Budget Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 11/27/2013 was $9.7B bringing the November 2013 cash deficit to $113B with 1 business day remaining. Last year, Friday 11/30/2012 posted a $38B deficit, so $150B seems like a pretty reasonable estimate for the month, maybe +/- $5B….we’ll know by this afternoon.

Wednesday brought the final major SS payment of the month, which drove the  large deficit, but also pushed SS ETF outlays past $62B for the first time and a $377M gain over last month, which annualizes out to a 7% gain. Just for reference, excluding December…which has the COLA adjustments…a typical month will have SS growing by about $300M or so. however, for the past 2 months…SS had more or less flatlined at about 61.7B. I can’t explain that, but growth does seem to have resumed, and with December having COLA adjustments figured in…we’ll probably surpass $63B very soon.

With one day remaining…revenues look pretty much in line with the forecast….outlays however are surprisingly weak…it will be interesting to see where the cuts were once we get the monthly finals in.

The Us Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 11/26/2013 was $6.0B bringing the November 2013 cash deficit through 26 days to $103B with 2 business days remaining.

Revenues remain strong…gaining another $1B to hit $+21B YOY. With 2 business days left, vs 2012’s 3….it is possible we lose a little ground, but we should turn in a solid month absent a month end surprise. Looking to last year, we can probably expect ~a $10B deficit Wednesday and a $35B deficit Friday, which would get us pretty close to $150B, with Friday being the real wildcard.

No post tomorrow due to the Thanksgiving holiday… Wednesday’s DTS will probably be published Friday, so I may post then, but no guarantees.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 11/25/2013 was $6.4B bringing the November 2013 cash deficit to $97B

Revenues make another big jump…this time another +$4B bringing revenues to +$20B which is right about where they need to be. However, with Thanksgiving a week later than 2012, 11/2013 has one less business day remaining compared to 2012. This will hurt revenue a bit, but improve outlays….at least temporarily, because December gets an extra business day 🙂

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 11/22/2013 was $5.7B bringing the November 2013 cash deficit with 4 business days remaining to $104B.

At this point, revenues are up 11% and outlays are down 2%…leading to our $20B YOY improvement. Withheld tax deposits are up 8%, corporate taxes are down 19% (from a small base) and excise taxes are flat. Making up the rest of the gains are mostly the $6B TARP payment we discussed a few days back.

Looking ahead, Wednesday brings the final round of SS payments and Thursday is Thanksgiving. Friday is the last business day of the month, and it should bring a large deficit of $30B+, but we won’t know for sure until 12/2 when the 11/29 DTS is released.. We appear to be on track to end the month somewhere between $140B and $160B.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 11/21/2013 was $4.6B bringing the November Deficit through 21 days to $98B with 5 business days remaining. Since the corresponding Thursday in 2012 (11/22/2012) was Thanksgiving….there was no activity…so 2013 shows gains in revenues and outlays throwing the timing off a bit, but it will catch back up next week by month end.

Nothing else to really note other than that November 2013 continues to look like it will overperform my initial expectations of a $160B deficit with 5 business days to go…though 11/29 will be a wild one, so how it all ends is still up in the air. Right now, I’d say $135B-$155B looks most likely, but stay tuned.