Rotary Bulletin September 6 (Aug 29, 2018)

There were 31 members at the meeting. Guests were Rosemary Heilimann (Buffalo Grove Club); Mike Kelly (Joe Nash guest); Neil King (Skokie Valley Club); and Pete Henderson (guest of Neil King). Patty Ruiz represented WCH.

John Thomas did the “thought of the day” and Joe Nash led the Pledge of Allegiance.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: President Bill Leske said that although we recently celebrated Sam Badger’s 5^th year of membership in our Club, Sam has been a member of Rotary in other clubs for a total of 44 years. Bill reminded us that we will have our Club assembly on September 13^th, thus no speaker. The Club’s Foundation recently amended its guidelines for future grants and will tend to give bigger grants to fewer grantees, with more focus on those charities helping children in the Chicago Metropolitan area. In response to Bill’s request for additional scribes to help replace the great job Wes has done over the last 5 years, Patti Van Cleave volunteered, assuming we will be making the job less time consuming with less detail on what the speakers present—her offer was accepted immediately. Bill reminded members that we need volunteers for the Winnetka Farmers’ Market on September 15 and also for the Winnetka Fall Fest to be held on September 29^th at Winnetka’s Duke Childs Field.

Rosemary Heilimann invited our members to participate in her Club’s annual Buffalo Grove Days by buying tickets to the Rubber Duck races that are held that day. Prizes range from $100 to $1500 and it’s all a matter of luck as to whether the duck with your number is drawn from the water. Tickets are $5 a piece and can be purchased online. The proceeds help fund her Club’s community grants.

Joe Nash and his guest Mike Kelly explained the arrangements for our Club’s benefit concert at the Kenilworth Club on October 5 from 6:30-11:30. Mike used to be with Wells Fargo which participated in annual coats for kids programs providing 8000 coats at 11 schools. Wells Fargo is donating at least $65,000 this year to try to get every Chicago kid in need a coat for the winter. Mike is now with Oppenheimer but is very anxious to help Joe and our Club raise money through this benefit concert. The event will feature raffle items, games and live “classic rock and blues” by Louie Agoras and his Rollover band. There are already 14 sponsors each paying a minimum of $500 which will pay the costs of food and the Kenilworth Club rental. This means that the proceeds from new sponsors will go entirely to the purchase of coats.

HAPPY BUCKS: Fred Schwimmer donated in honor of the birthday of one of his grandchildren, the 82^nd birthday of Senator McCain, and the 88^th birthday of Warren Buffett. Tony donated in honor of our guest Neil King who was very active in past Rotary events including mountain climbing and long distance running-- and Tony also wanted to recognize guest Pete Henderson, whose wife was past president of the WCH board and helped it through some tough times.. Rich Lalley donated in appreciation of Joe Nash’s fund raising efforts and for Mike Kelly’s past efforts at Wells Fargo and his willingness to now help our Club’s coats for kids campaign. Ned Meisner donated because Joe Nash’s fundraising efforts are also a lot of fun.

Dig and Grin was handled by Robert Mardirossian who explained how laughter and a $20 bill can get you through some mighty embarrassing moments!

SPEAKER MITCHELL A. PETERSEN: Mitchell is Professor of Finance at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and his extensive bio is in our last meeting’s notice. He distributed an outline containing facts about the amount of “cash” being held by U.S. companies in other countries. Over the last 25 years, such amounts have grown from about 400 billion to almost 4 trillion. The top 5 industries that are “stashing” this money outside the U.S. are chemical and allied products, petroleum and coal products, industrial machinery & equipment, transportation equipment and business services. The top 6 countries that are stashing 55% of this cash are Ireland, United Kingdom, Bermuda, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg—with an average corporate tax rate of 15.7%, as opposed to the 35% corporate tax rate of the U.S. prior to this year. The U.S. tax rate was reduced to 21% as of 1/1/2018, there is no longer a tax on foreign income (with a few exceptions) and there is a one time tax on unrepatriated income.

This tax cut will increase the U.S. deficit considerably. However, the U.S. is somewhat unique in that it can cover much of the unintended deficit by printing more money, but of course there will be consequences to that action as well. Actually few politicians understand the bill and there will need to be many modifications and regulations issued to make the new plan workable. An important difference in this tax bill versus the one President Reagan achieved is that Reagan’s was done by a bipartisan group of politicians and it was easier to amend that Act than it will be to amend the recent tax cut which was not done on a bipartisan basis. Mitchell also observed that China holds more U.S. Government bonds than any other country and that it is already moving its investments to short term bonds.

Mitch’s presentation can be found here: http://portal.clubrunner.ca/2417/Documents/en-us/97c67e0b-d270-485d-b927-889d9b3f2e58/1/