US Treasury Shocks With Second Biggest Budget Surplus In History
Two weeks ago, as part of its quarterly refunding announcement, the Treasury surprised the market when it unveiled a funding need for the current quarter that was
$53 billion lower than it had initially forecast in February, and which we said "indicates that DOGE is indeed working and the US funding needs are actually declining."
Needless to say, for a market that was habituated to Joe Biden's debt-funded drunken sailor spending ways, the news that the US would needs
less - not more - spending than previously expected, came as a shock, and yields slumped as less debt than expected would be required to fund the world's most indebted government.
Today we got the reason why the borrowing need of the US was surprisingly lower than previously expected, and it was revealed in the latest
Treasury Monthly Statement laying out the US government's monthly deficit...
or rather surplus. Yes, we are so used to describing the sum-total of the US government's monthly income statement as a deficit (i.e., more spending than revenue) that it has become automatic to assume that every month the US will spend more than it brings in. Only this time that wasn't the case.
Presenting Exhibit A: in April, the US Treasury generated a $258.4 billion surplus after last month's $160.5 billion deficit; this the second biggest surplus on record, with just the $308 billion bumper surplus in 2021 bigger.
The unexpected surge in revenue, and the resulting budget surplus means that the cumulative deficit for fiscal 2025 suddenly doesn't look catastrophic: recall that just four months ago, back in January, in the last month of Biden's reign, the US had already spent a record $840 billion for the first 4 months of the year, on pace to blow away all previous records. But then something changed, and first March saw a big slowdown in spending which resulted in a much more tame cumulative deficit through March, and then the April data meant that the cumulative deficit in the first seven months of the year, was actually an improvement, and dropped to just $1049 billion, down from a peak of $1037 billion in March, and below the run-rate of both 2021 and 2024.