Bert Ely is a consultant specializing in banking issues. He writes ABA's Farm Credit Watch.
The Farm Credit Administration has proposed a potentially dangerous relaxation of its regulation governing the appraisal procedures FCS institutions rely on in making lending decisions.
In the latest Farm Credit Watch, Bert Ely highlights the notable lack of transparency around Farm Credit Administration board meetings. While government agencies are required to be open and accessible to the public except under certain circumstances, Ely raised concerns that FCA has been requiring attendees to its public virtual meetings to pre-register, which he said “represents a deliberate attempt by the regulatory body to discourage the monitoring of its actions.”
By Bert Ely As bankers and other FCW readers know all too well, American agriculture…
By Bert Ely The FCA is administered by a three-member board of directors; the chairman…
By Bert Ely On Aug. 3, Fitch, one of the three major debt rating agencies,…
The FCS’s issuance of short-term securities, called discount notes, nearly doubled during the first quarter, rising by $17 billion between the end of 2019 and March 31, 2020. That increase accounted for 80 percent of the FCS’s first quarter rise in total system-wide debt outstanding.
Recent legislation introduced in both houses of Congress―the Enhancing Credit Opportunities in Rural America Act―would…
In January, the Farm Credit Administration proposed two potentially significant regulations that could have mixed…
By Bert Ely American agriculture is experiencing extraordinary financial stress, unlike anything farmers and ranchers…
The FCS, America’s least known government-sponsored-enterprise, has an excessively complex and increasingly obsolete organizational structure. … Simplifying the structure of the FCS would improve its operating efficiency, which presumably would benefit its member/borrowers, while strengthening the FCA’s safety-and-soundness regulation of the FCS.