General Comments In December the Fed's FOMC voted to buy $85 billion of Treasury notes and mortgage bonds each month for an indefinite period of time. This is another version of quantitative easing designed to keep interest rates very low. Effectively, the Fed would "print" $85 billion each month and feed it to the U.S. economy. Some pundits dubbed this program as QE-Eternity. The general assumption was that this program would last at least until the end of 2013 and perhaps beyond.However, the actual minutes of the December meeting tell a somewhat different story. Whereas the FOMC voted 11-1 in favor of the bond buying program, the minutes revealed that there was a considerable difference of opinion among members as to how long the progr...
Yesterday, Alberta held a referendum on whether to begin the process toward independence from Canada. With more than one million votes counted as of early Tuesday morning, around 77 percent supported remaining in Canada, and 23 percent voted to start the process of separation, according to unof...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Pakistan’s smaller wheat farmers have been holding protests to complain about the lack of a support price for wheat and the potential expansion of GMO crop production. They also want the reinstatement of PASSCO, the governme...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.