ORGANIZATIONS

Kari Niedfeldt-Thomas

Better Business Bureau Serving Minnesota and North Dakota announced the appointment of New Brighton Mayor Kari Niedfeldt-Thomas as its next president and CEO, effective June 30. Niedfeldt-Thomas succeeds Susan Adams Loyd, who will be relocating to the greater Boston area. Niedfeldt-Thomas also most recently served as managing director and chief operating officer of Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose.

ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING

MSR Design, a Minneapolis architecture firm, announced it won an American Institute of Architects Architecture Award for its work on RIDC’s Mill 19 adaptive reuse project in Pittsburgh. … Golden Valley-based engineering and consulting firm WSB announced the following promotions: Sarah Rohne to senior director, Talent Planning & Partnerships, and Caitlin Austin to director, talent performance & development. … NewStudio Architecture, St. Paul, announced the retirement of founder, CEO and President Sean M. Wagner, effective June 30. He is succeeded by Adam Jarvi as part of a longtime succession plan; Jarvi has worked as an associate principal since the founding of the firm in 2011.

CO-WORKING

The Coven, a Minneapolis-based network of co-working spaces focused on historically underserved communities, announced the opening of a seventh location, at Nordøst Exchange, 2125 E Hennepin Ave, Suite 200, Minneapolis.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Bloomington accounting firm BGM announced the hire of Dyanne Ross-Hanson to lead a new Succession & Exit Planning unit, helping business owners navigate the process of transitoning their business. … Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union, St. Paul, announced the opening of a branch at 1118 Mainstreet, Suite No. 2, Hopkins. … LoCorr Funds, an Excelsior-based investment company, announced the hiring of John A. Norris to its national accounts team. Norris previously served as director of investor relations for Crowd Street Capital. In addition, LoCorr said it has added internal wholesalers Drew Dean and Brody Munger.

HEALTH CARE

Accra, a Minnetonka-based provider of homecare services to people with disabilities and older adults, announced the appointment of Colin Raymond as chief executive officer. He succeeds John Dahm, who will become executive chairman and serve in an advisory role. Raymond most recently served as regional vice president at U.S. Renal Care.

LAW

Fredrikson, Minneapolis, announced that attorney Nicholas Smith has joined the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Group and that attorney Steven F. Mikel has joined the Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity groups. … Maslon, Minneapolis, announced the addition of former federal prosecutor Samantha Bates to its investigations team, representing corporations facing government inquiries, enforcement actions, and litigation. … National law firm Spencer Fane announced the addition of Shlomo Hahn to the firm’s Minneapolis office as an associate in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice group.

MANUFACTURING

The Central Minnesota Manufacturers Association announced Two Rivers Enterprises, Holdingford, Minn., as its 2024 Manufacturer of the Year. TRE specializes in stainless steel equipment for the foodservice and industrial sectors; the organization also named Les Engel as the 2024 Collaborator of the Year. Engel currently serves as CMMA president and board member for the Midwest Manufacturing Association.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

SynerFuse, an Eden Prairie-based medical device company focused on the treatment of back pain associated with spinal fusion surgery, announced the appointment of Dr. Michael Park as chief technology officer. Park is a former principal investigator for the SynerFuse proof-of-concept study and primary inventor of SynerFuse technology. He also is a board-certified neurosurgeon and associate professor and director of stereotactic and functional neurosurgery in the Department of Neurosurgery and Neurology at the University of Minnesota.

OPENINGS

Ross Stores, a national off-price retail apparel chain, announced the planned openings of locations at 8268 Tamarack Village, Woodbury; and 14375 State Hwy. 13 S., Savage.

SPONSORSHIPS

The Minnesota-North Dakota Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association announced Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank will be its presenting sponsor for the 2025 Walk to End Alzheimer’s-Twin Cities, held at Target Field on Sept. 27.

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KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Flash floods in Texas killed dozens and left an unknown number of July Fourth visitors and campers missing, including many girls attending Camp Mystic. The devastation along the Guadalupe River, outside of San Antonio, has drawn a massive search effort as officials face questions over their preparedness and the speed of their initial actions.

Here’s what to know about the deadly flooding, the colossal weather system that drove it in and around Kerr County, Texas, and ongoing efforts to identify victims.

Massive rain hit at just the wrong time, in a flood-prone place

The floods grew to their worst at the midpoint of a long holiday weekend when many people were asleep.

The Texas Hill Country in the central part of the state is naturally prone to flash flooding due to the dry dirt-packed areas where the soil lets rain skid along the surface of the landscape instead of soaking it up. Friday’s flash floods started with a particularly bad storm that dropped most of its 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain in the dark early morning hours.

After a flood watch notice midday Thursday, the National Weather Service office issued an urgent warning around 4 a.m. that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life. By at least 5:20 a.m., some in the Kerrville City area say water levels were getting alarmingly high. The massive rain flowing down hills sent rushing water into the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet (8 meters) in just 45 minutes.

Death toll is expected to rise and the number of missing is uncertain

At least 59 people in Kerr County, and eight elsewhere in central Texas were confirmed dead as of Sunday morning.

In Kerr County, 38 of the victims dead were adults and 21 were children, including 16 girls recovered from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river. Eleven more girls were still unaccounted for.

For past campers, the tragedy turned happy memories into grief.

Beyond the Camp Mystic campers unaccounted for, the number of missing from other nearby campgrounds and across the region had not been released.

“We don’t even want to begin to estimate at this time,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said Saturday, citing the likely influx of visitors during the July Fourth holiday.

Officials face scrutiny over flash flood warnings

Survivors have described the floods as a “pitch black wall of death” and said they received no emergency warnings.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, who lives along the Guadalupe River, said Saturday that “ nobody saw this coming.” Various officials have referred to it as a “100-year-flood,” meaning that the water levels were highly unlikely based on the historical record.

And records behind those statistics don’t always account for human-caused climate change. Though it’s hard to connect specific storms to a warming planet so soon after they occur, meteorologists say that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and allow severe storms to dump even more rain.

Additionally, officials have come under scrutiny about why residents and youth summer camps along the river were not alerted sooner than 4 a.m. or told to evacuate.

Officials noted that the public can grow weary from too many flooding alerts or forecasts that turn out to be minor.

Kerr county officials said they had presented a proposal for a more robust flood warning system, similar to a tornado warning system, but that members of the public reeled at the cost.

On Sunday, officials walked out of a news briefing after reporters asked them again about delays in alerts and evacuations.

Monumental clearing and rebuilding effort

The flash floods have erased campgrounds and torn homes from their foundations.

“It’s going to be a long time before we’re ever able to clean it up, much less rebuild it,” Kelly said Saturday after surveying the destruction from a helicopter.

Other massive flooding events have driven residents and business owners to give up, including in areas struck last year by Hurricane Helene.

AP photographers have captured the scale of the destruction, and one of Texas’ largest rescue and recover efforts.

Rededicate ourselves to our founding principles

This Fourth of July prompts serious questions about our nation and how it so radically differs from a proud and historic past.

Is the great American experiment born in enlightenment, freedoms and hope gone? Would the Founders be proud of the country we’ve become?  A majority of the country chose to reject the Founders’ America in the last election. We chose a president without principles who believes he’s above the law and the Constitution, a president who would be king. We weren’t duped, we knew exactly who and what Donald Trump is. There is no place for truth, character and morals in his America nor interest in a unity of states or the common good. Trump’s America is solely for those who pass his loyalty tests. Disagreement makes one an enemy, scum, unpatriotic.

His re-election further illustrated the decay in a nation that’s lost its ideals, for which we all bear responsibility, and also lost is the better part of ourselves. What would the Founders think of a citizenry that embraces rule by billionaires and corporations? What would they think of a citizenry that would allow a Christian minority to rewrite history and establish theirs as a state religion? Any claim we may have to exceptionalism is due to our founding in enlightenment. The American Revolution was not fought to establish a Christian nation nor was the nation founded on acts of conservatism.

If there’s anything left of the nation of our Founders, if there’s still any meaning in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, it is our duty to re-discover the hope and promise of America and re-dedicate ourselves to the principles upon which this nation was founded.

Thomas L. Lenczowski, Mendota Heights

 

Try to respect people

After reading the article on Thom Higgins in Sunday’s paper, I must say I am almost at a loss for words — but not totally. I am not sure why we needed to read about Thom; a mention that he coined the phrase “gay pride” might have been enough. He somehow thought that “pieing” is not violent. Really? Why is OK to interrupt someone to push a pie in their face?Anita Bryant was using her voice and fame to put forth her ideas — just like Thom wanted his views to be known. But Higgins decided it was perfectly fine to physically assault someone.

This type of behavior has gone on way too long.I think destroying people’s property is wrong — flags should not be destroyed because you don’t agree. Treat people the way you want to be treated. It is time to try to respect people.

Joan Barrett, St. Paul

 

For the people or for himself?

President Trump has made hundreds of millions (possibly over 1 billion) dollars selling himself as a presidential candidate and now as president.  Yet, his presidential campaign refuses to reimburse the city of St. Cloud for about $209,000 in expenses incurred for security,  IT services, and changing a road construction project for his July 27, 2024, campaign rally at St. Cloud State University.  Is Trump for the people, or just for himself?

Chris Lyons, St. Paul

 

A much larger debate

Arguing about the execution of bombing Iranian nuclear sites is moot; however, the consequences are worthy of a much larger debate. Have we made more enemies, further alienated our allies, and reinforced opposition alliances?

Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump call for “peace through strength.” Does that mean threaten and bomb your enemies into submission? On the other hand, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Roosevelt championed a strong military but cautioned against using it to antagonize other nations. His policy was to resolve conflicts by finding mutually agreeable solutions.

On the World Stage or kindergarten playground, those forced into submission find ways to retaliate. We had a nuclear arms agreement with Iran. Trump withdrew it. Lack of a nuclear arms agreement continues to plague US-Iran relations. Weapons of greater devastation will be made. We may have won the battle but lost the war.

Sarah Koper, St. Paul

 

These masked abductions

Last weekend Narciso Barranco was working as a landscaper at an IHOP in Santa Ana, California, when masked agents wearing full tactical gear and wielding guns chased him down and took him to the ground. These masked men can be seen repeatedly striking him in the head and neck and forcing him into an unmarked vehicle with truncheons at his neck. One of the agents is brandishing his handgun sideways at passing vehicles like he is in a Rambo movie. To be clear, Mr. Barranco is undocumented, but he has worked as a laborer in the U.S. for 30 years without any criminal record. Mr. Barranco loved and respected this country so much that the values he instilled in his family inspired his three sons to join the U.S. Marines where they currently serve.

To counter what we can all clearly see in the video, a Homeland Security statement says: “the illegal alien ran and turned and swung a weed whacker at an agents face and resisted arrest”. If these seven 200-plus-pound tough guys in their tactical armor and guns drawn were so afraid of a pot-bellied old man with a weed whip, they should take off their masks, identify themselves, and face the cameras to tell us their story of why they just had to force their knees into his back and beat him in the face so we can all see the cowards that they really are. If they can do this without identifying themselves legally in America to anyone, illegal alien or not, we should all be afraid.

If these “agents” are so proud and justified in what they are doing, why the masks and very unclear identification of who they really are or who they represent? In Minnesota we were just traumatized with the slaying of Melissa Hortman and her husband by a man “dressed up” as a police officer, so we are a little wary of unidentified authorities with guns. Also, this administration claims these arrests are all rapist and murderers or MS-13 members. If this were true, we would be seeing their RAP sheets with all the crimes they have committed. Instead, what we are really witnessing is good hard-working people who are seeking a better life, like my Norwegian grandparents, getting brutally rounded up and hidden away. These masked abductions can only be seen as terror tactics as well as a national disgrace.

Greg Kvaal, Mendota Heights

 

Sainted

To all who prepared and planned the funeral at the Basilica last Saturday: it was a beautiful and reverent send-off for the Hortmans.

The music, the choir, the sermon, the intentions, and the rite of the Mass — every detail was thoughtfully executed. It was a moving presentation of the Catholic Church, capturing both the intention of the Mass and the deeper story of our Catholic faith.

Thank you for such a meaningful tribute.

Leah Shiely Swenson, Lilydale

Edward Lotterman

U.S. agriculture is on the brink of a financial shakeout that will be the worse since the farm crisis of the 1980s. This is largely ignored, even by many farmers, but the monster won’t stay under the table much longer.

The problem is that farmland prices have risen, in steps, to unsustainable levels just as farm commodity prices are set to fall because of a U.S.-initiated trade war against the rest of the world.

The Russia-Ukraine war’s adjustment from an acute problem to a chronic one also pushed prices down. So has the dramatic growth of corn production in competitor Brazil along with continued growth in that country’s soybean output.

The rise in land prices initially was due to two factors: First, values started going up in 2005 in response to a “global commodity price super-cycle” driven by exports to a booming China. This product price boom continued to about 2012. Second, ultra-low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve after the 2008 real estate debacle further boosted cropland prices even as commodity prices ebbed back toward earlier trend levels.

Grain and oilseed prices did retract a bit as China reacted to Trump’s tariffs on its exports after 2017. But the Fed turbocharging money growth in response to COVID flooded the farm economy with readily available land and operating loans at low rates. The first Trump administration also had laid out tens of billions in subsidies to crop producers to compensate them for any losses due to trade skirmishes. Much subsequent research shows these payments “overcompensated” farmers. The payments they got were greater than their losses in the market. That further motivated bidding on land.

Then, on top of all these boom-causing factors, Vladimir Putin unleashed his “special military operation” on Ukraine in February 2022. It soon became the worst European war in 80 years. Both Russia and Ukraine are major crop producers and exporters. Farm shipments from both must cross the Black Sea as must phosphate fertilizer exports from Russia that are vital, for example, for growing crops on the most common soil types in Brazil and elsewhere.

This had multiple impacts all happening at once. Commodity prices had their fastest and highest spike in decades. Field crop farming became frenzied. Rental rates rose. Farmers paid “liquidated damages” to the USDA to revoke Conservation Reserve Program contracts freeing millions in additional crop acres. Sales prices for the small numbers of farms put on sale spiked. Farmers snapped up new combines and tractors that had sat idle on dealer lots five years earlier.

But now, not only is all that drawing to a close, but a financial chasm looms. Interest rates are higher than in 2022. Long-term ones are more likely to rise than fall as bond markets react to ever-increasing U.S. deficits. Rather than being in a trade war with one importing country, we are now at war with the whole world. Our competitive nations now gleefully scramble for our usual customers. And the war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending.

What in economics helps us understand all of this?

Let’s go back to the early 19th century with the fundamental insights of David Ricardo, the most important classical economist after Adam Smith. His thoughts still form the basis of all trade theory and most finance.

Ricardo defined the relationship between the annual net income from an investment asset, the interest rate, and the value of that asset. It’s a simple equation: the annual income divided by the interest rate equals the value of the asset.

Say you get $100 in net rent from an acre of land and the interest rate is 4%, then $100 divided by .04 gives a value of $2,500 for the acre. The same thing is true for a financial asset like a bond you can own in perpetuity, as was common in the early 1800s. The lower the interest rate, the greater the market value from a given annual income. That is the primary reason why land prices rose as the Fed drove interest rates down 15 years ago. But inversely, it also means that if rates now rise, land prices will fall. With the federal budget deficit and thus the national debt set to rise with votes in Congress this week, market forces will force long-term interest rates, like those on farm mortgages, even higher.

A second insight comes from Julius Nyerere, the Tanzanian schoolteacher and president who led his country to independence from the United Kingdom. In the 1950s, he and leftist economists argued that the prices of primary products — grains, metals, fuels and timber — inevitably fell relative to the prices of manufactured products like tractors or computers. This argument was disputed in the 1950s and still is. But it seems to be true for U.S. farm products.

In November 1971, my first harvest after getting out of the Army, we sold corn out of the field to a neighbor at 97 cents a bushel, the price at the local elevator. One can get $4.02 a bushel from the same grain dealer today. Yet adjusted by the Consumer Price Index over the same period, 97 cents in November 1971 would equal $7.48 today. Yes, for a few fevered months in late 2021, the inflation-adjusted corn price had hit $7.50, topping a half century earlier. But if you plot inflation-adjusted corn prices from 1925 to 2025, the trend is clearly downward.

I also remember my cousin enthusiastically telling me the milk price had hit $13 per hundred pounds for the first time. It is $18.42 for Minnesota-Wisconsin this week. But my cousin died in 1986. Adjusted for inflation, $13 forty years ago would be about $41 now, over twice what the current price is.

Of course, productivity has risen both in crops and livestock. An hour of labor produces much more milk or corn than decades ago. But producers should be careful not to respond to short-term price spikes from exogenous shocks like war by locking in the long-term fixed costs of expensive land.

Many are not cautious. That leads to the crunch we see forming.

An excellent farm in Rock County, the southwestern-most in our state, recently sold for $14,000 an acre. The price had been $105 an acre in 1940 and about $750 in 1970. USDA lists the current interest rate on farm mortgages at 5.875%. So the annual interest cost per acre on this farm will be $822.50 per acre. The average corn yield for Rock County has hit 202 bushels per acre. One can contract to sell at a local elevator this November for $3.98 a bushel or $803.96 an acre. So a good crop this year won’t even pay the interest due, much less seed, fertilizer, diesel fuel, labor or other variable costs. See the math? Thus deep problems loom, but need their own explanation.

Related Articles

Real World Economics: Fed up? Delusions about the central bank continue

Real World Economics: Storm clouds gathering for a new farm crisis  

Real World Economics: Bonds Part 2: How this affects us

Real World Economics: Bond primer part 1: Understanding the market

Real World Economics: Pragmatism, not globalist ideology, drove U.S. trade policy

St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.