commodity markets
The Fix is In
(October 16, 2011) - When Chairman Frank Lucas gaveled the full House Ag Committee to order Oct. 12, ranchers, farmers and other aggies who depend on commodity futures markets to price their crops, livestock and dreams might have thought the hearing would center on what its title suggested: “To Review Legislative Proposals Amending Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.”
The hearing would do no such thing.
Two days before, on Oct. 10, the Committee’s Majority Staff circulated a seven-page memo to all members that outlined seven legislative proposals to amend the law designed to rein in American equity and futures markets’ excess that nearly derailed the global economy in 2008. (Read the memo at http://www.farmandfoodfile.com.)
Each of the seven proposals, though, sported two faces. The first was really a mask for the second: a legitimate question or concern about an some aspect of Dodd-Frank’s trading rules.
The second was the real deal: a primer on how to kill Dodd-Frank by sticking it with a thousand little pins—amendments, hearings, studies, cost-benefit analysis, lawsuits—and letting it slowly bleed to an irrelevant death.
No muss, no fuss, no fingerprints.
MFU members return from National Farmers Union Convention
St. Paul (March 22, 2010) - Minnesota Farmers Union (MFU) members return from the annual National Farmers Union (NFU) Convention held in Rapid City, South Dakota. Policy was set, Special Orders were passed, awards were given and speakers spoke about the status of the agriculture community and where it is heading. NFU President Roger Johnson, and NFU Vice President Claudia Svarstad were re-elected to their positions.
"The National Convention is a place where all the state Farmers Union organizations come together to work on policy that puts farmers first," said Doug Peterson, MFU President. "Now that the convention is over, we can take that policy and let our elected federal officials know where National Farmers Union stands on the issues important to farmers."