According to The Hill
House Republican leaders on Friday announced a plan to condition a three-month increase in the debt limit on the Senate committing to pass a budget by the April 15 statutory deadline.
The US Daily Deficit for 1/17/2013 was $3.8B, bringing the January total through 17 days to $39B, now pretty much even with 2012. The revenue gap has narrowed to $22B and the outlays have narrowed to $27B. As mentioned yesterday, 2013 is currently 2 business days ahead of 2012 so it’s not a stretch to assume we are pretty much in line with last year at this point in time. Still no progress being reported on increasing the debt ceiling with about 4 weeks to go. I give it two weeks and it should start to get a lot more interesting.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/16/2013 was $0.2B, bringing the deficit through 16 days to $35B, $16B under where we were this point in 2012. It is important to point out that through 16 days, 2013 is a full 2 business days ahead of 2012, which is really starting to make our revenue and outlay charts pop. 2013 Revenue is a full $47B ahead of 2012 and outlays are up $32B through our 16 calendar days. I expect this delta to be significantly reduced after the MLK holiday next week when 2012 and 2013 get more or less back in sync. Jan 2012 ended up with a $53B deficit…2013 is looking to end up less than that, but how much is difficult to forecast due to all of the moving pieces. I’ll just throw the dart at $25B, +/-20. We’ll see how that ends up.
I had mentioned yesterday that there was something screwy with the DTS. I still have not heard back with an explanation…not sure if that means it isn’t coming, or if I’m in the queue.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/15/2013 was $4.5B bringing the deficit through 15 days to $36B. Timing differences are still apparent in the data. Not only is 2013 1 business day ahead of 2012, but MLK holiday timing is throwing off the timing as well. I expect these timing issues to mostly resolve themself by next Tuesday, so by next Wednesday we should have a general idea of how January is going down.
The DTS for 1/15 has some oddities that I don’t quite understand at the moment, though I don’t think it affects my deficit numbers. I’m almost certain it us due to “extrordinary measures”, but I can’t quite wrap my mind around the accounting… Note to self…. never get into government accounting!! The gist of what they have done is somehow redeemed about $27B of Intragovernmental Debt …our pretend debt to ourselves and ended up with $27B in cash….while still staying under the debt limit. I sent an email to their usually very helpful staff…hopefully that yields some clarity. If not, i guess we’ll just have to take their word for it. In any case, this neat little switcharoo has pushed the cash balance, and debt limit cushion up to $77B over yesterday’s $50B. When coupled with the delay in tax refunds, this pushes the needle for impending default per my simple linear model to about 2/10 to 2/14. Remember that 2/15 there is a large interest payment due…~$35B from memory. If Bernanke can conjur up $27B in cash at will on a random Tuesday, it’s a pretty safe bet he can make that payment.
As a side note…regarding the debt limit, there has been a lot of talk about prioritizing payments, and all of the difficulty that would bring. I’m not reccomending this, and I fully expect a debt limit increase before we get there, but the answer is obvious…just delay tax refunds and prioritize all other spending above them until the debt ceiling is raised. Don’t get me wrong, delaying any payments is going to hurt the economy and piss people off, but delaying tax refunds seems a little bit less disruptive than not paying soldiers, social security, doctors ect… If Obama can frame the headlines that way…and blame Republicans for blocking tax refunds, I just don’t see the republicans having the spine to continue fighting. Or…it would just cause riots in the streets, but I guess that’s one of the risks of playing with fire like this. Without further ado…today’s charts.
