Endgame: US Ends Fiscal 2024 Paying A Record $1.1 Trillion In Interest Expense
2024 was the year when the runaway US budget deficit was supposed to gradually normalize, and after two crisis years, the US was supposed to end its drunken sailor spending ways. And for a while there, it seemed touch and go, with the cumulative US deficit initially overtaking 2023 - forget about the batshit insane 2021 and 2022 when the deficit hit a mindboglilng 18% of GDP...
... before slowly easing back for a few months, only to sprint ahead of 2023 once more in August and close out fiscal 2024 by modestly reverting in September.
To be sure, while relentless US deficit spending did moderate somewhat in September, even leading to a very modest surplus ($64 billion, an improvement from the $171 billion deficit a year ago), this was due to a calendar quirk which pushed the August deficit to a record high $380 billion as we discussed last month.
Unfortunately, nothing has really changed: here is the 6-month moving average of US spending, which remains at the highest level since covid.
For those wondering how government receipts have performed during this period of exploding spending, here is the answer (in green):
... which is remarkable because while spending is absolutely exploding, revenues have also managed to bounce back, largely thanks to capital gains taxes on the surging stock market....
.... where stocks are at record highs thanks to the circularly relentless increase increase in the US deficit and debt, which just hit a record $35.77 trillion and is set to hit a satggering $36 trillion around election time.
But wait, there's more.
Looking at the ever more dire big picture, there is a reason why the Treasury waited to release the latest deficit data until 4pm on a Friday, and that reason is the latest confirmation that we have now crossed the Minsky Moment in terms of how much the US spends on interest on its debt, which as regular readers know is hitting a new record high every day, and just closed above $35.8 trillion (it was $35.3 trillion exactly one month ago when we did this update) and is growing by about $1 trillion every 100 days.
And even though the Fed cut interest rates one month ago, a long time has to pass before this flows through to the US interest expense waterfall. Meanwhile, the prediction we made last July, has finally come true because according to today's Budget statement, the amount spent on gross interest in September, the last month of Fiscal 2024, was $84 billion...
... which means that the total for Fiscal 2024 (which ended on Sept 30), US interest spending has just hit an all time high of $1.133 trillion, not only the first time in history when annual interest on US debt has surpassed $1 trillion but also surpassed $1.1 trillion and was just shy of $1.2 trillion!
Putting it in context, the $1.133 trillion interest expense for fiscal 2024 was almost 30% higher than the $879 billion in gross interest expense one year ago....
... and the stunning punchline is that as of today, gross interest on US debt has surpassed not just Defense spending, but also Income Security, Health, Veterans Benefits and Medicare, and is now the second biggest outlay of the US government, second only to Social Security, which is roughly $1.5 trillion per year.
But wait, there's more: the latest numbers confirm that we are well on our way to hitting our other forecast from April 1, of the US hitting an insane $1.3 trillion in interest expense by the year-end (now that the Fed is on its way to cutting rates by about 100bps through Dec 31)...
Why oh why are yields surging? Oh yes...
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 1, 2024
US Interest To Hit $1.6 Trillion By Year End, Making It The Largest US Government Outlayhttps://t.co/pGdjRlhuPX
... which mean interest expense will soon surpass Social Security spending and become the single largest outlay of the US government, some time in late 2024 or early 2025 at the earliest.
In other words, game over.
Which begs the question: why would Trump even want to be in charge when the house of cards finally comes crashing down, which they surely will in the next four year? Just let Kamala have it.