The US Daily Cash deficit for 8/30/2013 was $36.5B bringing the August 2013 Cash deficit to $173B over the full month. This is a $38B improvement over last August at $211B, but after adjusting for about $25B of timing, it reflects a only moderate $13B improvement.
The story is all in revenues…up a meager $1B…less than 1% in a year that averaged 18% YOY increase over the first 6 months thanks to tax increases, moderate increases in employment, and of course, a $60B payday loan from Fannie Mae. Digging into the details…it wasn’t all gloom, tax deposits were actually up $8B…offset by an $8B decrease in TARP Receipts…an issue I detailed 9 months ago in We Won’t Miss TARP, But Uncle Sam Will. We’ll see this again in September as last year’s $23B of TARP revenue is likely to fall down to $1-2B or so.
Overall, I have to say this was clearly a disappointing month, but I’m not sure yet if the revenue slide is just an anomaly, or a bona fide shift in the trend. September should give us a pretty good idea which…especially the corporate tax deposits and the “taxes not withheld”. I’ll try to do a more detailed write up later in the month, but this will have to do for now…
