The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FMOC) was scheduled to meet on Wednesday of this week, but for the second time it took emergency action prior to the meeting. On Sunday, Chairman Jerome Powell announced a 100 basis point cut to the federal fund rate. This comes after the Fed announced an emergency 50 basis point rate cut on 3 March. That puts the rate in the range of 0 to 0.25 percent, to where it was lowered in 2008 and stayed until the end of 2015. In his statement Powell generally ruled out negative interest rates like Japan and Europe have had. Back in the fall of 2019, President Trump tweeted several times that the Fed should adopt negative interest rates, or at least get down to zero rates so that the...
After more than 40 years serving the agricultural industry and leading World Perspectives, Inc., Gary Blumenthal is retiring. His career—which included time on Capitol Hill, at USDA and the White House—helped shape U.S. and international agricultural policy and guided strategic disc...
What You Need to Know Today: Early Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Secretary said vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is rising in a “very meaningful way.” Tuesday afternoon, however, President Trump said Iran shot down a U.S. helicopter while it was patrolling the Strait of Hormu...
In January of this year, the House passed House Resolution 375, which established an E15 Rural Domestic Energy Council and directed the council to investigate the sale of E15, to develop legislative solutions, and to submit those solutions to Congress. E15 legislation was included in a short-te...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.