The US Daily Cash Deficit for Friday 8/29/2014 was $17.5B bringing the August 2014 Deficit to $155B for the full month compared to $173B last year.
You may recall…I was forecasting a huge deficit for Friday, and I suppose $17.5B is a pretty big number, but I was looking for something in the $30-$35B range. In a typical month, a large Medicare payment of about $18B goes out early in the month, but I with the holiday on 9/1, I assumed it would be paid on the last day of August like it was last year. For whatever reason…it didn’t….I’m sure we will see it 9/2….
If you ignore this timing event, August 2013 and August 2014 were pretty much the same….with marginal revenues gains being cancelled out by an increase in outlays.