Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 1/28/2014 was $2.7B pulling the January 2014 Cash Surplus down to $13B with 3 days remaining in the month.

Just for fun…I have unsynced the month…from days of the week to day of month…so we are now comparing 28 days of 2013 to 28 days of 2014….each with 3 (different) business days remaining. It’s not perfect….nothing ever will be, even comparing full months to full months…days of week and business days still have an impact, but with all of the big daily events behind us….I think this is the best way to look at the final 3 days.

So…we can see that revenue is at +21B….and still has some room to grow.

Outlays are at -$15B….which has been confusing me all month. I don’t actually track category spending daily, so I’ll just wait until the month is over, but I am thinking that most of this is in “other”…which is just a field I calculate…whatever’s left…generally a bunch of small items only periodically showing up on the DTS. In January 2013…other added up to $29B….if my hunch is right, it should be down to about $20B or so in 2014…..Good job congress….not!!

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 1/27/2014 was $6.1B…pretty much in line with last year…Monday 1/28/2013 at $5.5B. this brings the January Surplus to $16B with 4 days remaining.

As it stands…Revenue is at $+15B….which we will likely see grow, perhaps as much as $10B due to the extra day remaining in Jan 2014 compared to 2013. Outlays, on the other hand are about $-24B….for now. The extra day will likely shave about $10B off of this…and payments due 2/1 that will be paid Friday 1/31 should push this the other way by a healthy margin, making January look worse, but February better.

There is still quite a bit of uncertainty, but the January deficit looks like it will end up right around $20B…+/-$10B or so…. Quite coincidentally….I threw out $25B earlier this month as my wild A$$ guess….though it looks like I may have missed big on revenue and outlays….only to have them net out…. We’ll find out next Monday when the 1/31 report is released

The US Daily Cash Surplus…the 8th surplus in the last nine days, with the only exception being an $11M deficit on 1/15 came in at $5.4B, bringing the cash surplus to $10B for the month.

Another good day for revenues…adding another $+5B on the day versus last year, though a good chunk of that was a $3B TARP deposit…cash is cash right? Per the Daily TARP report…the balance of TARP Assets remaining is now down to $8B…

So two days ago….I was sitting here pondering about whether or not we would make it to +$17B for the month…equating to a moderate 6% YOY gain. Two days later, we are sitting at +$16B….with 6 days left…so without a doubt…January is looking pretty good on the revenue front perhaps with even +10% is striking distance. I’m no optimist, but there is no denying that the trend is looking good through 23 days of 2014…let’s just hope it still looks this good in 2 more days 🙂

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Wednesday 1/22/2014 was $12.5B as revenues surged far past my expectations…driven by taxes not withheld at $29.2B….compared to $18.5B a year ago…not bad for a one day haul!! From here, we would expect this source to taper off…ending the month well under $1B per day. On the current track, this category is on track for about +10% compared to my initial estimate of +5%. On the other hand, taxes withheld are currently sitting at only +1%, but seem on track to end up closer to +5%.

The 12.5B daily surplus pushes the monthly surplus to $8B…breaking to positive for the first time this month. If revenues stay strong it’s possible we stay here…but I suspect we will still end up with a small deficit thanks to strong outlays Friday 1/31 as a lot of February payments will get pulled forward…January’s loss…February’s gain.

Outlays were actually flat for a change. The final large SS payment is now in the books bringing the monthly total to $62.840B. Looking at the month over month, that would indicate a 5.2% growth rate…which could grow a little higher depending on what trickles in for the rest of the month. It’s not an outrageous number, but it is a bit higher than my forecast, which has a 4% growth rate baked in. The rate does generally jump around, so I wouldn’t read too much into one incomplete month, but it is something to keep an eye on. We know the wave of Boomer retirements has really just started…if we see this rate start to spike for a sustained period, it will tell us one of two things…the second wave of retirements (the first being caused by the “great” recession) may be upon us…or secondly…maybe the economy sucks and seniors are being forced to take SS because they can’t find jobs.