Last week, the Fed’s FOMC left interest rates unchanged, as was widely expected, but the future outlook is less certain. According to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, “The fact that we decided to maintain the policy rate at this meeting doesn’t mean that we’ve decided that we have or have not at this time reached that stance of monetary policy that we’re seeking.” In response to a reporter’s question at the post-meeting press conference as to “what level of interest rates will be enough to restrict inflationary pressure?” Powell replied, “You know sufficiently restrictive only when you see it. It’s not something you can arrive at with confidence in a mod...
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.