January 2014

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 1/30/2014 was $5.9B bringing the January 2014 cash surplus with one business day remaining to $12B.

Revenues are now sitting at $+24B….There is a good chance we will build on that some more just due to 1/31/2013 being a Thursday with typically weak revenues vs. 1/31/2014 being a Friday…which generally has moderate revenues. Bottom line…an impressive +10% is definitely within reach.

As noted before, Friday 1/31 will likely have very strong outlays as payments due Saturday 2/1 will instead be made 1/31…and thus pulled into January. This normally happens a few times each year and just glancing back, we can probably expect a $30B deficit….flipping our current $12B surplus into a ~$15B-$20B deficit….if the pattern holds.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Wednesday 1/29/2014 was $5.5B bumping the January 2014 surplus back up to $18B with two business days remaining.

It was another good day on the revenue front thanks in part to a $2B bump from “Federal Reserve Earnings.” Of course….the game here is that the Federal reserve essentially prints their own money, and with it has purchased about $4T worth of securities…including $2.2T of treasury notes (US Federal Debt) and $1.5T of mortgage backed securities. Now, whenever treasury makes a debt payment on a bond owned by the Fed….the Fed turns right back around and sends it back to Treasury. It’s a nice little game I suppose….what could go wrong? In any case…this little game nets the government a cool ~$80B per year of revenues per my math, but who knows how they account for that…negative interest expense?? I suppose it’s whatever they want it to be.

Moving on, Withheld tax deposits are sitting at +8%, taxes not withheld are at +9%, and corporate taxes are up at +16%, though that’s only $1.4B. Total cash revenues (including Fed reserve “earnings”) are at +11%. For comparison, my initial estimate for the month was +7% for total revenues, so there is not doubt, at this point revenues are over performing in my mind….I suppose we should all hope this holds up….unless you are the one paying that additional 11%.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 1/28/2014 was $2.7B pulling the January 2014 Cash Surplus down to $13B with 3 days remaining in the month.

Just for fun…I have unsynced the month…from days of the week to day of month…so we are now comparing 28 days of 2013 to 28 days of 2014….each with 3 (different) business days remaining. It’s not perfect….nothing ever will be, even comparing full months to full months…days of week and business days still have an impact, but with all of the big daily events behind us….I think this is the best way to look at the final 3 days.

So…we can see that revenue is at +21B….and still has some room to grow.

Outlays are at -$15B….which has been confusing me all month. I don’t actually track category spending daily, so I’ll just wait until the month is over, but I am thinking that most of this is in “other”…which is just a field I calculate…whatever’s left…generally a bunch of small items only periodically showing up on the DTS. In January 2013…other added up to $29B….if my hunch is right, it should be down to about $20B or so in 2014…..Good job congress….not!!

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 1/27/2014 was $6.1B…pretty much in line with last year…Monday 1/28/2013 at $5.5B. this brings the January Surplus to $16B with 4 days remaining.

As it stands…Revenue is at $+15B….which we will likely see grow, perhaps as much as $10B due to the extra day remaining in Jan 2014 compared to 2013. Outlays, on the other hand are about $-24B….for now. The extra day will likely shave about $10B off of this…and payments due 2/1 that will be paid Friday 1/31 should push this the other way by a healthy margin, making January look worse, but February better.

There is still quite a bit of uncertainty, but the January deficit looks like it will end up right around $20B…+/-$10B or so…. Quite coincidentally….I threw out $25B earlier this month as my wild A$$ guess….though it looks like I may have missed big on revenue and outlays….only to have them net out…. We’ll find out next Monday when the 1/31 report is released