President Bill DeGraeve called the meeting to order at 12:27 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary.

 

 

Daniel Fulton and Krista Beale were our greeters and Daniel introduced guests:

Cori Cosner-Burton introduced Joe Nickerson;

Robin Mundell introduced Jennifer Forsberg and Dan Cantine;

Chad Nelson introduced Steven Schnell and Carl Nelson;

Daniel introduced Rhonda Anderson of the CACC;

Eric Easton introduced parents of the SOM, Shelley Starnes, and Cameron and Lisa Allen;

Martha Rakestraw introduced Larry Meeber from NCHS, SOM parents Larry and Cheryl Gray and Angela Shumate also her guest Greg Tucker;

Bill Schilling introduced Anne Lucas who then introduced their guests from Bank of the West, Ben Bell, Mike Reed, Shannon Ketterling, Kim Garrett and Russ Barney also from the SBA Amy Lea;

Dennis Jack is also with us today;

 

Dennis Lower and Toni Lussier each started us off with a chuckle then Gary Pehrson led us in singing “America the Beautiful” accompanied by Brenda Peters.

 

Today we had students from both NCHS and KWHS, we started off with KWHS and the first student was Daniel Starnes, the son of our President Elect John Starnes, then we heard from KWHS student Samantha Allen. Next up we had our NCHS students Benjamin Shumate and Larissa Gray. All four were very interesting great students, congratulations and good luck in the future.

 

Dave True reminded us of District conference coming up at the Marriott in Fort Collins June 18-20; there are still some rooms available.

Greg Brondos announced that the Bike Ride will be this Saturday and will be a great activity starting at 10:00.

 

John Starnes introduced the first portion of our program today from Thermopolis and the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, Director of the Center Angie Guyon and the Director of the Big Horn Basin Foundation Jessica Lipincott. They gave us a brief overview of the Dinosaur Center which has been named one of the best Dinosaur Museums in the U.S. Angie let us know that this year they will be mounting a new Dinosaur that was dug up from the Thermopolis dig site, so they are very excited for that to be mounted. Also this year is the 20^th anniversary of the opening on July 1, 1995 and they have grown exponentially since that opening day. Last year they did a remodel and added an entire section dedicated entirely to Thermopolis Fossils. She added that Thermopolis has one of the richest dinosaur deposits in the world and they could dig for the next 200 years and still not dig them all up. They have many dig programs such as the dig for a day, different school programs and university programs where students can dig up dinosaurs during the summer. We then heard from Jessica Lippincott who is the director of the foundation that was developed for educational outreach and research for the center. Jessica teaches digging programs and she goes around to schools around the State teaching about the Dinosaurs and the digs.

 

Tara Short nominated Mike McIntosh and family and friends, Liz Becher, and all who attended and helped with the International Dinner that was held on Saturday evening. President Bill let us know that the dinner was to raise money for our exchange student Giulia’s bus trip at the end of the school year and we raised enough to pay for her trip with a total of $1600 being raised.

Dave True nominated Paulann Doane for her hard work on the retirement party for Dr. Nolte.

Kevin Murphy nominated Brad Cundy and wife for the fundraiser at the Boys and Girls Club in Gillette for their donations.

President Bill then reminded us of some of the great things the Rotarians of our club have done, last week we were asked to donate to the Rotary International Foundation and as of today we have seen $15,000 in donations and will see 6 plus new Paul Harris members. We were asked to help raise money at the international dinner for our exchange student and in one evening we raised $1600. We were asked to engage the younger Rotarians and ten Rotarians stepped up to help with that task. We were asked to attend District Conference and so far we have 12 Rotarians signed up to attend. There was an earthquake disaster in Nepal and each of the Casper clubs is sending $1,000 for shelter boxes and the Casper Rotary Foundation will also be sending additional money. President Bill just wanted to let us know what a great club we have and how proud he is to be the president of this great group of Rotarians.

 

Dennis Jack was inducted into our club; he has transferred in from a club in Texas, welcome to our club.

 

John Starnes introduced Bill Schilling who then introduced our other speaker for today, Scott Anderson, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist from Bank of The West. Scott shared a great slide show with us showing the economics of the world. He said that we are coming up on the six year anniversary of our economic expansion. Globally there is a varied growth outlook with the US still being a growth leader with a forecast of 2.3% GDP growth. The first quarter GDP contracted for a few various reasons but they feel that the rest of the year will be much stronger. Euro Zone is showing some good news with the forecast being revised for a little better growth than originally thought. China is showing their economy decline very rapidly and is reminiscent of our 2007 and 2008 recession with very similar things going on however their debt is not as big so they should not see as big of a hit as what we had. Also the labor costs of China are increasing and are within 5% of the US labor costs in manufacturing. Latin America is not showing growth like they should with Brazil showing hyperinflation still. Some of the European countries are still showing a huge debt problem so long term Europe is still in trouble. In the U.S. we have created 13 million jobs in the last six years and the unemployment rate is down to 5.4% so we are making great progress. Jobless claims are the lowest we have seen for many cycles so the labor market is strong. Due to the bad weather I the first quarter this year we saw a drop in consumer spending, yet with the lower gas prices consumers will have extra money which they will spend a majority of thus increasing consumer spending and helping the economy. The housing market is looking much better and the average household wealth has increased also helping the economy. Since 2012 the Government has been a drag on GDP spending by not spending as much but that is starting to reverse as well in that area. The U.S. Dollar is increasing in strength which is a show of economic strength as it is one of the most important indicators in the economic strength. Corporations that are positioned to see a stronger profit with the decline of the strength of the dollar are showing a slowdown in corporate profits due to the strong dollar. This is one of the indicators they look at to try and forecast a recession and within two years after seeing this we see a recession, it is not a strong indication that a recession will appear but it is a possibility given the signs of slowdown in corporate profits. In the manufacturing arena there is an overabundance of inventories that they need to work down, we have more inventory than what was on hand right before the .com bust. On the investment side we have seen seven months of declining orders for capital goods except for airplanes. Even with these things going on they still feel that the economy will still continue to grow due to many other things like the labor market. Interest rates are down although they are better than around the world in other countries which has kept money flowing into the U.S. as people look for higher rates than what they can get at home. Most likely the Fed will raise interest rates around September and we will see sporadic increases from there and the ten year will grow to around 2.5 to 3% over the next year but it will not be enough to derail the recovery. Wyoming is starting to show a decline in job growth due to the oil industry layoffs but we will still see a little bit of job growth in Wyoming this year. Home prices in Wyoming are still holding fairly steady and job growth is still not going to the negative so we are still holding strong. Scott then opened the floor to questions; he said that he feels that the stock market is over inflated and that we will probably see a 10-15% correction with the increase in interest rates. It is going to be a lot harder to see big returns through the market. He also feels that the oil prices will hold at the $55 to $60 range for the rest of the year so Wyoming will see a decrease in tax revenue due to the economy being so dependent on the energy industry. He said that if you have any other questions feel free to email him at scott.anderson@bankofthewest.com

 

President Bill let us know that there are announcements on the table so please look at those. He then presented a check for $5,000 from the Rotary Foundation to John Jorgenson for the Wyoming Reads program. He also reminded us that through this Friday the club will match contributions to the International Foundation up to $250, so a great opportunity to donate.

 

President Bill DeGraeve adjourned the meeting at 1:37 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are meeting up at Casper College.