David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau
From The Detroit News
Washington -- Ford Motor Co. and three other industrial companies won the right to continue to hedge financial risks, as part of a compromise reached Friday on the federal financial overhaul bill.
One last sticking point was whether Ford, Caterpillar, John Deere and Boeing would be able to use financial instruments known as derivatives to hedge risks.
U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, lobbied his Senate colleagues to get them to accept his language that would allow firms that have a captive finance company -- Ford owns Ford Motor Credit -- to continue to use the financial instruments.
"They aren't speculating," Peters said Friday in an interview. "They are not part of the casino-type atmosphere that we saw on Wall Street. What they are doing is legitimately hedging business risk. They don't try to make profits on crazy derivative synthetic strategies."
Derivatives are financial instruments whose values are determined by the future price of a commodity or other financial entity.
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