The US Daily Cash Surplus for Monday 12/9/2013 was $7.0B pulling the December 2013 cash deficit through 9 days down to $28B.

Revenues advanced about $4B today pulling even with 2012 thanks to a $2.5B cash infusion from “Justice Department Programs”. Hmmm… I wonder if this related to any of the billion dollar fines I keep reading about…maybe one of the banks actually paid up?? Just a guess…

With about a quarter of the month gone…2013 and 2012 are all tied up… both revenues and outlays are flat. We’ll likely see about $10-15B of deficits between Tuesday and Thursday before heavy tax revenues start flowing in Friday…pushing the deficit to surplus by next Monday.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 12/6/2013 was $3.8B nudging the December 2013 cash deficit through 6 days to $35B…$5B over 2012 through the same time frame.

Revenues are still down a bit and cost are still up a little…but It’s still too early to really worry about it. We have a few more days before things really start heating up. We’ll probably see ~$100B of revenues between Friday 12/13 and early next week as corporate taxes and other tax payments are paid….dwarfing the activity we’ve seen to date. Until then…just stay tuned.

The US Daily Cash Surplus for Wednesday 12/4/2013 was $3.8B bringing the December 2013 cash deficit through 4 days to $27B…$6B over where 2012 was at this point.

No real action to note yesterday…revenues gained a bit over 2012 and outlays were down about $1B.  Expect moderate surpluses and deficits through next week followed by a surge in revenues between 12/13 and 12/16.

The US Daily Cash Deficit for Tuesday 12/3/2013 was $30.5B led by $24B of Social Security payments. Adding yesterday’s unreported $0.2B deficit gets us to ~$31B for the month.

Timing wise…I am syncing 2012 and 2013 based on business days…so we are comparing 2 business days of 2013 (12/1 to 12/3) to 2 business days of 2012 (12/1 to 12/4). This should work well until the end of the month…where 2013 picks up one extra business day vs 2012…. this should result in a small revenue bump offset by a small increase in outlays….all else equal.

So two days in…which admittedly is too early to spot trends…we see that revenues are down $4B…a little surprising, but not concerning yet. Outlays are up….thanks in part to a $5.8B interest payment yesterday….in 2012 this same payment went out 11/30.

So at $31B…the deficit should continue to grow moderately over the next week to ~50B or so. Then…tax revenues should start pouring in around the 15th (a weekend)…probably pushing us to a surplus by Monday 12/16….which we would expect to stick for the remainder of the month.

With November in the bag…it’s time to pull out the old dart board and take a swing at December. But first…lets take a look at November. My forecast was $160B…actuals came in at $142B, good for an $18B miss…tying my largest miss in the last 6 months I’ve been doing this. The average is a $12B miss, with my best being October with a $4B miss. Clearly there exists some randomness with revenues and outlays that will never be able to proactively forecast, but all together, an $18B miss isn’t that bad given that there were $349B of outlays and $206B of revenues.

The model I am using splits revenues into 21 independent sources and forecasts each stream independently. Outlays are split into 36 sources…also with a cash forecast for each. That’s a hell of a lot of moving parts, but it works surprisingly well. So bottom line…the forecast is not perfect, and never will be, but it does seem to be doing a fairly good job at this point, though I do have some concern about the 2014 forecast….especially on the revenue side. Basically, it may take a few months in early 2014 to re-calibrate the revenue growth I am expecting ~5% (wild a** guess) with what we actually see come January 2014.

Ok…looking forward. December is a quarter close, so we should see a big increase in revenues over November…from $206B to ~$342B as tax payments are made by individuals and corporations, including some cash from our good buddies and Fannie/Freddie. This will be about a 10% gain over last December’s $310B.

For outlays, I have them pegged at $291B….just $2B over last year’s $289B. Clearly it would be nice if we saw outlays down 5% again, but I’m not so sure….at least not yet. Add it all up, and we have a $51B surplus on deck for December….which would leave the year at $663B vs 2012’s $1.096T