Forbes Magazine E-i-C and Publisher Stops by Campus as Vance Distinguished Lecturer

By Melissa Traynor

Steve Forbes casually said he was going to make a speech or two about free market, offer bad date advice and get a free meal as he addressed students in Vance 105 last Wednesday.

He also delivered his views on how to solve the current economic crisis in bits and pieces, offering different options for Wall Street recovery and advocating for a more lenient, but sensible approach to businesses.

Malcolm “Steve” Forbes, Editor-in-Chief and publisher of Forbes magazine, who also campaigned for the Republican nomination for President in 1996 and 2000, stayed true to GOP party lines and favors a leaner, lenient government approach in handling and pulling out of the financial down turn. He met with mainly business students earlier in the afternoon during last Wednesday’s two-part visit, where he promoted his pro-business, pro-free market views in both the afternoon Q and A and evening lecture.

“You can only succeed when you provide something that someone else wants,” Forbes opened his 3 p.m. speech. He was borderline defensive of the United States’ free market, but also offered positive ways and preventative measures to fix the economy when he addressed Vance 105’s audience.

“Even if you’re greedy, you don’t succeed if you don’t pay attention to the needs and wants of other people,” he explained, in reference to the attacks on Wall Street in that many were too greedy and placed their concerns before others. He added that the crisis cannot be attributed to a failure of the free markets.

Forbes said that he would like to see a more sensible and reasonable approach to economic development with “rules of the road,” as he called them, which he believes would both cure the recession and grow businesses.

Part of his vision for the free market includes restructuring the current health care system so that all citizens would have the option to buy insurance privately. Forbes criticized the hybrid system the country has now, in that employee benefits are virtually the only way to get good health insurance, but the system still has many faults. He said citizens have no idea of what they are paying for, which does not help keep costs low.

“It should not be an employer-based system,” Forbes said, and said he’d rather like to see something like TIAA- CREF, a program that helps establish retirement plans for those in medical, research and academic fields. He also advocated for opening up the health insurance industry to general, healthy competition.

“If you’re a teacher, or administrator, or whatever and you go to a school, you would own the policy,” he said. “The employer would fund it and you’re allowed to put money in, too, but it’s your property. So if you went from school A to school B, it went with you. And that’s what we need in health care.”

Consistent with his conservative views, Forbes also said that he would like to see government spending decrease. When asked that he thought was the best way to reduce the national deficit, he said that the federal government should cut large programs in order to save money. He said that government spending in usual economic circumstances is 18 percent of the gross domestic product, but currently it’s around 25 percent.

“If the Fed decides to stop spending on [the troubled asset relief program], that’s $700-800 billion saved right off the bat,” he said, which he also discussed at his 7:30 p.m. lecture in Welte Auditorium.

Students were also generally interested in knowing how Forbes came to be the person and business man he is, and what it takes to be successful.

“ Well I was fortunate, and most of you can’t do what I do,” Forbes began, “and that is to pick parents who already own a successful business. But in terms of starting out one thing about free markets is, you can come from the most unlikely backgrounds and have a chance to make it work.”

For example, Forbes said, take Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was abandoned by his biological parents. A person’s business success requires drive and more than a little bit of luck, Forbes said.

“And the thing is, it’s not based on personality,” Forbes said. “I’ll be blunt with you: Steve Jobs can be a bastard.” But he praised Job’s ability to revive Apple and steer it straight.

Forbes also spoke to crowd in Welte later that night, but the audience was largely from the greater CCSU community and not necessarily students.