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copernicus

May 20
0

April 2014 Update: Social Security Enrollment

By | Commentary

The April 2014 SS numbers are in and we added 130,874 people to the consolidated headcount just barely edging last years 130,724 add by 150 people. The total consolidated enrollment now stands at 58.472M…good for 18.38% of the population.

2014-05-20 April SS Analysis

So in the big picture, we are still plodding along at an annualized rate adding about 1.1M people a year….pencil that out assuming new benefits at a rate of $1500/month, that’s about $20B per year…a big chunk of the programs ~50B growth rate….with the rest being primarily the COLA adjustments which are small, but being applied to a huge base.. At that rate, assuming everything else in the entire budget is frozen…we need about 1.6% annual growth in revenues just to stay even….or about what we just saw in April.

But the real reason I watch this series is because I am watching for a material change in the enrollment trend. Clearly we don’t have that this month. What we do have is two months of essentially no YOY change against over a 4 year trend of moderate decline. Two months in a row isn’t particularly alarming, but a few more would definitely be interesting.

May 20
0

US Daily Cash Deficit 5/16/2014

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Friday 5/16/2014 was $7.3B bringing the May 2014 deficit through 16 days to $81B.

2014-05-16 USDD

It was a really good day for revenue…we see a YOY gain of about $8B primarily on withheld taxes. I don’t fully understand it…maybe a YOY timing change, but we’ll take it….a $4B hole at mid month is a lot less daunting than yesterdays $12B YOY revenue shortfall…a few more of these and we’re back on track.

May 16
0

US Daily Cash Deficit 5/15/2014

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 5/15/2014 was $30.8B bringing the May 2014 deficit to $89B through 15 days.

2014-05-15 USDD

Looking at our chart, we see revenue back to a -$12B YOY. Most of that can be attributed to there being one less business day…pull that out and we’re flat….which would still be  disappointment. There’s still a half a month to go…plenty of time for a comeback, but clearly we are not where we’d like to be at this time….which is more or less even despite being down a day. The one bright spot so far is corporate taxes…up 7%….but only good for a $0.5B bump.

Outlays look great at first glance, but their down a day too, plus they are down a ~$13B SS payment…so they are more or less flat once you back all of that out, which is about what we would expect. By the end of the month we will definitely catch back up on SS, but end up down a little overall.

So taking stock at midpoint…outlays are more or less where I expected them to be, but revenues are looking light so far…not a good sign. If May ends up weak, that will make 2 months in a row. June is just about guaranteed to be down since last June got a $50-$60B boost from Fannie Mae that won’t be replicated. Of course we can back that out to compare the fundamentals, but we’d still be at 3 months in a row, following a terrific Jan-March. Obviously I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but if we are indeed nearing the end of the impressive +10% revenue growth period we’ve seen since Jan-2013, things could get ugly pretty fast.

 

May 12
0

US Daily Cash Deficit 5/9/2014

By | Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 5/9/2014 was $2.1B bringing the May 2014 deficit to $49B through 9 days.

2014-05-09 USDD

Revenues continue to gain slowly on 2013 trimming the gap to $7B with 14 business days remaining. Just looking ahead, this Thursday the 15th may be the most interesting day of the month with a large $30B+ interest payment likely to go out, along with some corporate taxes likely to be received in the $6B range. We’ll get to see how these payments compare to last year’s numbers