Farm Credit Watch: Time for Fully Transparent FCA Board Meetings
In the latest Farm Credit Watch, Bert Ely highlights the notable lack of transparency around Farm Credit Administration board meetings....
How Much Is FCS Underestimating Its Future Loan Losses?
By Bert Ely As bankers and other FCW readers know all too well, American agriculture has experienced severe stress in...
Farm Credit Watch: Another Vacancy on the FCA Board Would Cripple It
By Bert Ely The FCA is administered by a three-member board of directors; the chairman of the board also serves...
Farm Credit Watch: Fitch Lowers FCS Debt Rating Outlook to Negative
By Bert Ely On Aug. 3, Fitch, one of the three major debt rating agencies, revised its Rating Outlook for...
Farm Credit Watch: FCS Dramatically Boosted Its Liquidity During March
The FCS’s issuance of short-term securities, called discount notes, nearly doubled during the first quarter, rising by $17 billion between...
ECORA Tax Relief Also Benefits Farms, Single-Family Rural Residences
Recent legislation introduced in both houses of Congress―the Enhancing Credit Opportunities in Rural America Act―would amend the Internal Revenue Code...
FCA Seeks Comments on Two Potentially Significant Regulatory Changes
In January, the Farm Credit Administration proposed two potentially significant regulations that could have mixed effects on the FCS, and...
Resolving the Farm Credit System’s Growing Credit-Quality Problems
By Bert Ely American agriculture is experiencing extraordinary financial stress, unlike anything farmers and ranchers have experienced in several decades....
Restructuring the Farm Credit System—Why Now and How to Do It
The FCS, America’s least known government-sponsored-enterprise, has an excessively complex and increasingly obsolete organizational structure. ... Simplifying the structure of...
Is the FCS Understating Its Emerging Credit-Quality Issues?
As bankers know all too well, farmers and ranchers are suffering from a sustained period of low commodity prices, rising...
