Kiwanis Club of North Suburban Golden K St. Paul

It was the usual start to the Tuesday meeting as LaMar Zollinger, our president, rang the bell and got us to stretch before getting down to business. Phil Larsen led us in the invocation highlighting the service activities of our Kiwanis group and our impact on the community.

For circle three reports we again note the sad passing of Mary Jane Munson, wife of Bob, one of our longtime members. Also it was noted hat Dick Holmsten is back in the hospital - we wish him well. Today we celebrate the return of two of our members - Bill Larson and Art Hedstrom - welcome back!

Today we had another reason to celebrate as we inducted our newest member, George Johnson, into the club - welcome aboard, George!

Howard Rieke handed out a Golden K Foundation flyer and walked us through it.

LaMar Zollinger started out the happy dollars for the day with a buck to welcome our newest member. John Sweeney contributed two happy dollars - one for a successful (and free meal) inter club meeting at Crystal's 50th anniversary. There are only twelve members in their club. The other dollar was to welcome back Art Hedstrom. Bill Flittie added two more dollars to the welcome back Art club and noted that when he asked Art how he felt, he said "damn good" - so we know Art is back! Joe Kilpatrick commented on getting a shingle shot - expensive, but well worth it - shingles is a terrible thing to have. Ken Bregstedt shared yet another joke - a stop for a yellow light, lady behind gesturing, police taking her in - basically because the police couldn't believe that a car filled with religious bumper stickers could contain someone that gestures so - they figured the car was stolen - Ken - where do these stories come from? Art Hedstrom contributed his own buck - glad to be back. Gordon Martin gave his buck to welcome back Bill Larson. Arnie Albrecht gave a buck for Bill being back and explained the ÒLarson ShuffleÓ - it's how Bill fell in the bathroom - maybe not so funny, but we are glad Bill is back.

John Trammell introduced the speaker for the day - Joe Mahon from the Federal Reserve. Joe was an enthusiastic presenter taking us through some definitions of what the Federal Reserve does and what he does. His background in journalism got him into the job and his degree in economics helped moved him to his current position where he analyzes data to help the ninth district (Where Minnesota is included) provide data to the full committee so they can give updates to us ten times a year. He explained about the twelve districts and how the Federal Reserve is a decentralized bank and each district operates on its own merit.

Joe helps to generate forecasts on how the economy is doing in the ninth district and assures that we are included in the aggregate economic forecast for the whole country. He did some comparisons of 2011 and 2012 forecasts for the ninth district. He talked about, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, retail and financial sectors and how we are faring slightly better than the whole U.S. economy in most categories. He made sure we understood the difference between employment (net number of jobs created) versus unemployment (out of work but don't want to be). In both measures we are doing better than the national averages. His comment that business leaders seem more optimistic about the economy should be encouraging to us - employment is up, there is a small wage/price increase, agriculture and manufacturing are upbeat and the only negative might be slow home building growth. He talked about how he uses both historic data and surveys of households to come up with a profile on how the economy is doing and then projects that data based on trend lines and other factors. It was a very interesting topic and he filled the hour - fun to watch his enthusiasm for his job.

Next week we will change gears again and learn about mail fraud and postal scams from U.S. Postal Inspector Jeff Long. He will cover some information on identify theft too. It should be another interesting session so bring a friend and join us for the next meeting - the social time starts at 1:30 PM and the meeting starts at 2 PM.