Tag

fiscal cliff

Daily US Deficit For 01/02/2013

By | Daily Deficit
Happy New Year!! The US Daily Deficit for 1/2/2013 was $3.1B. I’m not going to put up any charts and it’s too early in the month to really predict anything, so let’s take a look back at January 2012. A year ago, the deficit was $53B on 256B of revenue and $309B in outlays. It seems likely that we will see improvement over last January. We are coming off a pretty strong revenue month in 12/2012 which could carry over. There are some smaller timing issues related to outlays that should help a little bit, and finally, with the expiration of the payroll tax cut and the increasing of rates for the “wealthy”, we should start seeing revenues running $15-20B higher…on top of what we were seeing. On the other hand, social security recipients get a 1.7% raise this month…good for around another $1B per month…plus the 10k people who retire every day. I shouldn’t even throw a number out but what the heck. I’ll throw my dart at a $10B deficit for this month. Last month, my initial prediction was $30B deficit and we ended up with a $21B surplus….let’s see how this month ends up.

Daily US Deficit For 12/31/2012

By | Daily Deficit
Swing and a Miss!! The US Daily Deficit for 12/31/2012 was $1.4B, substantially lower than my projection if $15-25B, leaving December’s surplus solidly intact at $20.6B vs December 2011’s $59.3B deficit. I’ll have more analysis later, but Revenue was up $45B and Outlays were down $35B resulting in an $80B improvement. No too shabby, if it it sticks. I’m hoping to get a 2012 total year piece posted in the next few days, and after that maybe a more in depth review of December and a look at January. So many things to do, so little time.

12-31-2012 USDD-TEST

Fiscal Cliff Thoughts 12/31/2012

By | Debt Limit, Fiscal Cliff

With about 6 hours to go, I am reading a report saying a deal is close on avoiding the fiscal cliff, with just a few sticking points to be ironed out. I don’t know the details yet, but I doubt that it matters too much. I don’t think anyone ever expected rates to increase on most of us, regardless of whether the deal was done a few weeks back or even six months from now. Here’s what you need to know…while Republicans and Democrats have been engaged in an epic battle over whether to raise taxes on the “wealthy” by $25B per year or $50B per year….your taxes were raised $125B for 2013 due to the expiration of the payroll tax cut.

Now honestly, this probably needed to be done…especially if you are in the camp that believes the social security trust fund isn’t make believe. But the truth is, FICA is an income tax no different than any other, and while they distracted the country over the last month arguing over whether “wealthy” was defined as $250k per year or $1M per year….both parties quietly raised everybody elses taxes 2%. I’m waiting for the outrage that won’t come because let’s be honest…as a nation, math really isn’t our thing.

 

Daily US Deficit For 12/27/2012

By | Daily Deficit
The US Daily Deficit for 12/27/2012 was $3.6B, pulling the surplus down to $18B with 2 business days remaining in December. It is still pretty close to 50/50, but leaning a little closer to ending up in the red again for the fifth straight December despite some favorable timing of outlays.
I know I promised a 2012 deficit preview last week, but have decided instead to just wait until we have the finals. 12/31  DTS will be out 1/2/2013 at 4….it will probably take a day or two to assemble from there, but if you can’t wait, I’m guessing that the 2012 cash deficit will be around $1.12T compared to last year’s $1.26T. The $140B improvement will be primarily due to a revenue improvement and flat outlays.

12-27-2012 USDD

Daily US Deficit For 12/26/2012

By | Daily Deficit
The US Daily Deficit for 12/26 was $7.9B, pulling the surplus down to $21.6B with 3 business days remaining in December. Not that it really matters, but whether or not December finishes in the black is going to come down to 12/31 outlays. I’m expecting a large deficit on the order of $20B as January payments get pulled into December since the 1st is a holiday. Note that we won’t do any adjustments for this since this happens every year. Statistically, I’d put the odds 50/50, but posting a surplus in December would make a good headline for somebody, so if I had to bet, that’s where I’d go.

12-26 USDD