Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-21-25_FRIDAY_8AM

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Rogue Credit Union is getting larger, absorbing a N. California CU, and Matt Stephenson, CEO of Rogue CU digs into the details, open phones, emails, D62 quiz wrap the hour.

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Big changes going on in the financial world here in Southern Oregon and Northern California. One of the kind of clue you in on this one, Matt Stevenson is the president and CEO of Rogue Credit Union. He joins the show. Morning, Matt.

Good to have you on. Good morning, Bill. Thanks for having me. All right. So you're getting bigger here. Rogue Credit Union, yesterday you ended up announcing a merger with Members First Credit Union. And where is that and what kind of drove this? Yeah. So, well, first of all, again, thank you for having me, Bill. You're welcome. Yes, we are growing a little bit. I think that the first thing to point out is that growth is important for us as we try

to keep up with inflation and other things. If we want to continue to offer the same things to our members tomorrow that we're offering today, we've got to grow just a little bit just to keep up with inflation. And if we want to offer new products and services to our members, which we desperately do, we've got to grow slightly faster than everything else. And so we're looking to expand and we have been looking to expand into Northern California for quite some time. The border has stopped us, to be honest, because California is a different animal, different

regulations, different rules, and it's been a little bit challenging. And so we were really excited that Members First Credit Union, which is based in Redding, California, they've got a couple branches in Redding, a couple branches in Chico, another one in Anderson, they have got some experience working in that California market and we're excited to welcome them into our family and help us get some experience down there as we continue to grow and expand. And they also know how to deal with the California bureaucracy already being there, right? Exactly. There's privacy laws or employment laws or lending laws. Things are just

different in the state of California, so we're excited to have their expertise as part of our organization. Now Matt, is this a friendly merger or is it now I don't want to talk negatively about any financial institution but you know there are times that when a bank fails the FDIC will say okay you you big bank you get a chance to take over this weaker bank that's going to go under is it that kind of thing or just we're all this is well yeah and in the credit union space these are mergers not acquisitions so I think that's important to point out okay to be agreed to by both sides and in this particular case This is fantastic because both organizations are extremely healthy

The benefit I've kind of already explained the benefit that rogue is going to get from this on the members first side Because they're quite a bit smaller. They have been financially healthy. Let me be really clear. They're doing great But at because of their size they're going to struggle with advancing technologies and other things that are just super expensive. In fact, they were looking at a massive core system conversion that was going to cost them a lot. So this is kind of one of those things where, well, this is sort of one of those things if I'm hearing Matt, is that you either get big or get bigger or you're going to have to go home at some point.

That's kind of what, that's the reality, right? In this world. That is the reality. And so we're going to be able to offer their members advanced technology. We offer a lot more products and services than they do. And so when we started to talk, they were excited because of all the benefits that are going to come to their members, which are many, and I could get into them and their team members, by the way, their staff members are going to really benefit from this merger, and we're going to benefit from it because of our expansion into the market. And so yes, both organizations are very healthy. We're both very excited about this. Okay. So Members First is not sitting there going, oh no, those rogue people. They're thrilled with this then, in other words, right?

They are very excited and they voted unanimously for this, they're very excited about it. Okay, good. What kind of benefits will accrue to Members First and maybe even some mutual benefits for, and by the way, I do have a dog in this fight because I'm a member of Rogue Credit Union. So yeah, I'm interested in what you're doing, okay? Yeah, excellent.

So the members of Rogue are going to benefit again by longevity and resiliency of our organization. This is the type of thing that we need to do to stay healthy to continue to offer wonderful products and services to our members. The members of Members First are going to benefit immediately by more expanded products. For example, we have a deeper mortgage program. We have a deeper commercial lending program. We have a rewards program, Rogue Rewards, which we love that they don't have. And so there's additional

products and services that they're going to be able to get. And then just the obvious, you know, more locations to do business, more expanded digital delivery. Those are the types of things that we're able to provide as we get more resources. Okay, very good. And also more free ATMs for us when we go to California, right? We just go over there? Absolutely, 100%. That's correct. Okay, very good. And also more free ATMs for us when we go to California, right? We just go over there? Absolutely, 100%, that's correct. Okay, so is it going to be called Road Credit Union or Road Credit Members First,

or does Members Change Its Name, or does Road Credit Change Its Name? No, so Road Credit Union will remain in both name, branding, and charter. Okay. And so Members First organization will merge into Road Credit Union. So yes, members first organization will merge into Road Credit Union. So yes, the Road Credit Union as we know it here in Jackson County, honestly there's not going to feel a whole lot different for the folks

here in Jackson County. Okay, very good. How would you judge here, just shifting around to the the overall financial horizon here in Southern Oregon and Northern California, both Oregon and California have pretty intense financial regulations, pretty big bureaucracies, a lot of control. I know that real estate, residential real estate, has been kind of frozen up a little bit with higher interest rates, and commercial real estate nationwide has been talked about as a real potential problem. How would you evaluate us on the West Coast? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, so real estate in general is

just an interesting animal right now. You pointed out that with the higher interest rates, which we've seen a slight relief on but not much, I mean there's so much higher than we'd like them to be, it is making housing affordability very difficult. And we're dealing with that the same way the rest of the nation is. I anticipate that the same way the rest of the nation is. I anticipate that the additional regulatory burdens

that are in California and Oregon specifically are going to continue to drive that up, unfortunately. You know, the cost of construction, the cost of just regulatory oversight, and in many cases the cost of taxation

on property is driving those costs higher. So I don't see a lot of relief in sight. I do think that we, Kyle, don't get me into trying to predict interest rates. That's a tough one. Yeah, I know. I know. Eventually, I think we'll see some relief on that front, although it probably will be

gradual. Although, when it comes to right down to it, even 6%, seven percent mortgage is not a high mortgage, historically speaking, right? But when you have half million dollar homes that are, or a modest home is half million dollars, a lot of what drove that up to a half million dollars was that the mortgage rate was two and a half, three percent, right? One way or the other, the cost has to balance out, right? You are 100% correct on that. And yet the affordability has just gotten out of control. And because rates went up so fast from where they were at historic lows for so long, it

really impacted us from an affordability perspective. But you're 100% right. If you go back into the, heaven forbid, if we went back into the 70s and 80s, right? I mean we went back that far, but even into the 90s you have rates that were above where we're at now. Yeah, I remember my first mortgage though in the mid 1980s was 10.9% and I was glad to have it. I was proud to have it at that point. Hope I don't say that again for sure. Matt Stevenson is the president and CEO of Road Credit Union. again for sure. Matt Stevenson is the president and CEO of Road Credit Union. Before we take off then, is this a done deal at this point or there are still some final approvals that have to go? And what kind of time frame are we talking about here, Matt? Yeah, great question. So this has been voted on by

both boards in terms of we want this to happen, but we still have to seek regulatory approval, which will take months, especially in the state of California. And so we don't anticipate getting that until around the October timeframe probably. And then the members first members of the credit union will vote. We anticipate that going very favorably.

And then it'll probably become legal close to the end of the year. So we've still got several months before you'll see changes. Matt Stevenson, president and CEO of Road Credit Union, we're not going to see anything differently in Jackson Josephine County as far as operations. It'll look the same for us, right? Just to be clear. It'll look exactly the same, yes. All right. And does it change any personnel or do you anticipate any personnel changing because of this merger? All the changes are positive. So we have an agreement that everybody's going to

keep their job at at least the existing compensation level and we are very excited that their team is going to be joining us. I mentioned earlier with that California expertise and the local market expertise too. We're really hoping to ingrain ourselves in Redding and Chico and the other county and the other communities there to become part of their communities as well. So we're really excited to have them join our team. All right, very good. Matt Stevenson, president and CEO of Roe Credit Union.

Appreciate the explanation. Thanks again. Yeah, thanks, Bill. Really appreciate you having me. My pleasure. 22 After 8 at KMED and 99.3 KPXG. Hi, this is Bill Meyer and I'm with Sharice from No Wires Now, your dish premia- At KMED.com. You're hearing the Bill, your dish premix. And KMED.com.

You're hearing the Bill Meyers show on 1063 KMED. Now Bill wants to hear from you. 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED. Yep, open phones on the Friday edition. Gosh, we had everything from mental illness in the... in well in the state nuthouse.

I was talking with state Senator, Noah Robinson a little bit earlier that we have Cliff dealing with the mental illness from the Democrats in Washington, DC. We've got that conversation going on right now. What President Trump is going to do? What about stripping some of the judges? All sorts of things going on this morning. And I don't know, is there anything that you wanted to reach out there? What did you think about Congressman Pence, about what he had to say about the challenges

of getting anything moving here? All right. 770-5633-770-KMED. While we get ready to take your calls, I, having to do some emails of the day too. Emails of the day are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry, centralpointfamilydentistry.com. Great in-house lab that they have now.

And we have same day crowns, a possibility. No more of this having to wait a while, you know, a couple of weeks for an out of town lab to do that. Nope, they don't do that. Right there, get your appointment at centralpointfamilydentistry.com. I think you'll enjoy that experience. And I ended up having John write me this morning saying, hey, John, if one vote is so important, talking about Congressman Cliff Pence, if one vote is so important, then why get rid

of Congressman Santos? If money is lacking for Social Security, then why steal billions for Ukraine? Well, I can certainly address, then why steal billions for Ukraine? Well, I can certainly address, I can't address the Ukraine thing. There is a strange hold that Ukraine holds over some of the folks in Congress. Not me, not Thomas Massie, but others. So I can't answer that one. Congressman Santos, why they can George Santos, I think it's pretty simple. He even admitted he

pleaded guilty to crimes. In fact, I just wanted to remind people, George Santos, who essentially just lied about everything he did and was about in his 11-month time in Congress. So, he owes more than $370,000 in restitution. He pled guilty in federal court on Long Island island and i was just looking back at a story here he pled guilty to wire fraud aggravated identity theft and some other crimes there too so i think that's why george is gone they weren't going to keep him there okay i'm just saying it's just i don't know what else to tell you that he confessed to crimes Of course, I know if you scratch enough Congress Cruz, you probably find plenty of other crimes here, too

All right. I don't know why people call me. Well, I'm on the air, but they do anyway All right. We have Randy writing. Hey greetings bill. I give you the following quote of the day My Wi-Fi went down yesterday for 15 minutes minutes so I had to talk to my family. They seemed like nice people. That makes me laugh. Richard writes about the homeless dudes. Bill, traveling west on East Jackson Street in Medford, I noticed a scruffy looking guy by a wood fence next to the sidewalk.

The guy could not be seen by someone traveling east but was in plain sight to me. He dropped his pants, squatted down, and did what dogs do in city parks, and then he left. How can the city fathers and do-gooders think that this can be acceptable and not a problem? Can the serious health issues not be important and not be dealt with? Point well taken. I appreciate that. Wild Sam and Steve writes in this morning too, says, Hey Bill, he sends me to the water list where the water is coming in. He says, Scroll down to Jackson and Klamath counties. If the weather remains cool and even more snow and higher elevations, what happens when we get hot weather?

I lived in Boise, Idaho for a few years and flooding occurred there when it suddenly turned hot in the spring. Just saying when you go on recent data, two standard deviations, there are always three deviations that will happen. When you go on recent data, two standard deviations, there are always three deviations that will happen. Well, hopefully our water masters and guessers of how much should be stored and what we should do, hopefully they guess right, Steve. That's all I can say. Let me go to your calls now. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hey, Bill. It's Deplorable Patrick. Good morning. Morning, DP. It's on your mind. Well, I had a sarcastic thought.

You, a sarcastic thought? Perish the thought. It seems strange. I know. In this case, it's true. And then I had to wonder if it's not just sarcastic but real. I don't know, you tell me. real. I don't know, you tell me. But I'm hearing that under these deranged Democrats, it would be illegal to leave your house with a high-capacity magazine. Now, does that mean the doom for the real estate market? Because you can't move now. I mean, you... Scott Horrell Hey, that's taking it to its logical conclusion, right? But we are talking about democratically pushed bills, which have no logic to them. Now, yeah, you are technically committing a crime when you leave with your... I don't even consider them high capacity magazines.

I have all sorts of firearms that came standard with 17, 19 rounds, and it's all contraband at this point. I would predict that it will end up being the most highly violated law in Southern Oregon besides the speed limit laws in downtown, okay? Well, I don't want to be the only one that gets caught while the rest of them are all getting away with it, but it makes me really start to look favorably toward this greater Idaho movement. And that's the only real solution, which it might be. But how does this actually go? You talk about it as being a high lift.

Does that mean that, I mean, I'm thinking that the first thing that comes to my mind is all the snow plows here, State of Oregon, we might be inclined to say, look, our taxes down here paid for those, so those are now part of Idaho. Well, there are those things about the divvying up of property and also bonding authority and responsibility for stuff that had been purchased for. There's all sorts of things. The challenge with Greater Idaho is that the state of Idaho has to approve it.

The state of Oregon's legislature has to approve it and the Oregon voters have to approve it. And so when you talk about the Oregon voters have to approve this, can you imagine there you are a progressive in Portland, right? You're sitting there and you're enjoying the sights of the homeless people taking a dump on the sidewalk and spreading dysentery and all the rest of this kind of stuff and you're thinking, but isn't it wonderful that we are treating people so well? And if we here in Southern

Oregon say we want to leave, what's the fun of being a liberal unless you're able to stomp on our faces? You see what I'm getting at here? Do you think they would let us go or are we going to have to actually do something more intense to make them let us go or to just leave? More intense, I think. These people are not people of principle. If you compared and said, look, the slaves didn't want to be constrained to stay on their plantations and you're all for how things went when they were finally freed, but you're still willing to keep us. Well, our bottom line, though, is that nobody gets freedom given to them.

Freedom usually has to be taken and seized. Liberty too. You can say the same thing, really. And to expect liberty to come out of the state of Oregon. This is why I've said this is just my opinion, in my opinion only. Greater Idaho will likely happen very easily and it will be at a time in which the state of Oregon is in such dire straits financially, maybe they end up doing Jeff Goldin's net zero program and then PERS goes bust and everything else, that they're more or less happy to let us go. I think that's really how it ends up happening. Get rid of some liability, in other words.

Yeah, in other words, and essentially we probably cost more in state services than we're generating in taxes in many ways. And when Jeff Goldin finally has his way and PERS goes bankrupt, but hey, we're all sustainable in driving electric cars, except for the Tesla ones, those ones will be all burned up by then. But, you know, they would finally let us go when this is financially advantageous for them to do so. So as far as I'm concerned, sour their milk right now. Okay? Let it happen. Hey, the only other thing that crossed my fertile mind is that I think we should set up a committee and you I'll figure out how to innovate and you can figure out the way to fund it. I got plenty of time to do that no problem. We can name like three people to

rotate and create a keep an eye on Jeff Golden committee because we want to know what he's planning next. All right, you got a deal. Thanks for the call there, DP Deplorable Patrick. Good morning. Who's this? This is Bill. Bill, good morning. It's your friend Brad. Hi, Brad. How are you? So economic turbulence on deck and it may not necessarily be a bad thing. So you saw that Governor Newsom, you know, our neighbors to the south of us,

he had asked the legislature for about $4 billion for the extra cost for the illegal health care budgeting. Then he came back and said... Oh, and by the way, just Los Angeles itself is a billion dollars in the red. Just that city is a billion dollars in the red. Just that city is a billion dollars in the hole from it. Seriously. I'm sorry. Forgive me for laughing. I'm sorry. But yeah. So anyway, so why do we care about that? Well, we care about it because what we've learned is, is that even

progresses in leftists are affected when costs get out of control. That's right. Case in point is the wildfire mapping. So what happened with the wildfire mapping is that we discovered that when even progressives get their hazard insurance policies non-renewed, even they get upset and start demanding that we make sense financially. So we've got a situation where, you know, blue states that are not compliant with the current administration's executive orders have been told they're going to get their money turned off. And bankruptcy has an amazing way of focusing the mind. That's all I'm going to say. And that's even when I talk about greater Idaho, the same sort of thing. And there's a part of me that would almost be happy to cloward pivin the Oregon government. You know what I'm saying?

Almost let them do absolutely every crazy thing in the world within limitations. I don't like the gun stuff, that sort of thing. But they so overload themselves that they just end up exploding into a pile of fairy dust and then, okay, you got to go. go see you later we're going to join Idaho okay yeah no you're right and their policies are doing exactly that so in Oregon our state budget is about 28 billion give or take and our federal pass-through is about 30% so just for easy math we'll call call it nine billion. So there's nine, potentially nine billion dollars that's going to get with with help from the state of Oregon on top of all the other

silly stuff that Oregon is doing. To me, this is good news, Bill, because it's going to force some physical responsibility where none has been needed previously. And for all we know, Jeff Golden, with his deal of net zero and no investment in fossil fuels and we don't want it going into PERS, when he bankrupts PERS, it could be one of those things where he may be a secret conservative agent and we just don't know it. It could be because he could be furthering the clowered pivoting of the country or of the state at least, and then it heads into... Well, you know how bankruptcy goes. You get into bankruptcy. Was it Hemingway that said this or someone else? That you start gradually and then all at once,

that kind of thing? Wasn't he the one that came up with that phrase? I think it was Hemingway. I just know that a lot of these people are running into unanticipated consequences because they have never run out of money before. They've never run out of money before and they're about to. And now they yeah and now they might have to and they have no choice. They'll have to actually think this through. Appreciate the call. Math doesn't lie. Let me go to the next slide. Hi, this is Bill. Good morning. This is KMED and you're on. Who's this? Hello? Hello? It's Joel. Hey Joel. What? Well, the Clamont River is pretty high on the, ripping down the, it's ripping pretty high. Now, I was asking Mr.

Outdoors about an hour ago about that. What is the current condition? Is it at flood stage or is it just running really high but everything's kind of normal there? Semi-flood. Semi-flood. Okay. And I'm talking to old timers that are even, you know, I'm 74 and I'm talking to guys 94 and they said that the were that the fish never got

past a certain point because it was an actual waterfall. Well yeah there was that land well there's that bridge where there was the the granite or the rock outcropping that was underneath the dam that I think they built the dam on isn't that right? Yeah, lava ledge. Lava ledge, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and the other deal is all these current fish that come up and go, they never go past where they were spawned from their mother and father. So do you believe all of the magic fish fairy tales that were coming out, or do you think they really made it up here naturally?

I think they were truckeded but that's just me. Oh yeah, yeah. Well they already admitted years ago that we're trucking them around for the agricultural, whatever. Yeah, yeah, but that way the news reporters come up there and go, well they got the fish here, isn't this wonderful? Boy, it's just a few weeks after the dam got blown up, right? Yeah. It's running pretty muddy and it's above normal level. It's ripping. If you fell in, you probably might die. Alright. Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know. Okay. 770-5633. I'll take one more call and then I'm going to break for news and then we're going to do the Diner 62 Real American Quiz. And you can call for that, okay? 770-5633. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hi, this is Cherry Cherry. Cherry Cherry. What are you thinking about? Are you going to be our entertainment guide for this weekend?

Oh my gosh, I just saw a movie I never thought I would see or like. It's called Nosferatu. Oh Nosferatu. Isn't that the Ted Cruz life story? Oh I love it. Actually Ted Cruz did look kind of like a vampire earlier on when he was a younger man. And that's why I said, oh gosh, it's like he looks like Nosferatu, right? But then as he got older and he started wearing a beard it got rid of the the vampire look So it's good thing for him. But anyway, I digress what about Nosferatu? Tell me well, it was dangerously frightening With the language it was absolutely magnificent and authentic now was this Nosferatu the 1922 film or is it were you talking about a more modern one? 24. 24 with Johnny Depp's daughter in it. Oh okay. And and Bill Skarsgard and uh and Willem Dafoe was so good. I love that guy he looks like such a creep.

I love Willem Dafoe he looks like such a creep but I love Willem Dafoe. He looks like such a creep, but he does a great job on the screen. But he just looks like a creep. He always looks like he's ready to explode into creepiness. It's just the face. Can I help you? But after I watched it, I had to fast, read the Bible, and whip myself. Oh, really? What do they call that? Not self-flagellation? Scourging. Scourging, right? You're sitting there scourging yourself. So you give it some thumbs up for the weekend, huh? Oh my gosh, it was really...it made the exorcist look like Bambi. Oh boy. I'll tell you, the exorcist back in this day kept me up nights.

I'm sorry. Oh my God. Well, no, this wasn't that scary, but Clyde Lewis, he was scared. He talked about it. And I said, I don't watch that stuff, but I watched it and it was so authentic. It was very, the language, I can't... When you talk about the language, what are you talking about? The F-bombs or something else? No, no, no. It was like old English.

Oh, okay. So proper. All right, proper. Like Shakespeare's stuff. Yes, yes. We're talking about shoppies instead of shops, right? Extra P's and E's everywhere you look. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you for the suggestion there, Cherry Cherry. You be well, okay? You're welcome. Great weekend. Of course, if I want to watch vampires and bloodsuckers, all I have to do is just watch the Senate and House hearings in Salem, but I digress.

But I'll tell you what we're going to do. Diner 62, Real American Quiz, 7705633. By the way, today is Clam Chowder Friday. Wonderful stuff. Your lunch destination with those juicy third pound burgers. I have to tell you, when I pass away someday, it will happen. I will hope that the Diner 62 burger,

which is the hamburger, and then they put ham on top of that. And then of course you got the dressing and the onion rings and everything else. And I'm sure it's about 4,000 calories, but I loved it. All right? I want want that in heaven and you can eat as many of those as you want and you don't get a pound right but they have that all your hearty breakfast favorites it's all there and various specials just good

stuff. All right Diner 62 on highway 62 rather just south of White City if you haven't won this in the last 60 days, I might have to expand this for once a year, but we'll see. But for 60 days, call in it, and we'll play that next. I'm Bill London, KMED News. Quarter before 9, the Diner 62 real American quiz. And we're going back in history today March 21st 1947 they bring on Calvin Hi, Calvin. How you doing? Calvin glad to hear this now President Truman today back in 1947 ordered loyalty checks of federal employees Now if we did this today, I think a lot of them would explode into into vapor

You know kind of like, you know when you throw holy water on a vampire. But I digress. I've been thinking a lot about vampires lately. That was because of Cherry's thing. But in response to fears and congressional investigations into the commies that are here in the United States, Harry S. Truman issues an executive decree. Sweeping loyalty investigation of Fed employees, Congress had already launched investigations of the commies in Hollywood and the laws banning commies from teaching positions were being put in place in several states. Now of most

concern to the Truman administration however, persistent charges here Calvin that that communists were operating in federal offices. Now in response to this Truman issues this order, 1947, and it sets up a program to check the loyalty of federal employees. In announcing his order, Truman indicated that he expected all federal offices or workers to demonstrate complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States. Anything less, he declared, constitutes a threat to our democratic processes." Notice he didn't say threat to democracy. But anyway, between 1947 and 1953, over three million

federal employees were investigated. Now the question for you this morning, Calvin, is how many in this period, three million investigated, how many were ultimately fired or dismissed? in this period, 3 million investigated, how many were ultimately fired or dismissed? Was it A, 3? Was it B, 30? Was it C, 300? Was it D, 3,000? Or was it E, 30,000 employees? What do you say? In my mind, as soon as you asked the question and didn't give answers, I thought 3. You're thinking three, right? Yeah. No, it's more than that. But thank you for playing and you're a good sport about that. Let me go over to Kathy with a K.

Hello, Kathy. Hi. All right. So how many were ultimately fired for these commie investigations? All right, was it 30 employees, 300, 3,000, or 30,000 commies fired out of the federal government? 300.

You're going to say 300? Yes. Good day for you. You're a winner! Yes. Out of 3 million federal employees, 300 were fired. And so anyway, a loyalty review board was set up under the Civil Service Commission to deal with employees, right? And history.com says Truman's loyalty program resulted in the discovery of only a few employees whose loyalty could be reasonably doubted. A quick search resulted in an AI response

indicating that investigations resulted in about 308 being dismissed. However, though, this is what happened. This is the part they don't talk much about. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of federal employees quit before they were investigated. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, yeah, something tells me, yeah, 300 ultimately fired, but thousands upon thousands of them ended up actually quitting during that time out of the 3 million. I don't think we have nearly that many federal employees right now. They had a lot of federal employees. Of course, it was post-World War II.

You know how that goes. Big, big bureaucracy at that point as they're getting a wind down. Hang on here, Kathy with a K. I'm going to set you up, send you to Diner 62, have a lot of fun. Happy to take your calls continuing too, by the way. 770-5633. Open phones, tell me what you're thinking before we wrap for the week. This hour of the Bill Meyers Show is sponsored by Fontana Roofing. For roofing gutters and sheet metal services, visit FontanaRoofingServices.com.

Siskiyou Pump Service and Rotary Drilling Company have a special offer at the Southern 63 KMED. 7705633 we have seven minutes of broadcast time left and then it goes into the broadcast museum as Rush Limbaugh used to talk about. I guess the broadcast museum is the last 90 days of my podcast, okay? And we appreciate the folks over at clouds are drilling doing that clouds are drilling comm great people And I got to tell you great well drillers too when it comes right down to it You know, we've had a lot of serious conversation this morning We need a dad joke another dad joke to get things lightened up here a little bit a bit of a palate cleanser and those

Are sponsored by two Dogs Fabricating on Bryan Way, off Sage Road in Medford. They have a new line of Horizon heavy duty equipment trailers. You can get those in 10, 12, 14, 20 foot lengths, sharp looking all black, two tone black and gray and black and tan. And they have built their business on custom fabrication.

That's why they call Two Dogs Fab. All right, twodogsfab.com. By the way, getting ready for the camping camping season they can take care of any tongue or no well I'm talking about a trailer tongue all right not dog oh not that kind of tongue but I hit your tongue repair for the upcoming camping season get it all get those cracks fixed okay go over to a two dogs fab today we're gonna give one to Doug Dean once again and Bill and Greg were talking the other day he says

about how fans might get a souvenir paw print from Kota the Yellowstone TV wolf. If you could you might call it Kota's paw-to-graph. That's a good dad joke Doug. Doug and Rogue River we always appreciate that he's kind of a funny guy. Let me say it is 853. Now, I can't say that Tom in talent is funny all the time, but he is a serious fellow. And he talks about serious big things. And we've got serious things going on in this state. Welcome back, Tom. What are you thinking? Well, you know, your interview with Matt Stevens, head of Rogue Credit Union, world credit union what time the member i have a real concern there uh...

what's that this that merger in that uh... and question i would have loved to have asked him was uh... is is the credit union subject to baling which means that if the if

the credit union they're a whole bunch of bad loans like real estate, if the real estate market crashed and rogue credit union found itself in a very bad financial place, could they rob all the deposits of their depositors? You know, that is a really good question and I think I know the answer to it, but I will actually write them to get this for sure, because everything in our fractional reserve banking and credit union, being part of the banking system,

fractional reserve means that, generally speaking, for every $1 that is deposited, what is it, 10 bucks gets loaned out? That kind of thing? Supposedly, although it's even worse now. They've kind of looked at the other way with us, so there's even less than that. Yeah, people don't know about this bail-in business where any bank that's in trouble can all of a sudden confiscate all their depositors' money and pay off their bills and so forth. And that's just...people think they're protected by the Vicar or whatever it is,

with the $250,000, whatever. You most likely would be taking care of that particular situation, smaller than 250. But the point being though, your point is well taken because legally, in fact, I think if you're a member of the credit union, you are technically a shareholder in the credit union. We're all that way, and I've been that way for a long, long time. And there is no 100% reserve financial institution anywhere right now in this country. In fact, they're not even permitted by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve doesn't like a bank that just takes 100% reserve and then just has all the money there. Okay?

Yeah. Back in 08, when a lot of banks failed and so forth. So on the credit union was kind of pretty good about that because They weren't they were making house or mortgage loans and so forth But they weren't in a speculative market where you go out and borrow money to buy a whole bunch of homes and so forth and send your stuff to the stock market and so forth. They were pretty conservative. My concern is that they're expanding into a fragile California,

which is even pretty bad financial situation that they could, that Northern Credit Union could have a bad crash and suck us all into it. There's always a possibility. I don't know. But it seems to me that I have no doubt that Matt is sincere when he talks about the fact that, hey, they're in pretty good shape, but they're small. And unfortunately, we're in this situation right now, where especially when you're up against the JPMorgan chases

and the various other things, that you either get big or die you're going to die and that's kind of it. And it's almost like you want to be large enough to not be allowed to fail. Is that a good way of putting it? Too large to fail but not big enough to bail. I don't know. I'm just having a little fun with this right now. But the greed factor here, because if you get to the point where you get greedy and you over speculate and not very wisely because you're out for that extra buck, that could be a problem. Yeah.

Well, from what I'm told, though, from what I'm told though, Rogue Credit has had a pretty good take on the books. I think what we really have to keep an eye on is the reason why I asked about commercial real estate, because I think commercial real estate could be the next... I don't want to say, yeah, exactly. Because you've gotten to the point where a lot of competition in retail, not as many people working in offices, there's been more at home work, people have gotten used to this, and yet there's a lot of money tied up in a lot of malls and a lot of retail space and it's, somebody is showing some cracks around the, around the facade. I hope not too much rogue credit union money it's in some of those

you know commercial buildings and so forth. Yeah agreed all right my friend thank you for the call have a great weekend I gotta go because I'm just going to turn into a pumpkin okay. Thank you Bill. All right so anyway email bill at BillMeierShow.com the podcasts are still up on BillMeierShow.com hopefully we get the uh by the way I found out that the website problems are not our fault. Okay, but we're still having problems. Hopefully we get those fixed over the weekend. We'll talk more on Monday. Have a great weekend. Maybe catch you at the Lincoln Day dinner tomorrow.