The US Daily Cash Deficit for 9/26/2013 was $7.5B bringing the September 2013 Surplus down to $36B with two business days remaining in the month.
Revenue from “Taxes Not Withheld” plummeted under $1B to $388M…..a bit more than expected, but not concerning. Total revenue is now up 3.6% YOY … Outlays are up 10%…all timing, else they would probably be down a little. 2 days left…I expect surpluses both days, especially Monday 9/30, but how much is yet to be seen.
The US Daily Deficit for 9/25/2013 was $9.0B knocking the surplus through 25 days down to $44B with Three business days remaining. Tax deposits not withheld fell to $1B from $4B yesterday….more or less in line with the drop off we expected. For the month, this category is currently up $9B over last year, good for an 18% YOY gain. On the other end of the spectrum, Corporate taxes are basically flat at a little less than 1% YOY, while taxes withheld from paychecks are up 11%.
Total revenues, currently up $10B YOY (3.5%) should continue to grow…before getting a big boost Monday, which is an extra workday over last September and a Monday at that. With strong Fannie/Freddie “dividends”…tacking on another +20B of YOY revenue seems feasible…which would put us pretty close to the +10% we want to see.
On the other hand, that extra business day also gives us an additional day of outlays, which are already at +21B thanks primarily to timing. I’m sticking to my $70B surplus forecast for the rest of the month, though it is starting to look a bit high. However, you never know what kind of fiscal year end surprises are in store, so I’ll be an optimist and hold tight.
The US Daily Cash Surplus for 9/24/2013 was $0.5B bringing the September Surplus through 24 days to $53B. Revenues from “Taxes Not Withheld” dropped from $9B on 9/23 to $4B on 9/24….stronger than the 2012 amount by $1B, but still indicating these receipts are probably trailing off.
Total cash revenues for the month are now running only 3% over last year but should get a material bump on 9/30, ending somewhere between +5%-10%. Not bad, but we may pay for it with a weak October. Tomorrow, we get the final large SS payment of about $12B which will more than likely force the first deficit over $2B that we’ve had in several weeks.
Cash in hand was $55B, which we will probably see grow by $10-20B by month end, lets just say to $70B absent any “extraordinary measures (EM)”. The first week of the month is typically pretty brutal….assuming the government isn’t shut down, we would probably run a $50B+ deficit in that first week of October alone. So Treasuries 10/17 date looks good on paper. However, the CBO also came out with an estimate stating between 10/22 and 10/31. About a month ago, I had guessed early to mid November…citing the difficulty of forecasting without fully understanding what EM magic tricks Treasury had left up their sleeve. Regardless of who is correct, it does seem clear that within the next 6 weeks, either the debt limit will be raised, or we will be in for one hell of a show….maybe even both 🙂
The US Daily Cash Surplus for 9/23/2013 was $13.7B as revenues from “Taxes not Withheld” defied the historical trend for the second day in a row, posting $9.1B of cash revenue compared to the comparable year ago (9/24/2012) cash revenue of $5.7B. Last year, these revenues dried up before the end of the week, ending at only $300M on 9/28/2012. If we don’t see a similar crash over the next few days, it wouldn’t take much to handily beat the year ago revenue $ from this source.
So on that strength, revenues show strong YOY gains for the second day in a row, and are now at $+7B….a 3% YOY increase with additional gains looking likely. The Monthly Surplus is now sitting at $52B with 5 business days remaining in the month. There is still plenty of upside left with the likelihood of topping $70B growing by the day(for now).
The US Daily Cash Surplus for 9/20/2013 was $4.9B pushing the September 2013 surplus through 20 days to $39B.
Friday was actually a pretty good day, with Revenues gaining about $4B YOY and finally catching up with last year, ending at $+1B…good for a 0.5% YOY improvement. “Taxes not Withheld led the charge with nearly a $2B improvement, actually increasing from the prior day, where we typically expect these to start tapering off pretty heavily as all of those checks that were “in the mail” are received and cashed.
With six days left before the end of the FY, there is a bit more uncertainty left than I expected. First there are the Freddie/Fannie Dividends…which look to be about $10B higher than last year. Second is the extra day…a Monday (typically strongest weekly revenues), and finally, it is impossible to predict how “tax deposits not withheld” are going to finish the month. Were it not for these things, I’d probably guess we would see very little deficit action over the rest of the month, ending right about a $40B surplus. However….given these outstanding items…. a $70B surplus (my initial forecast) still seems like a possibility if the stars align. If not… a bit lower.