The US Daily Cash Deficit for 10/8/2013 was $2.5B pushing the October deficit up to $47B and the cash balance down to $32B…pretty close to where Lew has stated he expects it to land next Thursday.
Revenues continue to gain ground on 2012 despite the slow start. Outlays continue to be very light. I can only assume that bills are being slow paid and some things just aren’t getting paid at all. Since this is the cash deficit…no accruals here…. this will create the illusion of a lower deficit now….and a higher deficit later…when all of the bills are caught up and people get their back pay….after the debt limit is raised and the government is re-opened.
Tomorrow should post a bit larger deficit driven by a $12B Social Security payment, partially offset by higher revenues….$5-10B seems most likely, followed by a moderate Thursday deficit, and probably a small surplus on Friday.
I do want to point out that 10/17 is being talked about like it is doomsday in the press. However, from what I have read, Lew isn’t saying that it’s Doomsday…just that he will be out of extraordinary measures, and left with $30B of cash. It looks to me like a $30B cash cushion ought to be just about enough to get to 11/1 before an actual cash flow problem hits….but it’ll be a big one. It’s hard to estimate with precision, but using Friday 3/1/2013 as a go by (the last month to start on a Friday) there were $75B of outlays and $21B of revenues good for a $54B cash deficit. So without a deal….$54B of something doesn’t get paid 11/1….which is exactly why I suspect there will be a deal, but you never know….I didn’t expect the government to actually shut down, yet here we are, 9 days into it, with very little apparent progress being made. Stay tuned…the show is about to begin.
