More on Farmers and Government Data

Bloomberg (via Ritholtz):

For Brian Duncan, a 49-year-old hog farmer in Polo, Illinois, the government shutdown is converting the economic fundamentals of his business into a guessing game.
Duncan relies on U.S. Department of Agriculture commodity data to price his hogs. That information flow has been cut off with the partial shutdown of the federal government, which entered a fourth day today. The lapse has had a dramatic effect on his operation in north-central Illinois, he said.
“Everyone in the food chain relies on the government to be an unbiased source of prices,” said Duncan, who sells 50,000 pigs a year to meat packers, including Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), Smithfield Foods Inc. and Cargill Inc. “We have no clue what the price of hogs is or the price of the pork.”
From farms to factories, businesses are getting an unwelcome lesson on how central Washington’s digital feed has become in the information age. Wall Street traders, home builders, economists and cattle ranchers are all learning to do without as the shutdown shows no sign of ending.

The article goes on to highlight the National Weather Service, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Energy Information Administration and the Census Bureau.  These are all government operations that I think are extremely valuable, and which Republicans absolutely hate.  Knowledge is power, and in these instances, the government is the most transparent, unbiased and equitable source of information out there. There are other places with as much or more knowledge than the government in these fields, but those places are hoarding the information so they can profit from the information gap between them and everybody else.  And that is why the Republicans hate these services.