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Episode 66: Retired Admiral James Stavridis
06 Mar 2026
00:58:23
“21st Century Geopolitics and Investments” Retired Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and Partner & Vice Chairman of the global investment firm Carlyle, shares his insight on today’s world hotspots, including Iran, and potential investment opportunities, before a February 17, 2026 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Admiral Stavridis took the Club on a world tour of potential investment opportunities. His first stop was in the Middle East. He foresees a peace treaty in Gaza implemented by the Palestinian Authority, Israel, the United Nations, President Trump’s Board of Peace, and the Arab League.
“Gaza,” he said, “which has been on fire for two and a half years, I think, is headed toward a period of hopefully prolonged cease fire. That's good news for investors. It means investment in Israel makes more sense. It means investment in general in the region makes more sense. And all of us ought to feel it's a positive humanitarian development that 2.2 million Arabs, Palestinians are going to see some kind of relief in the situation they've been facing.”
The admiral spoke just 11 days before the U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran began on February 28, 2026, but had some things for investors to watch for, in the event of such an attack.
“Number one, if it goes sideways and we end up in an ongoing conflict, the Iranians will respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz. There goes 30% of the world's oil bottled up for months. And they will attack Israel with ballistic missiles, and they'll attack U.S. bases in the region. We will get dragged into this. So you ought to be watching this for the dark end of the spectrum.”
“If this rotten regime tumbles,” he continued, “and I think there's a one in three chance it could, the theocracy could fail. If that happens, Iran could come out from under sanctions, and that's a lot of oil hitting the world markets. So as investors, you ought to be thinking both at the dark end of the spectrum and positive outcomes.”
As for Ukraine, Admiral Stavridis said Vladimir Putin and his ego are the problem. He pointed out that Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and is full of wheat and corn. Putin’s dream is alignment with China, and he is recruiting mercenaries from all around the world. Cuba is providing troops, and North Korea has more than 30,000 troops fighting in Ukraine. He said investors should be watching for a deal between Russia and Ukraine. Number one, what if... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2026-february-admiral-stavridis)
Episode 65: Lazard Chief Market Strategist Ronald Temple
10 Oct 2025
00:58:23
“A Global Macroeconomic and Market Outlook” Ronald Temple, Chief Market Strategist for Lazard’s Financial Advisory and Asset Management businesses, talks inflation, tariffs, and labor supply - and their impact on GDP - together with the latest developments in Europe, China, and Japan, and where the U.S. fits in going forward, before a September 15, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Mr. Temple took the Club on a world tour of geopolitical issues covering the Eurozone, China, Japan, and the United States. He discussed two areas of concern – inflation and tariffs – and focused on three primary themes:
The convergence of GDP growth across developed economies- “US growth rates are likely to slow in the years ahead,” he said. “If we go back in 2023 and 2024, real GDP growth in the United States was 2.8 to 2.9% each year. That's well above what most economists would say is a sustainable growth rate.” He predicted U.S. growth will slow to 1.5%, while sustainable growth is 1.7-2%. He predicted European growth to narrow the gap by increasing to about 1.2%.
Impact of Tariffs on Inflation - “What you're going to see is higher inflation in the United States this year and next because of our trade policies and the tariffs. This is a short-term issue, because tariffs, once you raise the price, you don't get another increase the next year. This would be a one-year inflation divergence.”
The beginning of the end of American exceptionalism in the markets - Mr. Temple said that in the last 15 years, U.S. equities have gone up 10-11% a year, Euro and Japanese stocks up by 2-3%, and emerging markets about 2%. “I think the U.S. will continue to outperform non-U.S. countries, but the gap between us is likely to narrow, and we're likely to see improving economic conditions in some of the non-U.S. countries that are finally being forced to reform their economies and try to improve productivity.”
Mr. Temple pointed out that most U.S. consumer spending is on services – housing, shelter, doctors, financial advisors, lawyers, etc. Only about 24% is on physical goods.
He said that while U.S. job creation is basically at full employment, the year-to-date job creation is the slowest since 2010. This year, there is a significant decline in the number of people who were born in another country, so there are fewer people in the workplace.
“I think for the Federal Reserve there's a real challenge,” he said. “Inflation is still grinding higher as tariffs work their way through to prices. Unemployment has ticked up a little bit, but job growth is much weaker. And if we look at the number of open jobs in the United States per unemployed person, for the first time in years, we're now below 1.0 − meaning there are more unemployed people than open jobs.”
“I think what you're going to see over the next year is the Fed will be cutting rates. But it's not a slam dunk. It's not a clear-cut case that the Fed should be hitting the alarm bells about unemployment, because there's a chance that we will see unemployment at or below four and a half percent by year end, but inflation looking much more worrisome, and it's going to be very hard for economists in the Fed... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-ron-temple) A TeleDirections podcast
Episode 56: Institute of Makers of Explosive’s Clark Mica
13 Jul 2024
00:51:30
“Florida’s ‘Booming’ Economy” Clark Mica, President of the Institute of Makers of Explosives highlights the critical role that commercial explosives play in building the Florida and U.S. economies before a June 25, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
“There are a couple things you need to have in a modern society, or successful society, and that's energy, water, and food,” Mr. Mica told the Club. All of those things require explosives to produce, what he refers to as “the ultimate power tool.”
The Institute of Makers of Explosives was begun in 1913 as an organization to provide safety instruction and guidelines. It’s been so successful in its mission that OSHA told the group it does not need to form a safety and health alliance with the government organization. To handle or possess explosives, a person has to pass an ATF background check and be thoroughly trained. Three universities in the country now offer degrees in mining or explosives.
“If you think about the millions of tons of explosives that are consumed each year, rarely do you hear about anything in the news,” he said.
The group includes manufacturers, distributors, and users of commercial explosives. The group does not deal with defense or fireworks.
Mr. Mica said that there is only one dynamite factory in the United States and no TNT plant. What is needed is imported, and that could be a national security issue. Most of the commercial explosives used today are made from ammonium nitrate emulsions.
The group just completed the first ever economic impact study of the commercial explosives industry in the United States and Florida.
Across the country the industry provides:
15,592 direct jobs
60,329 direct and induced jobs
The economic impact of the industry is large.
$7.5-billion in direct economic impact
$11.5-billion in supplier and induced economic impact
$19.1-billion in total economic impact
Commercial explosives make other industries possible, including industries that will be very important in the future.
“We talk about all the new technology, the green economy. We don't care if it's fossil fuels or green, you need us for everything,” he said. “If you want to make lithium batteries for electric cars, you’ve got to mine the lithium, and you have to use explosives to do that. You want to build windmills, you use explosives, and not only to get the material out, but to build the windmill. You have to use it to prepare the site because those things go down twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty feet to build the foundations.”
The largest users of explosives are the oil and gas industry and the mining and quarry industry. There explosives provide:
$121.7-billion in mining and critical materials
$2.2-trillion in quarry and construction
$81.2-billion for the energy industry
In Florida, the economic impact of commercial explosives is also huge.
“The Opportunity Capital in Florida's Rocket Ship Economy” Miami entrepreneur Saif Ishoof of the Miami business development firm Lab22c shares a glimpse of what Florida could become in the future before a May 16, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Mr. Ishoof told the Club that technological innovation and economic growth depend on human capital and developing that human capital. He quoted his late father, who said we honor the American Dream by helping others achieve it.
He pointed to the great changes in the state over the past 40-years by using the changing pronunciation of his city as a metaphor – Miam-uh, Meeahmi, and now Miami.
At 24, after graduating from law school, Mr. Ishoof decided to build his first software company in an office building near the University of Miami. Guy Kawasaki, Chief Marketing Officer for Steve Jobs and Apple, told him to move from Florida.
“And I disregarded what was the best worst piece of advice I ever had,” he said. “Because I believed that that Miam-uh, Meeahmi, Miami had something that was going to position us to win the second half of the 21st century. That very special element is human capital.”
Ishoof served as Executive Director for City Year Miami, an AmeriCorps national service program for young adults. As nothing was going on in downtown Miami in 2008, he decided to recruit young people to serve as tutors, mentors, and role models and to focus long-term on human capital. His ideas worked.
“We moved over 1.5 trillion of assets under management capital to Miami and Florida in the last 48 months. There's a global ranking called the GFCI which stands for Global Financial Center Index. It's a ranking of global financial centers. OECD and the World Bank put it out. Miami had never been on the list ever before. This year, we landed on the list for our first time at number 24. Dubai is 21.”
Ishoof said big companies are moving to Florida. “Blackstone, the largest institutional asset manager in the world, now has a massive strategic presence in Miami. Amazon is setting up 50,000 square feet of footprint in Miami, and Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in the world headquartered in Miami. That's all part of the increase of assets under management in our region. We have to look at those assets as opportunity for human capital.”
He said he wants to work supporting people, institutions, founders, and builders that are trying to solve problems, and that will require developed people.
“We have to develop human capital in our K 12 system,” he said. “We have to make sure that we're supporting early learning, we have to be focusing on creating an actual pathway. So, from when a young person graduates from college, they can see their way to a meaningful career. Are you setting up everybody's child for this form of success? Are you enabling and creating those types of ecosystems in those environments?”
“Driving economic development and driving innovation is not about tech bros at coffee shops. It's about PhDs and postdocs sitting at labs that are actually creating bench science that can actually go to the market.”
Episode 54: Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner
03 May 2024
01:04:16
“Towards Precision Medicine Therapies and Biomarkers for Neurodegenerative Diseases”Dr. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, Professor and Enterprise Chair of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Neuroscience, explains the very latest research and treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases before an April 2, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Dr. Ertekin-Taner gave the club some shocking figures on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease:
$305 billion spent on the diseases
600,000 cases in Florida alone
12.5% of Florida residents over 65 suffer, the second highest in the country
18 billion hours of caretaker time
At Mayo Florida, she has more than 200 investigators working in her lab and supervises more than 250-scientists and trainees at the Florida campus.
“Our collective mission is to find cures and diagnostics for currently incurable and undiagnosable neurologic illnesses, like dementias, like Alzheimer's disease,” she said. “Dementia is the umbrella term, it means a person is having problems in their thinking, and it's interfering with their day-to-day life.”
She pointed out that while Alzheimer’s was first identified more than 100-years ago, it has only recently become recognized clinically. It was thought to be a normal part of aging, but now we know it is not.
Dr. Ertekin-Taner and her lab are looking for cures not only for Alzheimer’s but also Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a disease that progresses faster and at a younger age than Alzheimer’s.
The investigators use genetics to get information about possible risk factors, but it does not give specific information.
“Basically, think of it like the general address. There is a fire so the firefighters are called, and we say there's a fire in this general region. That's the kind of information that these kinds of studies give us. But they don't tell us exactly which house is on fire. And they don’t tell us what caused the fire.”
While diagnosis has gotten better, there are still few cures.
“The answer again, lies in in the economy. The cost of putting a single drug on the market is on average over a billion dollars. So pharmaceutical companies cannot commit unless those drug targets are de-risked for them. And the groups that are going to really identify those drug targets and de-risk it for big pharmaceutical companies are academic groups. Places like Mayo Clinic and other places.”
Dr. Ertekin-Taner said Alzheimer’s, PSP, and the other forms of dementia differ from person to person. While Alzheimer’s is now treated as a single disease, she says it should be treated similarly to cancer with specific therapies for specific patients. Doctors need to apply precision medicine, which is diagnosing and treating the right patient with the right treatment at the right time.
Genes are not all researchers look to.
“There's also a big emphasis now on environment, the exposed zone. Where you were born, what you eat, what are your other risk factors, and education? What are the things that enrich your brain, and what are those that take away from your brain? Their relationship with genes matters. And this combination either puts you at risk for diseases... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
Episode 53: Tangent Capital Partners’ Bob Rice
28 Mar 2024
00:58:25
“The Radical Consequences of a Digital Economy” Bob Rice, Managing Partner of New Jersey-based Tangent Capital Partners, shares the revolutionary implications of Artificial Intelligence on global production, wages, competition, investments, and education before a March 21, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Bob Rice told the Club that the current digital revolution is making radical changes in the economy which will have radical societal consequences. The changes are occurring at a rate of speed that is hard, even for him, to comprehend.
He pointed out that the first digital camera was invented less than 50-years ago. With the popularity of the Internet and the Personal Computer, anyone can now transmit a photograph to half the world’s population instantly. “The latest iteration is Artificial Intelligence or AI, created by machine, and it’s just getting started. The advances and the consequences are mind-blowing and we have to be ready,” Rice said.
He then showed three brief videos that were created by computers solely with human text commands.
“They literally started with a blank screen with no pixels at all on the screen,” Rice said of the AI process. “Tyler Perry, the big movie guy in Atlanta, was shown this a month ago. He walked out and told The Hollywood Reporter ‘I'm putting my $800 million studio expansion on hold. Jobs are going to be lost.’”
He calls both the advances and the consequences “shocking.” Mr. Rice said we are seeing a “revolutionary revolution,” and he calls it that because it’s not happening in just one domain of human existence. It’s affected things such as the war in Ukraine, entertainment, and also medicine.
“Some of the medical advances that are coming out of this are absolutely mind blowing. The ability to create brand new antibodies that are proteins, specifically for your body, is happening right now.”
It’s a revolution that everyone will have access to.
“You don't need to be a specialist with 20-years of training to use this tool. You need to be able to speak or write something, and it will take care of it and do what you want it to do.”
He said that the Meta (formerly Facebook) open-source AI has been downloaded about 150-million times.
Mr. Rice also discussed human productivity and said the invention that most improved the world was the washing machine.
“Suddenly, electric washing machines freed up essentially half of humanity from six hours of drudgery every single day. And half of humanity was unleashed into things that were more economically productive,” he said, alluding that AI holds the same potential. (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
Episode 52: Panetta Institute for Public Policy Chairman Leon Panetta
16 Feb 2024
00:44:08
“The Challenges of Leadership in Our Times” Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta discusses the growing challenges and turmoil facing the United States before a February 6, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Leon Panetta briefly told the Club about his background including reminiscences of Floridians he had worked with in Congress in the late 1970’s and 80’s, Senator Lawton Chiles and Congressman Claude Pepper. He recounted how his parents were immigrants from Italy in the 1930s and how they believed they could give their children a better life in the United States. His father instilled in him the idea of service.
“I really felt it was important to give something back to the country. And frankly, what I'm trying to do here with the Panetta Institute is trying to develop a new generation of leaders for our country. And man, do we need a new a younger generation of leaders in this country,” he said. “The rewards in public service are not money or power, or having a name on the door. The purpose of public service is to improve the life of people in this country. And I felt that I could help improve the lives of the people.”
The former military Intelligence officer pointed to how recruitment across the military services is down. “The reward in public service is a reward that goes to the heart of what our democracy is all about, which is that all of us owe a duty to country. But one of the things I'm sensing in young people is that they don't have that same drive that same sense of duty to country.”
Mr. Panetta deplores the lack of public service in young people today, and throughout his discussion, he suggested ways to get them more interested and working on improving lives.
“Looking to the future, what we really need to do with young people is establish a national service system that requires young people to serve this country, in some capacity, whether it's in education or conservation, or health care, or the military. It would be a hell of a lot better for them to pay for college, working for this country than simply borrowing the money to go to college like they do now.” That suggestion drew a big round of applause from the audience.
He added, “If we don't build a good future generation of leaders, we will continue to have problems with our democracy.” (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Episode 51: Florida Sports Foundation President & CEO Angela Suggs
29 Nov 2023
00:45:42
“Driving Florida’s Sports Economy” Angela Adams Suggs, President and CEO of the Florida Sports Foundation shares the growing $70 billion economic impact of Florida’s sports industry before a November 7, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Angela Adams Suggs told the Club that Florida is where the world comes to play.
“Florida's economic impact is $70 billion dollars plus annually through amateur, recreational, professional and leisure sport,” she said.
While major professional sports teams are important with three NFL teams, two NHL teams, two NBA teams, and two MLS teams, most of that number comes from non-major league activities, such as:
Jump rope competitions
Horseshoe events
Softball tournaments
Dance competitions
Pickleball tournaments
Shuffleboard tournaments
In addition, Orlando will be hosting thousands of volleyball players for a tournament in July 2024.
She added, “More than sixteen-million people come to eleven-hundred golf courses. Twelve percent of the United States golf economy is right here in the state of Florida.”
Plus, the state’s thousand miles of coastline, more than twelve-thousand miles of rivers and streams, and eight-thousand lakes attract fishermen year-round.
Fifteen major league baseball teams hold their spring training in Florida’s Grapefruit League. Suggs said many of them have renewed contracts, and many of the stadiums and facilities have recently undergone renovations. The state hosts the Governor’s Baseball Dinner annually at various spring training sites.
In all, sporting activities provide nearly a million jobs statewide.
“We need traffic control. We need for people to come out and keep these parks clean. We need ticket takers. We need folks that are going to come in and print up all of the great signage that you see. For our road races, you need people that are going to put barricades out. You need people on our softball diamonds that are going to drag the fields,” Suggs said.
While hurricane season means the Summer Olympics probably will not be hosted in the state, there are openings in other areas.
“While we may not host the Games in Florida, we definitely are primed and ready to create opportunities for preparation to have a huge impact through the games,” she said. She pointed out that a lot of nations have their Olympic teams train in various Florida communities.... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Episode 50: Florida Power & Light CEO Armando Pimentel
03 Nov 2023
00:59:17
“Energy of the Future” Armando Pimentel, President and CEO of Florida Power and Light Company, discusses the challenges of providing customers reliable, affordable power with less emissions before an October 5, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Florida’s economy is growing significantly, and Florida Power and Light President and CEO Armando Pimentel told the Club that whatever happens in the Florida economy affects its largest utility. The company serves more than 12-million people – over half the population of Florida – making it the biggest electric utility in the nation, too.
Mr. Pimentel said the company is working to solve the riddle of how to provide customers reliable power that is affordable. He said generating it with less emissions is hard to do.
“We have one of the lowest bills in the nation, roughly 25% to 30% lower on a national average than everyone else again. And that's because we provide clean, affordable and reliable power,” he said.
One of the ways FPL will accomplish that is by the use of solar power. He said that solar energy is now cheaper than natural gas over a 30-year investment. By early next year the company’s 66 solar projects will expand to more than 100.
“It makes sense for our customers to reduce the amount of natural gas that we're burning at Florida Power and Light and increase the amount of energy that we're getting from solar. Texas and Oklahoma take their gas somewhere else, and we get free energy from the sun here in Florida.“
He says the federal Inflation Reduction Act provided production tax credits that save money for customers.
To back up the solar and wind generation, its affiliated company NextEra Energy Resources also has more battery storage than anyone in the nation. But resources are not limited to renewable energy. The company also drills for oil and natural gas and owns pipelines. Over the past 20-years, they have torn down old, inefficient natural gas plants and replaced them with modern ones that have saved $15-billion in fuel costs. They are also experimenting with using solar power to separate hydrogen gas from water to use as a fuel in what are now natural gas plants.
Mr. Pimentel said battery technology is critical to renewables and that reduction in cost will lead to more electric vehicles.
“Battery technology is going to get very cheap, very, very cheap. And once it does, it's no longer going to be economical to buy gasoline powered cars.”
Mr. Pimentel said the company has increased customer reliability by replacing 94% of old transmission line structures with concrete and steel ones which are much more resistant to hurricanes and other storms. He said that during Hurricane Idalia less than 0.3% of their solar panels were affected.
FP&L also operates an innovation hub called 35 Mules to give entrepreneurs, many of them with energy or power projects, an opportunity to grow their ideas. The program helps build jobs across Florida and makes it an even better to grow and innovate. FP&L receives hundreds of applications a year and chooses only a few for the program.
“We provide them not only senior leadership, we provide them a little bit of money, guide them in the right direction to make sure that they can understand how to raise money for their venture and allow them to think much broader in terms of bringing a product out to the market. It's been very successful.“
He concluded by...
Episode 49: Correct Craft President & CEO Bill Yeargin
04 Oct 2023
00:52:33
“The Economics of Culture” Bill Yeargin, President and CEO of Correct Craft, shares the lessons he’s learned running a successful Florida business and how corporate culture impacts the bottom line and the lives of employees, before a September 12, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Since 1925 Correct Craft has operated as the world’s leader in tournament inboard, freshwater fish and utility and recreational boats, as well as marine propulsion and watersports parks. The company is headquartered in Florida but has manufacturing plants across the country, and it operates in more that 70-countries worldwide.
Bill Yeargin has served as CEO since 2006 – he was the fifth CEO in five years. He realized the company needed a culture of service.
“One of the things that we needed was a culture, and a culture of service, a culture of something bigger than us,” said Yeargin. He promoted a culture of making life better. “When you have employees that are engaged, employees that are part of something that's bigger than themselves, they perform really well.”
“You can’t think of culture as an expense. You have to think of culture as an investment,” said the CEO. “There’s no investment you can make, that’s better for your organization, that’s got a higher return than investing in culture.” He said Correct Craft has grown from a $40 million company in 2009 to more than $1 billion last year.
Yeargin said part of the culture is becoming a learner. He said most people conversely are knowers – people who use data only to confirm what they already know.
“If you’re a learner, you get an endorphin rush when somebody changes your mind,” said Yeargin. He said he wants to be the least judgmental guy anyone meets.
He said the way we frame things in our minds make a big difference in how successful we are. We should see obstacles, or challenges, as opportunities and the way to our success.
“And so when we have a big challenge, we say the obstacle is the way. We’re going to figure out a way to turn this to our advantage.”
Yeargin and part of his team recently spent a week in Silicon Valley. Their concentration was on the huge increase in computational power seen in the past few decades, in items such as the smart phone – and its implications for change and transformational growth.
“That technological change is transforming business models and transforming the world. Whatever you’re doing now, if you’re doing the same thing in ten years, you’re likely to be out of business,” he told the Club.
Yeargin emphasized that looking ahead is part of his company’s culture. He points to the need to drive culture and says it is simple if these four steps are followed.
Identify what is important in your organization
Create a clear way to present it
Communicate over and over
Model it
As for the last point, Yeargin said leaders have to follow the cultural steps themselves.
“As CEO of Correct Craft. I talk about this stuff all the time. But if people see me talking one way and acting another, they're always going to make their determination of what your values are based on what they see you do, not what they hear you say. Always. So you have to model it,” he said.....
Episode 48: Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company’s Lasse Petterson
12 Sep 2023
00:42:48
“It All Starts with Dredging” Lasse Petterson, President and CEO of Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company outlines the economic impact of its Florida port deepening and beach restoration projects and why the company is diversifying to offshore wind projects, before an August 24, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
The Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company is the largest provider of dredging services in the country and the only U.S. company with significant international dredging operations. It’s also responsible for many of the major beach restoration and dredging projects in Florida. Some of the biggest construction projects in the Sunshine State wouldn’t have happened without dredging.
“It all starts with dredging because we find that every major deepening project has an economic impact that occurs of a magnitude greater than estimated,” said Lasse Petterson, the company’s President and CEO. He said port and shipping channel deepening typically average a 7-to-1 or 8-to-1 benefit to cost ratio in federal spending, but are actually much higher when you take into account supply chain benefits “because the ports and the shippers always find more innovative and inventive ways of utilizing that deeper channel and port.” Deepening the ports allows larger vessels access, bringing in more goods.
Likewise he said for beach renourishment projects, noting “there’s nothing more important to Florida than its beaches.” Although the benefit to cost ratio for beach projects is lower at 4-to-1, “the feds are not allowed to include recreational or tourism benefits in their calculations. We have heard presentations that estimated it in the range of 20-to-1.
Among the company’s significant Florida projects have been a large deepening of Port Miami, another one at the Jacksonville port, and a third at the Tampa port that was finished ahead of time and under budget. There are ongoing beach restoration projects in Boca Raton and Panama City. “And we are doing the maintenance work in the Tampa Harbor while we are rebuilding the beach on Egmont Key with the material that is dug out of the harbor channel,” Petterson said.
The company was one of the first to utilize advanced methods for beach renourishment in South Florida to replace the old method of rebuilding eroded beaches with chunks of old concrete and other debris. Along the way, the company has become increasingly eco-conscious with marine wildlife. They have special precautions in place to protect wayward sea turtles during dredging operations and have partnered with the Florida Aquarium to help grow coral.
The company employs more than 1,000 dedicated engineering, operations, and support personnel. It has a rich 129-year history of developing and executing successful dredging and marine construction projects, operating the largest and most diverse dredging fleet in the U.S. comprised of over 200 specialized vessels. It is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange with annual revenue that ranges between $650 million to $750 million. Its operations, in part, are funded by hundreds of millions of dollars of federal and state taxpayer money.
Petterson said that it’s part of that reliance on government money that...
Episode 47: Name Image Likeness Panel Discussion
24 Aug 2023
00:57:03
“What’s in a Name? Perspectives on Name, Image, and Likeness” A panel that includes a student athlete, a lawyer, and a sports agent shares the evolving rules allowing college athletes to be paid by marketing their name, image, and likeness, before a July 27, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Previous to an NCAA rule change in 2021, student athletes were not able to profit or receive compensation for their participation in collegiate sports. Today, they are allowed to do so through product endorsements, autograph signings, and social media posts under name, image, and likeness (NIL) laws and regulations. Florida recently amended its NIL law, removing restrictions that prohibited schools from facilitating NIL deals and now allowing compensation from booster clubs and other third parties affiliated with an athlete’s school.
While technically not being paid to play, “somewhat like the pro athletes, they’re able to be entrepreneurial and benefit and provide support for themselves and earn some income as they go through college,” said Hugh Tomlinson, Director of Development and Gift Planning for the Florida State University Seminole Boosters Club. He moderated the panel discussion that included a college athlete, a sports agent, a lawyer, and the head of an NIL “collective” that helps put together these deals.
“A collective pools resources in a given community to maximize a student athlete’s exposure. Otherwise, you would end up with the athletes all kind of fending for themselves,” said Will Cowen, Chief Operating Officer of Rising Spear, based in Tallahassee, Florida. Rising Spear is a third-party NIL collective that develops NIL opportunities for FSU student athletes and collects donations from donors. “Collectively we can raise more money and we’ve done over 1,500 hours of athletes giving back to the community,” he said. The donations are tax deductible and can be allocated per sport. Collectives also work with local businesses to solicit NIL deals.
Will Hall, an attorney at the Dean Mead law firm, serves as outside counsel to Rising Spear and explained that collectives come in two varieties: nonprofit and for-profit. “The NIL rules require athletes spend a portion of their time in community service. What Rising Spear Garnet does is buy that time and essentially donate it to the local schools and the Boys and Girls Club. On the for-profit side, Rising Spear Gold harnesses opportunities for local businesses, especially for those athletes who may not be able to afford to have a sports agent,” said Hall.
One of those athletes is Michaela Edenfield, catcher for the FSU Seminoles Softball team. The team most recently went all the way to the 2023 Women's College World Series championship finals.
“I'll never make a living from softball, but I can have softball help me make a living. And I think the idea of that has been able to change and grow due to NIL,” said the incoming junior, who has amassed a social media following for her makeup tutorials. “NIL has definitely been able to help me provide for myself and pay for my education here alongside of my softball scholarship,” which she noted is among the sports that don’t offer full scholarships. The Sneads, Florida native is majoring in Business with the dream of becoming a media marketing manager for either a sports team or sportswear company.
Ben Chase, Director of NIL Strategy for the University of Florida, acknowledged the....
Episode 64: Wells Fargo Economist Jackie Benson
11 Aug 2025
00:50:04
“U.S. and Florida Economic Outlook” Jackie Benson, vice president and economist with Wells Fargo’s Corporate and Investment Bank, assesses the U.S. and Florida economies for the rest of 2025 into 2026, before a July 17, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Ms. Benson began her discussion at the national level and particularly looked at tariffs. She said that the real GDP – the sum of all goods and services produced in the economy domestically – contracted by a half-point in the first quarter of 2025.
“What we saw is businesses rush to get ahead of the incoming tariffs that were to be applied on April 2,” she said. “And that import spike drove down the headline GDP number. Imports are not counted in GDP. So, the act of buying a foreign good in itself is not a drag on the economy, but the act of buying a foreign good instead of a domestically purchased good, does reduce the overall level of economic activity.”
She said that tariff concern also affected consumer spending.
“Consumer spending grew at a very slow pace, only half a percentage point in the first quarter, and that's largely driven by those tariff threats increasing economic concern among consumers and causing them to be a little bit more cautious.”
She told the Club that current policy tariff rates are at 16%, compared to just 3% in 2024. She says the rate changes cause uncertainty.
“Tariffs are a one-time increase in prices,” she said. “It's not an ongoing push in inflation rates, so theoretically, it should be a temporary shock.”
Nevertheless, the economic consensus is that tariffs are a drag on the economy, “although that’s changing a little bit. We've seen it play out in history before. It depends on the magnitude of the tariff rate. It depends on the uncertainty they cause. But generally speaking, any added cost, whether taxes or tariffs, are going to slow economic activity.”
She pointed out that the U.S. economy added 140,000 jobs in June 2025. They were primarily in the fields of government and health care with health care being the larger share. Sectors such as finance, real estate, and technology all lost jobs.
She predicted Federal Reserve interest rate cuts of 25-basis points each in September, October, and November of 2025.
Ms. Benson moved on to Florida and pointed out that the state’s economy is very resilient. It has generally outpaced the nation since 1998. “Florida was only one of a handful of states to post positive GDP growth,” in 2024 into first quarter of 2025 she said, noting the state economy grew at 1.4% in that period compared to a national contraction of 0.5%.
The Florida labor market has grown 1.5% over the past 12-months and the state is adding jobs at a rate almost equal to the pre-pandemic rate.
“Florida has recently seen an acceleration in information technology payrolls,” she said. “Also, in professional and business services, and that includes some technology and professional consulting, scientific research, things like that... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-july-jackie-benson)
Episode 46: Florida Chamber Leadership Council President Katie Yeutter
06 Jul 2023
00:33:00
“Making Florida the Safest, Healthiest, and Sustainable State in America” Katie Yeutter, President of the Florida Chamber Leadership Cabinet and its Safety Council outlines a new effort to improve mental health and substance abuse issues in the workplace and beyond, before a June 6, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Katie Yeutter leads the team that created the Florida Chamber Leadership Cabinet on Safety, Health, and Sustainability, which consists of global leaders who practice in these three areas. The Safety Council focuses on tactical safety training and compliance, the Health Council addresses long-term systemic issues such as mental well-being and preventative health programs, and the Sustainability Council focuses on cleaner air, water, and land. One goal is to make Florida one of the top five states in the nation for well-being.
Yeutter said that despite opioid prescription rates being at an all-time low, unintentional drug overdoses are on a dramatic upswing, many happening in the workplace. In addition, one in five US adults experience mental illness, with depression and anxiety disorders costing the global economy a trillion dollars each year in lost productivity.
“So if we're going to accomplish being the safest, we can go into organizations, we can teach OSHA, we can teach training…but if we don't address the long term systemic issues of mental well-being, opioids, and preventative health programs, we can never get to safest,” Yeutter said.
Florida, she said, ranks 49th in the US for access to mental health care, with 1,343 Floridians currently waiting for help. She also cited new Census Bureau household pulse surveys, conducted annually since the COVID pandemic. “If 59% of Floridians are feeling nervous, anxious or on the edge, those are individuals that make up our workforce. They're coming into our organizations and we're expecting them to have high productivity, be good members of the team focused on what they're doing, and most importantly keeping themselves safe and keeping their team members safe at the same time,” she said.
Yeutter told the Club that an estimated 1.4 million Florida adults have a major depressive disorder (MDD) causing them to miss almost seven days more work than other employees. “Depression interferes with a person's ability to complete a physical job task about 20% of the time and reduces cognitive performance about 35% of the time,” she explained. Addressing that workforce gap created by MDD could potentially add the equivalent of 89,000 full-time employees back into the workforce.
Although workplace fatalities continue to decrease in Florida (42nd in the US), the state ranks 32nd for lost time, non-fatal workers’ compensation insurance claims, resulting in an estimated GDP loss of $293 million in 2021. Furthermore, 13% of workers do not return to work after a lost time injury, leading to even higher costs. Florida reported 52,852 non-COVID worker comp claims in 2022, with an average cost per claim higher than the US median.
(You can also view the entire Club meeting on YouTube.)
Episode 45: Freedom Institute of Collier County and CryptoLawyers.org Co-Founder Tom Grady
30 May 2023
00:51:15
“Kids, Crypto, Banks and Excellence” Tom Grady, Co-Founder of The Freedom Institute of Collier County and CryptoLawyers.org shares his views on investments in changing times, particularly human investment, before a May 23, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Tom Grady, a longtime resident of Naples, Florida has a wealth of government experience, having served as a member of the Florida House of Representatives, Commissioner of the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, Interim President & CEO of Citizens Property Insurance, a member of the state Constitution Revision Commission, and an eight-year member of the Florida Board of Education, most recently as Chair. Along the way, the Duke University-educated lawyer has founded several firms and ventures.
“I think kids, crypto, banks, and excellence are tied together with one theme and it’s a very important theme for America in 2023 and 2024, and that is economic growth,” Grady said. “We must have economic growth in America in order to meet our obligations. And we haven't had economic growth in America for a long time.”
Grady discussed the two types of capital in life – financial and intellectual – and the importance of skepticism in the pursuit of excellence in both. He blamed the four recent bank failures in the country, including Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, in part on interest rate risk on US Treasury bonds. “They had a boatload of these long dated treasuries that declined precipitously in value as interest rates increased from 1% to 5%,” due to inflation that the Federal Reserve did not project he said.
The banks also faced “enormous additional burdens” to comply with ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance criteria) requirements and increasing competition from online banks and non-banks. Grady said that three of the four banks that failed also had involvement in cryptocurrency, some significantly.
“What is cryptocurrency? It’s software, that’s all it is. It’s a spreadsheet, a distributed ledger on a Blockchain. Proponents tell us it’s a wonderful thing because it’s assured, unlike US dollars. You can never inflate it, you can never make more Bitcoin. Truth is you can make an endless amount and people have made an endless amount of cryptocurrencies, thousands of them, all of them worth pennies on the dollar from when they were first offered. But Bitcoin they say is different. There will never be more Bitcoins. Well, you can call me a skeptic, but it’s software…and software can be hacked,” Grady said, noting that the United Kingdom is now regulating crypto in the same way it does gambling.
Like financial capital, intellectual capital is also being disrupted, Grady told the Club. He pointed to the recent coronavirus pandemic, which forced states to close their schools and transition to online learning. Florida, he said, was a leader in returning to in-person schooling quickly, with better student testing performance results than any other large state. “If you look at the large states that shut down the schools in some cases as much as two years, those kids lost so much. Online learning did nothing for them. They will never recover, unless they happen to be wealthy…and got a tutor or went to a private school,” he said, calling the situation “tragic.”
Grady warned of efforts to “dumb down educational excellence” in closing certain schools for gifted children and the discontinuing use of SAT scores by some colleges for admission “because they want to discriminate on the basis of race…over the competency and capability of those kids,” he said.
Grady has been an investor in education for many decades preceding his service on the state Board of Education. Nearly 30 years ago, he helped start the Quest Educational Foundation in Collier County and continues to serve as its CEO and Chairman. The foundation obtains about $20 million a year in scholarship offers for college-bound high school students. His newest venture builds on that, as Co-Founder of The Freedom Institute of Collier County, opening this summer of 2023. Describing it as technically a “homeschool support system” for students, it is physical school building with teachers and administrators that students can choose to attend in-person. Grady told the Club that it’s geared toward students who are not necessarily college-bound, as he said that 15 out of the top 15 jobs in the US do not require traditional four year college degrees.
“We're creating an environment that's different than many other schools and that we're focusing on five C's: career, counseling, civics, core, and competency. We want kids to graduate from high school, knowing a lot about their country, knowing a lot about history, learning a lot about consumerism, personal finance, and home economics. We want kids to graduate fully capable of becoming employees and not having to go to college because they haven't yet learned how to do anything else. (It’s) not anti-college, but opening up opportunities for kids that they may not have now, and having internships and apprenticeships and real jobs,” Grady told the Club.
One of the other differences in the curriculum he said, is aptitude testing. “We're going to regularly test kids, a Myers-Briggs kind of test for aptitude and interest. We want to develop what they're good at. We want to know what they enjoy. And we'd like to be able to merge the two.”
Grady stressed the importance of remembering that the US competes in a global economy. “If you look at learning and skills and the acquisition of skills at a macro level, at a GDP level, at a very top level, if we as workers, as contributors to the economy don't do a good job, we don't get economic growth. If our kids don't excel, as a country we won't get economic growth.”
(You can also view the entire Club meeting on YouTube.)
Episode 44: Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky
18 May 2023
00:45:19
“Florida’s Insurance Market: The Decade Ahead” Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky discusses the challenges and solutions to Florida’s insurance marketplace, the ninth-largest in the world, before an April 20, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Hurricane Ian’s landfall near Ft. Myers in September of 2022 was the costliest in Florida history, causing an estimated $109.5 billion in damage, including insured and uninsured losses, as well as claiming 156 lives. For the state’s property insurance market, it’s just the latest in a series of challenges. In the past 15 months, seven Florida domestic insurance companies have become insolvent and others aren’t writing any new policies. Insurance carriers collectively have taken huge underwriting losses, despite multiple double-digit rate increases on homeowners insurance policies.
Commissioner Yaworsky said a combination of three factors are involved: the cost of reinsurance (which is insurance for insurance companies), natural catastrophic events over the past seven years, and social inflation. “The social inflation includes everything from abusive practices within a litigation environment to vendors that aren’t acting in the best interests of the consumers overall,” he said. “We’ve seen those three events combine together and accelerate each other causing an unprecedented level of adverse loss reserve development, meaning the cost to insure homes has exceeded all expectations that were represented before it in rate making.”
As a result, Commissioner Yaworsky said the multiple years of billion dollar-plus losses by property insurance companies are “extreme and unsustainable…there is simply not enough capital in this state to accommodate the losses that we've experienced.”
He outlined the series of reforms that the Florida Legislature enacted in two special sessions in 2022 and the supplemental reforms passed in the 2023 regular session. These include measures to increase insurance claim transparency, crack down on frivolous lawsuits, eliminate one-way attorney fees, strengthen regulatory authority, require carriers to more promptly respond to and pay valid claims, and establish a new optional state reinsurance program.
“I'm optimistic that eliminating the one-way attorney fee provision over time will increase some rationality in the litigation space to make sure that there are no perverse incentives operating in it to incentivize undo litigation,” Commissioner Yaworsky said, while still preserving access by consumers to litigation in genuine disputes with their insurance companies.
The most immediate challenge as hurricane season approaches is for insurance companies to find affordable reinsurance. “It’s become easier for insurance companies to purchase reinsurance above the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund level, but more difficult to find reinsurance below the Cat Fund level,” the Commissioner said.
As for when property insurance rates might level off, Commissioner Yaworsky said it will probably be 16 months before insurance companies begin to experience relief from the reforms that they can then reflect in their rate filings to his office. Given that most policies are issued on an annual-basis, consumers won’t likely see the relief reflected in lower homeowners premiums for months beyond that, he said. “It's going to be a very difficult time for a little bit longer before we come to a place hopefully, where we’re past a lot of the past seven years.”
Calling it “the most complicated property insurance market in the country and possibly the world,” Commissioner Yaworsky also shared with the Club that Florida’s insurance marketplace is the ninth-largest in the world, with a direct written premium of $209 billion. It employs 213,100 Floridians and represents 3.5% of the state’s Gross Domestic Product. “Insurance accounts for a tremendous amount of Florida’s economic stability but is also the underpinning of any future growth in Florida,” he said.
Florida also has the largest federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) market in the country with more than three million consumers and is growing rapidly. All but one county now have multiple carriers offering ACA policies. Meanwhile, the small group market has been slowly declining, with less than 500,000 members this year.
(You can also view the entire Club meeting on YouTube.)
“Geopolitics and the Global Economy” Retired four-star US Army General and former CIA DirectorDavid Petraeusshares his insights on the geopolitical risks to investments, including actions by China and Russia, before a March 27, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain, and predict international political behavior through geographical variables. General Petraeus, in a conversation with moderator Ash Williams, Vice Chair of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, focused on the Russia-Ukraine war and the consequences for the US and European nations, and on the rise of China. General Petraeus is a Partner at the New York-based global investment firm of KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in 2013. The institute identifies geopolitical risks when evaluating potential investments and then mitigates them.
“During the past decade, the world has truly transformed from an era of benign globalization in which economics largely determined geopolitics to an era of renewed great power rivalries in which geopolitics very much constrains investment, trade, economics, and a variety of other interactions,” he told the Club. “The continued rise of China, the resurgence of a very aggressive Russia, obviously having invaded Ukraine without provocation in a particularly brutal manner, the continued challenge posed by North Korea, that posed by Iran, a number of cyber threats that exist, and a host of other challenges, all again, make this time very, very challenging for the United States and for our allies around the world.”
On Russia:
“Vladimir Putin has a very grievance-filled view of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, especially of Ukraine. He doesn't believe it has a right to exist as a sovereign country believes it should be part of the Russian Federation. He's really tried to reassemble as much of the Soviet Union as he possibly could.” Petraeus noted that Russia, as one of the top three natural gas, crude oil, and coal producers in the world, together with its agricultural goods, has the money to pursue Putin’s ambitions.
“The Ukrainians have been phenomenal. This is their war of independence and they're fighting it that way. The Russians completely underestimated how President Volodymyr Zelensky would perform as a wartime president. To be fair, his first two and a third years in office had not been particularly distinguished, but he has been positively Churchillian.”
“The irony is that no one has done more for the cause of Ukrainian nationalism than Vladimir Putin. The other irony is that Putin set out to make Russia great again and what he has really done is make NATO great again. The greatest gift to NATO since the end of the Cold War is Vladimir Putin.” As a result, Petraeus noted, two historically neutral countries, Sweden and Finland, have applied for NATO membership.
“Vladimir Putin, I think, is still convinced that the Russians can out-suffer the Ukrainians, the Europeans and the Americans, the way that Russians historically out-suffered Napoleon's army, out-suffered Hitler's Nazis, and so forth.” But despite the differences in the size of the two opposing forces, “Ukraine has fully completely mobilized. Everybody is committed to this. The business people are engaged in it, the IT experts, they’re all engaged in this. And the innovativeness, the entrepreneurship that they're employing is really extraordinary.”
General Petraeus also outlined the principals of strategic leadership, “the contrast of which couldn’t be more clear” in this conflict. “This is about as cut and dried as a situation can be literally. On the one hand, a kleptocratic, dictatorial, murderous leader invading a neighboring country without provocation and in a brutal manner. On the other, a country, a democracy, however flawed to be sure, a free market economy trying to withstand and again fighting for its very independence.”
Petraeus told the Club that he believes the US government is generally providing a sufficient level of weapons and other support to Ukraine and that the current administration and Congress “have done a very, very impressive job. I think that is hugely important, because it shows the world that we are still the indispensable nation. We will lead the world.”
On China:
The US commitment to supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia “translates very importantly into deterrence when it comes to China, because your potential adversary not only has to see your capabilities, but also your willingness to employ them.”
“It's more assertive, more aggressive actions, not just in the Indo-Pacific region, but literally around the world are causing enormous changes in how it is that we invest, because of course, everyone invests with China.”
Noting that labor costs in China are going up as its population is declining, Petraeus said “One of the big questions has always been, ‘Can China get rich before it gets old?’ which is what Japan did, or ‘Does it get old before it gets rich?’ And actually, the answer is not completely clear.”
On how the Ukraine-Russia war might end, General Petraeus said he thinks it is “very unlikely” that Putin would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Noting that Russia “has a culture of committing war crimes,” Petraeus said “We have to convince Putin that this war is not just unwinnable, it’s unsustainable. And then and only then could you have meaningful negotiations.” He admitted he doesn’t know how long that might take.
In the meantime, there are winners and losers among other global powers in all these difficulties. The winners include those who export natural gas, including the US, “which thanks to our ingenuity, deep directional drilling, hydraulic fracturing, seismic big data, our agile capital markets, our legal structure…we're the biggest crude oil producer in the entire world as a result of that. We're also the biggest natural gas producer in the entire world.” Other winners he said include India, which has gained important advantages over China.
General Petraeus joked at one point that he was runner-up to Vladimir Putin as Time magazine’s Person of the Year. The world however, has since changed. “We currently face the most numerous and challenging array of threats that we have had, arguably, since the end of World War Two, not just the end of the Cold War. Not more dangerous, perhaps, than certain periods of the Cold War, but much more complex.”
(You can also view the entire Club meeting on YouTube.)
“Agriculture’s Surprising Role in the Economy” Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson discusses the breadth of Florida’s second largest industry and why, amid threats of greater regulation, it should be viewed through a national security lens before a February 21, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Commissioner Simpson spoke to the Club fresh from his recent duty as state Senate President which capped ten years of service in the Senate. A fifth-generation Floridian, he has deep personal and professional roots grounded in agriculture, including running a family-owned large-scale egg-laying operation that supplies supermarkets statewide with two million dozen eggs monthly.
Florida agriculture is a $180 billion per year industry, employing 2.5 million people. It is second only to tourism in its impact on the state’s economy. He said during the recent coronavirus pandemic and in deeper recessionary times, agriculture is the top industry in Florida. Beyond being an economic driver, Commissioner Simpson told the luncheon meeting that agriculture is a national security issue, too.
“You should thank a farmer three times a day. We just got finished eating food that was grown by a farmer. And if you don't put it in national security terms, think of it like going to the grocery store for a week with no groceries there. Think about two weeks. Then it becomes a national security issue in a hurry, right?” Simpson posed.
He said agriculture “should be elevated to that lens” when discussing further regulation on farmers. The majority of farms are using best management practices and the fertilizer and waste runoff “coming off most farms is a thimbleful of nutrient load relative to the five gallons of nutrient load that’s being created around them.” He said water use for most crops has also been reduced from 50% to 80% over the last 20 or 30 years.
Commissioner Simpson said 80% of vegetables grown on the eastern seaboard of the country is grown in the Palm Beach and Everglades Agricultural Area. “There are people who want to shut all of that agriculture area down…(and if so)…we’d clearly have to try to import a lot more food.” He made an analogy to Germany’s decision thirty years ago to rely on Russia for its natural gas, the supply of which was cut-off by Russia during the Ukraine War. “So if you want to entrust your enemies with your energy supply, at your own peril do so. If you want to trust them with your food supply, at your own peril do so,” he said.
To help preserve farmland and safeguard the environment, Simpson said the state last year appropriated $300 million to the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program. The program purchases future development rights from farmers, letting farmers manage the land and keeping properties on the public tax rolls. The investment is three times the amount spent since the program’s inception 20 years ago. He also noted the recent sales tax reduction on farm supplies and the “Right to Farm” law to protect agriculture from nuisance lawsuits.
Commissioner Simpson also discussed his initiative to restrict the purchase or lease of Florida farmland and land around military bases by nonresident aliens, foreign businesses and corporations, or foreign governments.
As for the recent price surge of eggs in the grocery store, Commissioner Simpson said that although the worldwide Avian flu has mostly impacted Midwest flocks, “the price is all based on supply and demand, just like any other commodity quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.” He said the Avian flu has taken out about 20% of the birds that lay eggs, resulting in prices increasing from $2 per dozen to $6 over the winter, which is now receding. He shared some of the general security and bio-security protocols in place on Florida farms to prevent disease and other contamination.
(You can also view the entire Club meeting on YouTube.)
Episode 41: LPL Financial Chief Economist Dr. Jeffrey Roach
31 Jan 2023
00:49:30
“2023 Global Markets and Economic Outlook” LPL Financial Chief Economist Dr. Jeffrey Roach explains the rising risk of recession and the factors that will influence financial markets and the national and Florida economies before a January 19, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Dr. Roach is Vice President and Chief Economist for the Investor & Investment Solutions Group at LPL Financial, an independent brokerage supporting more than 21,000 financial advisors across 1,100 institutions in the U.S. Utilizing charts in his presentation, he pointed out that Florida has the fourth largest economy in the nation in terms of Gross Domestic Product and its job growth “consistently outgrows” the national rate.
“Even before COVID, employment growth in Florida has been fantastic. It has been a consistent outperformer and one of the reasons why is because Florida’s economy is amazingly diverse. So we're talking everything from housing, the sciences, the healthcare services, and manufacturing, this is private industry growth,” Dr. Roach said. He pointed to the past decade’s lower recession risk in Florida reflected in a higher real estate rental and leasing rate, with more households relocating to Florida and other business-friendly states. “I think the hybrid work environment is fantastic for Florida. You have the opportunity to move to a place that has fairly attractive standards of living and tax structures that are fairly favorable.”
Dr. Roach identified four “hot topics” that will determine the 2023 financial market and economic outlook.
Inflation: “We know it’s a terrible story, particularly for some parts of the country relative to others,” he said, noting that one-third of the Consumer Price Index is housing and those homeowners with fixed rate mortgages haven’t seen much of a cost increase compared to those with variable rate mortgages and renters. “I think we’re convincingly past peak inflation, with encouraging signs except for rents. I think we’re going to get close to 3% by the end of this year, especially as more multi-family units come online,” he said.
Recession: Dr. Roach noted that although 2022 saw two consecutive quarters of negative growth, “that does not make a recession…because so many parts of the economy are actually growing.” He pointed to consumer demand for services that added 1.2% to total growth by the end of the third quarter of 2022. Current leading indicators though point to more of a slowdown and likely recession. “I think it’ll start early 2023. The first half of this year will be negative, the latter half of this year, we can eke out some growth, hence, we see 2023 slightly above zero.”
Federal Reserve Policy: Dr. Roach described the “tug of war” between the markets and the Federal Reserve. “The Federal Reserve says we’re going to keep tightening (the money supply) for the next couple of meetings and then hold steady for the rest of the year. The markets have clearly priced in the fact that the Fed will most likely cut interest rates the latter half of 2023. I think the markets are right,” he said. Dr. Roach said labor markets are key and that the previously high quit rate of construction workers is starting to change “in a massive way” and will bode well on the overall quit rate among all jobs nationally. “Here's the not so good. Florida does have a challenge with just filling openings.”
Real Estate: Dr. Roach described the real estate market as a “tale of two economies,” with a big dip in construction of single-family homes and a big increase in new multi-family units, such as apartment complexes. “I think that's actually going to do great things for the rent problem that we see right now in this country,” he said.
Dr. Roach told Club members that the economic headwinds of 2022 – inflation, China’s economic trajectory, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine – could become the tailwinds pushing the economy in 2023.
Episode 40: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Director Greg Boebinger
13 Jan 2023
00:56:58
“The Scientific and Economic Attraction of Florida’s Mag Lab” National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Director Greg Boebinger shares the scientific and economic impacts of the world’s largest and highest powered magnet lab before a December 15, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
The “MagLab” as it’s known, is based at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, Florida with other facilities at the University of Florida and Los Alamos National Laboratory. It is a federal-state partnership that performs field research in physics, biology, chemistry and their related fields that has led to many scientific breakthroughs and inventions, with more to come. One of the best known is the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine whose ability to scan the human body has largely replaced the need for exploratory surgery. The MagLab’s MRI magnet is 10 to 20 times more powerful than the hospital version and its field has been made large enough now to study mice.
“We have specialized instrumentation that can image individual cells and the nucleus inside of individual cells,” explained Mr. Boebinger, who prefers not to be called “Dr.” “The record now is a single nerve cell 10 microns across, or one-tenth the diameter of a human hair,” he said.
Boebinger’s specialty is condensed matter physics, what he described as “the physics of things that are on a human scale.” It’s the branch of physics that invented the transistor. “You have in your pocket a device that has two dozen materials that didn’t exist 25 years ago, including the transparent metal touch screen that is part of your cell phone.” Many modern materials he said are examples of quantum matter – materials in quantum engineering that lead to unexpected discoveries.
He led Club members on a fascinating explanation of how magnetic fields are created at the lab and about superconductors, the “dancing electron partners” as he described them, which are a popular focus of its research. These are materials or substances that under the right temperature and magnetic field have no electrical resistance. “If we could develop room temperature superconductors to make MRI magnets big enough for humans, then doctors could get much sharper images of what's going on in the body,” Boebinger said. “That’s the next goal.”
Boebinger said the MagLab has become “the center of magnetic research in the world,” attracting about 2,000 scientists a year from around the world to conduct their research. But it’s not just the strong magnets that attract scientists to the MagLab, but two other critical elements as well he said: a large number of in-house experts and unique techniques for making scientific measurements that have resulted in 17 world records.
“If you think of us as a company, our product is educated people,” explained Boebinger. “So 235 post-doctoral students in one year, 508 graduate students, and our user community published over 400 refereed papers in the literature. You won't be able to understand these papers, because these are written in the scientific language. But then other people use this information to write the next generation textbooks that then educate the next generation of engineers and technologists, who then know how to make something that can turn a profit. And so I like to say that we're laying the foundation for a lot of economic activity,” he said.
While the lab isn’t inexpensive to operate (its electricity consumption alone costs $3,000 an hour) its economic impact is huge. Boebinger said the MagLab generates $709 million of economic activity annually in the U.S., $325 million in Florida, and $221 million in Tallahassee. The lab has created 4,550 jobs in the U.S., 2,680 in Florida, and 2,220 in Tallahassee. Its return on investment is put at $6.44 in economic activity in Florida for every dollar invested by the National Science Foundation, which just awarded the lab its next $195.5 million grant over five years.
The MagLab hopes to improve on that further. “Mag Corp is a new private sector company spin-off of the Magnet Lab that has signed a deal with FSU to help link the private sector to FSU,” Boebinger said. “To help speed things along, they’ve already pre-negotiated some of the terms of contracts and that's been a huge success.”
Episode 39: Restaurant Brands International CEO Jose Cil
14 Dec 2022
01:03:56
“Running Restaurants in a Challenging Economy” Restaurant Brands International CEO Jose Cil shares how supply chain challenges, commodity and wage inflation, and labor shortages are impacting its Burger King, Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and Tim Hortons restaurant chains before a November 29, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Restaurant Brands International (RBI) is the franchisor to 29,000 Burger King, Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and Tim Hortons restaurants in more than 100 countries. It generates approximately $35 billion in annual system-wide sales. It is also a major employer in Florida with headquarters for the first three of those brands, employing 1,000 corporate employees.
“Florida is a fantastic place to do business and that's not by chance, that’s by design,” the Miami native said. “It's by design from the government but I think more importantly, from people like you that are involved, that are engaged, and that bring businesses together and help create an environment where entrepreneurship and commercial enterprise can drive communities forward. And that's, I think, a super powerful combination. It's why Florida today is what it is,” Cil said.
Mr. Cil shared how the quick service restaurant industry has evolved and how everything, including the customer experience, has changed since the coronavirus pandemic. RBI had to make “significant investments” in technology and mobile apps to improve online off-premise ordering and drive-through service, as well as food and restaurant worker safety.
“I think the other piece that was important during the pandemic that changed us, I think dramatically, is I think we became more courageous,” explained Cil. “I certainly did. As a leader in the organization, we took steps, bolder steps, than we ever have before because we needed to, in order to take care of our franchisees, to take care of our team members, to take care of the folks in the restaurants, and to take care of our guests.”
Cil told the Club that while the pandemic was probably the most difficult stretch of time he’s ever had as a business leader, “I almost wish we were back in the pandemic, as it was much easier to deal with that than the current environment, including supply chain challenges,” he said.
Cil said that ongoing commodity pressures and “staggering” wage inflation are impacting RBI’s franchisees and the entire industry, as are significant challenges finding labor. The pressure is being felt by their restaurant guests as well. “We’ve seen a drastic pricing increase in the products we purchase. If I take 10-cents of price increase, how much of that 10-cents goes to the bottom line? If not all, it means you’re impacting consumer behavior and losing traffic,” Cil said. “Our focus is always on the guest and the guest experience.”
One solution has been to encourage guests to order digitally, either online or using an in-store kiosk. RBI’s digital sales in the third quarter were up 26% year-over-year to nearly $3.4 billion, representing a third of its quarterly sales. “In the end, we want to get to 100% digital,” he said.
RBI recently announced it will be investing $30 million in digital improvements, part of a $400 million plan to beef-up advertising and store remodeling and relocations to modernize and grow its U.S. business that together with franchisees’ contributions will total nearly $1 billion in the next year few years.
Mr. Cil also shared with the Club RBI’s corporate values, including a diversity of viewpoints. “I feel that this is a key driver of success, having more perspective, more viewpoints, creating a positive tension and disagreement as a leadership team, is really powerful to get to the best ideas,” Cil said. I think when you get to a situation where everybody has the same ideas, everybody's supportive of the ideas that someone has, there's no debate, there's no challenging, be careful.”
He also revealed the five ways you build a most-loved brand, “as our mission is not to be the biggest, or the most financially successful, it's to be the most loved.”
Episode 38: Southern Company Executive Vice President Stan Connally
17 Nov 2022
00:51:38
“Building a Clean and Resilient Energy Future”Southern Company Executive Vice President Stan Connally discusses the rapid transformation taking place in the energy industry and the challenges it poses for producers and consumers before an October 26, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Stan Connally is Executive Vice President of operations at Southern Company, one of the largest producers of energy in the United States. He also serves as Chairman, President and CEO of Southern Company Services. Recognizing that “most people don’t think of us until the bill arrives or the lights go out,” Connally addressed upfront the current rise in consumers’ electric bills, pointing to the higher costs of inputs.
“There's some dynamics around natural gas prices and other commodities related to supply chain that are really leading to a lot of those pressures on prices and we're all working incredibly hard to try to manage that. I'd like to give you some hope there. But as long as we have this conflict in Europe going on, I think there's going to be some challenges to the supply chain fixing itself for some time,” he told Club members.
Meanwhile, he said, the focus remains on “building the future of energy and making it cleaner and more resilient.” Climate change has prompted policies to reduce carbon emissions at power plants. “Decarbonizing our electric generation business, frankly, has proved economic for our consumers,” Connally said. The Southern Company has transitioned its fleet and retired or converted 80% of its generating units in the past 15 years. Carbon emissions were reduced nearly 50% with a goal to get to net zero emissions by 2050. “Getting that last 10% to 20% is going to be the hard part. That's where the new technologies have to evolve.” To get there, Southern is deploying more solar and storage technologies and is about to put online the first new nuclear units in a generation in Georgia.
“Electrification” is another way to build the future of energy, with electric vehicles leading the way. “Not since the invention of the air conditioner have we seen such a potential impact to the electric loads of our utilities as we do now with the growth of electric vehicles,” Connally said. To handle the projected 19 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, he said that many more smaller generating installations will evolve from the traditional big central power stations that he ran earlier in his career. “It’s going to be far more distributed and that brings permitting and land use challenges that we’ll need to navigate. We as a country need to get more efficient at our permitting system, the United States at the federal level needs a lot of work,” he said.
Connally, a 34 year veteran of the industry, said the energy business “has gotten some recent wins” from Washington DC to help transition to that future. He said the recent federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will allow utilities and communities across the country to make greater investments in transmission and distribution networks, electric vehicle infrastructure, and provide more energy efficiency grants. He likewise applauded the federal Inflation Reduction Act which extended tax credits on renewable energy sources, nuclear energy development, and energy storage.
“Politically, energy should not be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, there's way too much partisanship going on related to energy. Because at the end of the day, it is not a commodity, it is a necessity,” he told Club members.
The Southern Company’s operating companies provide electricity to 4.4 million customers in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and natural gas service to 4.3 million customers in Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Illinois. It also provides wholesale solar, wind, natural gas, and clean energy alternatives in 14 states across the country. Southern also operates a distributed energy infrastructure company, a fiber optics network, and telecommunications services.
Connally also talked with the Club about resiliency, cybersecurity challenges, training young talent, and “the need to connect to the customer and what they need most.”
Episode 37: Figgers Communication CEO Freddie Figgers
23 Sep 2022
00:34:25
“A Gadsden County native’s path to success as an American technology entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist” Figgers Communication CEO Freddie Figgers shares how a $23 Goodwill purchase led to his multi-million dollar career as an entrepreneur and the importance of finding your passion in life before an August 25, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Abandoned at two days old in a trash can and adopted by an older couple who raised him as their son, Freddie Figgers’ story as a technology entrepreneur began at nine years old, when his father bought him a broken computer at a Goodwill store that he restored to life with borrowed parts from other electronics around the house. It was the start of his career as an inventor, software developer, and now at age 32, the CEO of Figgers Communication, the nation’s only minority-owned telecommunications company. The company provides cellular and broadband services in rural areas and manufactures consumer electronics, including cellphones, from a manufacturing facility in Doral, Florida.
“I meet so many people across the country that don’t like their job. They get up every morning and they go to work. You have to find what you’re in love with in order to excel in it,” he told the Club in a fireside chat format with Club Vice President Marion Hoffmann, Vice President of Business Solutions for Indelible Solutions. “Technology was my passion - innovating, creating something new, and helping others. And every product that we’ve built to date has made an impact on people’s lives.”
That “passion with a purpose,” as Figgers calls it, began at age 15, when he quit school because of bullying and to take care of his father, who had developed dementia and would leave the house and wander around town. It was the necessity of his dad’s illness that became the mother of his first invention: A GPS tracker embedded with a two-way communicator in the sole of his dad’s shoe, allowing him to talk to and find his dad when he became lost. It became the precursor to today’s Life Alert ® product. Figgers sold the rights to the tracker for $2.2 million in January 2014, receiving the check on the same day as his father passed away. It was the first of several medical informatics inventions and programs he has developed under his other company, Figg Health.
“The best thing my father ever taught me was staying grounded. Never forget who you are. Don't forget where you come from, and always pay it forward. If you can help somebody else you do it without hesitating,” Figgers said. More than 20% of his company profits are invested in philanthropy, including The Figgers Foundation that helps disadvantaged children and families and provides grants for education and healthcare projects.
Figgers discussed current supply chain issues and his company’s work overseas, including helping Kenya expand its 5G cellular network through Safaricom. He said he’s also working on a pending business deal with Meta in the augmented reality space. For now, he said he has no interest in taking his company public, despite many offers. Among his employees are some of the bullies that used to bother him in school. Freddie Figgers represents the Florida-born talent who are developing businesses and creating jobs and his story is truly inspirational.
Episode 63: Florida’s Chief Investment Officer Lamar Taylor
11 Jul 2025
00:58:24
“How the SBA is Viewing a Changing World” Lamar Taylor, Chief Investment Officer for the Florida State Board of Administration, discusses the SBA's $275 billion asset management, focusing on asset allocation, assumptions, and potential changes in the economic landscape, before a June 26, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-june-lamar-taylor)
With his slides, Mr. Taylor showed the Club how the Florida pension plan ranks very well against the top ten defined benefit plans in the country. He said he achieves that through asset allocation. Currently about 47% of the fund is in global equities, about 10% in real estate, and the rest in fixed income assets such as treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, and commercial paper.
He reviews asset allocation every three to five years and works to get the most efficient return for the asset mix.
Mr. Taylor said that Covid exposed weaknesses in the supply chain which led to an effort to re-shore and near-shore those supply chains. The changes have required people to spend money. Add in labor expense, energy transition, and an aging population, and those expenses affect equities.
“Equities are about as expensive as they’ve ever been,” he said, “and particularly U.S. equities are expensive.”
The price-to-earnings (P/E) multiples are now about 21-times forward-looking earnings.
He said that it was his opinion that U.S. equities are primarily expensive because of concentration, particularly in:
The Magnificent Seven (principally tech companies in Artificial Intelligence - AI) of the S&P 500 Index
Spending by wealthy U.S. consumers
“A quarter to a third of the growth in U.S. GDP is attributable to capital expenditures in AI,” Mr. Taylor said, as he expressed concern about how large capital expenditures in the past, such as the Dot-Com boom, have not ended well. “Maybe AI is different. Who knows? I don't know. These are huge companies. They can afford it. They have fantastic earnings.”
He said that half of U.S. spending is attributable to the top 10% of income earners. Their spending used to be in the 30-35% range. The top 20% of incomes now own 90% of equity securities, and the top 1% own almost 40% of those securities.
Recently there have been calls for returning manufacturing to the country and reducing our trade deficit. Mr. Taylor said he has begun to look at those changes differently through a concept called identity-of-payments. He said the United States has been the destination for foreign capital for more than 40-years.
“Because we are buying more than we're selling in the goods market, by definition, you’ve got to be importing capital to be able to do that,” he said. “It doesn't mean that trade deficits... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://ecf.memberclicks.net/2025-june-lamar-taylor)
Episode 36: Florida State University Economist Dr. Jerry Parrish
10 Aug 2022
00:41:39
“Is Florida Heading for a Recession?” Florida State University Economist Dr. Jerry Parrish shares the probability and how rising interest rates, housing costs, and gas prices affect consumers before a July 19, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Dr. Jerry Parrish is the Chief Economist and Director of State and Local Policy Analysis at the Institute of Government at Florida State University. He said Florida has two different economies: one with almost full employment with more than 600,000 open jobs, and the other with persistently low consumer sentiment.
“Consumer sentiment is lower than what it was during the worst of the pandemic and you know, that's really unusual, with almost full employment,” he told the Club. “I watch that because it’s really an indicator of how people are going to spend their money. And you've heard all over the place that about 70% of the economy is people out there spending money, so if they have a poor outlook, that's certainly a concern in the future. What’s driving it is inflation.”
Dr. Parrish said Florida weathered the coronavirus pandemic’s economic upheaval better than most states, recovering all its jobs by October of 2021. The exception is in healthcare and especially registered nurses. Thirty-five other states still don’t have their jobs back. Other economic factors he noted at play:
Since the pandemic, U.S. wages have increased 7.9% for people who’ve switched jobs and 6.1% for those who’ve stayed put, but inflation now is exceeding those earnings gains;
A survey shows 25% of Americans are delaying retirement due to inflation;
Falling mortgage demand because of rising interest rates and plunging homebuilder sentiment;
As interest rates go up, the dollar gets stronger and has now reached parity with the Euro. “That means that guy in Chicago who wanted to take his family on vacation my skip Florida this year and go to London,” or other European destinations.
A strong dollar favors those in the U.S. who import items, but for those exporters, “you may not be competitive anymore.”
“People at lower incomes take the biggest brunt of inflation,” said Dr. Parrish, who also chairs the Council of Economic Advisers at the University of West Florida’s Haas Center. “If you're spending all your money on gas and rent and food, there's not much money left for fun stuff. The economy runs on fun stuff. If you're buying a motorcycle or a motor home, or taking a great vacation or something like that, that's really, really good for the economy, right?” he asked the Club.
Dr. Parrish has maintained a probability of recession forecasting model for the past several years. One component is the spread between 2-year and 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields. “The interest rate on a 2-year bond, which should be lower, is inverted now,” he said, noting it’s the largest inversion since 2000 and “a lot of the time, this signals a recession is coming on.”
So, is Florida heading for a recession? Dr. Parrish said his model shows about a 67% probability, noting as well a Wall Street Journal chart he displayed for Club members that shows a historical drop in consumer sentiment “very hard and very quickly right before we have a recession.” On the positive side, “If we do go into a recession, Florida will weather it better than the U.S.,” he said. In his question and answer session with Club members, Dr. Parrish also explored the positive factors in a recession, including easing inflation and increased entrepreneurism.
Episode 35: Andreessen Horowitz Investing Partner Scott Kupor
15 Jul 2022
00:52:02
“Web3 and Cryptocurrency” Andreessen Horowitz’s Scott Kupor explains Web3, the next generation of the internet and cryptocurrency before a June 21, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Scott Kupor is investing partner with the venture capital firm of Andreessen Horowitz (known as “a16z”), based in Silicon Valley, California. One of its funds is “a16z crypto” which has raised $7.6 billion to date to invest in Web3 and cryptocurrency startups. Kupor describes Web3 as the third generation and “future of the Internet,” and like cryptocurrency, it’s based on Blockchain technology.
“It's really a new development platform on which lots of different applications we think will be built over time,” he told the Club. “The key distinguishing features of Web3 relative to its predecessors is that the platform is decentralized and open, meaning nobody owns it. Anybody who wants to be a publisher to that platform is able to do so and it's not really controlled by any central resource or big tech companies. So that freedom and that flexibility is what we think kind of is very attractive to developers in this age.”
Likewise, the cryptocurrency component will serve as a decentralized, non-bank digital currency used for transactions on Web3 with the added benefit of being an investment in particular web applications, where users will gain appreciation from their early spending support.
“It really creates an economic opportunity for those people who helped grow the network, who helped govern the network. And so it really creates an economic incentive that enables the participants to feel as though they ultimately can be compensated for the value they bring to the organization,” said Kupor, whose experience in the software industry and investment banking spans the dot-com boom and bust era of the mid-1990’s and includes the sale of Loudcloud to Hewlett-Packard in 2007.
Kupor also discussed one of the more developed areas of Blockchain technology: “De-Fi” (decentralized finance), which he referred to as “an application in the Web3 environment.” It involves enabling software on computers to intermediate transactions instead of going to central clearing houses or institutions. “So this doesn't yet exist at scale. But over time, if decentralized finance is going to grow and live, it will ultimately have to replicate all of those individual functions that exist in the traditional financial system today…using decentralized platforms,” Kupor said.
He also discussed the state of cryptocurrency today, including some notable failures in the news recently, such as Luna, and whether it will spur greater regulation. “The Enforcement Division at the SEC has done a good job, I think, actually rooting out quite frankly, bad behavior in the system. And unfortunately, bad behavior I think, is always going to be part of a new economic model. We as market participants do believe that an appropriate regulatory framework does make sense for these types of activities,” Kupor added.
Kupor told Club members that this is “frontier technology” with new engineers and developers migrating to the environment. He advised viewing it as a long term venture capital investment with “10 to 20 year time horizons” in terms of monetization. “We’re very early on in this new technology. What’s we’re hoping it can develop into is phenomenal, world-changing applications, including protected personalized medical information that you can share with others.”
Episode 34: Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady
16 Jun 2022
00:43:45
“Florida Courts by the Numbers” Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady explains the challenges in trying to reduce a 600,000 case backlog from the Florida court system created by the coronavirus pandemic before a May 17, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
The 2020-2021 pandemic created a big challenge for the Florida court system in how to keep operating without placing court participants in unsafe situations. While the state’s appellate courts and the Supreme Court were largely unaffected thanks to the use of Zoom calls for oral arguments, the circuit and county court dockets were greatly impacted on the trial court level because of the inability to convene juries due to health safety concerns. Justice Canady explained that by the time the courts resumed full operation in June of 2021, there was a backlog of 600,000 cases.
“Since then, we have been successful in an overall reduction of the backlog by 30%,” Justice Canady told the Club. “Some dockets have not done as well as others. We've got some problems on some of the (criminal) dockets. But on the circuit civil and the county civil dockets, where we imposed the aggressive case management requirement, we've had dramatic reductions in the backlog. In fiscal year 2021, the trial courts actually resolved more than 2.7 million cases,” he said, thanking the lawyers, judges, and court personnel who made it happen.
While Florida is the third most populous state in the country, he said its court system has the fifth lowest number of trial court judges per capita among the 50 states. There are 935 judges, including the Supreme Court and the five District Courts of Appeal. Its current year budget of $667 million is seven-tenths of 1-percent of the $100 billion state budget.
“I don't think there's anything wrong with being a lean system. It's a small percentage of our budget, as I said, but it's real money, and it's taxpayer money, and we need to make sure we get the full, effective use of that money,” Justice Canady said. “We certify judgeships if we think there's an additional need for judgeships.”
Justice Canady took questions from Club members, including his reaction to the recent leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion that suggests the justices will overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
“That’s a very serious matter. So far as I know, we've never had a breach of our court security. But it's absolutely essential that the deliberations of courts be confidential and not leaked… that's just corrupt justice if it's leaked,” he replied.
Justice Canady graduated from Yale Law School in 1979. After private practice in Lakeland, Florida, he served three terms in the Florida House of Representative and four terms in the United States House of Representatives. He was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Charlie Crist and took office on September 8, 2008 and was subsequently retained by voters in 2018 and 2020.
The address by Justice Canady was also notable in that, in the audience, was a former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice, Major Harding, who introduced Justice Canady, and the incoming Chief Justice Carlos Muniz, who will succeed him as Chief Justice on July 1.
Episode 33: American Petroleum Institute President & CEO Mike Sommers
12 May 2022
00:53:34
“America’s Energy Challenges in a Changing World Environment” American Petroleum Institute President & CEO Mike Sommers discusses the domestic oil and gas industry and how the Russian-Ukraine War and current policies on production and climate change effect gasoline prices before an April 14, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
The non-partisan American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest national trade association representing all aspects of America’s natural gas and oil industry. It was founded in 1919 as a standards-setting organization, and has developed more than 700 standards in the oil and natural gas industry to enhance operation and environmental safety, efficiency and sustainability. Mr. Sommers told the Club that America must continue its march to energy independence.
“In 2008, this country was producing about 6 million barrels of oil every single day. And since then, we've more than doubled that production. It's not because some politician came in and made the decision to do that. It's because this industry stepped up to the plate, discovered new innovations, and new ways to get more oil and gas out of the ground. And that has had such huge economic consequences for the American people,” Sommers said. “Unfortunately, we've made some bad policy choices in the last couple of years and as a consequence of that our production has gone down. If we get the policies right, we can get production back up and we can get prices lower for the American people.”
Sommers said API is working with Washington policymakers to provide energy security at home, maintain U.S. economic strength, and protect national security interests, especially in these times of international crisis. He said the world consumes 100 million gallons of oil each day, of which about 13 million barrels are produced in the US. “But we consume about 21 million barrels of oil every day here,” Sommers said. “This is a global market. What brought prices to where they are now is a combination of bad policy, the pandemic, and lately, the war in Europe.”
Sommers told Club members that it’s very difficult to see a scenario where the US will be able to produce what it needs, but could be energy independent with the help of Canada, which has abundant oil and natural gas resources. “So when we talk about energy independence, we talk about North American energy independence primarily,” he said.
He also discussed the role that climate policy is playing. He has spent the past three years with API leading the adoption of the industry’s position on climate change, including decarbonization – helping reduce the planet’s “carbon footprint” from vehicle and industrial emissions linked to climate change. “Even if every country meets their Paris Climate Accord goals, half of the energy in the world will still be from oil and natural gas. Setting ideology aside, most everyone knows that the world needs oil and natural gas in a big way, and will for decades and decades to come. The only question is where that oil and gas is going to come from?” he asked.
API also supports President Biden’s recent pledge that over the next six years, 65% of US oil and gas exports would go to Europe. “We are all for that. But in this case, the tools and the levers to meet the goal are held up by Washington DC. To get supplies on this scale to export terminals, and over to Europe we’ll need access to energy on federal lands, and the ability to build new infrastructure, such as pipelines,” Sommers said.
He also said there’s a misconception that an oil lease is all that’s required to start producing, when there’s actually a long list of other steps and approvals that must follow. “The real problem here, as everything in Washington, D.C. is red tape. We actually need more lease sales and permit approvals onshore and offshore if we're going to keep production in line with what we know is going to be future demand.” Sommers said that includes developing a new five year offshore leasing program in the Gulf of Mexico to replace the current one set to expire in June. He also said that despite criticism, production is at or near its highest level in two years.
“If America doesn't control its energy destiny, our fate will be in the hands of others,” Sommers added. “That alone is a powerful argument for increasing supply here in the United States. Energy policy does not have to be a series of endless crisis by crisis movements. Our aim should be to avoid crisis by shaping events instead of being shaped by them.”
Sommers took questions from Club members about the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, private energy investment, clean energy alternatives, and the impact of hurricanes on oil production.
Episode 32: China Research Center Founding Director Dr. Penelope Prime
29 Apr 2022
00:56:32
“US-China Economic Relations Revisited” China Research Center Founding Director Dr. Penelope Prime shares her updated analysis of the macro political-economic environment of today’s China and its relationship with the United States before a March 22, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Dr. Prime is a retired professor of economics and international business at Georgia State University. She told the Club it was important to remember that the U.S. and China have had a long-standing good relationship with mutual interests as we enter a period now where both countries have more concerns about each other.
“We’re in a new economic reality…where there has been diminishing returns from our continuing trade relationship. I would argue it’s really about competition over innovation, with diminishing returns from trade but increasing returns from innovation. Innovation is harder to predict and for some of the key technologies we are both right on the frontier. Some of the competition is really intense and some of those frontiers have military, dual-use as well,” Dr. Prime said, coupled with a "new political reality" of mistrust & competition.
She’s been watching the relationship from its beginning. She was one of the first American graduate students allowed to enter China to conduct research after President Jimmy Carter normalized relations in 1979. Over her career, she took more than 400 students to China for study. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, her past assignments include teaching economics at both U.S. and Chinese universities and the Ministry of Economics in Taiwan.
Dr. Prime’s address included a “view from China” on how the country has rapidly changed in terms of freedoms and market reforms, how the U.S. has changed its approach to the Communist-regime over the years, and how she sees the U.S.-China relationship going forward in terms of what both countries want. “I don’t have any silver bullet…we need to keep the benefits of cooperation greater than the costs of not cooperating.”
She faced some tough questions from Club members, including how an American democracy can deal with a dictatorship that uses subterfuge and wants to dominate the world. “I wouldn’t start with the assumption that China wants to dominate the world, I don’t think it’s helpful,” she replied. “Really where the story is, is domestically within China and we need to see how that plays out.”
Episode 31: Charter Communications VP Marva Johnson
18 Apr 2022
00:46:13
“Closing the Digital Divide to Create Economic Opportunity” Charter Communications Group Vice President of State Government Affairs Marva Johnson discusses the upwards of 2.3 million Floridians that are without broadband internet before a February 8, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Charter Communications is a national provider of broadband, the high-tech network of lines that provide Internet, phone, and TV services to our homes and businesses. Marva Johnson shared her views on the current access and affordability challenges, their economic impact, and the public-private partnerships that seek to close the digital divide, especially for low-income families.
“There are upwards of 2.3 million Floridians in rural and even some urban areas that are without broadband. They don’t have access to online banking, healthcare, and educational tools that have enhanced the quality of our lives,” Johnson told the Club. But that also represents an economic loss to Florida. “That cost is between $2.25 billion to $17 billion that could otherwise be brought to the state through greater commerce,” she added.
Johnson explained that the reason for the digital divide is often geographical, as rural areas lack the infrastructure, such as utility poles to run the broadband cable. The Florida Legislature this session is considering proposals to create a framework to help expand broadband into underserved areas, including pole replacements.
But she said there are also affordability and socio-economic reasons. The Federal Communications Commission set aside $20 billion, in part to provide a $30 monthly cable credit to low-income households, but has only spent $10 billion to date. “Charter is wiring one million locations across the country and we’ll spend another $3.8 billion ourselves in providing infrastructure and services to make it happen, so this is not a government giveaway,” Johnson said.
Episode 30: 2022 Market Outlook: Looking Through the Noise
03 Apr 2022
00:55:31
“2022 Market Outlook: Looking Through the Noise” BlackRock Global Allocation FundManaging Director Kate Moore provides a financial market forecast for the New Year before a January 20, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
The Club began the New Year with a timely address in January from Kate Moore, Managing Director and Head of Thematic Strategy for the BlackRock Global Allocation Fund. BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $9.5 trillion in assets under management. Ms. Moore provided a financial market forecast for 2022, a year she said that is starting with a lot of uncertainty.
“2021 was a really unusual year for asset returns,” she said. “There were only three other times in the last thirty years where stocks were up and bonds were down. We’re in an even more unusual place to start 2022 where both stocks and bonds are down. It’s not ideal. We forecast strong growth for the U.S. economy but it will be uneven at times and at a much slower pace than last year, simply because we’re not coming out of the depths of pandemic behavior,” said Moore, adding that she expects by year’s end that stocks will again be up and bonds will be down.
She also discussed inflation, its impacts on monetary policy, and both supplier and consumer costs. “This is a really complex environment for monetary policy…markets stop panicking when Central Banks start panicking.” While some inflation is transitory, such as computer chip shortages and other sectors where demand outstrips supply temporarily due to the pandemic recovery, Moore said that core consumer price increases are not transitory. “The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is up 9.5%, groceries are going up 5.5% at this point, and while prices are going up, the volume of the product, such as cereal, is going down, so there’s less value,” Moore said.
In this period of rapid inflation, she also addressed how companies are passing along costs to consumers. “Large companies are able to eat the cost but smaller to medium size companies cannot and have past the costs on,” she said.
Episode 29: Florida State University President Richard McCullough
02 Apr 2022
01:04:13
“The Future of Florida State University and Higher Education in Florida” Florida State University President Richard McCullough shares his vision on building academic innovation that impacts regional economies before a December 1, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Richard McCullough became the 16th president of FSU in August 2021 via Harvard University, where he had served for nine years as Vice Provost for Research and a professor of materials science and engineering. The first in his family to attend college, he shared how he combined his academic background with an entrepreneurial spirit, founding two companies and earning several patents.
“I learned more in the failure of my first company than I did in any other schooling that I ever had. And so my second company, we sort of knew what not to do. And that’s really valuable,” McCullough told Club members. He discussed the synergy of his practical research background from Harvard and Carnegie-Mellon Universities and how he plans to build similar research innovation and entrepreneurship at FSU. The keys he said to “taking FSU to the next level” are increasing research dollars and expenditures, including hiring more tenured faculty, and growing the partnership with nearby Tallahassee Community College and Florida A&M University.
“One of the reasons that grant money and research money is so important to the community is that these dollars circulate directly into the community if we build a strong research program at Florida State University,” McCullough said. “We will continue to pump money into the region in ways that you may not know about.”
He specifically mentioned the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at FSU, which brings in about $275 million from federal, state, and other funding sources. “We ought to be at $500 million, not $275 million,” McCullough said. Although FSU is ranked as one of the Top 20 public research universities in the country, his goal is to achieve membership in the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of 66 universities with advanced research programs. He said he also wants to continue to grow the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship and formally encourage more of FSU’s 43,000 students to start their own business.
Episode 28: Florida’s Chief Investment Officer Ash Williams
23 Dec 2021
01:08:32
“How to make a 29.46% Investment Return” Florida’s outgoing Chief Investment Officer Ash Williams explains the state pension system’s phenomenal returns and shares his keen insight on the present and future financial markets, before a November 4, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Ash Williams, who shepherded Florida’s public pension system for the past 13 years before his own retirement last month, went out with a bang – earning the fund a 29.46% return on investment over the previous 12 months. How did he and his team of 220 professionals do it? Williams credited several factors, including robust public and private equity, venture capital, real estate, and other private asset markets, coupled with exposure to markets that appreciated most. But it’s also in the execution, he said.
“Even if everything's going great, if you don't have the ability to properly capture the returns, you won't benefit from them. And we have an outstanding professional team of talented, experienced portfolio managers and many others who know how to get the job done right, especially in a public environment with a high degree of transparency and accountability,” said Williams, whose family has lived in Florida since the early 1800’s, before it was a state.
As former Executive Director & Chief Investment Officer of the State Board of Administration (SBA), Mr. Williams was responsible for managing over $250 billion in assets including those of the Florida Retirement System, the fifth largest public pension fund in the United States, with one million participants. The SBA manages multiple investment mandates, including the defined benefit and defined contribution retirement programs and the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund.
Over the 13 years, the SBA had an annualized return of 10.33%, which is about 90 basis points (9/10 of 1%) ahead of target. That amounted to more than $15 billion in value added beyond what the markets provided. He and his team beat expectations, even in bad economic times, under their belief in long-term investing.
“As institutional investors, a substantial part of our return is always going to be what the markets did in a given period of time. The reason is, we manage risk very carefully, and you never get too far away from the markets that are your primary drivers of return for the simple reason that if you make a huge bet like that, and you're wrong, you can do a tremendous amount of damage,” said Williams, who returned to the SBA in 2008 after working for private capital firms in New York City.
He acknowledged that how the SBA invests is different than how individuals invest but said some of the same options exist in both worlds. "Don't start the pity party of saying 'I'm just an individual. I can't do hedge funds, I can't do private equity, I can't do distressed, I can't do all these countercyclical, pro-cyclical things that would be constructive in an aggregate portfolio,'" he told Club members.
Williams also shared his thoughts on individuals facing a choice of using independent financial advisory firms versus traditional investment management firms. “I don't think you can automatically say that one is better than the other. I think the most important thing is the character of the individuals you are dealing with.” He stressed it’s also important to know how the broker or advisor is compensated and whether they are a fiduciary, someone that is legally obligated to put the interests of the investor ahead of their own. “That’s critical,” said Williams.
Williams was recently elected to the Council on Foreign Relations, which he said provides a rich field of daily information on events all over the world – something that “without a doubt” has made him a better investor. “One of the things I've absolutely loved about my career in the investment field has been that what it's really about is understanding how economies fit together around the world, understanding how different companies in different industries’ business models work, which ones make sense which ones don't. And then fusing that understanding… into an actionable plan of where change will come and who's likely to benefit and who's likely to be heard.”
“Florida and the Future of Space” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson shares the latest on America’s planned return to the moon, a manned spaceflight to Mars, and his goals for the space agency, before an October 1, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Bill Nelson has a storied career of public service to Florida, serving as a state representative, a U.S. representative, state insurance commissioner and treasurer, and most recently U.S. Senator. The Miami and Melbourne native, who flew in space as a Congressman, provided a glimpse into the future "gee-whiz projects" of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) while reminding the audience that “space flight is a hard and risky business.”
In December, NASA will launch the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful telescope ever made. It will be positioned on the other side of the Sun pointing away from Earth. “It's going to look back and capture the life from over 13 billion years ago, the light that was emitted about 250 years after the Big Bang. For the first time we are going to see the formation of the first galaxy, the first sun, the first solar system, and planets. And we're going to look for an inhabitable atmosphere. And if we find it, we're going to see what it looked like so many years ago,” said Nelson.
Florida’s Cape Canaveral was the birthplace of U.S. spaceflight in 1958 with Project Mercury. Today, the space industry in Florida comprises 17,144 aerospace-related companies employing more than 130,000 employees, according to Space Florida. Administrator Nelson discussed the growing privatization of commercial spaceflight and its impact on Florida. “We have a space program in Florida that has come to life. Old abandoned launch pads from years ago are roaring to life.”
Nelson shared the numbers: In 2020, Florida spaceport operations had a direct economic impact of $2.25 billion in just sales on Florida's economy, not including the additional indirect impacts such as the supply chains and spending of all space-related workers. “You put all that together, it’s about a $4 billion annual impact on Florida. The economic indicators translate into good paying jobs.”
His address came the same week as Governor Ron DeSantis announced Terran Orbital will invest $300 million in Florida to build the world’s largest satellite manufacturing facility in Merritt Island.
Florida, Nelson said, is playing a larger than ever role in humankind’s return to the moon – and beyond. The largest rocket ever made is being put together today in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, as part of the Artemis Program, building on the legacy of the Apollo Program. “And in the Artemis generation, we go back to the moon, to learn, to inhabit the moon, to conduct all kinds of new scientific industry, to do manufacturing to learn how to live there in a hostile environment in preparation, late in the decade of the 2030s, we're going with humans to Mars,” Nelson outlined. Those new trips to the moon will include the first landing by a woman and by the first person of color, “that will represent the broad diversity of the diverse fabric of America.”
Nelson said NASA is going to be the catalyst for the growth of the space industry. “We're going to learn how to take moondust, regolith to the scientist, and how to mix it with a compound and make cement and how to build habitats on the surface of the moon as we prepare to go to Mars.” Another program is going to launch probes to the south pole of the moon, where water in the form of ice is present. “And then we're going there and we're going to convert that water to rocket fuel, hydrogen and oxygen. And it's going to become the gas station very likely for the future spacecraft that will be in lunar orbit, developed, assembled and gassed up from the hydrogen and oxygen on the moon to go all the way to Mars,” Nelson predicted.
From the next powerful telescope looking at mankind's origins, to quieter supersonic jetliners, and to the Artemis Program to take men and women back to the Moon and beyond - it's all part of a "healthy and vibrant space industry" with Florida at the heart of the exciting action.
Episode 62: Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Rob Kaplan
06 Feb 2025
00:58:24
“2025 Economic Outlook” Rob Kaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, provides a 2025 forecast for the U.S. economy and the financial markets, including the impact of tariffs, before a January 21, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Mr. Kaplan discussed the economy of the past few years, what he thinks the future might bring, and how Florida is one of the states leading the way.
The past economy has been characterized by several main drivers.
“The economy over the last four years,” he said, “whether we like it or not, has been government spending led. If you go back to 2019, net debt of the U.S. government divided by GDP, was about in the mid-70s. Today we're pushing up near 100% debt to GDP.”
Part of the problem was that COVID happened. The government estimated that the economy would lose $2-trillion, so Congress passed a bill to fill that gap called the Cares Act. Mr. Kaplan said the Federal Reserve printed every dollar of that Act.
Because, during the lockdown, spending went up but services did not, 2020 was the first recession in modern history where GDP went down while consumer spending went up.
“I would argue that if the excess fiscal spending stopped right there, I don't think we would have had the extent of the inflation issues that we've ultimately had,” he said.
However, the Biden administration passed new legislation – the American Rescue Act.
“In 2019, we ran a budget deficit in the United States of around 4% of GDP. In 2020, we ran a budget deficit around 15% of GDP, historically high. What people don't focus on is, in 2021 we ran another monster deficit, around 12% or 13% of GDP. Historic. It was not to fill the COVID gap. The American rescue Act money got spent in 2021, 22, 23, and 24.”
Following that was passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, for another trillion dollars. Kaplan said that fostered a whole range of public-private partnerships all through the United States. About 25% of the money is from the government and 75% private, but he said the projects would not happen without the government money.
He cited, as examples:
More than 20 lithium battery plants being built across the United States, including one in his home state of Kansas.
A New York tunnel project which cost $50-billion and employs 60,000 workers.
Other very large infrastructure projects across the US.
These projects cause disruption in the workforce.
“When you announce a project like that (Kansas battery plant), every restaurant in the state tells me they can't find workers. Every service sector establishment just lost workers because they're going to make $35-$37.50 an hour at the lithium battery plant in DeSoto, Kansas. This is going on all through the country, and it’s not done yet.”
Mr. Kaplan said the Fed probably should have stopped buying bonds in 2021, but waited until mid-2022. The net effect was that inflation got away from the regulators.
That inflation has had drastically different effects on two groups of Americans – each of about 60-70 million people.
The first group, which makes around $55,000 a year or less, has lost purchasing power.
“This loss of purchasing power that we had in 2021, 22, 23, and 24 has meant they can't make ends meet today. So, $55,000 a year may sound like a lot... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-january-rob-kaplan)
Episode 26: St. Joe Company President and CEO Jorge Gonzalez
25 Sep 2021
00:44:40
“Land Development for a High-Growth Region” Jorge Gonzalez, President and CEO of The St. Joe Company, discusses the burgeoning development in Northwest Florida after Hurricane Michael, including a new regional healthcare partnership, before a September 16, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
The St. Joe Company is a diversified real estate development, asset management and operating company with real estate assets and operations in Northwest Florida. Its assets focus on residential, commercial, and hospitality ventures. It owns 170,000 acres of property, the majority in Bay, Walton, and Gulf Counties.
Gonzalez told the Club that the three-county area has experienced surprisingly rapid growth, spurred further by rebuilding from 2018’s devastating Hurricane Michael. “I’ve been in this market for a long time and quite frankly haven’t seen anything like it ever before. We’re exceeding last year’s momentum,” he said.
Case in point: The Panama City metropolitan area, which ranks eighth of 926 metro areas in the U.S. in terms of net migration since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. Gonzalez said Walton County alone is the fourth fastest growing county in Florida and 21st nationwide. “We’re seeing more people moving here to live permanently and from a broader geography of the country. Over the past year and a half, we’re seeing folks literally from all over the country, particularly from larger metro areas, including California, Denver, and Chicago.” He added that there’s been a noticeable increase in interest by companies wanting to relocate, too.
St. Joe broke ground earlier this year on a new master planned community in Mexico Beach, ground zero for Hurricane Michael’s landfall in October 2018. The Category 5 storm destroyed many of the town’s older homes, built under older building codes, creating the need and opportunity for a re-birth. The first phase of the new 554-acre development will consist of 42 townhomes. “We’re going to build a broad range of rental homes and apartments, with the focus on providing off-base housing for nearby Tyndall Air Force Base, which suffered heavy damage in Michael. Congress has committed $3.95 billion to redevelop Tyndall into the air force base of the future,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez also shared details on the creation of a new medical campus in Bay County that St. Joe is doing in collaboration with the Florida State University College of Medicine and Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. “We feel pretty strongly of the potential of the synergies between research, teaching, and clinical delivery,” he said, adding that the company hopes to break ground in 2022 on what will become a “world class campus.”
Gonzalez noted that St. Joe is now developing 40 projects concurrently, “the most of anytime in our history,” with many more on the drawing board. During the question and answer session with Club members, he was asked what he sees as the greatest challenge. “Labor, labor, and labor,” Gonzalez replied. “It’s been a challenge not just in the hospitality segment, but across the board. Salaries aren’t the issue. It’s finding people,” Gonzalez said.
Episode 25: Celebrity Cruises President and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo
27 Aug 2021
00:53:05
“Return of Safe Vacation Cruising” Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, President and CEO of Celebrity Cruises, reveals the behind-the-scenes effort to resume cruise line sailing during the coronavirus pandemic and the new passenger safety protocols, before an August 10, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
It’s been a long previous 16-months with the No Sail Order in effect because of the coronavirus pandemic, but Celebrity Cruises found a way to become the first cruise line to resume sailing from a U.S. port, in Port Everglades, Florida this past June. During a “fireside chat” with Doug Wheeler, immediate past president of the Florida Ports Council, Lutoff-Perlo explained to the Club how that happened.
“Nothing has been easy with whoever is putting laws, requirements, recommendations, and executive orders in place but we’re finding our way. And so while it hasn’t been easy, we’re still able to do exactly what we said we were going to do and provide a safe and healthy environment for our guests,” she said. And while the state of Florida prohibits businesses, including cruise lines, from requiring customers be vaccinated from the COVID-19 virus, Lutoff-Perlo said it doesn’t prohibit the cruise line from asking its prospective guests if they’re vaccinated.
“Working with the Governor’s Office, we have implemented different protocols for non-vaccinated guests and so many are opting not to cruise because of those additional protocols,” she said, adding that there are also ports of call that will not allow any unvaccinated guests into their ports, another barrier to unvaccinated guests who want to cruise.
“Right now, a cruise ship is safer than Main Street. If you look at the entire population of a Celebrity ship right now, 99% of the people are vaccinated. One-hundred percent of our crew are vaccinated and no less than 95% of our guests are vaccinated. That is how we’re operating and that is how we will continue to operate,” she said, adding that additional cruises are being added each week.
Celebrity Cruises is voluntarily following all CDC recommendations. Passengers are tested for the virus before boarding and while there have been a few cases of coronavirus among the various cruises while underway, “when you consider a population of 3,000 to 4,000 on board, crew and guests, I think those statistics are pretty good,” she said.
Lutoff-Perlo has been with parent company Royal Caribbean Group for 35 years, becoming the first woman to lead one of its cruise lines in 2014, as President and CEO of Celebrity Cruises. She has led the company into an era of unprecedented growth, including the introduction of the critically-acclaimed Edge Series of ships in 2018. She appointed the first American woman as Captain in the Celebrity fleet and ultimately increased Celebrity’s percentage of women on the bridge from 3% to 27% in just five years, exceeding the industry average of 2%.
“Our crews come from all over the world. They are different colors, they are different genders, they have different sexual orientations, they have different religious beliefs. And they come onto these ships as strangers and they very quickly become family. And they’re taking care of each other and they’re taking care of our guests. I think the world could learn a lot from cruise ships in that regard,” she said.
Episode 24: Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare Chief Integration Officer Dr. Dean Watson, M.D.
28 Jul 2021
00:51:03
“COVID Update – What Do We Know and How Best Can I Stay COVID-Free?” Dr. Dean Watson, M.D., Vice President and Chief Integration Officer for the Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare System, discusses the new uptake in COVID-19 cases in North Florida and the challenges of treating the Delta variant, before a July 22, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Dr. Dean Watson is an internal medicine specialist who has been leading the charge on COVID-19 treatment and prevention in North Florida in his roles as Chief Integration Officer for both the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and Capitol Health Plan, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, based in Tallahassee, Florida. “My life is spent watching people in the hospital suffering and dying,” he said.
Using a PowerPoint presentation packed with statistics, Dr. Watson shared what he knows about COVID-19 but explained there is still a lot that medical science doesn’t exactly know or understand about the virus. He said it presents a unique challenge, especially its current Delta variant.
“This virus is so aggressive and so good at changing, it mutates so well, and we’ve never seen anything like it,” said Dr. Watson. I’m not a conspiracy theorist at all, but this thing mutates like a bioweapon. I mean, it is amazing,” he said.
On the day of his address, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital reopened its dedicated COVID-19 wing, due to the surge of recent cases from the Delta variant. “Of the 30 patients we had this morning, 29 were unvaccinated,” he said, noting that “typically we start to see deaths climb three to four weeks following each increase in the number of cases.”
During the week of July 19, 2021, Florida reported the highest number of new COVID cases in the U.S., with many of them people age 24 and under. “This is the highest number of people by age group and it’s because they’re unvaccinated,” Dr. Watson told the Club.
Dr. Watson discussed the various testing methods for COVID, warning that antibody and antigen tests are not completely accurate, noting the PCR test is “the gold standard.” He also shared the list of current treatments, including Dexamethasone and Zinc, which were viewed skeptically in 2020 but have been proven useful since. “Monoclonal antibody treatment is the only one that works on the Delta variant to date,” he said.
Club members asked questions about the effectiveness of the different vaccines, whether those who recover from COVID have natural immunity, the so-called “Long COVID Syndrome” of those suffering lingering symptoms months on end, and whether masks are truly effective and necessary, especially in children returning to school soon.
“We knew the Delta variant would be here and it’s skyrocketing. It was no surprise. We can talk about variants all day. But until we get people to vaccinate, these conversations aren’t going to stop,” he warned.
Episode 23: CDC Foundation President & CEO, Dr. Judy Monroe, M.D.
25 Jun 2021
00:44:05
“Partnerships Leading to a Healthier World” Dr. Judy Monroe, M.D., President and CEO of the CDC Foundation, discusses the challenges in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and how the business community can help, before a June 3, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
The CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit organization that helps the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) save and improve lives here and around the world. “We have the speed and flexibility to go beyond what government can do,” said CDC Foundation President and CEO, Dr. Judy Monroe, M.D. “We’re the fast army behind the army,” she joked. The Foundation does so by mobilizing philanthropic partners, corporations, and other private-sector resources to support CDC’s critical health protection mission.
“During the COVID pandemic response, the CDC’s people are working 24/7. They’ve put their hearts and souls into the science, but they’re also trying to translate that science into guidance that honestly every hospital in the nation uses and every health department,” she told Club members. The Foundation assisted by activating its emergency response fund in January of 2020 as signs of the pandemic emerged from China. “We’ve done everything from helping folks in quarantine, the homeless, getting vaccines out, and have hired over a thousand staff to embed them in state health departments to aid in the pandemic response,” she said. To date, the Foundation has raised $297 million in donations for COVID response.
Another area the Foundation has assisted with is data systems and the problem of reliable data reporting in our public health system. “We are not at a current state with our data systems where all the data is coming in as accurately or as timely as it should…you know, we had health departments when we started in this pandemic that were using fax machines,” Dr. Monroe said. She said the CDC and the Foundation have launched the first comprehensive data modernization initiative in the history of public health in the country. “It would be a game-changer to have the data in real time to inform decision-making,” she added.
So how can businesses, organizations and non-profits help with the COVID-19 response and build a stronger public health system? The CDC Foundation is a founding partner in the Health Action Alliance (HAA) which strengthens and accelerates the business community’s response to COVID-19. HAA provides free best-in-class tools, resources, training and events for the business community to help companies deliver trusted, fact-based health communications to employees and encourage consumers to make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Monroe also discussed the CDC Foundation’s other focus areas beyond the current pandemic. These include global health security, by preparing for threats and providing a unifying framework for more than 40 countries to improve the global response to disease outbreaks and close gaps in surveillance and interventions. Other focus areas are providing emergency response after hurricanes and reversing the trend of increasing opioid deaths nationwide.
Since 1995, the CDC Foundation has raised over $1 billion and launched more than 1,000 programs impacting a variety of health threats from chronic disease conditions including cardiovascular disease and cancer, to infectious diseases like rotavirus and HIV, to emergency responses, including COVID-19 and Ebola. Last year, the Foundation managed hundreds of CDC-led programs in the U.S. and in more than 140 countries.
“Navigating the Future for Seaports Post-Pandemic” Juan Kuryla, Port Director and CEO of the Port of Miami, shares current efforts to restart the cruise line business during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, before a May 20, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
When the coronavirus pandemic began making its way around the world in February of 2020, the cruise line industry was the first to be directly impacted as thousands of passengers, mixing in relatively small quarters, began to get sick onboard. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) soon issued a No Sail Order that’s been in effect ever since, shuttering the entire industry.
As the largest cruise port in the world and a cornerstone of the South Florida economy, PortMiami was hit hard. Port Director Juan Kuryla said that before the coronavirus, the port was on target to exceed a record 7 million cruise passengers in 2020. Instead, the count stopped at 3.5 million through March 2020. The port’s cruise sector normally generates a $7 billion annual economic impact, but because of COVID-19 “there are thousands of people who haven’t worked as a result in the past 14 months,” Kuryla said. Cruise line business supports an estimated 40,000 jobs throughout multiple sectors of South Florida’s economy and nearly 160,000 jobs across Florida.
As the pandemic began to ease over this past winter into spring, Kuryla told the Club that he and others set their sights on reopening the cruise business as soon as possible.
“We want to do this in a safe manner. Nobody is saying let’s start cruising and make it unsafe, no,” Kuryla stressed. He said that he and other Miami-Dade County officials have been in serious talks with the federal government and hospitality partners since April 1 to work out a plan for resuming cruises.
“A key requirement for the CDC is to have a memorandum of agreement between the cruise lines and the port that show, in the event of one case or one hundred cases ‘How would you handle that case? What protocols do you have in place? Who is going to pay for the transportation between the ship and the hospital and the hospital care?’ So all of these issues have either been resolved or we’ll be completing them by the end of this week,” said Kuryla. “We hope to resume cruise operations in July or August in a modest way.”
In preparation, many of PortMiami’s cruise partners have announced new policies requiring future passengers and crew to be vaccinated. Those policies would violate a new law passed by the Florida Legislature, banning such “vaccine passports.” Kuryla said he is believes that conflict will be resolved in the near future. “We’re trying to do the parts that we control here at the port and that is, having these re-start agreements fully executed with the lines so that once that issue is settled, we’ll be ready to roll.”
While cruise ships make up about 60% of PortMiami’s business, thankfully the other 40% - shipping – has remained strong and is now growing even stronger. “January 2021 was the busiest month in the history of PortMiami, as the coronavirus created greater demand for consumer goods,” Kuryla explained. He said continual investment in facilities has allowed the port to remain competitive, as the number two shipping port in Florida (behind Jacksonville).
Episode 21: Ballad Health Chairman, President, and CEO Alan Levine
26 May 2021
01:09:05
The State of Health Care: What is Changing?” Alan Levine, Chairman, President, and CEO of Ballad Health, outlines the challenges facing America’s health care systems and the patients who rely on them, before a May 12, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Alan Levine got his start in the health care field in Florida. He was a health policy advisor to Governor Bush before being appointed Secretary of Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees all hospitals. He later headed the North Broward Hospital District before being tapped as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’sSecretary of Health and Hospitals. He moved to the private sector as Florida Group President for Health Management Associates before becoming head of Ballad Health, a Johnson City, Tennessee-based rural hospital system covering the Appalachian Mountain areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina.
“What's happening throughout the country right now is large hospital systems are getting bigger and bigger through consolidation. They're leveraging their size, to increase their pricing and unfortunately that's happening because insurance companies have gotten so big. Patients are getting stuck in the middle and the employers and taxpayers are paying for it,” he said.
Even before the pandemic, the U.S. was facing the worst nursing shortage in history, with 176,000 nurse openings per year. More than one million nurses were projected to leave nursing between 2019 and 2030. Levine said the nursing shortage, the aging of the population, and specific to Florida, the state’s booming population growth have combined to create a critical challenge. “Is Florida going to have the health care manpower to care for its growing population?” he pondered.
Nursing school enrollment is not keeping up with demand, in part because of a faculty shortage. One solution, Levine offered, is to take more advantage of the two-plus-two program, where students spend two years in a community or state college, then transfer to a University for their last two years, a system that he says has a mismatch. “There's always a food fight between the doctors and the nurses and the different professions, as they all try to expand and grow their own profession, which is understandable. But what happens is, more and more of these professions go back and say, ‘well, we need more Doctorate of Nursing Practice degrees, we need more advanced nursing degrees.’ When you're running a health system, we don't need more of those, we need more of nurses who want to be bedside nurses.”
More than 80 million Americans are projected to be over the age of 65 in the next few years. “Combined with more chronic illness, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental illness, all contribute to poor health. These manifest themselves in health care costs as people age and the shifting and changing of payment models, with more reliance on Medicare and Medicaid,” he said.
Levine explained to the Club what Ballad Health is doing to cope with these challenges and how it’s been dealing with the coronavirus pandemic in its rural service area. He said the system had to consolidate staffing and defer elective surgeries to prevent nurses and doctors from becoming overwhelmed in a region that saw more than 100,000 COVID cases with 2,000-plus deaths. They expanded the use of telemedicine to maintain access for patients with routine and chronic conditions and used federal enhanced unemployment benefits which allowed them to furlough employees and reduce costs.
Ballad Health’s telemedicine visits skyrocketed from 2,400 in the pre-pandemic period of July 2019 to March 2020, to more than 15,000 in the months of April and May 2020 alone, thanks in part to changes in federal reimbursement policies for doctor’s visits. “So annually, we're now doing 80,000 plus telemedicine visits a year. And I don't think that goes away. Particularly with all the investments in technology, the use of telemedicine connected to artificial intelligence is going to transform how healthcare is delivered into the future,” Levine said. The need will grow even greater with COVID patients suffering long-haul symptoms.
Levine and Club members, through their questions, discussed other innovations taking place and the need to transition to different funding models that impact the burgeoning Medicaid and Medicare budgets, to keep up with health care demand, while trying to control costs.
Episode 20: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew
29 Apr 2021
00:57:02
“Recovering from the COVID-19 Shock: the Economic and Policy Outlook” Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew discusses the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the expected central bank and other economic policies to encourage full recovery, before an April 27, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Jacob Lew served as the Treasury Secretary under President Obama and as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Clinton & Obama. He told moderator Ash Williams, Executive Director and CIO of the Florida State Board of Administration, that the worldwide pandemic triggered a series of unprecedented events in society and the financial markets. “I think we’re seeing now, a year later, that when you bring all the instruments of government to bear, it makes a big difference.”
Among those instruments is Federal Reserve policy on interest rates and their interaction with inflation. Lew noted that the Fed’s desire to keep inflation at 2% means there will be periods above 2%. “So I think if you see inflation into the mid-twos and even into the threes, I don’t think the Fed is going to have an instantaneous response to throw the brakes. So what does the interest rate look long-term? We don’t really know coming out of this crisis.” Longer-term inflationary pressures, including labor costs, Lew aid, may come into play eventually once enough people are back to work. “Where we will see an issue is if we have a mismatch of skills,” something he said was an issue before the pandemic.
Lew said the sustained period of very low interest rates, “zero-boundary rates” have had an effect on asset values. He said the risk hasn’t been priced in the value of assets as it would traditionally have been. “I think people have been going into things that are of questionable long-term value and that’s always a risky business,” Lew told the Club.
Workforce impacts are being felt, too. Lew said increased productivity achieved through remote work and remote meetings will translate to greater profitability for some businesses. “There’s so many signals you don’t get over a screen that you do get when you’re meeting with people in person, though,” he said. He predicts going forward there will be a hybrid of remote and in-person work whose economic impact on the greater economy will vary by industry.
Lew and Williams also discussed big government spending plans, including the infrastructure program recently introduced in Congress. Public investment on infrastructure, he said, comes down to the demand for investment and the willingness to pay for it. “The question is, how do you pay for it?” he posed. Lew said one way is to look at the gasoline tax which hasn’t been changed in decades and doesn’t adequately cover a growing fleet of electric vehicles that use the nation’s roadways.
“The kind of theoretical question is, are we willing to do some hard things to pay for the infrastructure we need? I hope the answer is yes, because if we want to compete with China, if we want to compete with emerging economies, we can’t let our infrastructure crumble,” he said.
While those hard things will likely impact the balance sheet of the U.S. government with increasing deficits and debt, Lew said the government’s ability to service the debt has become more affordable due to very low interest rates. “My own view is that you should save your fiscal space for when you have the economic need to run deficits and you should try and maintain that sustainable fiscal path when the economy is doing well.” Lew said there may be a case for deficit spending during the final stage of recovery. “At what point do you go back to caring about adding to the deficit? And the answer is when the economy is back on its feet.”
Other topics discussed with Club members included how the coronavirus will affect other countries recoveries, the potential for cooperation between the U.S. and China, and the future of cryptocurrencies.
Lew also shared his observations about Florida’s economy and how he defines its success going forward post-coronavirus. “Each state, including Florida, is going to be judged based on not just how it dealt with the first wave or the second wave (of the virus), but how ready it is to deal with a future crisis,” he said. Lew left government service in 2017 and today is a Managing Partner with Lindsay Goldberg, a New York City based private equity firm.
Episode 19: World Anti-Doping Agency former President Sir Craig Reedie
22 Apr 2021
01:00:51
“Can the Olympics Vanquish its Cheating, Corruption, and Boycotts?” Former President of the World Anti-Doping Agency Sir Craig Reedie discusses the upcoming Tokyo 2021 Olympics, and past challenges that include his handling of the Russian doping scandal and his thoughts on whether the US & UK should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing over China’s human rights violations, before an April 21, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Sir Craig Reedie of Scotland is one of the few members of what used to be known as the Knights of the Roundtable from the old English days. And he has achieved the highest level of that British award, as a Knight Grand Cross, for his public service in Olympic sports.
His affection for the sport of badminton grew into progressive leadership from his native Scotland across Great Britain and eventually to a seat on the International Olympic Committee (IOC). But it was as President of the World Anti-Doping Agency a few years ago that Sir Craig Reedie took on the Russians, when their track-and-field athletes were exposed to be part of an organized cheating effort in a 2014 German television documentary.
The Agency, with new investigative powers, responded with a formal inquiry and the suspension of the Russian anti-doping agency, which Sir Craig said “were clearly corrupted and inefficient,” and later the Russian Athletic Federation. There were new allegations by whistleblowers of cheating in all Russian sports. Sanctions eventually followed years later, including a four-year suspension of Russia from world championships and Olympic Games. “It was a tragedy for sport. Many people thought it was the thing to do. And the IOC eventually came solidly behind us in December 2019.”
Sir Craig is credited with making Badminton an Olympic sport in 1985. He shared how the effort began years earlier with turning a former paint factory in Glasgow, Scotland into a badminton hall. He then set his sights on the international scene with the support of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, where the sport was very popular. Badminton premiered in the 1994 Barcelona Games, with television ratings throughout Asia “that were absolutely enormous,” he said. The first gold medal in the sport went to an Indonesian athlete and was the country’s first gold medal ever. The president of the Indonesian badminton association became the Vice President of the country six months later. “So don’t let anybody tell you that sport doesn’t matter when the country wins,” he added.
On the Tokyo 2021 Summer Games, Sir Craig told Economic Club members that this year’s games “will be very, very different” from those in the past, because of health precautions prompted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Athletes will be subject to rigorous COVID-19 testing and restricted to attending only their own sport’s competitions. The number of accredited personnel will be greatly reduced, too. There will be no international spectators allowed, except via television broadcasts.
“We hope hugely and importantly that Japans pulls this off because if they do, it’s the biggest sports event in the world and it will really be a sign that the world is beginning to get over this appalling, appalling pandemic which is doing so much damage.”
As for calls by some to boycott the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing Olympics over China’s alleged human rights violations, Sir Craig told the Club that sanctions “simply don’t work and the IOC isn’t a government and don’t make those political decisions.”
Sir Craig said he’s a firm believer in the economic investment needed to expand sports venues. That’s what Sarasota, Florida did in a 2013 public-private partnership that built a world-class rowing facility that later hosted the 2017 World Rowing Championships. “I think it’s a good thing to do because it develops the possibilities that you could host, in your own part of the country, world-class events. But actually much more important than that is that you can attract all sorts of people, young, middle-age, and old to take part in sports.”
Sir Craig will finish his 27 year term as a member of the International Olympic Committee at the end of 2021, when he reaches the mandatory IOC retirement age of 80.
“Emerging Business Leadership in Florida” HCI Group CEO Ricky Caplin discusses the opportunities he sees for Florida to accelerate efforts to develop high-tech industry and good paying jobs, before a March 29, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Richard “Ricky” Caplin developed an interest in entrepreneurship early in life. “My mom kids that I was always spending time calculating how much things cost and understanding value early. In the back of my mind, I always thought maybe I could be CEO of a business one day.”
After working as a CPA for a few years following college, he saw his opportunity in the tech field. He founded The HCI Group of Jacksonville, which became one of the largest global healthcare IT consulting firms. In 2017, he sold it to Tech Mahindra of India, a global technology company with 117,000+ employees. Today he serves as that company’s Global CEO of Healthcare & Life Sciences.
Caplin shared his personal journey with the Club through a series of questions from Florida Commerce Secretary Jamal Sowell and later the audience. “Anyone who is an entrepreneur will probably agree that you have to be prepared to fail and get back on your feet,” Caplin said.
So how can Florida develop more high-tech industry and jobs and the venture capital to fund it? While it has a good pool of talent, Caplin said what Florida lacks is the “eco-systems” of other states, such as California and New York. And it starts with our universities. “We need to be very intentional. We’re not overly strategic, everything is very political. We need to locate our tech schools in big cities where businesses are, not in the middle of nowhere.”
He pointed to Miami as a recent example of a successful strategy in trying to capitalize on the migration of “fed-up” California and New York residents to South Florida. “Miami has more of that big city feel and the leadership there is using social media where millennials and Gen-Z tech leaders interact to engage them. That’s producing dialogue and before you know it, you’re getting invited to come tour their facilities to recruit them to Florida,” Caplin said.
While Governor DeSantis and Secretary Sowell are going to back such local efforts, Caplin said “we need mayors that are going to lead.” It’s also going to take a community-wide effort. “We’ve had luminaries in this audience who have helped us get to where we are today. How can you, as an economic club, bring some of these ideas forward? We need you as business leaders to step up and pave the way and let’s work together as a state in harmony of strategy versus letting each city compete with each other.”
Caplin also discussed the start of his family company, Caplin Family Offices, to support a growing and diverse portfolio of companies that include a civil engineering firm, an HR consulting firm, and a clinical staffing firm. He has also launched the Aurora Forge, a venture capital incubator focusing on technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. He said that some of his companies are devoted to “spiritual entrepreneurship” where the proceeds generated go toward helping India’s poor population.
Episode 17: Former Florida Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp
18 Mar 2021
00:32:44
“The Transformation of Florida’s Economy” Jeff Kottkamp, the 17th Lieutenant Governor of Florida, discusses how the private commercial space industry, together with bio-tech and life sciences, are transforming Florida’s economy before a February 23, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
While agriculture, together with tourism and the services industry that supports it have long been the pillars of Florida’s economy, targeted economic diversification that began 20 years ago is now transforming the Sunshine State.
When Jeff Kottkamp became Florida’s 17th Lieutenant Governor in 2007, part of his responsibility was serving as Chairman of the Space Florida Board of Directors. After the federal government cancelled the Constellation Program to Mars, Florida’s Cape Canaveral faced a very uncertain future, with the space shuttle program soon ending, too. The state, through Space Florida, decided to create the Space Exploration Technologies Center to encourage private commercial space firms to locate to Florida and use the Cape.
“Bringing SpaceX was the beginning of something really exciting here in Florida and now we see Blue Origin and a whole host of other companies, also in the commercial space business and Florida is the place for commercial space launch in the world,” Kottkamp told Club members.
Similarly, Florida’s efforts to become a new hub for bio-tech and life sciences research that began in the early 2000’s is also paying off big now. Kottkamp noted the early effort to create the first U.S.-based Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience here in Florida created synergy that’s produced similar scientific endeavors. These include gene research at the University of Miami, Alzheimer’s research at the University of South Florida, and a recently-penned deal between Florida State University and the Mayo Clinic. The University of Florida Shands Health System is using stem cell research that has shown signs of not only stopping the advance of the degenerative Parkinson’s Disease in patients, but actually reversing its debilitating effects.
“It’s enormously exciting. And when you chart this, you see that now Florida has developed its own research triangle in bio-tech and life sciences. It’s a transformation in the economy,” Kottkamp said. To support these efforts, he told the Economic Club of Florida that “we need to focus on our children and their education, which is our future workforce. It all starts with workforce. What does business need in its workforce and then how can we best fulfill those needs in our schools, colleges, and universities?”
Jeff Kottkamp continues his public policy focus today as President of Jeff Kottkamp, P.A. He concentrates his law practice on Legislative and Governmental Affairs and Constitutional Law.
Episode 61: Margaritaville Holdings Co-Founder & CEO John Cohlan
11 Dec 2024
00:58:23
“Margaritaville: How a Song Became a Brand” John Cohlan, Co-Founder and CEO of Margaritaville Holdings explains the creation and enduring value of singer Jimmy Buffet’s successful multi-billion-dollar brand, before a November 21, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Dr. Jeff Sharkey of The Capitol Alliance Group introduced Mr. Cohlan but first had the club members put their hands on top of their heads in the iconic “Fins Up” salute.
Mr. Cohlan showed a video featuring Jimmy Buffett and people talking about the lifestyle they experienced at his Margaritaville franchise locations. He then explained how Buffett, whose hit songs include the iconic “Margaritaville,” expanded his recording career into what has become that franchise. The beginning was very humble – Buffett began seeing T-shirts sold in Key West with his name spelled wrong.
“It really all began because Jimmy was so annoyed that his name was being spelled wrong, which is pretty crazy,” said Mr. Cohlan. “So Jimmy was an entrepreneurial guy. And there he was in Key West, and he was just getting going, and all of a sudden, he noticed that there were people in Key West selling T- shirts with his name on them with one T instead of two T’s. And he basically said to himself, you know, I should rip myself off, because other people are ripping me off.”
Buffett built a T-shirt shop, then a bar and a restaurant. That’s all that existed in 1997 when Universal Studios in Orlando called and wanted to build a 25,000-square foot Margaritaville restaurant at the entrance to its theme park.
Buffett didn’t want to just license the name, he wanted to build a company and brand, so he called John Cohlan to come down from New York. They did market research and found that the word Margaritaville had a 50-60% recognition.
Mr. Cohlan said people would answer “’Oh, it's a great song. It's that guy, Jimmy Buffett. It's the place I want to be. It's a hammock.’” No one said, ‘Oh, it's that restaurant in Key West.’ So Margaritaville had a product. It had a product and the product was an emotion.”
“And the lesson of a lot of what's happened here is that an emotion can travel to many more places than a product,” Mr. Cohlan added. “The reason we can be the number one coconut shrimp in America, in your Publix store, and also the leading Active Living brand where you want to go and spend the back nine of your life at a Latitude Margaritaville destination is because Margaritaville stands for an emotion, and that emotion is something that is based on the fact that he was such a unique person, and through his music and really the way he lived his life, everyone said ‘I want to live that life.’”
Universal built a model of the proposed restaurant and invited Buffett and Cohlan to look at it. They arrived and met the executives, who were dressed in suits, while Buffett was dressed in shorts.
“The 10 Surprises of 2021” Byron Wien, Vice Chairman of the Blackstone Private Wealth Solutions group discusses events and surprises that he sees happening in the financial markets and the U.S. economy in the New Year, before a January 19, 2021 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
For the past 36 years, Byron Wien has been taking a look into the future of the financial markets and the social and political trends that impact them, to help guide his clients’ investments. He is recognized as one of the very top investment strategists in the U.S. and in 2006 was named as one of the sixteen most influential people on Wall Street by New York Magazine.
Wien told the Club that his “10 Surprises” are not predictions, rather events that have a better than 50% chance of taking place in his estimation. “I do this to stretch my own thinking and hopefully yours,” he told Club members. He noted that he missed the biggest surprise of all in 2020 – the coronavirus pandemic – but that it still turned out not to be as bad a year as he feared, referencing a good number of events he got right.
Byron Wien’s “Top 10 Surprises for 2021” Iist, as he explained them:
Donald Trump will create a television program titled “The Chief” to interview CEOs and heads of state with similar management styles as his own. (Wien noted that his list came out on January 4, 2021 and this predication “is not appropriate now” given the January 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol.)
The top diplomatic priority for President Biden will be to try to establish a harmonious relationship with China, given it will one day surpass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world.
The U.S. will be back to some form of normal activity by Memorial Day, including concerts and the Olympics, so long as COVID-19 vaccine distribution and acceptance reaches one-million shots per day.
The Justice Department will ease-up on Google and Facebook, concluding the companies’ acquisition efforts are not reducing the number of social media start-ups.
The U.S. economy will develop momentum of its own, with unemployment falling from 6% to 5%.
The Federal Reserve Bank and the administration will openly embrace modern monetary theory, including printing more money to stimulate economic activity, so long as inflation is modest.
The price of world oil will rise to $65 per barrel.
The S&P 500 will reach 4,500 points this year, following a correction in the first-half of the year.
There will be greater inflation, but it won’t be serious, with the 10-year Treasury yield increasing to 2%.
The value of the U.S. dollar will rise as financial markets and the economy recover, driven by investment in U.S. companies.
Wien revealed some “also ran” surprises that weren’t quite certain enough to make his list. He also discussed his concern on the imbalance of attention paid to fiscal policy vs. monetary policy, and his long-term concern about increased U.S. government debt and its impact on interest rates and inflation.
Questions from Club members led to discussion on increased minimum wage recently passed in Florida and a number of other states and the income inequality gap between the “haves and have-nots.” “This is one of the most serious problems we’re facing in the United States,” Wien said, noting the gap increased further during the coronavirus pandemic. He offered various solutions needed to fix income inequality in the U.S.
Episode 15: Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega
08 Jan 2021
00:52:20
“The Role of Higher Education in Economic Recovery” Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega discusses the importance of higher education in Florida, the role that it plays in economic development, and how it has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, before a December 16, 2020 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
Madeline Pumariega is the new President of Miami Dade College, the largest in the U.S. She previously served as chancellor of the Florida College System, comprised of 28 colleges with nearly 800,000 students. She told the Club that Florida’s goal of becoming number one in workforce by 2030 is a key to the state’s future success. Reaching that top spot is about educational attainment. “Employers ask, ‘Can I move to Florida and get the workers I need and be able to grow?’” Pumariega said. While acknowledging that a four-year degree may not be for everyone, she said that everyone needs some post-high school credential to compete, “especially if Florida is to compete for regional business headquarters and job growth.”
Pumariega’s address was full of performance metrics used to measure the state’s growing educational success. To have a talented and balanced workforce, she told the Club, requires closing the equity gap. At Tallahassee Community College, where she is finishing her service this month as executive vice president and provost, she noted the white student graduation rate is 51%, well above the 35% national average. But those students in poverty have a 19% graduation rate.
She also discussed private educational companies - the “Uber of education” - that are partnering with public colleges in that task and will be the “wave of the future with personalized instruction.” “Institutions today, not only business but higher education, have to be informed by data and strategy. Being a life-long learner means you are continually focused on your trade because everything that we know today, changes tomorrow,” she told Club members.
Pumariega also addressed the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on instructional practices and learning. She noted that colleges have always helped in economic recoveries and this recovery from COVID-19 will require being more targeted and strategic. “Those governments and communities who get it right will recover more quickly. Working with community colleges will help employers and employees get their jobs back and keep their jobs,” she said.
Pumariega is a product of the college system herself, having begun her academic career as a student at Miami Dade College and later returning as an administrator and one of its campus presidents. Today, she’s still learning, pursuing a doctoral degree in higher education.
Episode 14: CAPTRUST Co-Founder & CEO Fielding Miller
07 Jan 2021
00:56:29
“The Emerging Financial Industry Giant – Independent Financial Advisory Firms” CAPTRUST Co-Founder & CEO Fielding Miller explains how independent firms are changing the financial advice industry and their impact to the economy, before a December 2, 2020 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
CAPTRUST is an independent Financial Advisory Firm, meaning it largely offers fee-based advice only, as compared to traditional investment management firms, including brokers, who do the actual investing through products that they have a stake in. Miller explained why that difference is important – and why the concept has caught on so successfully. “If you’re a brokerage firm or an asset manager, all you really have to offer are the proprietary products that your company provides, so that cannot be the best solution for anyone and everyone,” he said.
When Miller started the firm 23 years ago in Raleigh, North Carolina he said the fee-based fiduciary model didn’t really exist and represented maybe half a percent of the revenue generated in the financial advisory industry. Today, Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) such as himself have collectively surpassed the assets under management of the major traditional brokerage firms. CAPTRUST now has $425 billion in client assets with 750 employees in 50 offices across the country and is one of the nation’s largest independent advisory firms. In fact, it’s been ranked the number one independent advisory firm in the U.S. by Financial Advisor Magazine. “The best lesson I’ve learned is failure,” he told Club members.
Miller has a great entrepreneurial story to tell that started in 1986. He decided to get into the investment advisory business after a series of unexpected events left him with five mortgages and a pregnant wife whose company had just closed, leaving him the sole family provider on a $16,000 salaried banking job. He started with a traditional firm and shared with the Club some of the inherent conflicts of interest he says exist within brokerage firms. “RIAs are different from traditional investment firms because we serve as fiduciaries. We have to put our client’s interest first,” he said.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Miller explained that the financial advice industry today is growing rapidly but the supply of advisors is shrinking, with those over age 65 outnumbering those under 35 by nearly two-to-one. “With the growing number of baby boomers retiring, many with underfunded retirement plans and little investment education, there is a big need for help,” he said. Likewise, the transfer of wealth from baby boomers passing along their assets to millennial offspring, 77% of whom have no financial advisors themselves, “is creating a gold rush of firms trying to fill those needs,” he said. “That’s an estimated $26 trillion in assets in play over the next 10-20 years.”
Although the bulk of his business is providing investment advice to retirement and pension funds, CAPTRUST has a burgeoning endowment and foundation side of the business. Notable Florida client organizations include the Barbara Bush Foundation, Associated Industries of Florida, and the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches. The firm also manages retirement investments for the University of South Florida and other major universities.
Episode 13: Former U.S. Ambassador to Italy Ron Spogli
07 Jan 2021
00:42:47
“75 Years After Victory in Europe: The EU, Brexit, and the U.S.” Former U.S. Ambassador to Italy and the Republic of San Marino, Ron Spogli, shares his views on the impact to the U.S. of Britain’s exit from the European Union, before a November 17, 2020 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes
In 2016, Britons voted 52% to 48% to leave the European Union (EU). That exit, known as “Brexit” will finally happen in 2021. Ron Spogli served as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy from 2005-2009. He shared with the Club the history of how the United Kingdom came to the Brexit decision to leave the EU, why it was inevitable, and why it’s of great significance to both the U.K., the E.U., and the United States.
“This is a big deal and something we should all care about,” said Ambassador Spogli. “Some exit from the EU was inevitable and in my opinion, long overdue.” He pointed to Britain’s refusal over the years as an EU member to adopt a common currency and the free borders that characterized the EU. And over recent years, the focus has become more of attaining a political union of countries, rather than just an economic union for trade purposes. “So Brexit is more of an evolutionary development, not a revolutionary event,” said Ambassador Spogli. “It’s an enormous blow to the EU to lose its second-largest member and the EU need this to be painful for the UK because they need to show others how painful it is.”
Ambassador Spogli also discussed how Brexit is supposed to work and its expected economic and non-economic impacts, as well as the future of the E.U. beyond Brexit. Unresolved issues at this time include future trade with Britain and the border crossing between Ireland and the UK. “For the U.K. it’s charting a new course, one that will be less Euro-centric and arguably more transatlantic-centric in terms of its relationship with the United States of America,” he said.
Spogli is Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Freeman Spogli & Company, one of the leading middle market private equity investors in the country. He has served on the board of directors of over twenty companies and organizations that do business around the globe. As for what Europe is going to do going forward? “I believe a united Europe is in the best interest of Europe and the U.S., especially as Russia is more of a significant risk to Europe today that it was at the fall of the Berlin Wall.”