Treasury Announces $49.8 Billion January Deficit
The Treasury has released its monthly deficit numbers, and while revenues this January came at a robust $226.6 billion (compared to $205.2 billion a year earlier), the outlays exploded to $276.3 billion compared to just $247.9 billion a year ago. The net result was a deficit of $49.8 billion in January, $7.2 billion more than a year earlier. And the number that all are watching (increasingly more irrelevantly by the way, as the Fed now owns almost 15% of marketable debt) – interest on debt securities, was $21.1 billion, or 7.6% of all outlays. Since the Fed’s holdings will never be reduced, and in fact will continue growing with QE3, 4, and so forth, soon all the interest on marketable debt will be paid to Ben Bernanke, who will promptly remit it back to the Treasury in the epitome of the biggest ponzi scheme ever conceived by man.
On the revenue side, not surprisingly the biggest contributor was individual income taxes, amounting to $129 billion.
On the outlays side, the biggest payment was for Health and Human Services, which was $63.8 billion, followed by Social Security at $60 billion, and Defense-Military of $46.4 billion.
Full report for those who care about America’s insolvency.