Tag

us deficit

Feb 12
0

Daily US Deficit For 2/8/2013

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Deficit for 2/8/2013 was $8.8B, bringing the 8 day total to $85B. This, coincidentally, is about the same amount of annual spending that is supposed to be cut in the dreaded  “Sequester”. That’s right…through 8 days of February, we have already run a deficit larger than the amount sequestration is supposed to save over an entire year. If nothing else, it gives you some scale to how puny these cuts really are compared to what is actually needed. If this tiny little $85B cut is going to hollow out our military, increase unemployment and otherwise wreck havok on our economy, just imagine what’s going to happen when the market takes away our ability to deficit spend. Just something to think about.

Despite the above reality check, we can see that through 8 days, February 2013 is still $31B below February 2012’s deficit through 8 days. unfortunately, about $20B of that is related to delayed 2013 refunds, and about $10B is due to the timing of social security payments, so adjusting for timing, we are on track with last year. Refunds are starting to accelerate…we’ll know in a few weeks if they will catch up to 2012 or get pushed into March.

 2013-02-08B USDD

 

 

 

Feb 09
0

Daily US Deficit For 2/7/2013

By | Daily Deficit
The US Daily Deficit for 2/7/2013 was $10.5B bringing the February cash deficit through 7 days to $77B. With the exception of refunds, everything is pretty much in line with last year. Note that revenue shows as negative today because refunds are higher than tax deposits. Unadjusted revenue is up $3B over last year, so on track to be around $15B or so for the month, which is what we would expect from the recent tax hikes. It’s still too early to start making projections though.
2013-02-07 USDD
Feb 08
0

Daily US Deficit For 2/6/2013

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Deficit for 2/6/2013 was $2.6B bringing the total deficit through 6 days to $66B, $14B under last year, primarily due to refunds running $12B under last year. I’m not sure yet how this is going to all play out. One possibility is that everybody who usually filed in the middle of January simply filed 1/30, and that we will see a spike in about a week and 2013 will start to catch back up to 2012. The other possibility is that there are system processing constraints that will simply push back everything, meaning that February would never catch up…refunds would just get pushed into March, skewing our monthly profiles and making next year that much more difficult to forecast:) There were $53B of refunds issued in the last 8 calendar days of February 2012, so all else equal, that would put the 2013 deficit ending at around “only” $200B. I’m pulling for the IRS’s refund department to power through so my charts don’t get screwed up for the next 2 years!!

2013-02-06 USDD

Feb 05
0

Daily US Deficit For 2/1/2013

By | Daily Deficit
The US Daily Deficit for 2/1/2013 was $57.7B…off to a roaring start due to the timing of outlays and the start of tax refund season. In all of January a mere $672M of refunds were issued to individuals, compared to $3.973B last Friday alone. If this February is similar to last, we can expect another $130B of refunds to go out over the next 18 business days. As usual, it is going to take a few weeks for the timing issues to work their way out of the data, so hang on!! **Chart Titles should read February** Whoops!!

2013-02-01 USDD

Feb 02
0

Daily US Deficit For 1/31/2013

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Deficit for 1/31/2012 was 4.8B, bringing the January total to $32.4B, $20B less than January 2012. Revenues increased $33B, 15B from increased withholding, $12B from increased nonwithholding payments, with the remaining coming from miscellaneous other sources. Note that due to the delay in the tax filing date 8 days to 1/30/2013, tax refunds, which I net against receipts, were $9B lower than last year.

Outlays Increased $13B over last year, with increases pretty much across the board with the exception of interest which was down $8B from $19B to $11B. Looks to be a timing issue, where 12-2011 payments were shifted into 1-2012, spiking last years Jan interest payments. The difference, $20B is the improvement over 2012. Will the improvement be sustainable? February will give us a good idea, but I don’t think we will really know until May when tax season is over.

If anyone remembers, at the beginning of the month I predicted a deficit of $10B, so I missed it by$22B…a substantial improvement over last months $50B miss. Looking ahead, last February had $80B of revenues (net of refunds) and 329B of outlays for a deficit of $249B. I could see next month going either way. I’ll just stick with last year’s number and hang on for what could be a wild ride.2013-01-31 USDD