The Market Ticker - "Raise The Debt Ceiling Or We'll Steal Your Money!"

What do you call it when someone sticks a gun up your nose and says “gimme all your money!”

The government could temporarily tap tens of billions of dollars from two federal employee retirement programs if Congress fails to raise the federal debt ceiling next month, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers.

Temporarily?  Only if they get their debt ceiling increase.  Otherwise….

Geithner said borrowing money from the federal retirement programs and other “extraordinary measures” available to the government would stave off the need to raise the debt ceiling until around July 8. Once those measures are exhausted, the government “will be limited in its ability to make payments across the government,” Geithner said.

In that case, retirees’ pensions could be affected. Adcock said that, if that were to happen, any impact on retirement payouts would be “the least of their problems because we’ll face a worldwide economic collapse.

Again, what do you call it when someone sticks a gun in your face and demands all your money?

Now perhaps you can explain to this intrepid blogger why one person who does it goes to prison, and another is Secretary of the Treasury.

Oh, and while you’re explaining that, make sure you take into account that US Prosecutors claimed that the folks minting “Liberty Dollars” (a private currency) were “economic terrorists” for their attempt to dilute the legitimacy and value of the official US Dollar, while the Treasury, by allowing The Fed to engage in “Quantitative Easing” and issuing 42 cents of every dollar spent in what amount to naked shorts against the currency, which directly decreases the value of the US Currency, is also not in the dock facing federal charges.

Read more at Karl Denninger – The Market Ticker