The US Daily Cash Deficit for 9/12/2013 was $3.6B bringing the September 2013 deficit through 12 days to $53B….just a tad lower than the $55B I forecasted before I left last week. (hooray!!…model accuracy is improving)
Of note, Revenue is up $8B (9%) YOY…a good sign, but outlays look to be running a bit hot…even adjusting for about $30B of timing. We are more or less expecting adjusted outlays to be down about 2%, not up, but this early in the month, it’s really too early to know if this is timing, or an actual increase.
Coming up…a lot of quarterly tax payments are due on 9/15(Sunday), so expect them to start coming in Friday 9/13 and then pour in on Monday 9/16, before trickling off. Last year, the similar Friday-Monday time frame posted an $84B surplus, so it is almost certain that the current $53B deficit will be sitting in surplus territory by early next week and stay there for the rest of the month, giving Treasury one last gasp of air before they hit the real debt limit of $16.7T+$300B of “extraordinary measures(EM)” accounting fraud. With the current cash balance at $21B, lets add $80B for the impending cash infusion and another $50B of EM left in the tank and say that we have about $150B left before Treasury runs out of cash and gimmicks. Using last year as a guide, I can see how this could get them into late October, maybe even early November…we’ll have a much better idea by the end of next week.
