Monthly report on crop acreage, yield and production in major countries worldwide. Sources include reporting from FAS’s worldwide offices, official statistics of foreign governments, and analysis of economic data and satellite imagery. The report reflects official USDA estimates released in the monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE).
[from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, released May 2]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced its current estimates of privately-held net marketable borrowing[1] for the April – June 2022 and July – September 2022 quarters.[2]
During the April – June 2022 quarter, Treasury expects to pay down $26 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-June cash balance of $800 billion.[3] The borrowing estimate is $92 billion lower than announced in January 2022, primarily due to an increase in receipts, partially offset by increases in outlays and the end-of-June cash balance.
During the July – September 2022 quarter, Treasury expects to borrow $182 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-September cash balance of $650 billion.
During the January – March 2022 quarter, Treasury borrowed $668 billion in privately-held net marketable debt and ended the quarter with a cash balance of $652 billion. In January 2022, Treasury estimated privately-held net marketable borrowing of $729 billion and assumed an end-of-March cash balance of $650 billion. The $62 billion decrease in borrowing resulted primarily from an increase in receipts and, to a lesser extent, from a decrease in expenditures.
Additional financing details relating to Treasury’s Quarterly Refunding will be released at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 4, 2022.
| Cash Balance Assumptions | January – March quarter | April – June quarter | ||||
| Prior | Current | Change | Prior | Current | Change | |
| Opening Balance | $406 | $406 | $0 | $650 | $652 | $2 |
| Closing Balance | $650 | $652 | $2 | $700 | $800 | $100 |
| Impact on Borrowing | $244 | $245 | $2 | $50 | $148 | $98 |
Sources and Uses Table [Archived PDF].
[from E3G, by Euan Graham, Kamila Godzinska]
The EU is implementing an ambitious package of measures to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, targeting both supply and demand. REPowerEU will accelerate the EU’s move away from reliance on gas imports over the next decade.
When it comes to U.S. gas exports, while this will lead to an increased reliance on liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the short term, the outlined strategy doesn’t imply any long-term LNG market growth. The U.S. can supply Europe with sufficient LNG without building new infrastructure. New findings show that, with clean technologies and energy efficiency, EU gas demand will decline before newly proposed projects are actually completed — 15-20 years — and long payback periods mean LNG export projects may never recover the capital investment.
![[LNG projects timeline]](https://metaintelligence.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/e3g_chart-1024x458-1.png)
Read the full briefing [archived PDF] on the future of EU gas demand.
[from Columbia Business School’s Center on Japanese Economy and Business]
by Haruhiko Kuroda (黒田 東彦), Governor, Bank of Japan (日本銀行)
Two years into the pandemic, COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated global inequalities and set back hard-earned progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is critical that the global community work together to avoid the catastrophic situation in which one group of countries recovers, and another sinks deeper into a cycle of poverty and unsustainable debt. To support efforts to overcome the great finance divide, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) will host a discussion with experts exploring ideas to improve access to affordable financing as well as how to resolve situations of unsustainable sovereign debt. Speakers will examine the latest findings from UN DESA’s new report, the 2022 Financing for Sustainable Development Report.
Register here by 13 April 2022.
The event is free and open to all, and will be streamed live on UN DESA’s Facebook page. It will be held in English with captions available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, and translation into American Sign Language. The event is made possible by the United Nations Peace and Development Trust Fund. All are welcome!
(from the Bank of England)
These monthly statistics on the amount of, and interest rates on, borrowing and deposits by households and businesses are used by the Bank’s policy committees to understand economic trends and developments in the UK banking system.
Read the full paper [Archived PDF].
Commentary on this data is now incorporated into the Money and Credit statistical release [Archived PDF, from above] to facilitate analysis.
Get the data tables [Archived Excel XLS].
(from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following news release today:
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021, following an increase of 2.3 percent in the third quarter. The increase was revised down 0.1 percentage point from the “second” estimate released in February. The acceleration in the fourth quarter was led by an acceleration in inventory investment, upturns in exports and residential fixed investment and an acceleration in consumer spending. In the fourth quarter, COVID-19 cases resulted in continued restrictions and disruptions in the operations of establishments in some parts of the country. Government assistance payments in the form of forgivable loans to businesses, grants to state and local governments, and social benefits to households all decreased as provisions of several federal programs expired or tapered off.
Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) increased $20.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of $96.9 billion in the third quarter.
Private goods-producing industries increased 5.4 percent, private services-producing industries increased 8.5 percent, and government increased 0.1 percent. Overall, 19 of 22 industry groups contributed to the fourth-quarter increase in real GDP.
Read the full report [Archived PDF].
(from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
Read the full report [Archived PDF].
View the data [Archived Excel XLS].
from Deutsche Bundesbank Eurosystem’s Bundesbank Research Centre:
Authors: Daniel Fricke, Stefan Greppmair, Karol Paludkiewicz
Money market funds (MMFs) are an important part of the growing segment of non-bank financial intermediaries. This paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the cross-border effects of the 2014 U.S. MMF reform, which was implemented several years prior to the EU Regulation. We study whether euro area MMFs received inflows as a consequence of the reform and investigate the (unintended) economic effects on the basis of the non-synchronized implementation dates of the regulatory changes in the U.S. and the EU.
To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to examine the cross-border effects of the 2014 U.S. MMF reform. Prior work has shown that the reform led to a substantial decline of the institutional prime segment in the U.S. (MMFs that invest primarily in non-sovereign debt instruments). Moreover, these funds increased their risk-taking due to the increased competition and newly imposed liquidity restrictions left these funds more prone to large outflows (run risks).
We document both positive and negative effects of the U.S. reform on institutional MMFs in the euro area. These funds, particularly those from the prime segment, experienced substantial inflows from foreign investors around the implementation of the U.S. reform and we show that these cross-border flows were largely motivated by the search for money-like instruments. While euro area MMFs reduced their risk-taking, the industry as a whole has become more concentrated and possibly more exposed to run risks. This risk materialized in the COVID-19 induced stress period during which these funds faced large outflows by foreign investors.
Read the full discussion paper [archived PDF].
(from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, This Week in Petroleum)
Release Date: February 24, 2022
Rising crude oil prices, low refinery production, and high consumption of distillate fuel, which includes diesel fuel and heating oil, have contributed to the highest nominal (not adjusted for inflation) middle distillate prices since 2014 (Figure 1). The front-month futures price for ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) for delivery in New York Harbor (NYH ULSD) reached as high as $2.96 per gallon (gal) on February 14, 2022. On that same day, ULSD priced in the Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp (ARA) hubs of Northwest Europe reached $2.74/gal, and distillate fuel oil priced in Singapore (Singapore 500 ppm) reached $2.54/gal. Prior to October 2021, distillate prices had not exceeded $2.50/gal in any of these three major pricing hubs since 2014.
Read the EIA analysis [archived PDF]
