term increase (with cuts greater than the increase), combined with a committee to find long-term savings before the rest of the increase would be considered. Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no.”

If this is accurate the president is playing with fire. By halting a bipartisan deal he imperils the country’s finances and can rightly be accused of putting partisanship above all else...

The president wants chaos. That's how he pushed through his $1T stimulus and his disastrous health care reform, against the spoken will of the people. He's counting on chaos one more time to help advance his radical agenda, and if the nation is destroyed by it, well, remember...the important thing here is his survival...