Wall Street banks bailing on troubled U.S. farm sector

[Zorro]

In the wake of the U.S. housing meltdown of the late 2000s, JPMorgan Chase & Co hunted for new ways to expand its loan business beyond the troubled mortgage sector.

The nation’s largest bank found enticing new opportunities in the rural Midwest - lending to U.S. farmers who had plenty of income and collateral as prices for grain and farmland surged.

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).

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-farmers-lending-insight/wall-street-banks-bailing-on-troubled-u-s-farm-sector-idUSKCN1U618F

[LiberalFighter]

1. What this says to me is that there is too much money floating around.

If this was back in the days before LBJ. More of the money would be taxed and used in better ways for everyone as a community.

[Frustratedlady]

2. Do not lose the family farms! The last thing we need are corporte farms.

They rape the land and leave when the ground isn't producing.

Leave the family farms alone.

Trump should be blamed for many of these farms going under. Farmers don't want bailouts, they want production and markets.