Regular Meeting, Febrtuary 24, 2010

Total attendance = 19.

Our guest today was Bob Sharkey – Houghton Rotary. Bob is our current Assistant Dist governor. Bob announced the 2013 Rotary District conference would be held in Houghton. He hoped all the local clubs would work together to host the event.

President Jim read Laura Miller’s name for the 3rd time – a potential new member.

Each Rotarian was issued 8 spaghetti dinner tickets to sell or pay for. The Community Dinner is Friday March 12 at the Irish Times. The committee expects all CLK Rotarians to help with the event. A work schedule is forthcoming. Rotarians who were not at the meeting will be issued tickets by Kevin Store or other members of the committee. Tom Tikkanen asked the club to consider starting the dinner at 1pm on March 12. The Copper Dog racers have a bib draw for the starting order on Friday afternoon. That event is followed by a dinner. The opportunity for CLK Rotary is to have another 100 or more dinner tickets sold by providing the dinner. President Jim said he would check with the committee and respond to Tom by Thursday Feb 25.

Tim Baroni presented the program. Tim gave background info to the past several years of bank industry problems focusing upon the mortgage industry. This problem started with the Clinton administration committing to increasing home ownership. That effort resulted in loosening credit requirements and underwriting. Banks were accepting more risk in the loans and sold the loans to a variety of end purchasers including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As the economy slowed, the borrowers were unable to make pmts or sell homes which resulted in defaults and the rest is history. Many of the Rotarians present asked questions or made statements about the problems the country experienced. Tim was passionate about the topic and well informed. He stressed the local banks were making loans and had few problems compared t0 many other regions of the country.

This was a very good presentation.