liquidity

"When you are out of cash, you are out of business", is a truism which should be on the top of everyone's mind these days.  With the bankruptcy filing of Pilgrim's Pride and VeraSun we are witnessing the turmoil and equity destruction which has been brought on by the tremendous volatility in commodity prices experienced over the last year.  This volatility is directly related to (but not completely the result of) government policy interventions, especially ethanol policy.

This cannot end well.  This cannot end well for anybody.  While there are clearly a host of forces at work in the world of agriculture today, the decision to remove 30-35% of the corn crop from the food supply will one day soon be acknowledged as a very bad mistake.  At the present time, if there is any benefit going to the consuming public through lower gasoline prices as is alleged by the ethanol supporters, it is being paid for almost exclusively on the backs of poultry, livestock and milk and  egg producers primarily in the United States.  There is just such a woven set of consequences to this that it is hard to pry them all apart.