The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 5/21/2014 was $7.7B bringing the May 2014 deficit through 21 days to $90B with just 6 business days remaining.
We see revenues again take a baby step backwards, but this time it is probably the timing of customs/excise taxes…we’ll probably get a $1.5B bump in the next day or two that catches us back up in that category at least. Other than that, and our other outstanding timing issues…this month looks remarkably similar to last year.
The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 5/20/2014 was $6.7B bringing the May 2014 deficit through 20 days to $82B with 7 business days remaining. 
It was a fairly typical Tuesday…low revenues and average outlays. Revenues were actually down about $600M…not terrible, but not in the right direction. Looking back a few weeks to my May 2014 deficit forecast of $133B….I’d say we are still pretty much on track to end up pretty close to that. We will continue to see the deficit grow moderately over the next week until next Friday 5/30…when we will probably see a $30B+ deficit primarily driven by outlays due June 1 being pulled into May by the timing of the weekend. The same thing happened last May, so we still end up with two roughly comparable months.
The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 5/19/2014 was $5.8B bringing the May 2014 deficit through 19 days to $76B.
Revenues continue to make gains…we are now at $-2B with 8 business days remaining. Last year May revenues came in at $215B, so if we want to get to +5%, we’d need to get to +11B by the end of the month….or a little over +$1B per day gains, which definitely looks possible…we’ll have to wait and see though. Outlays are on track to end the month down $10B or so overall…primarily to there being one less business day….we’ll take it I guess.
The US Daily Cash Surplus for Friday 5/16/2014 was $7.3B bringing the May 2014 deficit through 16 days to $81B.
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.
The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 5/15/2014 was $30.8B bringing the May 2014 deficit to $89B through 15 days.
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.