Remember when you were a kid and your mom told you it was always best to be honest rather than lie because if you told the truth, you wouldn't have to remember all the lies you told?

Timothy Geithner either never got that mom speech or he was busy doing something else and didn't listen.

Reuters:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is facing growing criticism for his changing predictions on when the country might face a debt default, shifts that have led some Republicans to discount his dire warnings that the debt limit must be raised soon.

Since January, Geithner has changed his forecast of when the U.S. would hit its borrowing cap, and the final deadline for raising the debt limit, at least four times -- fueling a belief among rank-and-file Republicans that his latest Aug. 2 deadline is artificial and can be ignored.

Some Democrats are increasingly worried that the changing calendar has been counter-productive, complicating efforts to get the $14.3 trillion borrowing cap raised because many conservative Republicans do not believe the country will start to default for many months.

"You can only cry wolf so many times," a former economic official in the Bill Clinton White House told Reuters. "If you are jumping from May to July to August, you can see people thinking that maybe you can jump from August to October.

Credibility is the coin of the realm - at least it used to be until Obama got elected. Jobs "saved," non-political Obamacare waivers - I wonder if we do run out of money, if anyone will believe Geithner even then?