Couldn’t Help But Notice (110607)
US Treasury receipts for October 2007 came in well ahead of October 2006, according to the last Daily Treasury Statement of the month. The specific items I track came in as follows:
The final word on this will be the Monthly Treasury Statement coming on Monday.
As mentioned towards the end of this post on how last year’s definition reduction was virtually ignored, I don’t expect future months’ receipts to exceed last year’s by more than 5%-6%. I believe that investors and those handling corporate capital expenditures will start pulling back on the possibility that Charlie Rangel’s Mother of All Tax Increases (named MOAT around here) might become law, and that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 will go away. I would greatly enjoy being wrong.
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This appears to be the underplayed story of the month so far out of Western Europe:
BRUSSELS – Yesterday was 148 days since the last general election and Belgium still has no new Federal Government. The figure is a record. In 1988 PM Wilfried Martens’s eighth administration took charge of the country 148 days after the poll.
….. Nobody dares to contemplate the ramifications of a failure to reach an agreement on these (remaining) issues (currently preventing government formation).
The “ramifications” including a breakup of Belgium, whose current capital, Brussels, is the home of the “supranatural and intergovernmental” European Union.
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House Minority Leader John Boehner discussed MOAT, the federal budget drift-by-continuing-resolution, and several other matters in his conference call yesterday afternoon with several SOBers, including yours truly, and fielded quite a few wide-ranging questions. Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion, Gribbit, and Justin at Right on the Right were also on the call.
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Related to the Boehner call — I looked for evidence of a “Pelosi blog conference call” or “Pelosi blogger conference call” (regular Google searches here and here; Google blog searches here and here; searches done without quotes; conference calls with the regular press don’t count), and didn’t find any evidence of one.
If that’s so, it sort of makes sense. What can you talk about when you yourself don’t even approve of the Congress you’re in charge of? –
“I don’t approve of Congress, because we haven’t done anything that — we haven’t been effective in ending the war in Iraq,†Pelosi said. “And if you asked me in a phone call, as ardent a Democrat as I am, I would disapprove of Congress as well.”
Fortunately for the country — not so much for Ms. Pelosi et al — it appears that the US military is (crossing fingers and toes while praying mightily) making a great deal of progress in ending the war (must-listen audio here). The least she could do is thank our soldiers for helping her accomplish her stated objective.
Have you noticed the continuing rise in tax receipts when viewed from the Department of Commerce site? From the 4th qtr of 2006 to preliminary 2nd qtr 2007 there has been a $187 billion increase. At that pace we will out do 2006 in gross receipts almost by 50%! A tidy sum for a supposedly slowing economy.
I also find interesting the incredible deceleration on the increase in interest payments from qtr to qtr. It will be interesting to see if the 3rd qtr shows a halt in it’s rise. It only rose $1 billion from the 2nd to the 3rd preliminarily. We will have to wait to Nov 29th for the final numbers on the 3rd qtr. What’s killing us is these government social benefits, if they would just stabilize we would be operating in the black by now.
Comment by dscott — November 6, 2007 @ 2:17 pm