A surprise to the upside (though still very negative), but an improvement none-the-less. We can see this below with a chart that details the year over year change, smoothed out over three month time frames.The U.S. government posted a $111.40 billion budget deficit in August, slightly smaller than a year ago due largely to calendar shifts and matching a record period of 11 straight monthly deficits, the Treasury Department said on Friday.
The August budget gap was well below the forecasts of analysts polled by Reuters, who predicted a $152.0 billion deficit for the month. The year-ago deficit was $111.91 billion.
My concern is that the massive spike in outlays was the sole reason for economic prints coming in more "stable" over the past few months (although it is amazing that this level of spending didn't create many absolute positives in recent months).
The question is what happens when the government doesn't have it's next cash for _____ program?
Source: Treasury
Since the HC post worked for you maybe this one on an overview of the economy, the context of macro-policy and the OBM outlook might be useful as well.
ReplyDeletehttp://llinlithgow.com/bizzX/2009/09/between_stalingrad_and_kursk_r.html
The outyear prog on deficits is well within our funding capabilities.