Economy Update and Other Matters
This last week I taught at the Graduate School of Banking at LSU. After my lectures, I attended Dr. Ed Seifried’s lectures in macroeconomics as part of my educational development. He had some interesting perspectives concerning the economy.
Last year the inflation rate was 1.9 percent on an annual basis. This year it is on a current trend to have an annual rate of 4.4 percent. As most of us now know, inflation is alive and well.
He is very concerned that the Federal Reserve will raise short-term interest rates by more than 3 percent over a 12-month period. They employed that strategy in 1994 and 1995, which almost placed us in a recession.
Of the 169 economies in the world, the U.S. produces more in one hour than 20 percent of the rest of the world economies. Wow!
Last time I discussed the Chinese economy. The U.S. produces more in five weeks than the economy of China produces on an annual basis. The U.S. has the capacity to produce $13 trillion annually. We are at $12.1 trillion now, so we have room to expand!
Trivia from the LSU School
My e-mail address is:sullylab@vt.edu
Editors' note: Dave Kohl, The Corn and Soybean Digest Trends Editor, is an ag economist specializing in business management and ag finance. He recently retired from Virginia Tech, but continues to conduct applied research and travel extensively in the U.S. and Canada, teaching ag and banking seminars and speaking to producer and agribusiness groups.
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