First, our hearts go out to all suffering in the world of insanity brought on by senseless wars that diplomacy OUGHT to have been able to prevent. The world always returns to the insanity that brought us to World War I when nobody could stop the trains once set in motion. As Phil Ochs sang, “It’s always the old who lead us off to war, it’s always to fall, look at all we won with the saber and the gun, tell me is it worth it all?” But here we are and as always the world continues to focus on the minutiae of life, including the financial outcomes responding to the high-speed headlines driven by algorithmic speed machines. There is no context to any news just manufactured volatility fabricators of the latest musings of some “news” outlets’ favorite expert. But as Hyman Roth said so clearly: “Michael this is the profession we have chosen.”
Posts Tagged ‘wheat’
Notes From Underground: Larry Summers and His Discontent
July 19, 2011In Monday’s Financial Times there is a column by Lawrence Summers, the GODFATHER of U.S. economic policy. Mr. Summers offers the Europeans a great deal of advice on “HOW TO SAVE THE EUROZONE IN THE COMING CRITICAL WEEKS.” The article is actually a good policy prospective if there was not the issue of politics that play a large and important role in the EU‘s inability to resolve its fiscal difficulties. Summers wants to believe that the EUROCRATS have the political mandate to negotiate Brussel’s desire for a peaceful, state-supported EDEN of entitlements.
Notes From Underground: In the Spring OLD GLOBAL MACRO TRADERS’ THOUGHTS TURN TO GRAIN REPORTS
March 30, 2011Thursday 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.
Notes From Underground: FOMC convenes Tuesday
August 8, 2010Friday’s unemployment report was worse than expected and to make matters worse June’s tepid numbers were revised downward. Prior to the U.S. release, we got news that Canada had negative job growth but that is not a terrible thing as the three previous Canadian numbers were very robust. The question facing all economic policy makers is whether or not the global economy is indeed slowing or merely treading water at very tepid rates of growth? All the news reports from the U.S. during the weekend reflected concern that the U.S. recovery was grinding to a halt and the Obama administration was searching for a new policy mix to stimulate the moribund jobs market.