I imagine Canada's grain boards would be a pretty good guide to these (sometimes privatised, sometimes not - it depends on what the state government can get away with) single-desk-trading statutary authorities. I imagine RailAmerica hopes boards survive the confluence of defaulting clients, low grain prices, surveillance by competition commissioners and authorities, droughts and floods (yep, we've been having both these last two years) and apparently poor hedging practices (they'd been doing their job too well, and offering farmers good prices during bad times, only to find that prices kept going down and that their enormous inventories were not about to find buyers at required prices), as their Australian subsidiary has recently got some fat freightage contracts out of 'em.
I don't know much about this stuff (indeed I got most of this from Australian Broadcasting Corporation Country News bulletins), but I imagine the idea is to stabilise the sector as a whole, by trying to guarantee predictable and stable prices in this most volatile of sectors. They store and market it, and hope the government and the banks help 'em through extended bad times. The NSW board looks to be about Au$70 million (about US$17.43) in the red just now, and the privateering vultures are circling. The farmers (and the board is made up of a majority of yer actual farmers) don't seem to want to lose it though, confining their indignation to the management (mebbe for paying higher prices than strictly required over the last coupla years). Guess they know they're not price-makers, and that they can go broke in two years flat without some kinda equalising force over time. They too see climate in all this weather we're having, and realise that a low Ozzie doesn't help in a region where half your clients' currencies are even lower, and hardly likely to rise against it.
All guess work and hearsay, but then that's a speciality.
Cheers, Rob.
>Is there a good defense (and explanation of) the Australian grain boards
>anywhere? And a good explanation of what happened to the New South Wales
>one? I've only seen the critiques, and the critics purport to be entirely
>baffled as to why they are so popular.
>
>Michael
>
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com