The Economic Club of Florida podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 46: Florida Chamber Leadership Council President Katie Yeutter Jul 06, 2023

Show notes

“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 Episode

Florida Chamber Leadership Cabinet on Safety, Health, and Sustainability

Katie Yeutter Biography

Episode 45: Freedom Institute of Collier County and CryptoLawyers.org Co-Founder Tom Grady May 30, 2023

Show notes

“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 Episode

The Freedom Institute of Collier County

Cryptolawyers.org

Tom Grady 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 5/23/2023. © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 44: Florida Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky May 18, 2023

Show notes

“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 Episode

Florida Office of Insurance Regulation

Michael Yaworsky 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 4/20/2023. © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 43: Retired Army General David Petraeus Apr 20, 2023

Show notes

“Geopolitics and the Global Economy” Retired four-star US Army General and former CIA DirectorDavid Petraeusshares his insights on the geopolitical risks to investments, including actions by China and Russia, before a March 27, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
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 Episode

KKR

David Petraeus 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 3/27/2023. © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 42: Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson Mar 08, 2023

Show notes

“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 Episode

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Wilton 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

Episode 41: LPL Financial Chief Economist Dr. Jeffrey Roach Jan 31, 2023

Show notes

“2023 Global Markets and Economic Outlook” LPL Financial Chief Economist Dr. Jeffrey Roach explains the rising risk of recession and the factors that will influence financial markets and the national and Florida economies before a January 19, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

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

Dr. Roach is Vice President and Chief Economist for the Investor & Investment Solutions Group at LPL Financial, an independent brokerage supporting more than 21,000 financial advisors across 1,100 institutions in the U.S. Utilizing charts in his presentation, he pointed out that Florida has the fourth largest economy in the nation in terms of Gross Domestic Product and its job growth “consistently outgrows” the national rate.

“Even before COVID, employment growth in Florida has been fantastic. It has been a consistent outperformer and one of the reasons why is because Florida’s economy is amazingly diverse. So we're talking everything from housing, the sciences, the healthcare services, and manufacturing, this is private industry growth,” Dr. Roach said. He pointed to the past decade’s lower recession risk in Florida reflected in a higher real estate rental and leasing rate, with more households relocating to Florida and other business-friendly states. “I think the hybrid work environment is fantastic for Florida. You have the opportunity to move to a place that has fairly attractive standards of living and tax structures that are fairly favorable.”

Dr. Roach identified four “hot topics” that will determine the 2023 financial market and economic outlook.

Inflation: “We know it’s a terrible story, particularly for some parts of the country relative to others,” he said, noting that one-third of the Consumer Price Index is housing and those homeowners with fixed rate mortgages haven’t seen much of a cost increase compared to those with variable rate mortgages and renters. “I think we’re convincingly past peak inflation, with encouraging signs except for rents. I think we’re going to get close to 3% by the end of this year, especially as more multi-family units come online,” he said.

Recession: Dr. Roach noted that although 2022 saw two consecutive quarters of negative growth, “that does not make a recession…because so many parts of the economy are actually growing.” He pointed to consumer demand for services that added 1.2% to total growth by the end of the third quarter of 2022. Current leading indicators though point to more of a slowdown and likely recession. “I think it’ll start early 2023. The first half of this year will be negative, the latter half of this year, we can eke out some growth, hence, we see 2023 slightly above zero.”

Federal Reserve Policy: Dr. Roach described the “tug of war” between the markets and the Federal Reserve. “The Federal Reserve says we’re going to keep tightening (the money supply) for the next couple of meetings and then hold steady for the rest of the year. The markets have clearly priced in the fact that the Fed will most likely cut interest rates the latter half of 2023. I think the markets are right,” he said. Dr. Roach said labor markets are key and that the previously high quit rate of construction workers is starting to change “in a massive way” and will bode well on the overall quit rate among all jobs nationally. “Here's the not so good. Florida does have a challenge with just filling openings.”

Real Estate: Dr. Roach described the real estate market as a “tale of two economies,” with a big dip in construction of single-family homes and a big increase in new multi-family units, such as apartment complexes. “I think that's actually going to do great things for the rent problem that we see right now in this country,” he said.

Dr. Roach told Club members that the economic headwinds of 2022 – inflation, China’s economic trajectory, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine – could become the tailwinds pushing the economy in 2023.

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

www.lpl.com

Dr. Jeffrey Roach 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 1/19/2023. © Copyright 2023 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 40: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Director Greg Boebinger Jan 13, 2023

Show notes

“The Scientific and Economic Attraction of Florida’s Mag Lab” National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Director Greg Boebinger shares the scientific and economic impacts of the world’s largest and highest powered magnet lab before a December 15, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

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

The “MagLab” as it’s known, is based at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, Florida with other facilities at the University of Florida and Los Alamos National Laboratory. It is a federal-state partnership that performs field research in physics, biology, chemistry and their related fields that has led to many scientific breakthroughs and inventions, with more to come. One of the best known is the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine whose ability to scan the human body has largely replaced the need for exploratory surgery. The MagLab’s MRI magnet is 10 to 20 times more powerful than the hospital version and its field has been made large enough now to study mice.

“We have specialized instrumentation that can image individual cells and the nucleus inside of individual cells,” explained Mr. Boebinger, who prefers not to be called “Dr.” “The record now is a single nerve cell 10 microns across, or one-tenth the diameter of a human hair,” he said.

Boebinger’s specialty is condensed matter physics, what he described as “the physics of things that are on a human scale.” It’s the branch of physics that invented the transistor. “You have in your pocket a device that has two dozen materials that didn’t exist 25 years ago, including the transparent metal touch screen that is part of your cell phone.” Many modern materials he said are examples of quantum matter – materials in quantum engineering that lead to unexpected discoveries.

He led Club members on a fascinating explanation of how magnetic fields are created at the lab and about superconductors, the “dancing electron partners” as he described them, which are a popular focus of its research. These are materials or substances that under the right temperature and magnetic field have no electrical resistance. “If we could develop room temperature superconductors to make MRI magnets big enough for humans, then doctors could get much sharper images of what's going on in the body,” Boebinger said. “That’s the next goal.”

Boebinger said the MagLab has become “the center of magnetic research in the world,” attracting about 2,000 scientists a year from around the world to conduct their research. But it’s not just the strong magnets that attract scientists to the MagLab, but two other critical elements as well he said: a large number of in-house experts and unique techniques for making scientific measurements that have resulted in 17 world records.

“If you think of us as a company, our product is educated people,” explained Boebinger. “So 235 post-doctoral students in one year, 508 graduate students, and our user community published over 400 refereed papers in the literature. You won't be able to understand these papers, because these are written in the scientific language. But then other people use this information to write the next generation textbooks that then educate the next generation of engineers and technologists, who then know how to make something that can turn a profit. And so I like to say that we're laying the foundation for a lot of economic activity,” he said.

While the lab isn’t inexpensive to operate (its electricity consumption alone costs $3,000 an hour) its economic impact is huge. Boebinger said the MagLab generates $709 million of economic activity annually in the U.S., $325 million in Florida, and $221 million in Tallahassee. The lab has created 4,550 jobs in the U.S., 2,680 in Florida, and 2,220 in Tallahassee. Its return on investment is put at $6.44 in economic activity in Florida for every dollar invested by the National Science Foundation, which just awarded the lab its next $195.5 million grant over five years.

The MagLab hopes to improve on that further. “Mag Corp is a new private sector company spin-off of the Magnet Lab that has signed a deal with FSU to help link the private sector to FSU,” Boebinger said. “To help speed things along, they’ve already pre-negotiated some of the terms of contracts and that's been a huge success.”

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

www.nationalmaglab.org

Gregory Boebinger 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 12/15/2022. © Copyright 2022 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 39: Restaurant Brands International CEO Jose Cil Dec 14, 2022

Show notes

“Running Restaurants in a Challenging Economy” Restaurant Brands International CEO Jose Cil shares how supply chain challenges, commodity and wage inflation, and labor shortages are impacting its Burger King, Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and Tim Hortons restaurant chains before a November 29, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

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

Restaurant Brands International (RBI) is the franchisor to 29,000 Burger King, Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and Tim Hortons restaurants in more than 100 countries. It generates approximately $35 billion in annual system-wide sales. It is also a major employer in Florida with headquarters for the first three of those brands, employing 1,000 corporate employees.

“Florida is a fantastic place to do business and that's not by chance, that’s by design,” the Miami native said. “It's by design from the government but I think more importantly, from people like you that are involved, that are engaged, and that bring businesses together and help create an environment where entrepreneurship and commercial enterprise can drive communities forward. And that's, I think, a super powerful combination. It's why Florida today is what it is,” Cil said.

Mr. Cil shared how the quick service restaurant industry has evolved and how everything, including the customer experience, has changed since the coronavirus pandemic. RBI had to make “significant investments” in technology and mobile apps to improve online off-premise ordering and drive-through service, as well as food and restaurant worker safety.

“I think the other piece that was important during the pandemic that changed us, I think dramatically, is I think we became more courageous,” explained Cil. “I certainly did. As a leader in the organization, we took steps, bolder steps, than we ever have before because we needed to, in order to take care of our franchisees, to take care of our team members, to take care of the folks in the restaurants, and to take care of our guests.”

Cil told the Club that while the pandemic was probably the most difficult stretch of time he’s ever had as a business leader, “I almost wish we were back in the pandemic, as it was much easier to deal with that than the current environment, including supply chain challenges,” he said.

Cil said that ongoing commodity pressures and “staggering” wage inflation are impacting RBI’s franchisees and the entire industry, as are significant challenges finding labor. The pressure is being felt by their restaurant guests as well. “We’ve seen a drastic pricing increase in the products we purchase. If I take 10-cents of price increase, how much of that 10-cents goes to the bottom line? If not all, it means you’re impacting consumer behavior and losing traffic,” Cil said. “Our focus is always on the guest and the guest experience.”

One solution has been to encourage guests to order digitally, either online or using an in-store kiosk. RBI’s digital sales in the third quarter were up 26% year-over-year to nearly $3.4 billion, representing a third of its quarterly sales. “In the end, we want to get to 100% digital,” he said.

RBI recently announced it will be investing $30 million in digital improvements, part of a $400 million plan to beef-up advertising and store remodeling and relocations to modernize and grow its U.S. business that together with franchisees’ contributions will total nearly $1 billion in the next year few years.

Mr. Cil also shared with the Club RBI’s corporate values, including a diversity of viewpoints. “I feel that this is a key driver of success, having more perspective, more viewpoints, creating a positive tension and disagreement as a leadership team, is really powerful to get to the best ideas,” Cil said. I think when you get to a situation where everybody has the same ideas, everybody's supportive of the ideas that someone has, there's no debate, there's no challenging, be careful.”

He also revealed the five ways you build a most-loved brand, “as our mission is not to be the biggest, or the most financially successful, it's to be the most loved.”

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

www.rbi.com

Jose Cil Biography

Restaurant Brands International: Version 2.0 (Harvard Business School, April 2022)

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 11/29/2022. © Copyright 2022 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 38: Southern Company Executive Vice President Stan Connally Nov 17, 2022

Show notes

“Building a Clean and Resilient Energy Future”Southern Company Executive Vice President Stan Connally discusses the rapid transformation taking place in the energy industry and the challenges it poses for producers and consumers before an October 26, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

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

Stan Connally is Executive Vice President of operations at Southern Company, one of the largest producers of energy in the United States. He also serves as Chairman, President and CEO of Southern Company Services. Recognizing that “most people don’t think of us until the bill arrives or the lights go out,” Connally addressed upfront the current rise in consumers’ electric bills, pointing to the higher costs of inputs.

“There's some dynamics around natural gas prices and other commodities related to supply chain that are really leading to a lot of those pressures on prices and we're all working incredibly hard to try to manage that. I'd like to give you some hope there. But as long as we have this conflict in Europe going on, I think there's going to be some challenges to the supply chain fixing itself for some time,” he told Club members.

Meanwhile, he said, the focus remains on “building the future of energy and making it cleaner and more resilient.” Climate change has prompted policies to reduce carbon emissions at power plants. “Decarbonizing our electric generation business, frankly, has proved economic for our consumers,” Connally said. The Southern Company has transitioned its fleet and retired or converted 80% of its generating units in the past 15 years. Carbon emissions were reduced nearly 50% with a goal to get to net zero emissions by 2050. “Getting that last 10% to 20% is going to be the hard part. That's where the new technologies have to evolve.” To get there, Southern is deploying more solar and storage technologies and is about to put online the first new nuclear units in a generation in Georgia.

“Electrification” is another way to build the future of energy, with electric vehicles leading the way. “Not since the invention of the air conditioner have we seen such a potential impact to the electric loads of our utilities as we do now with the growth of electric vehicles,” Connally said. To handle the projected 19 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, he said that many more smaller generating installations will evolve from the traditional big central power stations that he ran earlier in his career. “It’s going to be far more distributed and that brings permitting and land use challenges that we’ll need to navigate. We as a country need to get more efficient at our permitting system, the United States at the federal level needs a lot of work,” he said.

Connally, a 34 year veteran of the industry, said the energy business “has gotten some recent wins” from Washington DC to help transition to that future. He said the recent federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will allow utilities and communities across the country to make greater investments in transmission and distribution networks, electric vehicle infrastructure, and provide more energy efficiency grants. He likewise applauded the federal Inflation Reduction Act which extended tax credits on renewable energy sources, nuclear energy development, and energy storage.

“Politically, energy should not be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, there's way too much partisanship going on related to energy. Because at the end of the day, it is not a commodity, it is a necessity,” he told Club members.

The Southern Company’s operating companies provide electricity to 4.4 million customers in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and natural gas service to 4.3 million customers in Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Illinois. It also provides wholesale solar, wind, natural gas, and clean energy alternatives in 14 states across the country. Southern also operates a distributed energy infrastructure company, a fiber optics network, and telecommunications services.

Connally also talked with the Club about resiliency, cybersecurity challenges, training young talent, and “the need to connect to the customer and what they need most.”

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

www.southerncompany.com

Stan Connally 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 10/26/2022. © Copyright 2022 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Episode 37: Figgers Communication CEO Freddie Figgers Sep 23, 2022

Show notes

“A Gadsden County native’s path to success as an American technology entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist” Figgers Communication CEO Freddie Figgers shares how a $23 Goodwill purchase led to his multi-million dollar career as an entrepreneur and the importance of finding your passion in life before an August 25, 2022 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes

Abandoned at two days old in a trash can and adopted by an older couple who raised him as their son, Freddie Figgers’ story as a technology entrepreneur began at nine years old, when his father bought him a broken computer at a Goodwill store that he restored to life with borrowed parts from other electronics around the house. It was the start of his career as an inventor, software developer, and now at age 32, the CEO of Figgers Communication, the nation’s only minority-owned telecommunications company. The company provides cellular and broadband services in rural areas and manufactures consumer electronics, including cellphones, from a manufacturing facility in Doral, Florida.

“I meet so many people across the country that don’t like their job. They get up every morning and they go to work. You have to find what you’re in love with in order to excel in it,” he told the Club in a fireside chat format with Club Vice President Marion Hoffmann, Vice President of Business Solutions for Indelible Solutions. “Technology was my passion - innovating, creating something new, and helping others. And every product that we’ve built to date has made an impact on people’s lives.”

That “passion with a purpose,” as Figgers calls it, began at age 15, when he quit school because of bullying and to take care of his father, who had developed dementia and would leave the house and wander around town. It was the necessity of his dad’s illness that became the mother of his first invention: A GPS tracker embedded with a two-way communicator in the sole of his dad’s shoe, allowing him to talk to and find his dad when he became lost. It became the precursor to today’s Life Alert ® product. Figgers sold the rights to the tracker for $2.2 million in January 2014, receiving the check on the same day as his father passed away. It was the first of several medical informatics inventions and programs he has developed under his other company, Figg Health.

“The best thing my father ever taught me was staying grounded. Never forget who you are. Don't forget where you come from, and always pay it forward. If you can help somebody else you do it without hesitating,” Figgers said. More than 20% of his company profits are invested in philanthropy, including The Figgers Foundation that helps disadvantaged children and families and provides grants for education and healthcare projects.

Figgers discussed current supply chain issues and his company’s work overseas, including helping Kenya expand its 5G cellular network through Safaricom. He said he’s also working on a pending business deal with Meta in the augmented reality space. For now, he said he has no interest in taking his company public, despite many offers. Among his employees are some of the bullies that used to bother him in school. Freddie Figgers represents the Florida-born talent who are developing businesses and creating jobs and his story is truly inspirational.

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Freddie Figgers Biography

Figgers Communication

Figg Health

The Figgers Foundation

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 8/25/2022. © Copyright 2022 The Economic Club of Florida, All Rights Reserved

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

The Economic Club of Florida podcast

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected