There is no Daily Treasury Statement today due to the holiday/inauguration. Instead, I decided to take a look at some daily trends. First off, one thing you immediately notice is that Mondays are typically the strongest days for revenues, which makes sense. They (Treasury Employees) come in Monday morning, and process all those checks, wire transfers ect. that came in over the weekend, plus Monday activity, so it is like 3 days in one, except that weekend activity is obviously lighter. Of course, even flows would be 20% each, but we clearly see Monday on top at 30%, with Wednesday and Friday at ~20%, trailed by Tuesday and Thursday.
Outlays on the other hand are dominated by Wednesdays, which is when most of Social Security payments go out, with the rest going out on the third…whatever day that happens to be. The difference, of course gives us our deficit. In 2012, we actually ran a surplus…. but only on Mondays. Nearly $500B of deficit was incurred on Wednesdays due to heavy outlays, with Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday all around $200-$300B.
According to The Hill
House Republican leaders on Friday announced a plan to condition a three-month increase in the debt limit on the Senate committing to pass a budget by the April 15 statutory deadline.
The bottom line seems to be this..the Republicans will increase the debt limit by enough to get through three months. No word on how much that is…I’m guessing somewhere between $300B and $500B depending on how good they are at math. Here is the kicker…. if congress…that is both the house and senate don’t pass a budget in that period…they will all cease to be paid, presumably until a budget is passed. No word yet on if the lobbyists will also cease paying them :)…this seems to be only taxpayer funds they will forfeit.
If nothing else this is at least interesting. I guess the Republicans don’t have the spine to shut down the government in the middle of tax season…Probably a wise move. So they avoid that battle, and will undoubtedly attempt to squeeze a few hundred billion out of the budget…of course over 10 years so we won’t even notice if it’s bogus because honestly, what % of us can even divide by 10? 40%? 60% maybe?
Of course, this is just a proposal…let’s see if they can even get it passed before we stop worrying about whether or not Uncle Sam goes bankrupt before, or after we cash our tax refund checks.
The US Daily Deficit for 1/17/2013 was $3.8B, bringing the January total through 17 days to $39B, now pretty much even with 2012. The revenue gap has narrowed to $22B and the outlays have narrowed to $27B. As mentioned yesterday, 2013 is currently 2 business days ahead of 2012 so it’s not a stretch to assume we are pretty much in line with last year at this point in time. Still no progress being reported on increasing the debt ceiling with about 4 weeks to go. I give it two weeks and it should start to get a lot more interesting.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/16/2013 was $0.2B, bringing the deficit through 16 days to $35B, $16B under where we were this point in 2012. It is important to point out that through 16 days, 2013 is a full 2 business days ahead of 2012, which is really starting to make our revenue and outlay charts pop. 2013 Revenue is a full $47B ahead of 2012 and outlays are up $32B through our 16 calendar days. I expect this delta to be significantly reduced after the MLK holiday next week when 2012 and 2013 get more or less back in sync. Jan 2012 ended up with a $53B deficit…2013 is looking to end up less than that, but how much is difficult to forecast due to all of the moving pieces. I’ll just throw the dart at $25B, +/-20. We’ll see how that ends up.
I had mentioned yesterday that there was something screwy with the DTS. I still have not heard back with an explanation…not sure if that means it isn’t coming, or if I’m in the queue.
