World Perspectives

Inflation Implications

Concerns about inflation exceeding transitory terms have increased in recent days but it was reported yesterday that inventories of consumer goods have started to increase, which will both boost GDP and temper prices. This follows increases in off-loading containers at east and west coast ports. Of course, commodities may be a hedge against inflation, but it is argued that the correlation between the two has declined over the years. But the correlation between the U.S. corn price and inflation increased from 2008 going forward (see graph below). Typically, the larger focus for U.S. owners of agricultural commodities is on the value of the dollar. Since 25 May, the dollar index has risen 5.3 percent.  It is still below the peak it hit...

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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.

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