Delaying the Inevitable

Each month the Treasury Department releases a Treasury Statement.  This helps us understand the state of America’s fiscal situation.  These reports tend to be produced around the middle of each month, tallying the government’s prior month’s income and spending.  America’s fiscal year runs from October first through September 30^th.  With that in mind, the latest statement is the final release for fiscal 2024 (revisions will come later of course), but we should now have an understanding of the how things fared for the full 12 months.

The operative word in the prior statement is should.  This release was due to be produced on October 10^th.  When Atlas went to pull up the data, it was not there.  No report has been created.  A bit perplexed, an economic calendar from Econoday was referenced.  The only information offered there was the phrase “delayed at source.”  A quick search on the internet yielded no further explanation.  Desperate (What can we say? Atlas likes to keep tabs on indicators!), AI was consulted to see if it could discover the cause of the delay.  As of this writing, the best it could come up with was a large language model answer, representing pure conjecture.  Atlas never stoops so low as to pawn off conjecture as truth.

There could be any number of reasons for the delay, but whatever its cause, finding out why is more challenging than just few strokes of the keyboard.  Atlas didn’t try to pick up the phone and call the Treasury, instead this morning note was created.  Any number of excuses are possible, and if it is revealed, we’ll mention it when writing about the actual release.  In the meantime, Atlas wishes you a happy new fiscal year filled with new hopes, joys, and beginnings.