Daily Deficit

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 10/29/2013 was $6.5B bringing the October 2013 cash deficit to $81B with 2 days remaining.

Revenues have now surpassed October 2012 totals and are poised to land somewhere between +5-10% YOY growth. Outlays have climbed back a bit but are still down $19B, but I have to believe that most of this reduction is still timing ($5B) and a backlog of refunds and bills that built up during the shutdown they still haven’t caught up on. If that’s true..it may slip out of October and burn November. If it’s not….well maybe they actually cut spending??? probably not though.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 10/28/2013 was $5.1B bringing the October 2013 deficit with 3 days remaining to $74B.

Revenues…currently sitting at $200B are just under the $204B we netted for all of 10/2012. Getting up to $220-225B by month end looks possible (but not certain) if the month ends strongly, which would be a solid +10% YOY gain. Outlays still look quite weak, and other than a few spots, I really haven’t seen a surge of outlays I expected after the shutdown ended as back pay and unpaid invoices were caught up. Not sure what to make of that, but it is what it is. The deficit…currently at $74B will likely climb a little from here, but absent a revenue slowdown or surge in outlays will likely beat my $91B outlook. Cheer up….that’s a good thing!!

The US daily Cash Deficit for Friday 10/25/2013 was $4.9B pushing the October 2013 cash deficit to $79B with 4 business days remaining.

Revenues actually lost a bit of ground…in part due to strong tax refunds which were delayed earlier in the month during the shut down. My initial estimate for the month was $91B. We are already close to that….but honestly, there is a lot of uncertainty about the remaining 4 days, so I hesitate to even try to guess where it ends up.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for 10/24/2013 was $8.4B pushing the October 2013 cash deficit through 25 days to $75B.

Same old story…Revenue continues to make small daily gains…Outlays…not so much. Oh well…I guess we’ll find out how the story ends next Friday.

The US Daily Cash deficit for 10/23/2013 was $11.6B as the final SS checks of the month went out totaling $12.3B. This brings the October 2013 deficit through 23 days to $66B. We did see a small trickle of those delayed payments start going out today starting with 2.6B of tax refunds and $0.5B for the Commodity Credit Corporation….whatever the heck that is.

Revenues continue to make small gains vs. 2012 and are now at +$12B. If they continue at this pace, hitting +10% seems likely, which will be good for a symbolic win if nothing else. For the rest of the month, I’ll be keeping my eyes on revenues.

Perhaps of note…though it’s not set in stone, the vast majority of SS payments have gone out, and for the second month in a row it is looking like outlays were pretty much flat. August ended up at $61.632B…October is sitting at $61.671B…only $39M higher. For reference, in a typical month, we’ve been seeing about +$300M, with some seasonal variation. Quick math tells us that +100k people at $1163 per month would add about $125M to the baseline. Very interesting…. I have SS projected to grow at about 5% per year due to COLA increases and increased enrollment at higher monthly benefits. If we see a few more months like this, I may have to think about adjusting my forecast down a bit even though I had expected this to be a bit conservative. Oh well…when the facts change…so must the forecast….fingers crossed!! For what it’s worth…last October was at $56.949B…8.3% lower, so these last 3 months might just be an aberration. COLA increases go out in December, which should be good for a $1B bump at least, so one way or another, this won’t last more than another month or two.