Since 1977, The Economic Club of Florida has become one of the South’s most important forums for distinguished speakers on major issues of the day. The Club provides a platform for discussion to educate, engage, and empower citizens on important economic, political, and social issues. Major topics include the economy, business, investment, politics, public policy, government, education, entrepreneurship, healthcare, defense, space, and sports. New podcast episodes are published monthly. To learn more, including how to become a member, visit www.Economic-Club.com
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“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
Episode 65
Friday, October 10, 2025 • Duration 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.
Episode 56: Institute of Makers of Explosive’s Clark Mica
Episode 56
Saturday, July 13, 2024 • Duration 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:
Episode 55: Lab 22c’s Saif Ishoof
Episode 55
Thursday, June 13, 2024 • Duration 58:24
“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.”
Episode 54: Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner
Episode 54
Friday, May 3, 2024 • Duration 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.”
Episode 53: Tangent Capital Partners’ Bob Rice
Episode 53
Thursday, March 28, 2024 • Duration 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 body, is happening right now.”
Episode 52: Panetta Institute for Public Policy Chairman Leon Panetta
Episode 52
Friday, February 16, 2024 • Duration 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.
Episode 51: Florida Sports Foundation President & CEO Angela Suggs
Episode 51
Wednesday, November 29, 2023 • Duration 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.
Episode 50: Florida Power & Light CEO Armando Pimentel
Episode 50
Friday, November 3, 2023 • Duration 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.
Episode 49: Correct Craft President & CEO Bill Yeargin
Episode 49
Wednesday, October 4, 2023 • Duration 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 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
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.
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.”
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
your
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
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/)
“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/)
“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...
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.....
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