Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 1/28/2014 was $4.8B bringing the January Surplus with one business day remaining to $20B.

Revenues stand at +3%. Outlays are flat overall, but there is some interesting movement. First off, Medicaid continues to grow….likely at over 15% YOY. One month isn’t a trend…..and last January probably hadn’t seen the full effect of expansion hit cash flow by then, but still interesting. Last year Medicaid spending grew $49B good for an 18% clip. Social Security…a program nearly 3 times the size as Medicaid, grew only $37B. January looks to continue that +$4B/month trend….let’s hope it slows down a bit by the second quarter because that eats up about half of revenue growth at +3% growth….

The other interesting item in outlays is unemployment payments. After averaging $2.7B a month in 2007, they zoomed upwards, peaking at $16.1B in 3/2010….and they’ve been falling just about ever since, hitting a 7+ year low in November at $2.172B…..but then jumping to $3.2B in December. I figured it was just timing….December 2013 had a $1B jump as well, though prior years didn’t. In any case, January 2014 got right back on the trend. January 2015 though…with one day left looks to match December 2014 at ~$3.2B. Hmmmm…. It’s just 2 months….and it’s only $1B, but this is one of the key indicators I’ve been observing for several years now….looking for early indications of a recession. It doesn’t mean anything at this point, but stay tuned.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 1/26/2014 was $9.5B bringing the January 2015 surplus through 26 days to $40B with four business days remaining in the month.

Revenues have continued to gain, and are now at +$9B, good for +3% so far. Outlays are about where we left them at $-17B, though they should get about $13B of that back Wednesday with the final SS payments for the month. Putting it all together…as long as I have the timing right, I’d guess we will still end up with a small deficit by month end….$0-$10B or so….

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Wednesday 1/21/2015 was $18.9B pushing the January 2015 surplus through 21 days to $26B.

This was a very good day…The slug of taxes not withheld we’ve been expecting came in at $36B, topping last year’s $29B and finally pushing 2015 revenues past 2014 where it now sits at $+4B. That’s quite a relief…unless you were one of the folks writing those checks….I honestly would not have been surprised to see it go the other way, which would have put us in a hole to start the new year… Instead, we are at ~+2%, despite being down a day….not great, but not too shabby either.

Outlays also pick up a little bit of ground, but are still at $-19B. As discussed previously, most of this is timing…more or less we are flat. Outlays are way less volotile than revenues….so it is probably going to take a few months to see what the growth trend is, but 1-3% is a pretty safe bet. Most of the significant revenue events are now behind us….The MTD surplus will likely bounce around a bit around this level before being more or less wiped out 1/31 as timing pulls a lot of payments due 2/1 forward into January….just like last year. then..it’s on to February….which is likely to post another $200B deficit. Stay tuned…it will only get more interesting from here :)…promise.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Friday 1/16/2015 was $6.7B bringing the January 2015 deficit through 16 days to $6B.

Revenues make a big jump over our last report suggesting the major timing issues have resolved leaving us at $-4B with 9 business days remaining. this is a much less daunting position than the $-21B we showed on the last report. A solid gain for the month is definitely still within reach for the month, but highly dependent on the receipt of unwithheld taxes this week. Last year, Wednesday 1/22 had $29B of receipts….a beat or miss of that tomorrow will probably be the primary driver for this month’s revenue performance for the rest of the month.

Outlays are currently at $-19B…$13B or so which is SS payments. The rest is likely just the remnants of the one fewer business day, and possibly payments to defense vendors running a little bit behind last year. I did realize today that a $6B interest payment due 1/31 will likely go out February 2 instead…which will pull down the January deficit a bit and push February up. This wasn’t adjusted for in my initial forecast, but is now.

From here, we will likely jump to a surplus over the next two days before sliding back toward $0 +/- a few by 1/31, which should post a sizable deficit.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 1/14/2014 was $5.2B bringing the January 2015 deficit to $21B through 14 days.

Revenue, at -$21B does not appear to have made much progress. $7B can likely be chalked up to timing of corporate taxes…that will sync back up tomorrow. Being down a business day doesn’t help either, but we’re not going to get that back. I’d guess adjusted for timing, we are at about $-10B. So it looks like a weak start, but there is still plenty of time for upward movement, especially next week when we should see $40B or so of “taxes not withheld”

Outlays also appear to be down at -$26B, but again, timing explains most of it. 2015 is down a SS payment….that’s about $14B. There is also about $5B of interest that will catch back up tomorrow, and as with revenues, we are down a day.

As it stands, adjusted for timing, both revenue and outlays look to be a little light YOY, but nothing extraordinary….yet. We should have a better idea on revenues by the end of next week…if we haven’t caught back up by then, getting to over +5% on the month is going to start looking like a long shot. For reference, January 2014 had revenue growth of about +10% vs 2013 both at the midpoint and at month end.