US DAILY DEFICIT

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 12/11/2013 was $8.6B bringing the December 2013 cash deficit through 11 days to $42B. Expect one more day of deficit Thursday….followed by ~$75B or so of Surplus between Friday and next Tuesday…pushing the entire month to surplus.

For now…2013 and 2012 are oddly…still all tied up both for outlays and revenues. Key metrics we’ll be looking at are of course revenues…. per my initial forecast…we are looking for a +$34B gain for the month….if we don’t make a significant dent in that by next week…it probably isn’t going to happen. On the outlays side, we really don’t expect much movement at all…typically we’d look for -1% to -2%ish….this month we have an extra day vs 2012….so maybe closer to flat? SS should also be interesting…I think the annual COLA adjustments go out with this month (but not sure why??..I would expect Jan)…we could hit $63B vs the 62B we just hit last month. (a typical month might see a $300-400M increase).

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 12/10/2013 was $5.2B pushing the December 2013 cash deficit through 10 days to $34B.

Revenue lost $1B of ground, but so did outlays, so we are still pretty much even compared to 2012. It is curious that 10 days into December….in a year with surging revenues…we are still down a bit when we would typically be expecting 10% revenue growth…If we are still flat after next week….it would definitely be time to get concerned. For now though…it’s just interesting. A strong revenue push over the next week could make this weak start a distant memory…

So…looking at the full year…344 days into 2013 by my count…Revenues are up 13.82% at +$348B. Looking at this data set which goes back to 2006, the only year that comes close to this level of revenue growth is 2011 at 9.46%, with everything else under 5% down to -9.7% in 2009.

Compare that to outlays, which are down $53B…or -1.45%….an actual small reduction, but we’ll take it.

Looking forward (2014+), we can probably count on outlays continuing to grow at low single digit rates…say 1-3%, with a pretty high confidence level (absent a recession and “stimulus ect…). Revenues, on the other hand, are the wildcard and are the critical variable. If they continue to grow at 10%+…mathematically we would be in pretty damn good shape by the end of the decade. That kind of growth is possible in spurts, but stringing  more than a few together is highly unlikely. However…even something lower….like 5-6% YOY growth  would be a huge help…delaying the inevitable perhaps out to the end of the decade….maybe. If, however…we can only manage low single digit growth in federal revenues…the situation starts to deteriorate fast…we could get back to the $1T annual deficit level again by 2018 and never look back. If we actually got another recession somewhere in the mix that drove revenues down and spiked outlays….it could get real ugly(er??) in a heartbeat.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 12/9/2013 was $7.0B pulling the December 2013 cash deficit through 9 days down to $28B.

Revenues advanced about $4B today pulling even with 2012 thanks to a $2.5B cash infusion from “Justice Department Programs”. Hmmm… I wonder if this related to any of the billion dollar fines I keep reading about…maybe one of the banks actually paid up?? Just a guess…

With about a quarter of the month gone…2013 and 2012 are all tied up… both revenues and outlays are flat. We’ll likely see about $10-15B of deficits between Tuesday and Thursday before heavy tax revenues start flowing in Friday…pushing the deficit to surplus by next Monday.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 12/6/2013 was $3.8B nudging the December 2013 cash deficit through 6 days to $35B…$5B over 2012 through the same time frame.

Revenues are still down a bit and cost are still up a little…but It’s still too early to really worry about it. We have a few more days before things really start heating up. We’ll probably see ~$100B of revenues between Friday 12/13 and early next week as corporate taxes and other tax payments are paid….dwarfing the activity we’ve seen to date. Until then…just stay tuned.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Wednesday 12/4/2013 was $3.8B bringing the December 2013 cash deficit through 4 days to $27B…$6B over where 2012 was at this point.

No real action to note yesterday…revenues gained a bit over 2012 and outlays were down about $1B.  Expect moderate surpluses and deficits through next week followed by a surge in revenues between 12/13 and 12/16.