“Geithner has warned that interest and principal payments on Treasury bonds would stop and that Social Security and Medicare benefits would be discontinued if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit — a prospect that has Wall Street worried.”
Not true, not true, not true.
Debt can be rolled over without increasing the debt limit and we have enough revenue to pay for SS and Medicare on a pay-as-we-go basis.
Geithner loses a lot of credibility with bean counters when he says stuff like this for political effect.