Monthly Archives

August 2014

US Daily Cash Deficit 8/18/2014

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 8/18/2014 was $11.8B, dropping the August 2014 deficit back under $100B to $95B with 9 business days remaining.

2014-08-18 USDD

Not a whole lot has changed since my last  USDD post nearly 2 weeks ago….August 2014 and August 2013 are more or less synced up. 2014 revenue has taken a $1B lead with outlays up only a smidge….rounding out to ~1B YOY improvement so far (charts above independently rounded). From here on out, the deficit should drift gradually higher before Friday 8/29 when a ~$35B deficit pushes the month up to the $160-170B range. Primarily…I’m watching revenues (+1%…hoping for +5%), and to a lesser degree Medicare/Medicaid….which at least at this point do not look like they are on track to repeat last months huge spikes, though they will likely show growth.

“Treasury Wants To Hold More Cash” 8/7/2014

By | Commentary

This article over at Yahoo caught my attention…apparently Treasury is interested in increasing its cash balance in order to:

“help Washington pay its bills during a crisis”

-according to a senior “official”

They are looking to build the cash balance up to about $500B. So what does that mean? Well…Over the last 12 months, the average cash balance was about $65B. The high was $162B and the low was $17B….so this would certainly be a departure from the status quo.

2014-08-05 Cash Balance

Looking back a bit further…the above chart shows daily cash balances going back to 2005. Notice anything interesting? Back in early September 2008, the balance was low as ~$10B…before spiking to over $700B by mid October….before being siphoned off by TARP and other spending. But ultimately, the balance came back down and has averages about $75B since 1/2011…though it clearly fluctuates with the day to day/monthly, and annual cycles.

Going back to $500B would be a huge departure, and I’m not sure it makes much sense. At 2% average interest..adding $500B of debt comes at a cost of $10B annually…not much in the big scheme of things….but why?? The whole thing sounds a bit shady to me, but what do I know…

US Daily Cash Deficit 8/5/2014

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 8/5/2014 was $4.6B following Monday 8/4/2014’s $8.0B surplus, bringing the August deficit through 5 days to $59B.

2014-08-05 USDD

Revenues have made some nice gains in the last 2 days…closing the gap to $-2B. Outlays have also made some gains….nearly catching up to 2013 despite being down a business day.

August Forecast:

I normally like to make this it’s own post….but I’m running out of time. I mentioned a $160B deficit a few days ago and I’m going to stick with that.