The Treasury increased the total debt by $125B in May after a brief drop in April. This brings the total debt increase so far in 2022 to $880B. More importantly, though, the cost to service the debt is exploding. Total annualized interest has increased by $40B or 13.5% since the start of the year!
The Treasury ran a budget deficit of $193B in the month of March. This exceeded the 12-month average of $144B.
Over the last year, the Treasury has seen a massive influx of Individual tax revenues that have helped support the ballooning Federal Deficit. Unfortunately, spending has been so high that the additional revenue did not give much reprieve, causing the Treasury to borrow $2.27T over the last 12 months.
The US Treasury added $111 billion in debt during March. Meanwhile, rising interest rates are already creating problems for Uncle Sam. Annualized interest on the US debt has increased by over $16 billion in just six months. Following is an analysis of US debt holdings.
In January, the US Treasury realized its first surplus in 2.5 years.
The surplus was short-lived.
The Treasury went in the red by $216.6 billion in February.
Debt issuance by the US Treasury has fallen since the binge in December when the Treasury had to replenish its “extraordinary measures” stockpiles (government employee retirement funds) after the end of the “debt ceiling” debate. Still, issuance remains relatively high.
The Treasury added another $278 billion in debt during February. Similar to January, the Treasury stopped converting short-term to long-term debt Instead, it increased Bills by $94 billion, more than any other security type.
Even with the taper, the Fed continues to expand its balance sheet. And it’s not tapering the purchase of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) nearly as fast as advertised.
The US Treasury realized a monthly surplus of $118.7 billion in January. It was the first budget surplus since September 2019 and the largest since it realized a $160 billion surplus in April of 2019.
The surplus was driven by high revenue from a continued surge in Individual Taxes. This was combined with shrinking expenditures due to the expiration of the child tax credits that ended on December 31. The surplus for the month also was helped by $70 billion in proceeds from a wireless spectrum auction.
The Treasury added almost $400 billion of debt in January, the third most since July 2020. As the month closed out, the national debt eclipsed $30 trillion.
The other two larger debt increases both came right after the debt ceiling was raised. Perhaps most important is the fact that almost $200B of the newly added debt was in short-term Bills (turquoise below).
The debt ceiling was raised in December and the Treasury responded immediately, adding $709 billion in debt over the month.
To be fair, $470 billion of this was non-marketable, as shown below.
Note: Non-Marketable consists almost entirely of debt the government owes to itself (e.g., debt owed to Social Security or public retirement)
After all the drama, Congress finally did what everyone knew it would do. It raised the debt ceiling by $480 billion in October. The Treasury wasted no time and quickly added $480 billion to the national debt in the second half of the month.
With this new debt tagged on, if the Fed has to raise rates to 6% to fight inflation, it would increase interest costs by $250 billion within 6 months and nearly $1 trillion within a few years. This is why the Fed must tell everyone that inflation is transitory.
