Barack Hussein Obama and his MF Global web

[parsley]

That should read:

...even though Corzine has been called before  
Congress and claimed he didnt know where the
....
Je regret, Pars  

[bduke]

Parsley... I agree with you. The shameless disregard for regulations and justice in a capitalist society could be the undoing of this system.

Perhaps just the end desired by the socialists who confuse equitability with
equality.

IMHO we can only all be equal when we all have very, very little.

POTUS Obama is worrisome.

If the US re-elects this ideologue, who seems to believe one can spend a
country into prosperity, a most likely resulting depression will have world wide
reverberations.

Scary person indeed.

Cheers... Bill

[rockpile]

No Pars, no polka, just a slow two step with the
option to step backwards at will. And I always claim
the right to change my mind. Bduke makes an
interesting observation about the capitalist system
having received irreparable harm, but I hope he is
wrong. It's just a dialectic progression and hopefully
something with ethics built into it emerges. It's hard
to accept the world's largest super power has
collapsed to this level. No matter who wins
November, things won't improve soon. But on the
inside, corporate America is quite stable and
balanced with lots of coin in the hip pocket. I'm
talking about the nuts and bolts guys. Cheers.

[hobbyfrmr]

Rockpile, never say never! Its really not that difficult to export grains into the USA. I have been selling into Pensylvania, Vermont,Minnesota, Massachusettes, Wisconsin, Nebraska,Colorado, Oregon, and California.
Guaranteed there will be one less document to fill out. The application for export licence to the Canadian Wheat Board,with your personal visa number on it, so they can collect their blackmail...ooops buyback fees. Read the new website, it describes the documentation needed.
Get your wheat lab tested for protein,and falling number. Then you know what you have. Call up a US grain buyer, talk with them about your grains. Fax over your lab results, then if they are interested send a phsyical sample. If they are genuinely interested in your product,usually they have most of the documents ready, you need to fill out a NAFTA certificate that lasts a year. If they are not interested, they usually say so, or they disengage rather quickly. My experience is, that, US grain buyers dont spend a lot of time playing games, its yes or no. Give them your contact information because they may be looking for your product later down the road. I have completed sales for at least 30 "clean" transactions. Meaning, forward samples,agree to terms, sign contracts, deliver, get paid. DO A CREDIT CHECK ON ANY NEW BUYERS TO INTEND TO SELL TO. US buyers tend to negotiate payment 30 days after delivery. It takes about 18 days for rail cars to reach destination. I would invoice them for 60 days from releasing rail cars.
It is only scary if you want it to be. It has just been business for me. My farm is so small and horribly inefficient, I had to go looking for better value markets. It just happened to be in the US first, then Canada. I like working in BC, and Alta. Quebec and Ontario are far to smart for me, and they always have faaaar superior product. So be it. Now, with price transparency, you wont have to look to deliver into the US, the price in the old designated area is very much the same, sometimes higher.

[riders2010]

Was the cwb really eliminated so that the Chineese could come here buy land and then ship the wheat back home? In exchange for us selling them oil? Apparently this happenning in Quebec already where farms are bought hogs, cattle etc being produced and shipped directly back to China, no income tax paid just using our resources our land and killing our market for the rest of us?

[parsley]

You well understand, hobby, the rotten-spot in
the government single desk marketing agency
That one buyback document stopped sales,
curbed expansion, promoted favoritism, promoted
corruption, allowed the east to grab markets from
the west, promoted regulatory inequity amongst
Canadian citizens, rested power in roehled-
hands, and provided employees and politicians
a sense of power over, instead of service to,
farmers.

The rotten spot of compulsion is gone. The CWB
has not been rendered helpless in fact, taking
away the monopoly aspect will make it strong. It
will have to earn your business. Provide good
service. Gind markets to help you sell your
fusarium wheat, instead of telling you to burn it,
in order to keep you trapped within border
confines.

Roehled-thinking will become a textbook example
of how not to treat farmers. Good info hobby.
We've done it for so long, we kinda forget others
haven't, don't we. Pars

[parsley]

Rocky, MF Global is a company that is managed
in the USA, but reaches into countries all over
the world, and mainly Europe. Commodities
includes oil, gas and gold. And derivative trading
was routine at MF. There are accounts in limbo.
Waiting. And MF's CEO, Corzine, declared
bankruptcy. AFTER he raided client accounts.
According to the rule of law, that is an absolute
no no. Rather like the Royal Bank's CEO,
raiding our savings account, and then declaring
bankruptcy.

The big question, Rocky, is this: If the Justice
Department in any G20 country won't prosecute
a crooked CEO of the institutions the public
invests in, nor will his PM/ order him to
prosecute, who in their right mind will trust any
institution with their money?

And capitalism is based upon trust, conditional
upon the law backing up your trust. The MF
Global fraud has the ability to completely destroy
trust in capitalism. And Obama knows it. Pars

[bduke]

Riders 2010 ...The CWB was started in 1935 to keep the Prairie Pools from
declaring bankruptcy. T

Their losses... resulting from guaranteeing a pooling system for farmers, in
a falling market... had them financially strapped.

The CWB became compulsory under the War Measures Act in 1943.

It set maximum prices on wheat, oats, barley, and flax.

These prices were "maximized" to keep the prices down during the war
which especially helped feed the Great Britain.

This War Measures compulsion should have been ended 1 minute after WWII.

Following WWII an International Wheat Agreement was established.

Within a few years the IWA had signees cheating, and eventually only 1
country honoured this agreement.

The CWB had control so it easily maintained the minimum prices of the IWA,
but sold very little wheat and barley.

Farm stocks built up.. farmers were destitute.

In 1969 Prairie farmers could haul a 300 bushel "unit" per permit book
beginning Aug 01 if an elevator had room, and eventually another 3 bushels
per acre... if the elevators had room... for the entire crop year!

Ergo, I would argue the CWB effectively ensured a most humble and hard up
Prairie farm community.

I would argue the CWB encouraged acres and acres of temperamental,
unsuitable for cultivation land to be broken because delivery was meagrely
based upon cultivated acres.

I truly believe the opportunity lost by CWB control for 67 years since WWII is
so great the number would be mind bending... if calculable.

interesting you mention Quebec which is the most supported farm
community in Canada.... and is consistently the greatest benefactor of
Equalization.

Regarding the Chinese purchasing... I am a supporter of quid pro quo.

Any jurisdictions which do not allow trading as we do, should not be allowed
to purchase in our jurisdiction.

However, the WTO should ensure its members are fast tracking to fair
marketing as a fundamental requirement.

Cheers... Bill

[riders2010]

Bill, I agree on the one hand that wheat should not be different than any other commodity we produce. On the other hand if we asked farmers as a whole and not just the extreme left or right whether or not in difficult price times would it not be in our interest to have a some marketing power, the answer would likely be yes. However the cwb did not provide this marketing power, it lost its way in rhetoric, politics, and idiology rather than effectiveness. From this point of view the cwb failed horribly more than the smaller picture shows, because now there is a greater stigma that working together just doesn't work for farmers when in fact that was not the way the cwb was working at all anyway.

We are all kinda giddy because of the world prices for all grains. The cwb gone or here did not cause world price of wheat to rise, no one buying is saying good no more wheat board so I'll pay more for wheat, and certainly no individual has said or can say pay this price or else. We do however have the benefit of no middleman fee and I can get my full dollar value at delivery when I decide and I am greatful for that.

But have we as farmers been played here? To some the wheat board was a major issue but is it a major issue in terms of the big picture of what else is occurring?

China india pakistan does not have enough land, food, or energy to sustain its current and vastly growing population.

We have land and energy resources. Was the main issue we should have been discussing the cwb or should it have been our entire plan for agriculture?
Should we Canadians by retaining ownership of the resources processing them and selling them ourselves to a practically starving region? Would we not be in the driver seat?

Instead we are selling off our land, our energy, our future for a mere pittance. Importing people so as to expedite the extraction of our resources so they (asia) can fuel and feed their huge populations cheaply in exchange for some jobs and we take all the environmental risk to boot?

Imho the wheat board was made a bigger issue than what it deserved. But at least now with it done the real ag policy will have to surface, and what is that policy? Chineese ownership of our land? where does that lead us 20 30 years from now? alot different direction than whether or not wheat was sold through the board or not.

[riders2010]

Does any one know how this works, when these asians buy our land and then send the grain, livestock, etc. back, is there no income counted therefore no tax paid? Do they buy the land, set up a company then use the make work(our tax dollar) programs we have to import more asians then that allows them to become citizens and have all the benefits of pensions health care etc. with no taxes paid?

sorry Pars this is sidetracking the topic will stop