An Urban's Rural View

How soon will the Federal Reserve give up on trying to stimulate the economy and start cutting back on the $85 billion in bond purchases it's been making every month?

How long after that before it ends the purchases altogether?

And are we still two years away from the Fed raising short-term interest rates?

We may or may not get answers to first of those questions when Federal Reserve officials meet September 17 and 18. Even if we do, the others will continue to be discussed into next year and beyond. If you're a farmer with an interest-rate-sensitive bottom line, you'll be eyeing Federal Reserve policy for some time to come.

So come to our Ag Summit in Chicago this December for a briefing from a Fed insider: the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, Richard Fisher.

As head of one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, Fisher is one of the 19 officials who make the nation's monetary policy. Some years he serves as a voting member of the Fed group that sets interest rates, the Federal Open Market Committee. He'll be a voting member of the FOMC again in 2014. He's been an alternate member this year.

Fisher has been outspoken in his opposition to the Fed's big bond purchases, which he fears will touch off inflation. He has repeatedly criticized Congress's budgetary fecklessness, which he argues is holding back the economy's recovery.

In recent months, he has unveiled his own plan for too-big-to-fail banks. He'd require them to be "restructured into multiple business entities," with only the downsized commercial banking operations eligible for federal deposit insurance and access to loans from the Fed.

Despite his differences with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Fisher has praised Bernanke's leadership and of the central bank and publicly thanked Bernanke for tolerating open dissent.

An insider with an outsider's perspective and a willingness to speak his mind, Fisher is certain to have some interesting things to say at our Chicago summit, December 9-11. I hope you will join us.

You can find the agenda and other details of this year's summit, titled "Ag's New Playbook: Tactics to Tame Volatility," at http://tiny.cc/…

Urban Lehner can be reached at urban.lehner@telventdtn.com

(CZ)

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