You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
It is a chilly but beautiful
morning as we welcome you back to Up North News Radio.
Brought to you by Courier Newsroom and carried by our friends on the Civic Media Radio Network at 7.06 on this Tuesday morning, April 15th.
Coming up at the bottom of the hour, we will talk to Sean O'Malley, the Wisconsin native who
had a good career on Wall Street in financial compliance.
He knows the rules.
He knows the markets.
And while we've talked about trade and tariffs before, we are going to talk as well about the sell-off in the bond market.
And I'm no expert, and I'm thinking a lot of other people might not be experts, but one thing I know was that bonds that were put out by the US government were pretty much the safest, most guaranteed investment on planet Earth.
And then that changed last week because of a lack of global confidence in the U.S.
government's willingness to pay its debts after watching what Donald Trump has done to farmers and export import companies and manufacturers and everything else.
So we will talk more about that with Sean O'Malley coming up at the bottom of the hour.
Chad Holmes will wrap things up before his show takes over on 98.9 WXCO in Warsaw or on the Civic Media app.
But before all of that, Greg Bach is here, Dan Hagen from News Watch 12, and Ryan Landier is here, and meteorologist Brittany Merleau is here as well.
And so before we play a game called Cars vs. Cheese, Brittany's got a forecast for us that, again, has your occasional 20s and 30 degree temperature lows in there, but...
We're not getting snow.
Oh, wait.
Dan Hagan's telling us there was snow outside his window this morning.
Where isn't there?
Yeah.
Oh, was that my cue?
I thought
it was snow outside your window.
I
got a, I got a, perhaps you're something about a flirtation of a flurry.
Uh, so I have some snow outside my window here in Rhinelander and even more in Vilas County, North of me.
Oh my gosh.
It never ends there.
Does it?
It's a whole different worlds in Vilas and iron County, I think.
Well, we already knew that from a understand point.
Yes.
Yeah.
So what do we, what do we have to look forward to Ms.
Merleau?
Well, you know, a few flurries are still flying by the Great Lakes.
So up north by Lake Superior and into the Fox Valley and a little few places by Milwaukee, but no accumulations from those.
Those are just, you know, for look, for show, just to give you that little.
one more time, I guess.
But as we go through our day today, we are going to gradually become sunny.
It'll start obviously into the western part of the state moving central throughout the afternoon.
I think you're going to be stuck under more clouds far north and far east today, but high temperatures will make it to the low fifties far southwest.
We're looking at mid forties for a big chunk of the state, pretty much from Milwaukee through Eau Claire and then low thirties far northeast, of course, where.
That's a whole different world over there.
Breezy today, though, still winds pumping out of the Northwest, gusting up to about 30 miles per hour.
So the state is still in a very high fire danger, especially south.
But all of us avoid burning, watch sparks, don't toss cigarette butts.
We've already had 68 wildfires over the weekend and yesterday.
burning 135 acres.
So let's be careful today.
Those winds are still whipping.
We are going to be dry and comfortable tomorrow.
Mid 50s to low 60s is a high pressure system builds in a beautiful day tomorrow.
I cannot wait.
And then Thursday, we start off beautiful, but another system moves on in.
It's going to bring some showers, some thunderstorms by Thursday night and even into our Friday before we dry things out for a gorgeous weekend.
All right, very nice.
Let's see, before I get to Rob and Tigerton, I did get one other request.
I believe it was from Alicia here asking if you could work your magic for Friday.
I don't want to have rain that day.
And Alicia's in northeast Wisconsin, so
northeast
Wisconsin.
Yeah, wave whatever magic wand you can for that.
Meanwhile, from Rob, he says, good morning from Tigerton.
It is cloudy and 34 degrees.
We had a few flurries overnight.
I got my weather spotter certificate back in the 1970s.
It was Saturday night between He-Ha or Lawrence Welk.
He was normally watching He-Ha.
We were talking to Dan.
Dan was not familiar with He-Ha in our last.
Brittany,
do you know He-Ha?
Am I the only person completely
out
of it?
No idea.
No clue.
I don't believe that for a moment, Brittany Merlin.
What?
I don't know what it is.
Wow.
Okay.
Apparently, I'm the only one who grew up cultured.
All right.
Brittany, did you grow up watching SpongeBob?
I mean, let's try to exclude these other two for once, right?
I know, seriously, right?
Um, no, I was more like Sesame Street age, but my sister-
I watched the first episode of Sesame Street in 1969, you punks.
More from
Robin Tiderton.
The Embarrassed River ATV and UTV campground opens up on May 1st.
He says, and when my family farmed back in the day, our biggest tractor had an eight track cassette player.
My dad always played polka music tapes
on
the eight track in the tractor.
That wins the day.
Forget He-Haw.
Forget everything else.
You've had an eight track in your tractor.
That's it.
That's luxury, man.
My grandmother had extensive eight track collection and somewhere in the early like 1993, we just told her, we're like, Hey, you want to sell these there?
I mean, or get rid of them.
You can't buy anymore.
She goes, what do you mean?
She goes, well, they don't make eight tracks anymore.
She goes, that's not true.
They still make them.
And she was mad at us for telling her this.
Oh,
yeah, she was
special.
Yeah, there there are definitely some Neil Diamond and Glenn Campbell albums.
I feel
like I can
still sing in their entirety because of the songs that are on there.
Not necessarily this one was on there, but if it were, yeah, I know that I would serenade my
mom.
Hey, we got a little brandy in there this time.
Look
at
that.
Nice.
Progress.
Dan's just trying so hard to be like, everyone here is
so old.
Who is Glenn Campbell?
Yes, exactly.
Let's go to something a little bit more contemporary.
Dan, you drive cars, right?
Dan, you like cheese, right?
Until they took my license away.
I'm sorry, what?
No, I was never mind.
Yes, I drive cars and eat cheese all the time.
I thought, boy, do we have a story from local law enforcement up there?
But no, okay.
This was the craziest thing that I saw on social media yesterday.
And this was from, you know, we'll just say a data nerd who likes to occasionally plot things out in ways that you wouldn't have thought of.
And he shows all of his math and it's super cool.
And basically it's price per pound, price per pound cars versus cheese.
So if I told you that on everything that he measured, the most expensive one was, let me look at my graph here, roughly $150 per pound.
Would I be talking about a Ferrari or a Rokeford cheese?
Where's my game show music when I need it?
I'll help you out.
The correct answer on this one is the Ferrari.
Ferrari action is worth more per pound.
However, after you get right, the usual cars are up at the top Ferrari Lamborghini Rolls Royce and Porsche.
The next thing on the list is a Rokeford cheese, which costs you upwards of $32 per pound.
Oh, there's there's then the Mercedes Benz S class, which comes in at about
$25 per pound, followed by Grier cheese, Gorgonzola, and then the Range Rover and the Chevy Corvette Stingray.
No
way.
Coming in next at about $21 per pound.
Needless to say, we're not comparing Velveeta Slices over here, okay?
And we're not comparing my first car is 73 Plymouth Fury, because both of those come in, you know, less than the cost of moldy cheese.
But Dan?
What was your first car?
Uh, the Lincoln town car.
Uh, given to me by my grandpa.
With the
A-track.
Oh, no, you said it had a cassette deck, right?
You
had a cassette player, yeah.
Yes.
It had three seats in the front.
It was just like a perfect.
Yeah.
Nice.
I love that.
Let's see.
So then we've got a good fontina cheese is worth more per pound than a Tesla Model S. A brie, a good brie will cost you more per pound than a Cadillac Escalade or BMW.
and a good Gouda, which I would assume you would get at Marietta over in Thorpe here, a good Gouda will run you about 11, 12 bucks per pound as opposed to a Ford Mustang GT, which retails for about 11 bucks
per pound.
So all said this, can I just walk into a dealership with some cheese and be like, what's my trade in value?
I don't
I don't know about the trading value but but somebody did comment on how well you could either get a four-year lease on this vehicle or you could eat three ounces of this cheese every day for four years and you know which one would be the better value for you.
My doctor says get a car.
Yeah.
It just might work out, but I just love the fact that this guy went through all of these cheeses, calculated the price per pound.
He lists the weights of all these cars and their prices to work out that price per pound.
Oh, by the way, way at the bottom here, there's the Toyota Corolla, and it is a bit more expensive than your standard Cheddar or mozzarella, which comes way at the bottom of the list, but because we produce so much.
Cheddar and mozzarella that,
you know, you get it for a relatively low price.
I just want to know what this guy was sitting around going, you know what, you know what the world needs.
a very detailed graph and explanation of cars versus trees and their values.
And he gets all these comments like, what is the matter with you?
And he talks about some of the other things that he's measured up and compared over time.
And I have to go back and look at it, but it was just so fascinating that you could calculate these values and compare them to each other that I thought it was worth sharing.
So I hope that you appreciate your fine cheeses a little bit more next time you have one there.
I want to go into my car and find the equivalent cheese, because then I can find, like, you know, the car's spirit.
Yeah, well, in that case, yes, it would be the Brie or the Cadillac Escalade, you know, one or the other there.
I'm driving a 97 Chevy Gouda.
Yes.
That would be great.
I did have, you know, Don Rue, whose voice you hear at the top of every hour here.
Don and I worked in radio together many, many years ago on Rice Lake, and he had just this old beer of a car.
And the inside of it always just smelled like the, the moldiest cheese you could think of, except that it wasn't cheese.
He had once spilled like a gallon of milk from the grocery store
and tipped
over and broken.
And at some point, beer had spilled again on the carpeted floor, and he never fully cleaned up either one of them.
And so the combination of sour milk and sour beer gave that car something that maybe would resemble a rocfort or, you know, one of these other high-end cheeses, but you wouldn't want to take a taste of Don's old Toyota.
I promise you that.
What a lie.
You guys are, you guys are, thank you for playing along.
You're good eggs.
What a cheesy comparison.
That's what we tried to do here.
Dan Hagen from News Watch 12, Brittany Merleau.
Thank you both so much.
Have a great day.
Have
a good day.
Thank you.
I see what you did there.
I like that.
When we come back, we'll talk about somebody announcing that they're going to run for governor next year.
Another Republican wealthy business guy.
Just what the party needs.
More after this.
You're up north.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
One more from today's history lesson.
Actress Elizabeth Montgomery was born this day in 1933, passed away in 1995, but best known as Samantha on the series Bewitched.
So as long as we're getting into apparently old-timey TV here, which I guess He-Ha now counts as old-timey TV, Bewitched certainly has to be that as well, but
I figure you, even you were exposed to a little bit of bewitched, you know, reruns or something.
Oh yeah.
I feel very, very lucky to have grown up when I did.
I was a child of the eighties, a little child of the eighties.
So there were like 23 channels, 25 channels
and
so much content had to be put on there that I just.
took in all these shows been canceled for at least 15 years.
So I got Bewitched, I Dreamed Genie, The Monkeys,
Three Sons.
You name it, I watched those shows and they were all on because there was nothing else to put on these channels.
So I got to see all the stuff that like my parents grew up watching as well.
And now I feel like there's so much content kids and of course kids have almost no clue what those shows are because why would they?
Right.
They can, everything is very tailored to your generation.
You're not forced to watch He-Ha Lawrence Welker, whatever the case may be.
The thing about Bewitched, and again, you could only get away with this back in the day when there wasn't like internet and a whole fan culture and everything, was that they had, they had the one husband, Samantha's husband, played by Dick York for that first season.
And then the second season, it's a totally different actor.
Dick Sargent is playing it and like,
We're all just supposed to go.
Oh, yeah.
That's the same guy.
I'm sure same character.
They did that to us at the Fresh Prince.
They did.
Yeah,
they
did.
Didn't
they was and Viv was for like three season.
Then all of a sudden Aunt Viv was no longer is it?
Yeah.
And it changed.
Oh, they changed your character style.
Her it was.
Yeah.
Roseanne too, though.
Roseanne, one of the daughters.
Yep.
Becky was Sarah chalk and I can't remember the other actress's name.
Um, but yeah.
And then they actually then worked it into the show
and
kind of, it was like a little Easter egg for the, for the viewers, which I thought was, was very clever.
Yeah.
I, I, and I've really enjoyed actually the Connors since they, when they threw Rosanne off the show and they made the Connors there, it's on, they're on their final season.
It's a good show.
It was a good show.
Isn't it something how a workplace gets better when you get rid of the reason for the toxic workplace?
Yeah, you know, why should you even if it's there?
Even if it was their name on the company.
No, no, we can do better without you.
Let's talk about some of the headlines in the news today, including the story that a businessman is
running for governor next year, or at least considering it.
He's formed a political action committee.
Molly Beck, I had the story over at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Bill Berrien, a Navy SEAL veteran, and a Whitefish Bay manufacturing businessman is considering running for governor and has launched a political action committee dedicated to, as he put it,
help Republican candidates get back to winning after a series of losses in statewide races.
Barion's new group is called Never Out of the Fight Pack, which he says is inspired by Navy SEAL team ethos.
As Molly notes in the article, Republicans have really struggled to win statewide races that did not involve Donald Trump.
on the ballot.
You had Ron Johnson, of course, winning thanks to a whole bunch of billionaires coming in and buying a lot of ads.
Justice Brian Hagridorn won in a squeaker and the state treasurer, John Lieber.
But beyond that, again, you had a defeat for Tim Michaels running for governor last time, a wealthy businessman.
You had Eric Huvde losing last year to Tammy Baldwin.
wealthy businessman.
So now Bill Barion, a businessman, says that he is exactly what the Republican Party needs to start winning again.
And in his statement announcing the formation of this political action committee, he says, we are passionate about the growth opportunity for Wisconsin with the manufacturing reindustrialization in the US and President Trump's crackdown on China.
He goes on to say we believe boys are boys girls are girls and parents should have a say in their child's education We believe in restoring conservative values and common sense Okay, sure go with that because let's let's go back and dissect that shall we the reindustrialization of the US is not going to happen the way that
it works in Donald Trump's fantasy where if we just kick all the migrants out and if we have a trade war, everybody will bring their factories into the U.S.
and staff them with who?
Because we already have labor shortages in this country and you've now chased away the migrant laborers.
So how exactly does that reindustrialization work?
And I know
They'll say, well, there's a whole bunch of young men sitting on couches playing video games.
And they're committing fraud.
They're committing fraud by getting all these government benefits.
OK.
Maybe instead of running for governor, why don't you find those people for us?
Because I have not seen much for fraud cases brought against people who supposedly are milking the system.
If they are, in fact, out there, as fellow former Navy SEAL Derek Van Orden was claiming last week,
Let's see them.
Let's see the charges brought.
You don't seem to have a problem disappearing people without charges.
Why don't we see charges brought or just we'll find in El Salvador a whole bunch of young men who want to know where the Nintendo is in this El Salvador in prison because it's the only thing they know.
Um, maybe you can't find that.
Anyway, it mentions President Trump's crackdown on China.
He's checking all the boxes here.
He's anti-China.
He's anti-trans.
He's anti-public education.
When you get this, parents should have a say in their child's education.
They already do.
It's called a phone.
It's called stopping in and visiting your teacher.
It's called attending school board meetings.
So when you're saying parents should have a say in their child's education, we get the code.
We've been able to crack it for some time now.
And we believe in restoring conservative values and common sense.
Trust me, there has been nothing in terms of common sense about getting rid of due process, disappearing people off the streets.
launching a trade war that is only going to cause a recession and more.
So while for all I know, this person, Bill Barion, may be a very nice person, may be very well-meaning, may want to engage in public service, but based on this opening statement, if he's just gonna run another Tim Michaels, Eric Havde campaign, then I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a whole lot of other Republicans said,
Why don't we try a different direction this time and let's just wait and see what kind of a primary field develops in the race for governor next year.
We'll talk to Sean O'Malley about the bond market sell off after this.
You're up north.
That one is Dave Edmonds, who turns 81 years old today.
This is Up North News Radio.
It's Tuesday morning, April 15th, and the Brewers are back on the radio this evening against the Detroit Tigers after getting spanked last night.
We'll try to get back on track here.
Coverage on several civic media stations.
Head over to CivicMedia.us for more coverage at 6.05 today, and it's a noon hour game tomorrow.
It's a little matinee baseball from American Family Field.
All right, we're going to talk to Sean O'Malley here in just a bit and talk about the bond market sell-off and the tariffs.
Sean has over 35 years experience in financial services.
He's worked in anti-money laundering, operational risk management, financial risk management, data analytics.
He's been a data governance officer at Citigroup.
a research director for compliance and fraud management at IDC.
He's worked with four or with several of the big names out on Wall Street, the pride of Hudson, Wisconsin, who now joins us to talk again about trade and tariffs and stocks and this time bonds as well.
Sean O'Malley, how are you?
I'm doing all right, but I'm also...
How do I put this?
I mean, there are people who are like every hour trying to move their money to whatever appears to be safe now and I'm much more of a no place is safe.
So I'm just going to kind of ride this out, but you kind of do this for a living, not financial planning, but you know about moving.
Have you just personally, have you found yourself busier than usual trying to make sure that your nest egg is in good shape?
Not myself
I tend to be fairly prudent about my selections.
So I made some changes after the election to reduce my exposure significantly.
So I can certainly set out the entirety of Trump's term and several years after without
Being overly concerned about whether the values go up or down I knew that there were what there was the potential for a lot of volatility and so I said, you know, I'm I'm not gonna hang around for the volatility I'm I'm gonna play a little bit safer than that because I don't want to feel like and I'm sure a lot of people do feel like they're they're trying to hop from one foot and like, you know is now the right time
to go in this direction or that direction financially speaking with your decisions.
I'm sorry to say I don't have any words of comfort for anyone today.
No, no.
And look, the conventional wisdom for amateurs, myself included, was, well, if the stocks are getting a little bit too risky, then you move things over into bonds.
The term I always hear on channels like CNBC and others are, you know, flight to quality or safe havens or safe harbors.
And
that
almost always includes
U.S.
bonds.
And yet we heard last week about how the bond markets were being rocked and bonds were being sold off.
And that was finally the first time that the Trump White House seemed to be like, oh, is it us?
Are we the problem?
And maybe they're not going as extreme as they had thought that they were going to go.
And in part, this sell-off in the bond market might have helped do that.
So I wanted a little bit of background on you on what is it that makes bonds such a secure investment and why do they seem less so now?
That's a really good question.
And you bring up an interesting point that I'll get to in a second.
But first, let's answer the question, why bonds?
are considered safer.
Typically, especially U.S.
government territories are the risk-free rate, if you will, in the investment selections that personal investors can choose from.
So when you're talking about that flight to quality, which is used a lot, that basically is telling you, yeah, everybody's getting spooked by what's going on in the stock market.
So they're reducing their stock exposure and they're increasing their bond exposure.
So typically what you'll see happen is that the prices of stocks will go down and the money will move from stocks into bonds.
And so as the bonds get bought up more, their price goes up.
So get it, stocks go down.
bonds go up.
That's the typical pattern.
Unfortunately, what we've seen, and this is of concern to several people who are even more knowledgeable than myself, who have very big positions on Wall Street, is that we are starting to see that stock prices and bond prices are moving in tandem.
So when both stocks are going down and bonds are going down, that's usually a sign that you want to start paying attention, really close attention, because you're looking at a potential financial stressed situation.
The last time this happened was like in the financial crisis of 2008, much more exaggeratedly than what we've seen now.
But people are looking at it saying, well, we really haven't seen this sort of pattern for quite some time.
And the fact that we are seeing prices move in tandem is of concern.
And that's all based in the volatility that we have seen here in that what this really rocks and something that we never thought would be rocked would be this phrase, the full faith and credit of the US government.
Now, I know we often hear that about, say, the FDIC with bank deposits, but again, about
U.S.
bonds, the U.S.
was seen as, you know, they pay their debts.
They don't, you know, they don't break those kinds of agreements.
But now you see what, you know, President Trump has done with, you know, contracts with farmers and everything with the tariff situation, breaking agreements that he signed, like the USMCA with Canada and Mexico.
And you start to see where other countries, other countries would hold U.S.
bonds, but now they're looking at the U.S.
and going, does the full faith and credit of the U.S.
government, is it still a thing?
And I think what you're raising is part of, it's sort of like the tip of the iceberg.
The larger issue is, given the political realignment globally for the United States under this administration, you now have
A lot of you know former closest allies thinking you know Canada in particular But also many of the European Union nations They feel very alienated they feel betrayed let's be honest And they're not sure that they can trust This version of the United States.
So yes, what we're seeing is a pullback from what they would normally buy because what's happening is that
the world is starting to redefine itself in a business and trade environment whereby the United States, instead of being at the center of it all, we're just being circumvented.
Everybody's working around us, not with us and through us anymore.
And so that is one of the big reasons that we're seeing for big changes in purchasing.
We're seeing big changes in terms of not just
purchasing of bonds, but I mean purchasing of goods and services.
And it will have an economic impact on this country that's, it's not going to be positive, unfortunately.
And I guess that the term I'm looking for is overreaction or maybe overcorrection, I'm not sure.
But for folks who are saying, well,
What should the US have done?
Nothing?
No, that's not ever what I've been saying.
There's a place for trade negotiations and trade agreements.
And I have said plenty of times that we should try to strengthen some of these trade agreements because what I'd be saying to other countries is
if you want access to this market, and this is one of the greatest consumer markets on the planet, but if you want access to this market, you've got to play by certain rules.
It might be about environmental protections or employee protections or things like that.
So there's definitely room for it, but it's entirely different when you say
Actually, we're going to slap 145 percent tariff on you, China.
And small wonder that now instead of wanting to negotiate with this great consumer market here, that they say, well, let's bypass this.
Let's go to Brazil, get our soybeans there instead.
The simple fact is that putting it really bluntly, the United States has become too much of a pain in the butt.
to deal with both politically and financially, because there's no certainty with respect to what the future is or whether if you make a deal today, is it still good tomorrow with this administration?
As you point out, yes, they continue to backtrack.
There's a real lack of clarity, which is why the tariff situation with Liberation Day on April 2,
you know, put them in place, stock market goes down a huge amount.
And so a couple of days later, they take them off, stock market comes back, not quite all the way, because you still have a 10% tariff globally.
And as you pointed out, China is at 145%.
But what's the point of the tariff?
What is the purpose?
Right now, it's just acting as a tax.
It's like trying to drive forward in your car with your parking brake on.
You're not going to go as fast and you're certainly not going to get the gas mileage.
And a lot of other drivers on the road are deciding, you know, I don't think we want to be on the same road with this particular driver.
Let's address one of our more conservative listeners, Mark and Sussex puts this on the text line, says, do other countries still respect us seriously?
Over 130 countries now want a discussion on tariffs.
Many agree some tariffs are good, but nobody except Trump had the guts to do it.
Thanks, Trump, or thanks, Donald John Trump.
So Mark and Sussex is making the point that Trump and others are claiming is that now suddenly everybody wants to rush to the US and maybe
deal with them.
Uh I certainly hear Trump saying that like everybody wants to make a deal with Trump now.
I love when he talks about himself in third person.
But I don't know that I'm necessarily seeing that and you're saying that it appears everybody's trying to you know basically circumvent the US at least for now.
You
you do have some of these countries appear to have learned this much.
the least amount possible, or maybe a little bit more than the least amount possible to move off of status quo, that Trump will call that a victory, even though, again, it makes almost no actual significant difference.
But if he's able to prove that something came off of status quo however little, he counts that as a victory.
And it does not necessarily do anything to offset trade imbalances or consumer prices.
So what you're seeing is that there is this opinion that, you know, somehow we're going to get somewhere with tariffs.
But again, tariffs have to have a purpose.
We don't have a clear purpose buying these tariffs.
Number one, number two, we have global tariffs of 10%.
All that is is a 10% tax on American consumers.
OK, so you want to know what your inflation expectations are going to be?
Somewhere around 10% is probably gonna be a pretty good bet.
It'll probably be a little bit shy of that because it's not gonna be Everything everything some things are made completely domestically without any sort of input But the the simplified version that Donald Trump puts out that ignores International trade how complex Supply chains are, you know, it's not just oh, you know, I bought this and it says American made on it.
Okay, well
were any of the parts from a foreign country, whereas the machinery that was used to make that was part of it, you know, from a foreign country.
You know, there are so many intricacies when you try to kind of disentangle everything.
It gets to be a very complex picture.
There are a couple of companies that have
have products that are designed to help you through this, but really only at a level one on supply chain, trying to get level two, level three, really all the way down this rabbit hole of where does everything come from when you're looking at final products, goods out in the marketplace.
It's very, very complex.
And I think people like the simplified picture.
Unfortunately, that's not really an accurate.
picture and we'll be finding out as I'm sure these 10% global tariffs will be in place and inflation will continue to go up and economic growth will be under pressure.
It's probably not going to grow as much as it could have.
And even if there were 130 different agreements in the works here, it would take quite a while to get back to whatever we would call normal to undo this damage.
Sean O'Malley, thank you again for all of the insight.
It's always great catching up.
And I sense we're going to be talking again real soon as markets and conditions continue to move.
Have a great day.
When we come back, we'll talk to Chad Holmes, find out what he's talking about next on his show in Wausau.
And if you're not in the Wausau area, catch it on the Civic Media app.
This is Up North News Radio, live from Chippewa Falls on the Civic Media Radio
Network.
Coming up next on 989 WXCO in Warsaw and on the Civic Media app you can hear the chat home show and chat homes himself happens to be with us now.
Mr. Holmes.
Good morning.
How are
you?
Hey good.
Good guys.
How are you guys doing?
Very good.
Thanks.
Let me just clean up one bit of business from our last segment comment talking about why don't you talk about the
Trump tariffs that Biden kept and even increased.
And actually, I believe we have.
I did not mention it in that past segment, but again, the whole thing is not all tariffs are bad.
It's that...
there appears to be no strategy with this particular tariff and it's leading to the impact that we're seeing right here.
So again, to be clear, there's a role for tariffs.
There's a role for trade negotiations.
There's not a role for, you know, blowing up the entire system and assuming it's going to fall back into place.
So that may be among the things that you hear on the Chad Holmes radio program later, or it may be whatever else is happening in the greater Wausau metropolitan area.
What's happening out there?
We'll
figure it out.
All right.
Well, thanks for watching folks.
I
haven't done a literal double take like
that.
I'm
like, did I mute him?
Did I
mute him?
No,
no,
I didn't.
I got some guests coming from a local theatrical production coming in later on.
We're talking about that.
Going to complain to Brittany about the weather, because yesterday I was off in Stratford doing a softball game, and I have never.
And you know bring sports event that was like that where it was 40 degrees my computer literally fell low blew off my tape cuz I'm outside
A couple of times it knocked me off the air.
I mean, I've had to keep my hand on it or else it was going to fly away.
Wind chills are about 25 degrees, so Brittany's going to get a firm talking to here this morning about getting some spring weather here when I'm outside because I was bundled up.
I had my winter hat on, my winter parka on, and it was still cold.
And yet, you know, it was dry, so the game went on.
But I mean, the wind was incredible yesterday.
We need a dose of spring.
I need a dose of spring.
I feel like, you know, we need a little bit of that.
I've been saying that for weeks and I feel bad for Brittany, but I'm like, I've got no place else to put it except in the weather segment because we're getting the worst of it in the sense that we're getting some snow flurries over here, but it's not enough to decrease the fire danger.
So it's otherwise dry and windy.
So you've got all these burning bands in place and again, the reminder to everybody to be careful.
And the wind isn't like it's not like a hot wind that's spreading these these grass fires and brush fires.
It's a cold.
There's wind chill whipped fires.
That's the weirdest spring yet to have something like that.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's just it was it's crazy how this goes back because I taught her every morning on the program and some days out because there's a big tree right outside our window here that I kind of take a look at.
So often it'll be just calm because that's what it's supposed to be in the morning.
Calm you're starting off the new day.
Let's be calm man There are other days that tree is just bending backwards and bending forwards and and it isn't it is nuts and also Yesterday I'm here because yesterday was a start of something new around here downtown because we have this major Building project called foundry on 3rd is right across the street where the old wasa center mall was and they started to close down some of the streets here around our station
and literally the building starts to shake.
I mean, it was like an earthquake because they are pounding into the road right outside.
And I'm thinking, what is going on here?
There's a little craziness going around here downtown, but it's exciting here because it's been a long process.
This foundry on third, it took a while to get going, but now it's been building and it's been really going up fairly quickly.
You know, the roads are going to be expanded right around here downtown.
I think some exciting time.
It is because for the longest time, I thought like my entire adulthood was going to be marked with, you know, just downtown's dying everywhere.
You know,
it
happened in Eau Claire and it happened in all these other places and Wausau, every place that tried the, you know, the mall downtown, you know, where that didn't work out necessarily.
But now when I look at the redevelopment in Eau Claire, when I look at what the farmers union has done to market on river up here in Chippewa Falls and now what's happening in Wausau
the redevelopment of our downtowns across Wisconsin is just so wonderfully satisfying to get that done and hopefully continues to be done right that they don't overbuild as well.
And if again, if you can stick the landing on that with any kind of downtown redevelopment, what a feather in the cap that is because I really was concerned that our downtowns were just going to be these rotting husks for a lifetime and thank goodness they're not.
Yeah, you know, and I'm also though I'm I'm curious to see how it does develop I mean in terms of if no, we're in the in the process here It's being done.
Hopefully it is going to work.
Well, I think that there's still a lot of unknowns as the future goes on I think a lot of communities are are trying to figure out exactly the right way to go about it I think there are some areas that where the idea of a Mall type structure still can work I've heard about that in other areas of Central Wisconsin, but I do think what we're doing here in in terms of the best way
moving forward after the after the old Wasa Center was knocked down.
I do think that I'm willing to say that I feel pretty optimistic about what they're trying to accomplish here.
Yeah.
And again, I will say that for those folks who take those risks, who have that entrepreneurial drive to develop something, I think that's wonderful.
I think I get dinged a lot as well.
You're just, you know, anti-business and, you know, these people take risks.
No, no, no.
I want you to, I want you to within a set of rules, within a set of standards.
And, you know, that gets us into your buddy, one of the other developers there in the Wausau area.
But we're out of time for that.
So we're
all I'll
say real
quickly to wrap it up.
Yes.
absolutely great for the developers to be able to be rewarded, but not in a case where they have no risk at all.
Because they want a lot of times where they just want to have it.
If I win, I win.
If I lose, you lose.
That's
right.
Yep.
Put it all back on the taxpayers.
Chad Holmes coming up next in Warsaw and on the Civic Media app.
Thank you, Chad.
Talk to you a little later.
You bet.
Greg Bak is back in two hours for Matt and Air On Air.
So hang around for that as well.
And thanks to all of you for joining us on this Tuesday.
Up North News is the Wisconsin outlet for Courier, a pro-democracy news network building a more informed, engaged and representative America.
Sign up for our newsletter over at Up North.
news wi.com.
Have a great day.
We'll see you tomorrow morning here up north.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
