The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee is meeting today and tomorrow, where it will revise its latest economic forecasts for the year and release its plan for short term interest rates. At the June meeting of the Fed, the median forecast among the 17 Fed policymakers was that inflation would be 0.8 percent in 2020. Given the economic recovery to date and the growth in government spending, that will no doubt be too low. Also, in June the Fed’s projection of inflation in 2021 and 2022 was 1.6 percent and 1.7 percent. From the growth perspective, according to the data from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, Q3 growth could be near 30 percent. Economic reports so far show that consumer spending is outpacing productio...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump claimed the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was over, as both sides accused one another of violating the terms of the agreement. Commercial vessels are increasingly steering clear of the Strait of Hormuz as security risks escalate following Iran...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.