The US Daily Surplus for 1/16/2013 was $0.2B, bringing the deficit through 16 days to $35B, $16B under where we were this point in 2012. It is important to point out that through 16 days, 2013 is a full 2 business days ahead of 2012, which is really starting to make our revenue and outlay charts pop. 2013 Revenue is a full $47B ahead of 2012 and outlays are up $32B through our 16 calendar days. I expect this delta to be significantly reduced after the MLK holiday next week when 2012 and 2013 get more or less back in sync. Jan 2012 ended up with a $53B deficit…2013 is looking to end up less than that, but how much is difficult to forecast due to all of the moving pieces. I’ll just throw the dart at $25B, +/-20. We’ll see how that ends up.
I had mentioned yesterday that there was something screwy with the DTS. I still have not heard back with an explanation…not sure if that means it isn’t coming, or if I’m in the queue.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/15/2013 was $4.5B bringing the deficit through 15 days to $36B. Timing differences are still apparent in the data. Not only is 2013 1 business day ahead of 2012, but MLK holiday timing is throwing off the timing as well. I expect these timing issues to mostly resolve themself by next Tuesday, so by next Wednesday we should have a general idea of how January is going down.
The DTS for 1/15 has some oddities that I don’t quite understand at the moment, though I don’t think it affects my deficit numbers. I’m almost certain it us due to “extrordinary measures”, but I can’t quite wrap my mind around the accounting… Note to self…. never get into government accounting!! The gist of what they have done is somehow redeemed about $27B of Intragovernmental Debt …our pretend debt to ourselves and ended up with $27B in cash….while still staying under the debt limit. I sent an email to their usually very helpful staff…hopefully that yields some clarity. If not, i guess we’ll just have to take their word for it. In any case, this neat little switcharoo has pushed the cash balance, and debt limit cushion up to $77B over yesterday’s $50B. When coupled with the delay in tax refunds, this pushes the needle for impending default per my simple linear model to about 2/10 to 2/14. Remember that 2/15 there is a large interest payment due…~$35B from memory. If Bernanke can conjur up $27B in cash at will on a random Tuesday, it’s a pretty safe bet he can make that payment.
As a side note…regarding the debt limit, there has been a lot of talk about prioritizing payments, and all of the difficulty that would bring. I’m not reccomending this, and I fully expect a debt limit increase before we get there, but the answer is obvious…just delay tax refunds and prioritize all other spending above them until the debt ceiling is raised. Don’t get me wrong, delaying any payments is going to hurt the economy and piss people off, but delaying tax refunds seems a little bit less disruptive than not paying soldiers, social security, doctors ect… If Obama can frame the headlines that way…and blame Republicans for blocking tax refunds, I just don’t see the republicans having the spine to continue fighting. Or…it would just cause riots in the streets, but I guess that’s one of the risks of playing with fire like this. Without further ado…today’s charts.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/14/2013 was $7.3B bringing the total January 2013 deficit to $40B through 14 days. All in all, we are pretty much in line with last year when we ended up with a $53B January deficit, followed by a $249B February deficit. The “debt limit cushion” has grown to $50B, still pointing at 2/1 as the imminent default date using last year as a guide, which unfortunately isn’t particularly useful anymore due to the delay in tax filings. In any case, it looks like we have about a month, and the debt ceiling rhetoric is really heating up. Obama says he won’t even negotiate, and some are saying Republicans are willing to shut down the government. I’m pretty sure the Republicans will back down on this one, but you never know what a wounded animal will do. Default now, or default later? Does it really matter? In the long run, not so much, but in the short run, pulling out an annualized $1.2T of deficit spending out of the economy would pretty much send the economy into a “for real” great depression right here, right now. And that’s the scary part…like a drug addict, our economy has become addicted to all of this false demand created by deficit spending. Cutting spending kills the economy, but spending can’t continue forever anyway. It’s a lose-lose…my advice…just enjoy it while it lasts.
The US Daily Surplus for 1/11/2013 was $0.7B bringing the total deficit through 11 days to $47B, $4B under 2012. At this point, there are no statistically significant trends, in fact, adjusted for working days, 2013 is pretty much spot on with 2012. Due to the way the weekends and the MLK holiday falls in 2012 vs 2013, it’s going to take another week or two before we have a good idea where Jan-2013 is going to land. Further complicating it all, as discussed in an earlier post, Tax refunds are going to be delayed by a week, which will likely push about $5-10B of deficit out of January and into February. Ignoring any debt limit issues, there could be reduced refunds in February as well, but that’s more difficult to model so we’ll just have to wait and see.
