The US Daily Cash Deficit for Thursday 2/6/2014 was $14.9B as refund checks finally started being paid….just a few days later than last year.
You may be wondering….how do you book -$7B of revenue??? Well…I net out refunds from revenues rather than counting them as outlays (which would double count). So we had about $5B of regular revenues, and almost $12B of refunds….bringing us to about -$7B for the day. This does help to catch us up YOY…the gap was at $16B yesterday, but has narrowed to $10B.
Perhaps of note….cash plummeted $42B on the deficit and a~$26B net pay down of debt, ending up at $36B with just one day to go before the debt limit is frozen. Of course…if we hit the debt limit with $2T in cash….we wouldn’t have a problem for perhaps a few years…..generally speaking the more cash in hand 2/7…the longer they will be able to make it before “default day”. However, as I noted yesterday, I actually think it is in Obama’s best interest to minimize the number of days before we hit the D-DAY….forcing the republicans rather weak hand sooner, and getting this game over rather than letting it be drawn out. In the big picture, I suppose it really doesn’t matter:)
**Looks like Lew has penciled in Thursday 2/27 as D-Day….which makes sense since 2/28 will likely have a large ($30B-$40B) deficit as once again payments due Saturday 3/1 will get pulled forward into February since 3/1 is not a business day.
