The US Cash Surplus for 8/19/2013 was $3.1B pushing the August 2013 Deficit through 19 days down to $97B with 9 business days remaining in the month. Revenue continues to make gains…inching to within $3B of last year. I expect continued gains, but with 9 business days left, getting to +10% is going to be a challenge, but not impossible.
The US Cash Surplus for 8/16/2013 was $3.5B bringing the August 2013 deficit through 16 days to $100B with 10 business days remaining. Revenues finally caught a break…making up $8B of the $13B deficit vs. last year we had as of the last report. At 4% down, it would be a safe bet that steady ground will be made up over the rest of the month…I am forecasting we get up to around +5%, but willing to be pleasantly surprised.
For the coming week, the deficit will be moderate, maybe $15B-$20B +/- as Monday and Friday will likely post surplus, offset by deficits Tuesday-Thursday. No real action on the schedule from what I can see, so we will just keep our eye on the YOY revenues as we march toward the end of the month.
The Cash Deficit for 8/15/2013 was $37.9B bringing the August 2013 deficit through 15 days to $103B.
As expected, cash interest payments went out on the 15th…$34.5B worth…about $1B higher than last year…I had expected a small drop. Adjusted for Social Security timing, outlays are down about $9B YOY, with $5B of that reduction coming from defense vendor payments.
On the other side…we did receive the corporate tax deposits I had expected, but on the month, we are down 8% YOY…though that’s only $300M since August is not a strong month for corporate tax receipts. Halfway through the month, we are down $13B over last year (-11%) where we have come to expect ~10% gains. There probably aren’t any revenue surprises left…just the typical monthly payroll deposits. Is this a turning point? Or will the next 2 weeks bring with them a flood or revenues? Stay tuned folks!!
The cash deficit for 8/14/2013 was $7.4B bringing the August 2013 deficit through 14 days to $65B.
On the outlays side we have a very large timing issue regarding the $30B of interest payments….they are in the 2012 amounts already but will not show up in 2013 until tomorrow, so don’t get too excited yet about the apparent $60B decrease in outlays. Another $12B of the variance is SS timing that won’t get flushed out until 8/28.
Still no material improvement on the revenue side, though we should get a ~$3B pickup from corporate taxes tomorrow. The excise taxes we missed yesterday did flow through and are in line with last year…up less than .5%…or +$16M so it doesn’t look like we are going to get our +10% from there. 12 business days to go…$32B of ground to make up to get to 10%. We have witnessed several surprisingly strong finishes in the last few months, so clearly it is possible….but becoming less likely by the day. My current forecast only has us getting to +5%…I will probably take a closer look sometime next week to determine if any revisions are needed.
The Cash Deficit for 8/13/2013 was $6.0B with revenues underperforming compared to last year…primarily due to excise tax receipts…we will probably catch back up on those tomorrow. But as it stands, the cash deficit for August 2013 is $58B, $13B under last year, though adjusted for the timing of SS payments $12B…we are pretty much in line with decreased outlays being offset by decreased revenues. We will likely see a ~5-$10B deficit on Wednesday, and $30-40B deficit Thursday…followed by a wash on Friday, ending the week around $100B for the month.
