The Economic Club of Florida podcast

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts_and_summaries) 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.“Jimmy Buffett is looking at this big, $12 million restaurant model, and everyone's holding their breath, and... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts_and_summaries)  A TeleDirections podcast

“The U.S. Navy’s Economic and Strategic Impact from Florida around the Globe” Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment discusses the Navy's priorities in energy, climate resilience, and infrastructure, including hurricane impacts, before an October 10, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida. Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)Assistant Navy Secretary Berger spoke to the Club by a live video stream as Hurricane Milton was just leaving Florida.  She pointed out that hurricanes, storms, fires, other forms of bad weather and climate change are something the Department of the Navy has to prepare for all around the world.“It's a threat that we see that's not bound necessarily by geography, season or time.  It happens in other parts of the world, too,” she said.  She referenced a typhoon that struck Joint Region Marianas (Guam and the Northern Marianas) last year.“Ahead of the storm, we protected our critical infrastructure, secured systems, moved our platforms, everything from cars to ships to aircraft, and we sheltered our infrastructure the best we could so we could get the power back on to our community, both inside and outside the fence line.  Because that's how a defense community works.  We prepared fresh water, charged devices, aggregated supplies, and then you just sit and wait,” she said.In her role as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment, she supports what she called the three “C’s”.Community – “These are the ecosystems that allow us to survive and thrive, succeed and achieve the economies that support our way of life.  It's where our values that we hold and defend reside.  It's the institutions you're all a part of, regions, cities, towns.  It's where we lead and serve, where our base is and the environment that surrounds them and supports them.”Critical Infrastructure – “These are ports, natural and man-made structures, roads and runways, barracks and depots, utilities, energy and water that connect us, sustain us, prepare us, and ultimately protect us.”Climate – “We consider this a war fighting advantage, a tactical and strategic enabler and significantly, a conflict deterrent.”Ms. Berger also serves as the Navy’s Chief Sustainability Officer.  “As we think about climate change and whatever term you want to assign to the impact that we're seeing, so extreme weather, heat, drought, floods, resource scarcity, this is a national security threat for us.   It's a threat that we take seriously, and we are on the front lines of it.”One way of being on the front lines is by investigating the need for buried power cables.  She discussed last year’s fires in Maui where above-ground power cables were burned.  (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“Conservation is Good for Business” Jessica Harvey, CEO of the Guy Harvey Foundation shares its mission and success in combining art and science for greater environmental conservation through ocean research and education before a September 24, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)Ms. Harvey told the club that her father began his self-taught art career early.  His teachers told him he’d never amount to anything if he didn’t pay attention in class and stop drawing Spitfires.“Part of his success,” she said, “is that the art work is iconic.  He started off with the inspiration from The Old Man and the Sea, and because he was a very visual person, he couldn't find an illustrated version of the story, and therefore set upon himself, at the age of 16, to do pen and ink drawings of the story. Took him a year to do, and he, at the time, did not explore the watercolors or the acrylic.  That came later.”Guy Harvey’s paintings of natural scenes now grace everything from museum walls to coffee cups, and part of the money made goes to fund the Guy Harvey Foundation. “It's very hopeful.  It's very uplifting, and because of that, more people want to be associated with the brand.  It's branched out into people wanting Guy Harvey F-150s, so we had a licensing agreement with them.  Norwegian Cruise Lines wanting to feature dad as the hull art, which they do on all of their ships.  And it's not only become a feature of the art, but a billboard for conservation and support.  You have things like Tervis, which is a well-regarded brand (of glasses and tumblers), you have TAG Heuer watches that wanted to feature his art on the face of the watch.  It goes on to all sorts of different things.”She said that her father’s art is so realistic because of the efforts he makes to understand the environment.“He really makes an effort to study the animal and its natural habitat, but also learn more about it to support its conservation.  He is not, as he says, he's not a tree hugger.  He likes to fish.  He likes to eat fish.  But there are ways in which we need to move as a society to support sustainable use of our resources, and that's what he's about.”She pointed out the importance of water to Florida’s economy.52-million recreational anglers in Florida, $140-billion to the economy100-million Americans boat annually, $230-billion Boating and fishing employ thousands of FloridiansThe Guy Harvey Foundation began a relationship with Nova Southeastern University in 1999 to do research on pelagic fish – those that live in open waters – including sharks and billfish.“Dr. Mahmoud Shivji is the director of the Nova Guy Harvey Research Institute based at Nova Southeastern University, and he's an ecologist, but also geneticist, and he has helped with complicated studies on fish ID, because there's a lot of fish fraud that takes place in the States.  Unfortunately, endangered species, his group was one of the first to find to account for the number of shark fins that are caught to support the shark fin trade, which is. Is upwards of 73 million at the time.”To date, the Foundation has had 176 peer-reviewed scientific papers published which aid conservation efforts.  They are supporting...  (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“How Autonomous Trucking Will Deliver the Future” - Nationally-recognized expert Lee White reveals how trials of autonomous vehicle trucking on public highways are progressing and the impact driverless trucks are expected to have on the cost of goods, the labor market, and roadway safety before an August 27, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) Mr. White told the Club that autonomous vehicles (AVs) are already on the road.  Out west, Waymo operates driverless taxis with more than 100,000 paid rides a week.  The company will be expanding to 20 more states.In Florida, trucking will be a huge user of these driverless vehicles.  Currently in the state:130,000 trucking companies operate in Florida1 in 18 people are employed in the industry95% of all manufactured tonnage is brought to you by truckTrucking is the harbinger of the economyThe U.S. trucking industry represents $900-billion worth of transactions in interstate commerce across 140,000 terminals.  Plus, we already see autonomous vehicles and machines working in other areas, especially since the COVID pandemic changed the supply chain.“One of the things that helped these e-commerce companies, the Amazons, the UPS, DHL, Walmart, Target get through that is a lot of automation in their warehouses,” White said.  “We have more million square-foot warehouses in our supply chain now than we ever had, and there’s a lot of automation.  Amazon has over 14 different robots that are doing things, picking and unloading.  We've got automated forklifts that are loading and unloading trucks.  There's a lot of automation that's taking place inside the four walls, inside these facilities.”He also pointed to the ways agriculture uses AVs.“With John Deere, I believe there's 12 locations that they're testing right now for farming where the tractor has 24-hour capability to be able to farm.  All the farmer needs to do is transport their tractor to the field, get it set up, get out of the cab, use their mobile phone and swipe to farm.”In New York there are autonomous airport shuttles to take you to the terminal and then back to your car.  They use autonomous machines as baggage carts and to load and unload cargo.The military is also interested.“In the last 10 years, they've had some military vehicles in some of our areas and supply chains that are running without drivers,” White said.  “It's going to keep our men and women, our soldiers out of harm's way.  You know, if there's a convoy of 20 trucks, there may be truck number 15 that's got a driver in it, and everything else is being autonomously driven.”The trucking industry is still suffering a recession.  There was an additional 4-5% reduction in business last May and June.  The industry is also dealing with cost increases.“If you look at the past three years, the wage cost has gone up from 56 cents per mile for a driver to 78 cents, a 38% increase in wages,” said White, a truck delivery driver earlier in his career...  (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“Development Trajectory of the Internet and AI – Will History Repeat Itself, or Just Rhyme?” WebMD founding COO Michael Heekin draws comparisons to the early days of the Internet to discuss the rapid dynamics of Artificial Intelligence and how it may impact business operations in the next ten years before a July 23, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)Michael Heekin first took the Club on a nostalgic trip through the history of the internet featuring names such as America Online, the first internet connection many people had, Alta Vista and Yahoo, early search engines, and Netscape, an early browser.He discussed how electrical energy demands from Artificial Intelligence (AI), various data centers, electric vehicles, among others will be huge.  Previous Club speakers have addressed the energy needs as well.“AI does not think like the human brain,” Heekin said.  “Data is the key. It does not have instincts, emotions or consciousness.”He said that as far as we know, AI is not capable of innovative thinking.  He acknowledged that while AI might replace humans in performing some tasks, it’s power will be helping humans work more efficiently.“It can take the works of the Beatles, and it can compose a new song and have Paul McCartney sing it,” he said.  “It sounds like the Beatles because it’s got the same meter and the same interplay of instruments.  But, it’s not capable of, and I’m going to guess never will have original thought.  It’s not going to recreate a masterpiece like the complete works of Shakespeare or the City of God by Augustine.”Heekin, who specializes in the management and development of growth-stage health and technology companies, talked about how we saw internet companies succeed and fail, and through the booms and busts, we’ve seen what they needed to succeed.  AI companies will be similar in that there will be successes as well as dashed dreams and lost investment money.“Access to good data and good data curation is what’s going to be really key,” he said.  “Getting good data, curating it, and then stuffing it into the algorithm.”He said that regulatory good faith is necessary for AI to grow, and he praised President Bill Clinton and U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich for their light regulation of the Internet in the 1990s.“The government needs to not kill this thing in the crib.  It has great potential for good, and great, great potential for threats.  But that’s the same with a lot of things, wi-fi, life in general.  The genie’s out of the bottle.  If it’s not AI, it will be something else.”He also looked at social media and regulation as a model for AI.“Social media is like giving kids a pack of cigarettes.  It’s clear AI is going to need some regulation, but it should be ex-post, not in advance.  People in Washington don’t have a monopoly on good sense.”He said AI will be a commodity product.“There will be some wrinkles to it, but it will be a commodity.  We will have access to AI, but most AI companies will not own the AI algorithms.  Thay may own developments of it.  They may have prompt engineers that can tell the AI algorithm what to do, but they will not own the algorithm lock stock and barrel.”The public domain is... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)“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 jobs60,329 direct and induced jobsThe 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 impactCommercial 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 industryIn Florida, the economic impact of commercial explosives is also huge.$132.4-million in direct economic impact$299.4-million in the supplier and induced impact$431.8-million in total economic impactExplosives have played a critical... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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.”His company, Lab22c, works with founders who are creating technologies that are the stuff of...  (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)Dr. Ertekin-Taner gave the club some shocking figures on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease:$305 billion spent on the diseases600,000 cases in Florida alone12.5% of Florida residents over 65 suffer, the second highest in the country18 billion hours of caretaker timeAt 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

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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/)

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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 competitionsHorseshoe eventsSoftball tournamentsDance competitionsPickleball tournamentsShuffleboard tournamentsIn 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/)

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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...

“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.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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 organizationCreate a clear way to present itCommunicate over and overModel itAs 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.....

“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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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...

“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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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....

“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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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.)Links and Resources Mentioned in this EpisodeFlorida Chamber Leadership Cabinet on Safety, Health, and SustainabilityKatie Yeutter Biography

“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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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.)Links and Resources Mentioned in this EpisodeThe Freedom Institute of Collier CountyCryptolawyers.orgTom Grady BiographyThe Economic Club of Florida podcast, provides an extended platform for discussion to educate, engage, and empower citizens on important economic, political, and social issues.  Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Club has featured distinguished speakers on engaging topics of national importance since 1977.  To learn more, including how to become a member, visit www.Economic-Club.com  or call 850-224-0711 or email mail@economic-club.com.  Date of recording 5/23/2023.  © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

“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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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.)Links and Resources Mentioned in this EpisodeFlorida Office of Insurance RegulationMichael Yaworsky BiographyThe Economic Club of Florida podcast, provides an extended platform for discussion to educate, engage, and empower citizens on important economic, political, and social issues.  Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Club has featured distinguished speakers on engaging topics of national importance since 1977.  To learn more, including how to become a member, visit www.Economic-Club.com  or call 850-224-0711 or email mail@economic-club.com.  Date of recording 4/20/2023.  © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

“Geopolitics and the Global Economy” Retired four-star US Army General and former CIA Director David Petraeus shares 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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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.)Links and Resources Mentioned in this EpisodeKKRDavid Petraeus BiographyThe Economic Club of Florida podcast, provides an extended platform for discussion to educate, engage, and empower citizens on important economic, political, and social issues.  Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Club has featured distinguished speakers on engaging topics of national importance since 1977.  To learn more, including how to become a member, visit www.Economic-Club.com  or call 850-224-0711 or email mail@economic-club.com.  Date of recording 3/27/2023.  © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

“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.Show Notes  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)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.)Links and Resources Mentioned in this EpisodeFlorida Department of Agriculture and Consumer ServicesWilton Simpson Biography The Economic Club of Florida podcast, provides an extended platform for discussion to educate, engage, and empower citizens on important economic, political, and social issues.  Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the Club has featured distinguished speakers on engaging topics of national importance since 1977.  To learn more, including how to become a member, visit www.Economic-Club.com  or call 850-224-0711 or email mail@economic-club.com.  Date of recording 2/21/2023.  © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved