10/06/08 House Ag Chair votes against bailout

Farm and Ranch October 6, 2008 When the U.S House voted last Friday to pass a financial rescue package Democrat Collin Peterson, Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee was among those voting against the bill. Peterson: "They underlying problem is I don't think we have the right solution here. More important than that we don't have in this bill the regulation going forward on these credit-default swaps. That is my big issues. We have 55-trillion dollars of credit-default swaps out there. Mostly don't who has them and who is upside down. We do know this is what took AIG down and caused Paulson to give them 85-billion to keep them afloat. And I just think it is a mistake at a minimum to say that if you are going to take money from the government in this deal, that going forward if you are going to continue in this credit-default swap market you have to go through a regulated market to continue. And people are saying, oh, we can do that later." Given the experience he's had over the past six months working on oil speculation Peterson says he is not sure that will happen. Alan Tracy, President of U.S. Wheat Associates says although the current credit crisis is not yet curbing credit availability for most farmers, it has other serious implications for U.S. agriculture. He says to the extent U.S. economic problems spread globally, world growth will decline and agricultural market growth will slow, hurting prices for years to come. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.