Thursday brings the Department of Agriculture report on the prospective plantings for the new crop year and the quarterly grain storage report. In today’s WSJ, there was a piece titled, “U.S. Ethanol Industry May Pare Fuel-Blending Credit.” The readers of NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND know that the ETHANOL SUBSIDIES AND TARIFFS have been a major point of contention for me as I believe that the ethanol price supports have driven global grain prices higher and made a mockery of U.S. trade policy. The article said, “U.S. farmers are poised to increase plantings to take advantage of corn prices.” This is what I have been arguing: The higher corn prices go, the more land farmers take from growing other grains, thus driving beans and wheat and others higher as well. The ETHANOL LOBBY has argued that corn for ethanol is a benign effect … WRONG.
Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Hoenig’
Notes From Underground: In the Spring OLD GLOBAL MACRO TRADERS’ THOUGHTS TURN TO GRAIN REPORTS
March 30, 2011Notes From Underground: Did Dudley DO RIGHT on his mounting a possible expansion of monetary easing?
October 4, 2010First things first. The Financial Times ran a weekend front-page story revealing that Sarkozy and the Chinese have been holding secret meetings for the last year on the issue of global currency stability. It was unclear what efforts Sarkozy was pursuing but he was looking to get Chinese support for whatever he is going to try to accomplish when he gets the leadership post of the G-20. The French have been trying to replace the U.S. DOLLAR as the world’s reserve currency since the days of DeGaulle and Jacques Rueff. We have warned that Sarkozy is desperate to make a grand play on the international stage as his political support in France has badly eroded. Wen Jiabao is in Europe this week for talks with the EU on many issues.
Notes From Underground: CNBC-Trader’s Buzz
August 16, 2010
Watch me discuss FED policy–and flex my muscles–on CNBC.
Notes From Underground: Mr. Yen is looking for love in all the wrong places
August 16, 2010There was little news this weekend in the arena of financial enlightenment. There were several stories about the FED and its balancing on a tightrope of inflation/deflation. Thomas Hoenig, the dissenter from Kansas, was out making sure that the markets understood that he was not calling for tightening but rather was trying to keep the FED from painting itself into the same corner that it had under SIR ALAN. Hoenig wants the “extended period” language exorcised from the FOMC release so that the FED has more flexibility to move if and when robust growth emerges.
Notes From Underground: LTRO provides the NITRO to hammer the global equity markets
June 29, 2010NEWS OUT OF EUROPE: The Spanish Banks were all in a rage as the ECB moved to shorten the duration of the TERM DEPOSIT FACILITY, as the terms were shifting to three months from one year. The Long-term Repurchase Operation (LTRO) that was agreed to a year ago provided the needed funding to get European Banks through a difficult liquidity period at a very friendly below-market rate. Now that the ECB has put an end to that program the still-stressed banks are concerned that the ECB removal of the LTRO will cause short-term problems since liquidity is still an issue.