The Fed did not raise the federal funds rate at its January meeting. Instead, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell said the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) would be “patient” about future rate hikes, which is a dovish turn from the four increases last year. In short, the Fed will be watching inflation in 2019, and there is plenty to watch. Oil prices have been bullish, in part because of OPEC cutbacks and new U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. Also, the January jobs report that came out immediately after the FOMC meeting showed a gain of 296,000 new private sector jobs, well above the 175,000 expected. Chairman Powell’s concerns were mostly focused outside of the U.S. Besides addressing the impact of the government...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.