In other news, Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta has resigned effective next week. Trump claims the decision was Acosta's.
Meanwhile, Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) says low interests rates during the Obama administration led to wealth resentment and didn't cause economic growth -- which is very confusing because Trump keeps begging the Fed for lower rates.
Finally, banks are bailing on American farmers as Trump's trade war turns agriculture into a bad investment.
JPMorgan grew its farm-loan portfolio by 76 percent, to $1.1 billion, between 2008 and 2015, according to year-end figures, as other Wall Street players piled into the sector. Total U.S. farm debt is on track to rise to $427 billion this year, up from an inflation-adjusted $317 billion a decade earlier and approaching levels seen in the 1980s farm crisis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But now - after years of falling farm income and an intensifying U.S.-China trade war - JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks are heading for the exits, according to a Reuters analysis of the farm-loan holdings they reported to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
The agricultural loan portfolios of the nation’s top 30 banks fell by $3.9 billion, to $18.3 billion, between their peak in December 2015 and March 2019, the analysis showed. That’s a 17.5% decline. [...]
Chapter 12 federal court filings, a type of bankruptcy protection largely for small farmers, increased from 361 filings in 2014 to 498 in 2018, according to federal court records.
“My phone is ringing constantly. It’s all farmers,” said Minneapolis-St. Paul area bankruptcy attorney Barbara May. “Their banks are calling in the loans and cutting them off.”
Have a good weekend.