corn

Corn Ripples!

Submitted by on

Every once in a while we see a piece of data which makes the hair on our heads stand on end. Such is the Census Foreign Trade graph of the month. Below are corn exports and their percent change a year from June 2012.

corn exports 6/12

The more orange a state is, the more their exports declined. Texas corn exports declined a whopping -272.6%, Kansas dropped -160.9%. Arkansas is a real disaster, with a -445.2% drop in corn exports as of June 2012. What's worse is the June data only gives a 10% national drop in corn exports from a year ago. July gave much worse figures.

By July 2012, the United States corn export decline was the lowest in 19 years and had dropped 40% from a year ago according to the latest USDA statistics. The U.S. is the largest exporter of corn and corn is the largest export of course-grains. The below charts are from the USDA grain report.

Corn, Quantitative Easing and the Coming Storm

Submitted by on

By Numerian

Does Ben Bernanke make any connection between the asset bubble in a commodity like corn, and the economic pressures this creates for the middle class or poor people? Given their lofty and isolated position, and the fact that Fed officials talk only to businessmen and millionaires in Congress, one of the things most lacking in Fed policy debates, public or private, is any concern for the average person in the US. It’s as if these are the people of least concern to the Fed, or if they are of concern, it is only as economic factors in econometric models. You get the impression that the Fed has, for a long long time, forgotten about the real, and often immediate personal consequences its policies have for the average person. Numerian