Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 10/15/2014 was $6.5B bringing the October deficit through 15 days to $69B halfway through the month.

We are now more or less back in sync for revenues as $9B of corporate taxes came through for the day putting us on pace to beat 2013 in that category by 10%. It’s not on par with last month’s 29% YOY gain, and it’s only about $1B, but hey…we’ll take it.

Sitting here at the midpoint, October revenues don’t impress at $-7B. Sure…2013 has an extra Tuesday….so pulling that out they are more or less even. But we are shooting for +5% at a minimum to keep the deficit shrinking at a noticeable pace, so let’s hope we see an uptick in the second half of the month….it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Outlays, on the other hand, despite being down a day, are up $4B over 2013 and trending up. Ignoring the month end timing event we should see….we are on pace for about 3% YOY increase in outlays….quick math says to keep the deficit constant…we need about 4% revenue growth to stay even.

Other than that, there is something that looks odd in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cash outlays. They sit at $3.8B through 15 days. What’s odd is that looking back over the last few years, the average cash spend in this DTS bucket is only about $320M. Now to be honest, the $320M always seemed very low to me so I just assumed that the cash outlays for this program were somehow being dumped into another category…probably what they label “Food and Nutrition Service (misc)” (FNS) which averages about $8.4B per month. What I suspect is simply a change in accounting…things that had been coming out FNS’s piggy bank are now coming out of SNAP’s piggy bank. It should all net out…but nuke the category trends in the process….thanks!!

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Tuesday 10/14/2014 was 6.4B bringing the October 2014 deficit to $62B through 14 days.

YOY revenue continues to deteriorate, but a lot of that is related to timing….Last month 10/15 was on a Tuesday….there are generally a lot of things going on on the 15th of a month from debt issuance and payment, military active duty pay, and tax deposits to name a few. We should more or less catch up tomorrow and have a better idea of where we really stand at the halfway point.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 10/10/2014 was $2.2B bringing the October Deficit through 10 days to $68B.

We are still taking small steps backward, though some of it is likely timing. At least they are small…we have plenty of time left in the month for revenues to come back and hit that 5%+ target we are looking for.

The US daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 10/9/2014 was $5.8B bringing the October 2014 deficit through 9 days to $60B through 9 days. Due to Columbus day, we won’t get the Friday report until tomorrow.

It may be timing but revenue appears to be taking a small step back while outlays continue to gain YOY. Remember….in our comparison 2013 has an extra day on 2014, so we expect revenues and outlays to be lagging a bit. Revenues are…outlays are not. It’s still too early to worry much about, and I believe this time last year the government was shutdown due to the debt limit fight, so that probably is skewing our YOY a bit as well, but should wash out by the end of the month.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 10/7/2014 was $4.8B following Monday’s $5.4B surplus, leaving the October 2014 deficit through 7 days at $50B.

YOY revenue nudged up a hair, and Outlays are up a few $B, but no real material movement yet. October’s kind of a slow month….other than $10B or so of corporate taxes on the 15th….I wouldn’t expect anything but moderate deficits and surpluses through the rest of the month….with the deficit perhaps moving from $50B to $75B or so before a pretty big 10/31 deficit puts us up around $100B. So…I’ll be paying attention primarily to withheld taxes…the largest and least volatile cash source. As of now…they are up $435M…about 1%. Of course, with 2014 having one less day in our comparison….this is actually not a shabby number….let’s hope it continues gaining ground and ends up over +5%….