East Central South Dakota | I would add to your thought process, add machinery principal payments on machinery purchases that were fast depreciated and amortized over 5-7 years. Pretty easy to get $200,000 (or more) in payments that have a $80,000 tax bill attached to them. Balance sheets are still strong, but operations that are servicing land and machinery debt are losing working capital and are using most of the revenue stream to service debt. If they take on more debt to manage income tax bill, they are in a death spiral. That being said, these operations are very much in a minority. Still a lot of money hiding in the weeds. The last ten years have created a lot of wealth. These observations are for the Dakota's. I believe there is a lot of difference between us and the corn belt. |