Monthly Archives

January 2013

Daily US Deficit For 1/28/2013

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Surplus for 1/28/2013 was $5.5B on strong revenues…pretty typical for a Monday. Cash in hand was $75B, and the debt limit is still unchanged. The House has already passed the bill, but the Senate still needs to approve it and Obama needs to sign it.  This is expected tomorrow, or at least by week end. I don’t know how long it will take Treasury to unwind their “extrordinary” measures, but I will be keeping an eye in the change in debt once they do. Expect a spike in the $100B range. The last time there was a debt limit battle, debt outstanding spiked $238B the next day as Treasury brought their off balance sheet shenanigans back into the fold. I don’t expect that much…the battle of 2011 went on for a lot longer than this battle…if we can even call it that.

With 3 business days left, Revenues are up a solid 10% over last year and likely to increase a bit more. I expected a ballpark of $20B increase due to tax hikes and the trend. Add some delay to refunds (which we count as “negative” revenues) and possibly some filers pulling some income into 2012 for the lower tax rates, and there is nothing all that surprising about this “improvement”…if we dare call getting taxed more an improvement.

Cost is currently fairly even, but will likely end up $10-15B over last year. We’ll have the finals Friday, but $25B looks like a pretty safe bet for the monthly deficit. I said early on that deficit wise, January was going to be a snoozer, but never fear…February is almost here. Feb 2012 posted a $249B deficit…about a quarter of the yearly total packed into 29 exciting days!!. I have no reason to expect anything different from Feb 2013.

2013-01-28 USDD

Daily US Deficit For 1/24/2013

By | Daily Deficit

2013-01-24 USDD

The US Daily Deficit for 1/24/2013 was $2.4B bringing the January total through 24 days to $29B. There are five more business days left, and nothing out of the ordinary left on the calendar, so I am comfortable with somewhere around a $25B deficit for the month. Still no word on the Debt Limit hike making it through the senate and getting signed by the President, but I did read an article that said no opposition was expected. In any case, Treasury still has $70B cash in hand, so they should have enough to make it past 2/1 fairly comfortably even if the “No Budget No Pay”  isn’t signed next week.

Daily US Deficit For 1/23/2013

By | Daily Deficit
The US Daily Surplus for 1/23/2013 was $2.5B on very strong income tax receipts “not withheld” This is generally taxes paid on investment income and submitted quarterly, or as incurred, unlike taxes withheld from a workers paycheck and remitted every other week by the employer. With 8 days to go, 2013 is already $5B over where 2012 ended in this category. This could be strong evidence of high income individuals pulling income into 2012 to take advantage of the low tax rates before they increased in 2013…or, it could be evidence of a strong recovery…but we’ll just have to wait and see.

2013-01-23 USDD