The US Daily Deficit for 1/9/2013 was $10B primarily due to $11.5B of social security payments made yesterday. Social Security payments of around $58B per month go out in four monthly batches. The first goes out on the third of the month…usually about $25B. The next three batches go out on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Wednesday’s of the month and are around $11B each. This timing issue makes comparing year on year numbers throughout the month a little tricky. For example…in 2012, the second Wednesday of the month was 1/11, compared to 1/9 this year. Looking at the charts below, you can see that January 2013 outlays are a full $18B ahead of 2012 through 9 days, which is a pretty big increase. However, around $10B of that is due to SS timing. Revenue continues to pace ahead of 2012 and cost is a bit ahead, even after adjusting some for timing. All in all, through 9 days everything is looking pretty much in line with last year with increased revenues being offset by increased cost.
I don’t expect a lot of excitement for the remainder of the month deficit wise, but there will be a large surplus….maybe next Tuesday. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it is related to income tax witholding…wild guess is that for some entities, taxes withheld from paychecks are sent in on a specific date a few weeks after a quarter closes?? Whatever it is, expect a spike in revenues on that day of around $15-20B.
The “Debt Limit Cushion” is at $47.4B, and shrinking roughly at the expected pace. Using last year as a guide, we only get to 2/3, not 2/15 like the last projection I saw…I will reiterate that I do not have enough data to accurately model “Extrordinary Measures” but last year, the cash deficit between 2/1 and 2/15 was $174B. Need I point out that we currently have $47B in hand, and three weeks left in January? I will continue to keep my eye out though….what I expect to see is a substantial reduction in imaginary “Intragovernmental” debt, currently at 4.856T, offset entirely by an increase in external debt exchanged for cash. Effectively what they would do is push that debt off balance sheet, ignore it, and then issue new debt for cash, technically staying under the limit. Just a little bit shady, but nothing in comparison to the “Trillion Dollar Coin”…don’t get me started.
The US Daily Deficit for 1/8/2013 was $7.1B bringing the January Deficit through 8 days to $33B, $4B less than 2012 through 8 days. Expect another deficit in the $7-$13B range tomorrow as the next round of Social Security payments went out today.
An interesting (to me) methodology note on Social Security outlays… On the DTS, only Social Security payments made by EFT are segregated..Anything sent by check simply falls out into Other as those checks are cashed. It is a flaw in the data, but since 90-95% is paid by EFT, it’s not a huge data flaw, though admitedly one would expect that % to be slowly increasing as time goes by. However…Last year, Social Security announced that it planned on phasing out checks altogether in March of 2013. That does not appear to be a hard date, but if they are successful, it would mean that 1) the DTS would become a tad bit more accurate, with less falling through to other. 2) it would also mean that what numbers I am seeing will increase, even if everything else is equal (not that they will be), just because the % is rising. I have no no plans to adjust my data…the calculated deficit will be unchanged, it’s just that in the past, Social security outlay’s have been understated, and going forward, they will be (more) correctly stated.
Ok…moving on, below are the charts through 8 days. Revenue is still well ahead of prior years, but now cost is as well. I’d give it at least another week before timing really ceases to be an issue. Also, i adjusted the size of the new charts some…they looked a bit stretched out compared to how they looked originally in excel, hopefully this fixes them, or at least is an improvement.
I was watching “Meet The Press” yesterday and during David Gregory’s interview of Mitch McConnell, Gregory was hounding McConnell on whether or not he would use the debt limit as a bargaining tool over the next month. Fair enough, but one thing he kept repeating kept grating against my skull. He kept implying that the reason the US rating was downgraded after the last round was simply because the fight happened in the first place. This is ridiculous. The debt was downgraded because we as a nation have a negative cash flow of about $100B per month and no viable plan to even marginally address this problem. Gregory kept implying that if only Republicans had not made the debt limit an issue, our credit rating wouldn’t have been downgraded. Financial ignorance is nothing new, and since McConnel didn’t call him on it, it’s a pretty safe assumption they are in the same boat. Looking at the facts, it’s a wonder US debt isn’t rated as Junk.
Full Disclosure….a few years back I liquidated about $1k of savings bonds my kids had received from their grandparents for college and purchased silver dollars. I have no regrets.
Sorry for the delay on this one…It took a lot longer to get through the editing process at Seeking Alpha than I expected. Here’s the link.
It’s worth the trouble to get these published at SA first because it it pushes the article, and this site out to a far wider audience that it would get here alone. Also, I get paid per page view, which let’s be honest, isn’t much, but I won’t be sending it back. So click on over and tell all your friends about it!!