The Us Daily Cash deficit for 5/30/2013 was $2.0B bringing the monthly deficit to $122B with one day to go. through 30 days last year was at $129B, so a $7B improvement all else equal. The 5/31 numbers (we will get them Monday) have a lot of uncertainty. A final interest payment goes out that should be $5-6B, as well as normal operations…all else equal, we would probably run about an $8B deficit and end up at $130B. However, there are a lot of payments due 6/1 that probably went out today…my guess is anywhere from $15B to as much as $30B + if a large Medicare payment gets pulled forward as well.
Cash improved by about $5B today, despite the deficit thanks to the first definitive evidence to date of “extraordinary measures.” It’s a classic pattern…basically they pulled about $7B of intergovernmental off the books…pretending it no longer exists for the time being, yet promising to “pay” it back once the debt limit is raised. With intragovernmental down $7B….they find themselves $7B under the debt limit…so of course they issue $7B of “real” debt in exchange for real cash. I don’t fully understand the technical rules… there are limits… but it is all quite silly if you think about it. What with the pretending to temporarily write off the money we are pretending we owe to ourselves and such….par for the course I suppose.
So…expect large deficits 5/31 and 6/3…and a lot more “extraordinary measures”
