Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 11/22/2013 was $5.7B bringing the November 2013 cash deficit with 4 business days remaining to $104B.

At this point, revenues are up 11% and outlays are down 2%…leading to our $20B YOY improvement. Withheld tax deposits are up 8%, corporate taxes are down 19% (from a small base) and excise taxes are flat. Making up the rest of the gains are mostly the $6B TARP payment we discussed a few days back.

Looking ahead, Wednesday brings the final round of SS payments and Thursday is Thanksgiving. Friday is the last business day of the month, and it should bring a large deficit of $30B+, but we won’t know for sure until 12/2 when the 11/29 DTS is released.. We appear to be on track to end the month somewhere between $140B and $160B.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 11/21/2013 was $4.6B bringing the November Deficit through 21 days to $98B with 5 business days remaining. Since the corresponding Thursday in 2012 (11/22/2012) was Thanksgiving….there was no activity…so 2013 shows gains in revenues and outlays throwing the timing off a bit, but it will catch back up next week by month end.

Nothing else to really note other than that November 2013 continues to look like it will overperform my initial expectations of a $160B deficit with 5 business days to go…though 11/29 will be a wild one, so how it all ends is still up in the air. Right now, I’d say $135B-$155B looks most likely, but stay tuned.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Wednesday 11/20/2013 was $1.2B as strong SS outlays were offset by a surprise (to me) cash infusion from TARP in the amount of $6.1B. TARP assets still on the books as of the beginning of the month were about $22B and are being slowly liquidated (for cash) at a rate of about $2B per month lately…which is what my estimate was. So….I’ll go back to the drawing board…this will result in $6B of revenues I clearly was not anticipating, which will reduce the current period cash deficit accordingly. However…in the big scheme of things, all this does is pull forward “revenue” that I had expected in future months….so it basically nets to zero.

Still…thanks to that $6B, we got pretty close to posting a surplus on a day we typically would expect have a $5-10B deficit….so clearly more good news. While this is not a sustainable source of revenues (the $14B remaining balance will be exhausted before too long), we are now at +14B and +10% on revenues YOY with six business days remaining. If we stay on trend (anything but certain) it would appear that we could end the month with a deficit under $150B vs the $160B I had initially predicted, but you never really know until the books are closed.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for 11/19/2013 was $5.6B bringing the November 2013 cash deficit through 19 days to $92B with 7 business days remaining. Revenues take a small step back after a blowout yesterday, but remain at +$8.3B for the month, so +1.5B per day over the rest of the month would get us to where we want to be. Tomorrow’s report will show us round 3 of SS payments…another $12B slug, which should lead to a $5-10B deficit.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 11/18/2013 was $11.6B on extremely strong revenues and weak outlays bringing the November 2013 deficit through 18 days down to $86B with 8 business days remaining.

And just like that…what looked just yesterday like a disappointing month for revenues is back in the mix posting $19B of revenue for the day compared to $11B for the comparable 2013 day (Monday 11/19/2012) good for a +$8B gain on the day. I honestly can’t explain this one…it’s all from withheld taxes….a series that generally doesn’t display a lot of volatility. Whatever the reason…we’ll take it. Revenues are now sitting at +8.5% YOY…in line with what we have come to expect and poised to possibly exceed expectations depending on how strong the rest of the month is.