Spring 2006

Mike Randle, Editor

A Look at the South's Economy From an "Expert"

I don't want to sound arrogant by writing that I am interviewed by newspaper folks and the like several times a week and sometimes several times a day. Years ago I used some negative language describing people who seek to be written up in the media. With my quotes published by many different media sources lately, I want our readers to know I am not calling those writers. They are calling me. Again, no arrogance intended. I am simply answering the phone.

It's my choice to make myself accessible to other writers. After all, a big part of my job is to inform business and industry throughout the world about the South's advantages and disadvantages when it comes to business climate. Fortunately for us, there are more advantages for industry expanding and locating in the South than there are disadvantages. Do you want proof? Try these numbers: a regional GDP in the South that currently accounts for 40 percent of the U.S. national GDP and 33 million of the 58 million new jobs created in the U.S. since 1970 have been created here.

Southern Business & Development is no Forbes magazine. Then again, I know Steve Forbes and Forbes is no SB&D. Yet, I will admit SB&D's circulation is a fraction of Forbes' circulation. So, if a newspaper writer wants to call me about the South's economy, that's just one more media source that we can use to tell the truth about operating a business in the region. That includes information that exposes the positive, as well as the negative.

My message to almost anyone who will listen to my incessant yapping about the South always centers on one thing. Writers ask me about the "economy." I have the same answer every time: "What economy are you talking about?"

There are few experts, economists, think tanks or talking heads on CNN who will give you their view of the South's economy. That's because they don't know it. They, like most everyone else, naturally focus their attention on the U.S. economy as a whole. One important thing I would like everyone to remember -- including those newspaper writers who are calling -- in most years the South's economy and the U.S.'s economy are two different things.

For example, you cannot assume that if the nation's economy is struggling as a whole the South's is as well. That would be like assuming someone from Wyoming can teach a class on surfing.

Furthermore, if an economic expert in New Hampshire or Massachusetts, for example, advises leaders on economic development in the South, then he or she might as well be training crawfish farmers on lobster trapping.

Of course, the reverse is true as well. I don't know of an economic expert on Mississippi's economy who's advising Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on California's economic development practices.

One of my favorite people to quote is the late American music composer Frank Zappa (1940-1993). Zappa once said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." That statement applies to the South and the U.S. when it comes to economics.

That brings me to this issue's Southbound conclusion. I am, according to writers who call me, an expert on the South's economy. What they really mean is there are so few people who know the South's economy that we "ended up calling you." That doesn't make me an expert. It makes me a last resort.

But this "expert" is unsure about the South's economy in 2007 and 2008. There are so many things that could affect commerce in the region, such as a lame-duck President, the war in Iraq, oil prices, inflation in general, high debt, the housing market, the elections in November, this year's hurricane season and a tightening Southern labor shed. Some expert, huh?

But one thing I can point to are three deals that were announced in the South in the spring 2006 quarter, all of which topped at least $1 billion in investment -- Kia ($1.2B), UPS ($1B) and Samsung ($4B). In the 14 years of publishing SB&D, we've never had a quarter when three different billion-plus deals were announced. I'd say those three companies are confident about the South's economic future.

mike@sb-d.com