The Economic Club of Florida podcast

• Episode 62: Goldman Sachs Vice Chairman Rob Kaplan

  “2025 Economic Outlook” Rob Kaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, provides a 2025 forecast for the U.S. economy and the financial markets, including the impact of tariffs, before a January 21, 2025 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-january-rob-kaplan) Mr. Kaplan discussed the economy of the past few years, what he thinks the future might bring, and how Florida is one of the states leading the way.The past economy has been characterized by several main drivers.“The economy over the last four years,” he said, “whether we like it or not, has been government spending led.  If you go back to 2019, net debt of the U.S. government divided by GDP, was about in the mid-70s.  Today we're pushing up near 100% debt to GDP.”Part of the problem was that COVID happened.  The government estimated that the economy would lose $2-trillion, so Congress passed a bill to fill that gap called the Cares Act.  Mr. Kaplan said the Federal Reserve printed every dollar of that Act.Because, during the lockdown, spending went up but services did not, 2020 was the first recession in modern history where GDP went down while consumer spending went up.“I would argue that if the excess fiscal spending stopped right there, I don't think we would have had the extent of the inflation issues that we've ultimately had,” he said.However, the Biden administration passed new legislation – the American Rescue Act.“In 2019, we ran a budget deficit in the United States of around 4% of GDP.  In 2020, we ran a budget deficit around 15% of GDP, historically high.  What people don't focus on is, in 2021 we ran another monster deficit, around 12% or 13% of GDP.  Historic.  It was not to fill the COVID gap.  The American rescue Act money got spent in 2021, 22, 23, and 24.”Following that was passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, for another trillion dollars.  Kaplan said that fostered a whole range of public-private partnerships all through the United States.  About 25% of the money is from the government and 75% private, but he said the projects would not happen without the government money.He cited, as examples: More than 20 lithium battery plants being built across the United States, including one in his home state of Kansas. A New York tunnel project which cost $50-billion and employs 60,000 workers. Other very large infrastructure projects across the US. These projects cause disruption in the workforce.“When you announce a project like that (Kansas battery plant), every restaurant in the state tells me they can't find workers.  Every service sector establishment just lost workers because they're going to make $35-$37.50 an hour at the lithium battery plant in DeSoto, Kansas.  This is going on all through the country, and it’s not done yet.”Mr. Kaplan said the Fed probably should have stopped buying bonds in 2021, but waited until mid-2022.  The net effect was that inflation got away from the regulators.That inflation has had drastically different effects on two groups of Americans – each of about 60-70 million people.The first group, which makes around $55,000 a year or less, has lost purchasing power.“This loss of purchasing power that we had in 2021, 22, 23, and 24 has meant they can't make ends meet today.  So, $55,000 a year may sound like a lot...  (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://www.economic-club.com/2025-january-rob-kaplan)

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• Episode 61: Margaritaville Holdings Co-Founder & CEO John Cohlan

  “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

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• Episode 60: Assistant Navy Secretary Meredith Berger

  “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  

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• Episode 59: Guy Harvey Foundation CEO Jessica Harvey

  “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 economy 100-million Americans boat annually, $230-billion  Boating and fishing employ thousands of Floridians The 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  

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• Episode 58: Autonomous Trucking Expert Lee White

  “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 Florida 1 in 18 people are employed in the industry 95% of all manufactured tonnage is brought to you by truck Trucking is the harbinger of the economy The 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

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