America's Money Answers Man Jordan Goodman

News Talk 1540 KXCL, where Iowa comes to talk the last Friday during the month of October, but still time to get one more segment with the Iowa Gallivant JJ Goodvin.

As you know, he writes about traveling around the state at theiowagallivant.com and he talks about it here every few weeks with us on News Talk 1540 KXCL.

Thanks JJ for being back with us.

I'm glad to be

back with you and guess what?

We're talking Tama County and Tama is actually in Tama County.

So yeah, we finally did it.

One of those rare instances where the city and the county actually match.

It's nice to have one of those every once in a while, but you left us with something a couple of weeks ago when we randomly selected Tama County as our destination for this week.

a note about the Bohemian Alps.

And I have to ask JJ, is that a name that is self-applied?

Is that something that you were looking around and made up?

Where did you hear this?

And what part of Tama County are we referring to?

It's very much unofficial, but the locals will say, no, this is definitely the Bohemian Alps.

We're talking about the community of Beining, very, very small community, and a very hilly part of Tima County.

And it's a beautiful drive.

It really is.

Just about any time of year, especially in the fall, summer, that area of Tima County turns into Hill Country.

And obviously, the Czech and Bohemian presence in that area of Tima County is a strong one.

and a very proud one.

So you'll see the signs when you're getting close to the town of Vining with a big red heart.

It says, welcome to the Bohemian Alps.

And as you can imagine, the elevation, I mean, you're going to make sure that you bundle up no matter what time of year it is, and it's going to make sure you have the O2 tanks ready to go.

It's going to be a hike.

Tongue firmly in cheek and I've not seen the sign.

I've been to vining, but I've not seen that sign I do have to ask though JJ.

It's not near the Iowa River I don't think it's got another Geographic feature that would lead to the hilliness Do you know why it is so hilly there in that particular corner of Tama County?

It would

probably just have to do with like the glacial push of things, you know, it's like probably just didn't get touched as much

from the last Ice Age is what I'm guessing.

It would also make sense why the Native American culture is so strong there too is because it's prime land for Native cultures.

They really liked being in hilly areas because not only was there a lot of game that they could hunt and everything like that, but it was also

easier for them to be concealed.

So that's another reason why it makes sense to be in that hilly area.

So yeah.

There are a few other hills too in the northern part of Tama County as well.

We're talking with JJ Goodvin, the Iowa Gallivant, talking about Tama County on this Friday, pretty close to home for folks both in the Cedar Valley and the Corridor.

And Tama County right on the highway 30 slash Lincoln Highway.

Meridian that goes right across the center of Iowa.

Just recently, it's seen Highway 30 expanded to four lanes all the way across the county.

What's that meant to those local communities, JJ, as you've been through them?

You know, I got to figure that out a little bit more.

I know more about the communities of Highway 20, obviously.

But, you know, they've got to see an effect.

It really does.

And I hope they networked with Highway 20 communities when that finally got

four lanes 100% through Iowa.

I think they originally said it would take like 16 years.

So what was it?

Six years ago when they finally got it done so um and they started it in the 50s I believe so but anyway The the roadtrippers who want to follow the historic Lincoln Highway know exactly what to do So they'll still get off on old Lincoln Heritage Highway That part will always be there.

So they'll they'll figure out how to get into those little towns, but you know what?

It's one of those things where, you know, obviously Masquaki did a very good job years and years and years ago putting up that very nice convenience stores area.

And I'm sure each town is just going to have to figure out how to not only adjust.

to the highway but also pull them in at the same time uh so it's it's uh I have to get it get into that like bell plane will be another one that would like to pick their brain on Tama Toledo obviously so their main streets are really just have to get their heads together and it'll be interesting after a couple years uh to see where they're at but there's still some people that really utilize that old Lincoln highway

Well, since you mentioned the Masquaki Casino, that seems like as good a place to make a stop at as anywhere that we could talk about.

What have you enjoyed there, JJ?

Yeah, and by the way, speaking of the Masquaki convenience store and gas station, if you're on Highway 30, I don't care if you feel like you don't have to go to the bathroom.

You stopped there.

And go anyway because it's there's not very many places directly off of highway 30 So trust me on this one folks.

Okay, so but yeah, we've I've actually stayed at the casino in Masquaki a couple times I think it's one of the largest casinos in Iowa and I don't have the data to back that up It feels like it's one of the largest ones what I really got a kick out of there is on their Dinner buffet.

They had fried frog legs, you know, you just don't see that on every buffet and of course I got some so I'm like, hey

When in the squawking, get a frog leg.

So, and, you know, when it comes to other food in the area, Dizer is where we got our Tana County tunneling.

So that that was at Harper's Public House.

right there on the main drag of Dizer, nice little community up there in the corner of Tama County.

And then also a K.E.

Black mercantile, a little tiny restaurant there, good food made from scratch, and you know, it's a great coffee place.

So that's where I kind of watched the Main Street World go by there.

And Trayor has got some gems, La Toraza Mexican restaurant.

They might have in Trayor,

La Toraza may have the most items, like the most pages and the most items I've ever seen on a Mexican restaurant menu, unless they've changed it recently.

But the last time I was there, it's a journey through the menu.

And of course, so if you can't find something on that menu, I don't know what's going on.

You've got to flip through that a couple of times before you make your decision.

You'll get through a basket of chips before you make your decision on that one.

So in speaking of

directly off of Highway 30, Merv's Creamery in Toledo.

That's a staple.

Just your classic cheeseburgers and we always get ice cream when we're going through there.

So and of course we've been doing the sale barn stuff a lot throughout Iowa and the Tama sale barn there has got great food and I've honestly never been to a sale barn that doesn't have good food.

We're talking with J.J.

Goodvin.

He is the Iowa Gallivant and writes about traveling around the state at theiowagallivant.com.

You can also follow him on various social media platforms as well.

And since you mentioned Trair, have you been to the Salton Pepper Shaker Museum?

Absolutely.

That is fascinating.

It really is.

What I love about it is the lady who started that took it very seriously and she donated it to Trayor so they can have this whole with tourism.

And people just sent, just started sending her stuff too.

They would think of her when they'd be on vacation or whatever.

And yeah, it is fascinating.

So I really like going in there.

and they take care of it really well.

So it is worth the stop and while you're in Tray or they have that historic spiral staircase right in the middle of town.

And they have one of my favorite murals in the entire state right there in the middle of town.

And it has what I call Main Street skyscrapers, which is the grain elevator looking over it.

And it's just such a great scene.

I love it, that mural there.

And while you're in Trayor, I have to look.

But the local pizza place, I believe it switched ownership.

So there might have been a brief period where it closed down, but it might be open up.

But the last

The last owner did her such a great job.

She kind of almost found a way to mimic the pan pizza crust from Pizza Hut.

And it was it was it was so good, but it was better.

And it was, oh, God, it was such a great pizza.

So I really hope that's up and going to get in trailer because that that that is just great central Iowa pizza.

And my favorite freedom rock in the entire state is in Gladbrook.

All of them are.

unbelievably done, but it also depicts the Miskwaki co-talkers, which we don't hear a lot of because we hear a lot about Navajo co-talkers in the Marine Corps during the Pacific Theater for good reason, obviously.

But there was, I believe, seven or eight Miskwaki co-talkers from Iowa that were in the Army, that were in the European slash African theaters.

And they did the same thing where they did co-talking so the axes could not understand what was going on.

and that's depicted on the rock, too.

It's a great local story about some of our veterans that I wish more people knew about, but you'll see it at the Freedom Rock, for sure, and it's forever depicted on that, which is so great.

Well, JJ, since you alluded to Gladbrook and we've already talked about the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Trare, I've got to ask about Matchstick Marvels in Gladbrook.

That's right.

I have not been there yet.

I have not been there.

I got to go to that.

That is definitely on my bucket list.

It's a good thing I'm a non-smoker.

I won't freak them out with that,

so yeah.

Well, and in Tama County, let me come back to the Highway 30 route.

It's now sort of dividing.

Tama and Toledo were in the original Lincoln Highway days.

It ran through both communities.

Now it's sort of that dividing line between the two and maybe near the two shall meet.

But let's talk about Tama and Toledo and get into some of the granular details about what you'll see in those two communities.

Yeah, Toledo, the county seat of Tama County.

And they do a great job of pairing each other up in their marketing and getting people there.

So a lot of folks

when they go for like classic main street looking cities and things like that, both those cities, especially with the courthouse and Toledo, people love taking photographs and shopping up and down their business centers and things like that.

So yeah, it's a couple of communities that that's not very far off of highway 30.

So I really hope that people just kind of

you know, just kind of dip into there a little bit more often.

So, yeah, it's very important.

So, and getting back to another Highway 30 LeGrand, it's in Marshall County and Tima County.

Sunrise Cafe, I think is, now your listeners will correct us on this, and I want you to do that.

The Sunrise Cafe, I can't tell if it's in Marshall or Tima County, but it's right on the line.

fantastic Lincoln Highway restaurant.

I mean, fantastic.

Huge portions.

I've been there for breakfast a couple times.

I haven't been there for lunch or anything, but I've heard good things.

But my God, the omelet was just huge.

I mean, just a bushel of hash browns and the folks just do a great job.

Yeah, they are an unbelievable bunch.

Well, a number of different places we haven't mentioned Garwin, Cloutier, Chelsea, Montour.

A lot of places we haven't been.

We're running out of time, JJ.

Any of those that you want to touch on or anything else we missed?

Yeah, Otter Creek Lake in park.

That's a beautiful area.

So one of the county parks there, that's if you're just looking to pass the time, get some laps in, get your steps in, that would be a place I'd relax at.

JJ Goodvin is the Iowa Gallivant writes about traveling around the state at theiowagallivan.com and we've spent some time with JJ talking about Tama County this morning which we randomly selected the last time JJ was on the program.

We're going to do our next selection now which as custom dictates means flipping a coin over the Iowa map to see where it lands.

We've been through a lot of the counties around the state over the last few years with JJ but still a lot left to go so we've got a quarter from

from 2001, New York on the backside of this quarter.

That was one of the state quarters from that series.

So let's see where that takes us for our next discussion with JJ looking at an Iowa County when he comes back to talk with us in a couple of weeks.

And down Highway 63 we go from Tama County to Mahaska County.

Okay, Mahaska County, I am going to take you to Iowa's only mule cemetery.

We will look forward to that when JJ returns to talk with us in just a couple of weeks.

Always interesting and useful information about different locations around Iowa that folks might want to get to.

He is the Iowa Gallivant.

He writes about traveling around the state at theiowagallivant.com.

JJ, thanks for being back with us.

You bet, and we'll see you next time, everybody.

This is the station where Iowa comes to talk, News Talk 1540 KXCL.

Pleased to welcome on the news line.

America's Money Answers man, Jordan Goodman.

Jordan at moneyanswers.com is how you can connect with him.

He'll get back to you directly.

And if you have a question or comment that you'd like to have woven into this live conversation, send it to me right now.

Email Jeff at kxl.com.

Jeff at kxl.com.

Text line 319-235-1540.

Good morning, Jordan Goodman.

Good morning, Jeff.

Nice to be with you.

All right, Federal Reserve.

It was a roller coaster leading up to this in terms of what was predicted and what wound up actually happening.

They did not raise interest rates.

They kept them the same.

They had raised them a quarter point back in September.

There were 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the FOMC, and two dissented, saying they should raise interest rates.

There was 10 to 2, which is still unusual.

Normally, there's a kind of unanimous vote.

previous one was a unanimous vote.

Um, inflation is still higher than they want.

And so they kept rates the same even though inflation is higher than they want.

The latest consumer price index number is a 3.6% increase year over year, and producer price is up 6.3% year over year, which is way over their 2% target.

Um, and it seems like there's more inflationary pressure coming because gasoline

And oil prices continue to go up dramatically.

I mean, oil's up to like $115 a barrel now.

And so that kind of works its way through the economy, both directly in what people pay at the pump, but also indirectly in the cost for transportation and air fuel and those kind of things.

So there's definitely inflation still coming.

And the feeling on Wall Street is that they pause this time, but they're probably going to raise rates another quarter point at the last meeting of the year in December.

And I understand the president making the public statement saying fuel prices will go down as soon as we end the conflict and we're gonna end it soon.

I get that.

I'm not challenging that statement, but the fact of the matter is we already have some enhanced cost in the supply chain for transportation, et cetera.

It's not like the goods that were transported to the grocery store with prices, gas prices at this level are going to drop.

even if everything else comes about.

It would take a long time for it to kind of work its way back the other direction and my experience is oil and gasoline prices tend to go up quickly and go down slowly.

That's been my experience.

Now if the war ended and the Strait of Hormuz was flowing freely again and the Red Sea was open and everything was beautiful, yes.

The futures markets of oil would go back.

I mean the normal price of oil without all the wars these days would be about

$60 a barrel.

We're at about 115 now.

So it is I guess you could say artificially high, but I don't see any Prospect of the war ending anytime soon.

In fact, I think right after the election Everything says that we're gonna escalate dramatically.

I mean we've the State Department's put out notices to Americans get out of the Middle East basically because it's coming and There's all kinds of signs.

We've got an additional aircraft carrier there now that we're gonna escalate

not go down.

So if we escalate, that means prices of oil are going to go up even more.

And we're already having ships being shot in the straight-up form moves.

If it's an all-out war where Iran uses all of its missiles and drones, attaching things, and the hoodies keep shooting at ships in the Red Sea, I could see oil prices going to $150 a barrel or something like that.

Well, and on top of that...

You have the election in Israel where the outcome is not certain Some of us me speculated that the president canceled his weekend rallies in Kansas and Iowa Because there might be something going on in the Middle East well now the rallies are back on for Sunday, but again, it's just so tenuous and

When I posited that theory yesterday to someone about well, maybe there's something going on in the Middle East That's why the rallies were canceled the response I got was well He said they weren't going to go back until after the election and I thought

Well, you don't tell the enemy when you're you sort of lose the element of surprise.

So I'm not sure any of that was inconsistent.

But you know,

I don't think he wants to attack me before the election.

I think he wants to kind of get that over with.

I never know.

I

would have

thought I would have thought.

Well, but yet we've seen Halloween spending is still strong.

So consumers, apparently, even though they say they're strapped and they are

They still are willing to spend for what they want to spend

So the gross domestic product of the third quarter just came out up 3.4 percent an annual rate in the third quarter on strong consumer spending definitely stronger than expected and Data center investment is just huge.

So those are the two pillars of the economy right now Now people are spending more but to some extent the reason they're spending more is the prices are higher and you're not getting anything more $4.50 a gallon

gasoline than when you bought it at $3 again, but you're spending more on it.

So that's one of the reasons why consumer spending is high.

This is what they call a K-shaped economy.

Certain parts of it are doing really well, and lots of it, the lower part of the K, I guess you might say, is fairly scraping by.

Going into debt, you're seeing consumer credit card debt going up, and auto loan debt, and all these kinds of things.

So certain people are doing just fine, but a lot of people are not.

Jordan Goodman is America's Money Answers Man.

Jordan at moneyanswers.com.

He's kind enough to join us on Alternate Fridays on News Talk 1540, KXEL.

You had told us previously about Anthropic, and you'll need to, in the answer, remind us who that is, what they do, but Anthropic was going to have this big initial public offering, then it was pulled off the table at some point, and now it's back, and perhaps bigger than ever.

Yes, Anthropic is the company behind Claude, the ubiquitous AI tool that so many people use.

And this last week, they came out with all the details of the coming initial public offering.

Pretty staggering numbers all throughout this.

It's probably going to be the largest initial public offering ever.

Earlier this year, remember, we had SpaceX, which was huge, but this is probably going to be even bigger than SpaceX.

The valuation will be somewhere between $1.5 and $2 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO ever.

Their revenue for so far this year has been $16 billion, but their profits or lack of profits, they lost $80 billion, $16 billion in revenue, $80 billion lost for the first half of this year.

They have committed to spending

$475 billion on data centers in the next three years.

So they're going to continue to have huge losses because they're putting money into data centers.

But I guess in the long run, it all will work out, that's what they're saying.

Now, in this 400-page prospectus, they said the addressable market for artificial intelligence is $40 trillion.

Now, we hear $40 trillion all the time, but in another context, we don't know if the amount of national debt we have.

So maybe we could swap the national debt for the artificial intelligence addressable market and we'd come out even if something worked out.

So it's a staggering prospectus here.

I think it's going to be a successful IPO, but it's pushing the limits of everything we have about artificial intelligence.

the mere fact when you said 40 trillion and i'm thinking that number sounds way too familiar um is this a matter of folks may not be sure how this is going to go they're not sure of the future of it i talked to someone yesterday was talking about uh there could be an ai bust sooner than later etc or is it a matter of hey if this takes off i gotta get in on it it's too good or too big a thing to miss out on

well that's been

Wall Street's attitude for the most part of this year.

I mean, the stocks of the AI-related companies have been soaring all year until about the last month or so.

When skepticism came in and said, we just can't keep spending at this pace, and this is not going to be profitable.

And so they started pulling back investors.

So a lot of the big AI-related stocks have fallen sharply.

Corwee, for example, which built data centers down like 60% in the last month.

So there's definitely a lot of skepticism about this.

But the other hand, the momentum is just unstoppable.

These companies are pouring huge amounts of money, and the numbers came out this week.

Big tech, which is all the big companies, Microsoft, Metta, Google, all of them, are going to spend $720 billion on building data centers this year alone, $720 billion.

And next year may be a trillion, that speaks to data centers.

Microsoft is latest quarter, so they completed 24 data centers in the latest quarter.

They're aiming on 30 for the next quarter.

And they offered a buyout to a quarter of their employees, about 60,000 employees, because they said they want to spend less on employees and more on data centers.

I mean, it's just reshaping the entire economy.

And Iowa has a disproportionately large.

Share of that compared to the Midwest.

This is according to data from Common Sense Institute, Iowa and we'll have more on that on the Iowa business report this weekend, but it it also It's such a driver of economic

gain that we didn't have.

In other words, if you're a municipality or you're a state, and you're saying, well, I don't know much about it, and I may not like it, but holy cow, if the money comes in like we're talking, that's gonna alleviate a lot of our property tax problem for citizens, et cetera, it's a tricky balance for people to strike.

On balance, most people around the country are against having data centers in their areas.

I mean, you look at polls, and there's

vast majority is against it.

But then when they come into an area and buy out people's farms for millions of dollars and create, you know, huge amounts of construction jobs and, you know, it's hard to kind of resist that.

But it is a short-term situation.

They build it.

It costs a huge amount of money.

They have a lot of construction workers that once the thing's up and running, it does not produce a lot of jobs.

It eats a lot of electricity and water and hums very loudly.

So it's something that

People don't like what's there, but the construction part of it is fun.

Well, they they like the benefit.

They just don't want to live next to it.

You know, it's the same thing, whether you're talking about a steel mill in Lee County or.

pork processing plants in Marshall County.

Jordan Goodman, America's Money Answers Man, and he joins us on News Talk 1540, KXEL.

We talked a bit about the oil prices, et cetera, and some of that volatility, but put in perspective, if you will, the, you know, we all feel it at the pump, but there are, from a percentage standpoint, I mean, that number just doesn't lie.

Yeah, I mean, diesel prices particularly,

are up over 6,050 cents a gallon, up 67% over a year ago.

Regular gasoline is about 4,060 cents a gallon.

That diesel is really hurting a lot of farmers and truckers in your area there.

And it's making it very difficult for them to operate.

There was a big story this week about a cruise ship, which was doing an around the world tour for five years.

And people had sold their homes to live on this cruise ship.

And because of high diesel prices,

They had to stop and they happened to be in Cambodia at the time, so all the people who would put all their life savings into this around the world cruise ship are now stuck in Cambodia trying to figure out what to do.

That's just one little story about the impact of higher diesel prices.

I remember the story of when it started when people said, yes, five years around the world, what a wonderful thing.

I had missed the fact that they got stranded in Cambodia.

with all respect to Cambodia.

Oh my gosh.

It's a year and a half they got out of it and now they're stranded and they don't have any place to go and they, you know, all their money's in the cruise ships, which obviously took very good care of them.

Everything was fine except diesel prices and it just went up so much.

The owners of the cruise ship just couldn't keep doing it.

So they just stranded them in Cambodia.

It's just one little fine.

I mean diesel prices going up effects things around the world.

Farmers and

transportation all in place I mean there's concern in Europe they're not going to make it through the winter because they're not going to have enough oil and natural gas to survive a cold winter with just having all kinds of impacts as I said it seems like it's going to escalate not de-escalate in the Middle East unfortunately

and once again the unrest in Europe

Have to tell you I don't know if it is if it has calmed or if we hear the news that I consume anyway We're just so consumed by the election.

We're not paying attention But these riots do continue do they not?

Oh, they definitely continue.

Yeah, and it's spreading.

I mean it had started in France But now it's in Belgium and Netherlands and Spain and Albania and Austria and Germany and all kinds of different places These governments spent a huge amount of money for a long time

Uh, in many cases on the illegal immigrants and trying to be nice and bring them in.

Um, and then, uh, the budget deficits grew tremendously and the government said, we just can't keep spending like this, so we have to have some austerity.

Well, people who are getting benefits don't like things taken away from them.

So, you know, we want better schools, we want more welfare, we want all kinds of stuff.

And, uh, so they went out and protested.

Then it kind of morphed into this kind of pro-Palestinian

pro-Islamic against the Christian nation, and it kind of had that whole aspect of it.

And that just got very, very violent, where the police forces were attacking all those demonstrators and arresting them, left and right, curfews.

I mean, it's outright chaos on the streets of Europe right now.

And it's not going to get solved any time soon.

The result of all this, I think, is going to be a kind of backlash.

And the right wing

Anti-immigrant parties are going to come in the sense that this elections is one coming up very soon in Spain.

In England, probably Nigel Farage, who's kind of the anti-immigrant guy, will win there.

In France, Marine Le Pen, at the spring elections might very well win there.

The AFD, which is the kind of right wing party in Germany.

And so most average people in these countries do not like seeing all this rioting and violence and looting and so on.

And they're going to say,

Step this out and come come down and hard and get the immigrants out of here Who are not going to go easily?

I mean there are really in entrenched in England I saw recently ten of the largest cities in England have Muslim mayors right now including London so you know they've been coming in for Decades so that is all it all just came in the last year or so you just can't kind of throw them all out and

Send them back to Morocco and Algeria or something

well as you know it didn't happen all of a sudden so you can't change it all of a sudden There's a tipping point Well, let's close with with this news.

That's not necessarily bright US trade deficit.

It's going the wrong direction

134 billion dollars in the latest quarter, which is the highest since March 2025 now

Trump's entire tariff policy has been to lower the trade deficit by having companies bring production back into the United States, because it wouldn't have any tariffs, and keep out all these products.

It's the exact opposite of what's happened.

So the imports have surged, particularly capital goods related to building data centers, computers and chips and wiring and all the things that go into data centers.

We've been importing like crazy.

And as you well know in Iowa,

The exports of agricultural products, corn, wheat, soybeans have been very weak.

A lot of countries, particularly China, are basically not buying our stuff the way they did in the past because of retaliation against our tariffs.

And then you add on top of this what's going on with Canada, where we have 50% tariffs going both directions.

And that's going to hurt trade there a lot.

So unfortunately, the trade deficit is going the wrong direction.

And the policy of tariffs is kind of backfiring.

And again, this is the highest level since spring of last year, and that was right before the Tariff Independence Day,

as I

recall, which was in April.

Jordan, there's always so much to discuss, and you're always so well-versed and cognizant of it.

I so greatly appreciate that you shared the time with us.

We'll do it again in two weeks.

Indeed, we will.

Thanks so much.

Appreciate it, Jeff.

All right, take good care.

Jordan Goodman, the best.

Absolutely.

America's Money Answers man, and he joined us live on the news line from his home base on the East Coast on News Talk 1540, KXEL, where Iowa comes to talk.