U.S. budget deficit increases to $107.7 billion in August
The federal government recorded a slightly larger deficit in August than a year ago, while the deficit through the first 11 months of this budget year is well above the same period last year.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the August deficit totaled $107.7 billion, up 0.5 percent from a deficit of $107.1 billion in August 2016. With one month to go in the 2017 budget year, the deficit totals $673.7 billion, 8.8 percent above the deficit for the same period a year ago.
The Congressional Budget Office in July boosted its estimate for this year’s deficit to $693 billion, which would be 18.3 percent higher than the 2016 deficit of $585.6 billion, a deterioration that reflects in part smaller-than-expected revenue gains this year.
The CBO’s July estimate represented a sharp increase of $134 billion from the agency’s January forecast. However, since that time, CBO has indicated that it might have been too pessimistic in its revised forecast.
Some private economists are forecasting a 2017 deficit of around $635 billion. That forecast assumes the government will run a surplus in September, which it has done in 53 of the past 62 Septembers.
Through the first 11 months of the budget year, tax revenues total $2.97 trillion, up 1.9 percent from the same period a year ago. Government spending totals $3.64 trillion, 3.1 percent higher than a year ago.
The government’s new budget year begins Oct. 1, and Washington had been facing the threat of a government shutdown if Congress had not agreed on a new spending bill by that time. However, President Donald Trump reached an agreement with lawmakers last week for a stopgap funding bill that will finance the government through Dec. 8.
That agreement also suspended the current debt ceiling through Dec. 8, removing the immediate threat of a market-rattling default on the nation’s $20 trillion national debt. ments it’s bringing to its products are often incremental or derivative. Among other things, that runs contrary to decades in which high-tech device prices have fallen over time, often dramatically, even as the gadgets themselves ran faster and acquired new powers.
On Tuesday, for instance, Apple also introduced a TV streaming box that will sell for $179, far more than similar devices, and a smartwatch with its own cellular connection that will cost almost $400.
In December, Apple will start selling an internet-connected speaker, the HomePod, priced at $349, nearly twice as much as Amazon’s market-leading Echo speaker.
Apple is also raising the price of its runner-up phones, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which will respectively cost $50 and $30 more than their immediate predecessors, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
The premium pricing strategy reflects Apple’s longheld belief that consumers will pay more for products that are so well-designed, they can’t fathom living without them.
Apple CEO Tim Cook left little doubt in the company’s confidence in the iPhone X (pronounced “10”), whose name references the decade that has passed since company co-founder Steve Jobs first pulled out an iPhone that sold for $499.
Cook attempted to frame the iPhone X as a similar breakthrough, hailing it as “the biggest leap forward” since the original iPhone.
But the original iPhone revolutionized society by putting connected hand-held computers and apps into the hands of millions of ordinary people. The iPhone X mostly promises to do what earlier smartphones have done, only better.
The technological wizardry in the iPhone X is unquestionably impressive. It includes a bright new edgeto-edge screen, a special artificial-intelligence-enabled chip, new sensors for facial recognition and a grab-bag of fun items like animated emojis that mimic your expressions, portrait-mode selfies that blur the background, an augmented reality game platform and wireless charging. Apple said the phone’s battery will last two hours longer than that of the iPhone 7.
But rival phones — many of them from Samsung — already offer similar displays, facial recognition, augmented reality and wireless charging, if often in cruder forms that mostly haven’t won over large numbers of phone users.
None of which is to say that Apple won’t break new ground. In particular, the iPhone X gives Apple the opportunity to bring augmented reality — essentially the projection of computer-generated images into realworld surroundings, a la the monster hunts in “Pokemon Go” — into mainstream use.
No one can say with certainty what sort of “killer app” will make augmented reality a hit. Whatever it turns out to be, it seems as likely to emerge from an unknown startup as an established company. But Apple is certainly taking a stab at the problem.
On Tuesday, Apple demonstrated a simple use for sophisticated camera technology on the iPhone X with “animoji,” which lets people animate emoji characters with their voices and facial expressions — and then send them to their friends.
Showing off a new technology with something that everyday people can use and understand is “what Apple does best,” said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
Augmented reality won’t be restricted to the iPhone X; the apps will also run on hundreds of millions of other iPhones so long as they install new operating-system software called iOS 11 when Apple pushes out a free update next week.
In a way, Apple may have its rivals to thank for this opportunity. Fiercer competition from Samsung, Google and Huawei increased the pressure on Apple to make a big splash with its new iPhone, says technology analyst Patrick Moorhead.
“It looks like they have a good chance at creating a new market segment called the ‘super phone,’ ” Moorhead said. “You could tell they really poured their heart and soul into this.”