Tim Geithner: “I completely agree with what you said about the importance of there being a brutally honest, careful, independent…”

If the U.S. Government were at this time... to significantly reduce the assistance it provides students going to college, that would be a bad thing for the country.

If Congress were to choose to try to defer everything... that would be very damaging to the interests of the country.

Absolutely. Yes, again, we see there's no prospect to an agreement that doesn't involve those rates going up on the top 2 percent of the wealthiest Americans.

When Timothy Geithner says today that he's willing to go over the cliff, he's saying it because, yes, it's posturing. But he's also saying it because he means it.