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copernicus

Daily US Deficit For 12/17/2012

By | Daily Deficit

As expected, revenue continues to pour into the federal coffers leading to a $55.6B Surplus for 12/17/2012, bringing December 2012 to a surplus of $31.6B through 17 days. There are still a lot of days left, but with the majority of the corporate taxes in the books, there is a noticable increase in tax revenues over last year. If revenues continue to be strong, and costs stay on trend, we could be very close to a surplus by month end, which would be the first since 2007. I can’t prove this, but It is possible people and companies are making financial moves to pull profits into 2012’s low tax environment and push losses into 2013. Whatever the case, from a daily deficit perspective, the next month or so looks to be fairly smooth waters leading up to February, which will likely be a $200B+ deficit.

12-17 USDD

 

Seeking Alpha Links

By | Debt Limit
Below are links to a few articles I wrote and published by the good folks over at SeekingAlpha.com. I should have posted links earlier, but hey, I’m kinda new at this!! A few are reposts wrung through the editing process, but this one is new…I think you will enjoy it:

Increase Debt Limit Or Tax Refunds Will Not Go Out

also:

 http://seekingalpha.com/article/1059021-the-spending-problem and http://seekingalpha.com/article/1066631-are-intragovernmental-holdings-real-debt

 

Daily US Deficit For 12/14/2012

By | Daily Deficit
The Daily Surplus for 12/14 was $19.8B, bringing the deficit for the month of December down to $24B through 14 days, an apparent $38B improvement over December 2011 through 14 days.
That may sound good, but most of the apparent improvement this month is due to timing. First off, about $30B of payments for 12/1 went out 11/30 because of the weekend, and second, the timing of corporate income taxes, due 12/15, was also thrown off by the weekend, but this should work itself out of the noise in the next day or two.
Now let’s take a look at Revenue and Outlays, which of course we subtract to get to the deficit. Revenue for 12/14 was $30.9B, making it the highest revenue haul since 9/17. The key driver in both of these dates, as mentioned above is the quarterly corporate income tax due around the 15th the third month in every quarter. Also adding to revenues was an $8B contribution from TARP, the gift that keeps on giving, at least from a deficit perspective. When analyzing the deficit from a cash perspective, we counted TARP as a deficit when the cash went out the door in 2008/2009. However, that money wasn’t really all lost, as a sizable portion of TARP was, and continues to be paid back. Today’s $8B payment is the first significant payment of this fiscal year. FY 2012 had a total of $66B, so the run rate seems to be slowing exactly as one would expect.
Through 14 days, December 2012 revenue is running $14B behind last year, though I suspect this is all timing related to how the weekend fell versus last year. I’ll be more impressed if the number holds through this Friday.
Moving on, total outlays for the day were $11B with the only significant outlay being $2.8B for Military Active Duty Pay. This brought the December 2012 total to $143B, $23B under last year, primarily due to timing.
All in all, 12/14 was a pretty good day from a deficit perspective. At the end of the day, debt outstanding was reduced $10.B and cash in hand increased  $10B, bringing the debt limit cushion(Cash + borrowing ability) to $112B. Look to see another sizable surplus 12/17 and above average revenues for the rest of the week. I will do some more forecasting at the end of the week when we have a more complete data set, but for now, I am still estimating the December 2012 deficit comes in somewhere around $30B.

12-14 USDD

Daily US Deficit For 12/12/2012

By | Daily Deficit
The Daily Deficit for 12/12/2012 was $7.1B, bringing the December deficit through 12 days to $39.6B. We see pretty significant year on year change compared to yesterday’s post, due primarily to a $14B of Revenue 12/12/2011 related to the GSE MBS Purchase Program. It is not clear whether we will see a similar payment in December 2012.

 

Daily US Deficit For 12/11/2012

By | Daily Deficit
The daily Deficit for 12/11 was $5.2B on $4.7B in revenues and $9.9B in outlays.

Through 11 days, we really aren’t seeing much change over the last update. The apparent improvement over 2011/2010 is primarily due to 12/2012 payments getting pushed to 11/30 because of the weekend. There is potential for some true revenue improvement if the trend holds, but that won’t really solidify until the middle of next week when we get a glimpse at corporate tax receipts. With Social security ETF’s going out today, we will probably see a $10B deficit in tomorrow’s report.