It will be much more than that. Consider that the Treasury borrowed $880 billion between Sept 15 and Oct 27. That extrapolates to a brisk $8.8 trillion per year. Were those exigent circumstances? Yes, but what evidence is there that we should expect significant changes? The Treasury took a break last week, but there's precious little news to suggest that borrowing won't take off again. A huge recession is steaming down the pike so Federal receipts should be taking a dive, the official Bailout has yet to commence in major form, Federal guarantees of the money market have not been invoked, the Banks are only just beginning to deal with the underwater option-ARMs that will be bleeding off for the next 3 years, etc., etc. I certainly hope it won't reach the $9 trillion a straightline projection suggests, but it is very unlikely that the real deficit (not Enron.gov calculations) will be 2 trillion or less. Only the famous Wall Street firms that got us into this mess could project a deficit of $980 billion when the government has already borrowed $500 billion in the first month and is planning to borrow an additional $920 billion in the next 6 months! And the Wall Street Bond firms, being so much better with their math, are projecting $1.4 trillion, which is what the Treasury says it will borrow by the end of March. With math skills like that, it's no wonder we've had an epic fail on Wall Street. Is anyone watching the numbers?

All of the CBO's projections from July and August were blown out of the water in a matter of weeks. I suspect they're a bit shell-shocked. Also, it's hard to make accurate projections when the Fed and Treasury are playing Calvinball.

I've reread the Treasury statements about their borrowing needs and noticed that they claimed they would need $550 billion for the entire three month period from October through December. I originally interpreted it as being the remainder of the three month period. I should have known better. If there's one thing the Bush Administration has taught us, it's "don't trust the government". As of October 31, they passed the $550 billion mark. I suppose that politically, it's a bad idea to tell Congress that you're not going to be able to make it to Christmas without raising the debt ceiling. But honestly, this is just weird. They've already borrowed the entire amount they said they're going to need. In the last two months of calendar year 2007 they borrowed 150 billion. Somehow, this year, it's magically not going to happen?. Or for that matter be much, much worse? Of course they are smart people and there is Calvinball; they could just put it "off the books".