The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 8/21/2014 was $5.9B following Wednesday’s $8.3B deficit, bringing the August 2014 deficit through 21 days to $119B with 6 business days remaining.
2013 and 2014 revenues and outlays remain pretty much tied up. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of change over six days, but revenues and outlays will probably continue to gain over 2013, each ending up a few percent.
The Us Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 8/19/2014 was $9.6B bringing the August 2014 deficit through 19 days to $105B.
Revenues lost a little bit of ground and outlays were up about $2B.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 8/1/2014 was $62.2B…a huge number, but actually typical for the first day of the month. In this case, $24B of SS payments due Sunday 8/3 went out early because of the weekend.
For timing, as is typical, I am adjusting for day of week for 2014 vs 2013. So The chart above compares Friday 8/1/2014 to Thursday 8/1/2013 and Friday 8/2/2013. 2013 gets an extra business day from the start….and will finish the month with an extra business day, making revenues a little tougher to beat, and outlays a little easier.
We start the month $6B down on revenues and $4B down on outlays, good for a $2.8B deficit lead over 2014. Those are the numbers to watch. if we are going to hit +5% on revenues we need to get to about +$10B. It’s certainly possible, but given the one fewer business day and the overall slowing trend we’ve seen over the past 4 months, I’m not holding my breath.