Tuesday, July 07, 2009

1930 Again

It seems I'll probably end up posting regularly on the 1930 news (the summary of Wall Street Journal reportage). This time:
Editorial criticizing Dept. of Agriculture's forecast that wheat prices will be lower over the next 7 years. Suspicious this fits into Farm Board plan to reduce wheat acreage; says this is doomed to fail since foreign growers will take up slack and farmers will convert to other crops, with resulting pressure on those. Compares plan to “taking a part of the load from one end of the wagon and piling it on the other end.” No alternative plan suggested.
It's a reminder of the predecessors to the New Deal--in this case Hoover experimented with price supports without a production adjustment/supply management program in place. One item on my to-do list is to write on "supply management" for wikipedia.

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