Do you ever wonder how to navigate the economy when things seem out of your control? In this episode, Jimmy interviews Dr. Steven Agee, economist, entrepreneur and professor about his motivations and strategies to continue living life by design.
(Top photo © Paul B. Southerland and The Oklahoman)
In this episode, you will gain insight into:
- How to develop a lifestyle that you desire and motivates you to be your best self everyday.
- Why it is critical for you to understand the economy and how it affects you.
- When you start a new hobby or passion after working in your career.
- Who are your mentors and what impact they have on your ambition and creative abilities?
- What to do when faced with competing opportunities.
Podcast Transcript
JW:
Good morning. This is Live a Life By Design. I’m your host, Jimmy Williams, for another week of Monday morning Motivation. Today we have a wonderful guest – a gentleman I’ve heard speak, I’ve read about his findings of his production and life of what he does, and it is an area that I think will intrigue all of you today. Certainly intrigued me when I heard him speaking, especially based on where we are in the world right now. If you think about our economy with inflation continuing to pressure families and how they can buy consumer goods, durable goods are up higher than they were, you know, pre pandemic, continuing to see a strain on families budgets. Well, today, we’re hoping to bring you some information. It might enlighten you just a little bit and hopefully will inspire you that you can reach out and help your family even enjoy life on better terms. You know, on Live a Life By Design, always wanna leave you with a bigger, better, and bolder lifestyle than what you had in the past. So, we’re just gonna jump right in. Today, I have, as my special guest, the Dean emeritus of Oklahoma City University. He is a professor of economics, and he went to the University of Oklahoma. Now, folks, the reason I say that is because I’m a big OU fan as well. He graduated with his bachelor’s in Business Administration there, got a Master’s in Economics from the University of Kansas, as well as a PhD. So, Dr. Steven Agee is an economist specializing in energy policy, banking, monetary theory, and macroeconomic policy. And folks, I gotta tell you, the reason why we selected Dr. Agee to be our guest today is he’s not just an academician. He has real world experience and applies that knowledge to the classroom as well as to the private sector. So, he’s getting the best of both worlds. Good morning, Dr. Agee!
SA:
Good morning, Jimmy. How are you today?
JW:
I’ll tell you if, if it got any better doc, I couldn’t stand it. That’s a story of my life, though. I never have a bad day.
SA:
That’s great.
JW:
Now, I do have some days better than others, sir, but never a bad day. Right. let’s take just a few minutes. I wanna let the world know a little bit about, and if I may call you Steve on this show, I’m gonna let the world know a little bit about Steve. So give me a little background today for our audience of where did you grow up, what was your childhood like?
SA:
Well, I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, which is, you know, pretty close to Oklahoma City where I live now. I went through grade school there, K-12 in Wichita. And when I finished high school, I got a scholarship to come to the University of Oklahoma, which I did. I spent four years at, at OU and like you just said, I got a bachelor’s degree in business and I majored in economics. And when I finished that degree, or when I was getting ready to finish that degree, I went and talked to one of my university professors at the time, and I asked him, okay, so what do I do with this? What do I do with a undergraduate degree in economics? And he said, well, there’s a lot of things you can do with it. You could go into banking, you could go to graduate school.
SA:
You know, there, he just ticked off three or four things I thought about. And so I kind of thought about each one of the items or professions that he described, and I decided on the academic track. So I applied for admission to four or five different graduate programs in economics around the country. And I was accepted, like at the University of Chicago. I was accepted at the University of Kansas, and that Kansas was willing to give me some money in scholarships to come there. So as an economist, I thought, well, that’s probably my best road forward. And that’s what I decided to do. So I went to KU in Lawrence and in the PhD program. And as you mentioned, I got my master’s in PhD there. And, and during that time interval, I was married and my father-in-law at the time was a geologist, petroleum geologist.
SA:
And he lived here in Oklahoma. And so as I’ve completed my work in in the graduate program, he asked me to come work with him in the oil and gas business, which I knew nothing about. But I thought about it and I thought, well, you know, I, I might try this and see if it works, and if it doesn’t, I’ll go back to academics and teaching and to a university somewhere. So I, I moved to Oklahoma the second time. First time I came down in the seventies to go to school at OU. The second time I moved down was in 1982, which was not a very good time to go into the oil and gas business. The eighties were terrible time. But I did, I started a company in the fall of 1982 and ran that company for 24 years. We sold it in 2006, and we, we did very well. We, we were very successful in that 24 year time period. Subsequently, I was invited to join the Federal Reserve branch board here in Oklahoma City, which I served on for six years. And I was also asked to come out and teach at Oklahoma City University. So that is a real short snippet of my growing up an academic life. And I’d be happy to expound on any of that.
JW:
Yeah, you bet. Let, let ask you a couple of crazy questions. No my professor in economics in undergrad school was a wonderful gentleman named Kirk Jackson PhD, like yourself. And I had him for macro. Then I had a Dr. Eric Steger for in the smaller university here in Oklahoma for my microeconomics. And I gotta tell you, for you to make a gutsy move into a profession of which you had really no knowledge or experience right outta your PhD program, that’s kind of a non-economist move, Steve, tell me how, how’d you was it ’cause the father-in-law motivated you or what, what happened?
SA:
Well, I think that was primarily it. My father-in-law had two children. One was my wife, and the other was, he had a son. His son was interested in medicine, so he wasn’t interested in the oil and gas industry. And my father-in-law turned 60 about this time. And so he was, you know, thinking about what am I gonna do the next five, 10 years sometime, you know, you think about retirement when you hit 60. And so I think he was just thinking forward about who’s gonna take over this little family private business that I’ve created. And I think he picked me to, to do that. So we had to think about it because, you know, going into a family business sometimes is challenging. So I, I was concerned a little bit about that relationship, but it worked out well. My, my father-in-law would, he’s a wonderful man. He taught me a lot about the oil and gas industry. He introduced me to a lot of PE people. And, and something that’s really critical I think for students or for all of us, is to develop your networks. You’ve gotta, you’ve gotta make connections, network with other people, get to know other people yoke their strength. You know, there’s a lot of people out there that know a lot more than I do, and I wanna learn from them. So I’m always gonna be a student.
JW:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I’m a lifetime learner myself. And I, I would just say though, the oil and gas business is one of those types of businesses that is inherently with its own dangers and challenges and threats, if you will. And generally what I would see as an economist, and I’m just throwing a real generality here too, you, but is a lot of times when we sit down and analyzed, well, tell me what, gosh, let me look at this and look at the relevance of what can I do with my time that would also leverage that Gary to return. But the risk involved with oil and gas, you usually have quite a bit of risk, but you have quite a bit of great return. But now you went in at a time in 1982, lemme take everyone back in 82 in Oklahoma, we had a problem.
JW:
We are a oil and gas state, and it was in the toilet for lack of a better term. Penn Square Bank had gone bankrupt during this time because of loans that were thinly collateralized, and most of ’em were oil and gas. I’ll never forget. So Steve, I was young. Ladd, I didn’t graduate high school to 83, so I’m a little younger than you, but I’ll never forget my dad as we drove by a Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma City, and he pointed out the oil rigs parked in the parking lot, that they had basically repl on their loans or, or, you know, foreclosed, if you will, in the term of real estate. And, and I, I said, dad, why are they got, why do they have drilling rigs out here? You know, I was 17 years old. What’s going on with that? And he said, well, that’s what happens when oil hits about, you know, $15 a barrel.
SA:
So, yeah. Or, or $9 or $10.
JW:
Yes. I mean, it was, I can’t remember the dollar amount it was then, but it was so horrific. This state was in a spin. So, so let’s talk just a little bit about, you said, I got into academics before you went into oil and gas. What, what was it your advisor said at OU that really caused you to say that you could make a difference in academics? What, what were then, Steve Ag motivated you to go in that direction?
SA:
Well, one of the things that was motivating to me was I was in a fraternity at ou and when I got to be a junior and a senior and I was majoring in economics, so I, I had a, you know, a little bit of academic background in economics. And some of the younger students in my fraternity, some of the freshmen and sophomores were taking some of these principles of economics courses, micro and macroeconomics like you described. And so they needed some help. So I actually bought a little chalkboard and I moved it into my fraternity house room, and I was showing them charts and graphs and, you know, simple equations. And, and so I became a teacher or a tutor, I guess, way back then in my early years. And I kind of enjoyed that. I enjoyed explaining some of these economic facts and details and charts and graphics to these younger freshmen and sophomores. And I think that kind of motivated me to consider an academic career. And then when my professor mentioned a PhD program, and, and I thought, well, I, I think I might wanna try that. The other thing is economics requires some mathematical skills. So I, I had developed pretty good math skills back even in K-12. I had really good math instructors when I was growing up in Wichita. So my math skills were strong, and I think that helped me move into economics.
JW:
So you’re gonna laugh. I never forget my first class. I was a sophomore. It was my macro class at a small university south of Norman there, East Central University, a smaller university. And there’s a long story, I’ll say short is this is, I had great grades, ACT scores great. But I only got a half of an offer for all tuition and paid books and so forth at OU. I got a full ride at East Central. So guess where you go when you’re a farm kid? That’s where I went. So, yeah.
SA:
Or an economist.
JW:
Or an economist. Well, and so I did, I applied that economic step, right? Right. But what I did is I got that first class and I was intrigued. So I, I’m in a world of wealth management. I’m a CPA and my Master’s in Law and Taxation, so I’m a numbers guy as you, and to me, numbers always made sense, Steve. It, so, the algebraic equation to do something is a science. It is the same. It doesn’t continue to evolve and so forth. We may find derivatives of it, but it’s the same for every time. And so that stuck with me about economies and economic factors and things to study. So I had this big idea of thinking like an economist, don’t laugh from the time I was a sophomore in college.
SA:
That’s great. I looked at, I wish everyone thought like that. Yeah.
JW:
Well, I look at opportunity cost. ’cause If I have $1, what can I use it for that’d get me the best rate of return on it, or the best r o i or the most fun or, or whatever you wanna put as your outcomes. And I’ll never forget that my first paper I wrote was thinking like an economist in that class.
JW:
Now, I only got a 90 on it. Now. I talked to Dr. Jackson about, I thought he was a little more aggressive on grading than he should have been. I thought I had a great premise. I thought my research was sound and I thought my outcomes were not just laudable, but I thought were, you know, we’re really sound too. And he said, well, he said, I’ll tell you what, this is your first one and you’re gonna get a 90. ’cause This is what I want you to think about next time. And he gave me such an expansive view of how I could take this subject matter of thinking like an economist and apply it to literally everything in the world that I do. Tell me why economists think uniquely like that.
SA:
Well, I, most of my experience around economists, and I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of economists in my lifetime, they’re inquisitive. They, they are really inquisitive. They like to ask questions. They like to bore into details. And I’ve been in many presentations where I’m just in the audience and someone will throw up a PowerPoint slide or two and talk about this or that. And I’ll think, I wonder if that’s right. And so I’ll go back and I’ll dig out the data and the facts like you just described. Graphic is a correct, and here’s the data that demonstrates that. And I, I actually use that in some of my classes that I teach at Oklahoma City University. And I’ll, I’ll pull out a presentation that that’s been made maybe 10 years ago by someone at the national level. And, and I’ll say, is this right? And I’ll give my students a challenge to look and see the data themselves. And then of course they do, and they find out it’s wrong. And I said, this is why you have to be so careful when you make a presentation, especially if someone else prepares these slides for you. You better review the data and make sure it’s right, because you’ll look pretty silly if you don’t.
JW:
No, absolutely. And I’ve always been the type of person, so I’ve been fortunate to speak all, all across the country before covid. I had a pretty robust speaking calendar. And now we’re getting that back to going. But my point to that is, is I never wanna say anything. I can’t back up with some facts and research of my own knowledge. So, so those need to be my, my material, if you will, or my statements I make. So I’m concerned now. And now you’re an educational institution. One of the, the best universities I know is Oklahoma City University. I’ve got several clients whose children’s are gonna law school there, undergrad school there, and so forth. Are you concerned about the use of artificial intelligence in your realm as being an economics professor?
SA:
Well, I am concerned. I think I think it can be used for good. I think AI can be very helpful and useful for good things. But I think, you know, there’s an element of the population out there that wants to use it, you know, in, in a mal malware type way. And so I do, I am concerned about that.
JW:
I will say to you that we, we use it in our business here, mainly for those things such as marketing issues or assistance and maybe gaining topical matters, but we don’t use it to ride anything. Or obviously we’re under the SS e C and all these regulatory bodies. We, we really have to know what we’re doing. But I’m, I’m concerned as you that some of the undergrads, ’cause I have a daughter finishing her master’s at OU by right now. And I talked to her and pose that same question to her over the weekend. And she said, let me tell you what the professors at OU are doing. They have a system now, they can go in and, and do searches online to determine if you actually wrote that or where you got the site. Right. And, and the point I’m making with that is, is I think it’s a good tool. It shouldn’t replace the brain that, that’s my point I’m making on that. Let me ask you this, who, who was one of your biggest mentors in in life and why?
SA:
Well, I’ve had several professors during, I mean, I’m old, okay. I’ve been around a long time, so, and I’ve had lots of of academic training and education. But I think the first professor that gave me that advice on, on alternatives once I finished my bachelor’s degree was, his name was Ryan Ker. He was at OU for a short time. He had come there from the United States Treasury Department. So he had real world experience, governmental experience. That was really interesting. That’s the thing that I think excited me and the professors at ou. They were, they’re all interesting. I just thought, this is, the subject matter here was intriguing to me, and that’s why I think gravitated toward classes and economics. Another mentor I had was a gentleman who had gone to Harvard as an undergraduate. He trained one summer under a very famous Harvard professor named Otto Eckstein. And Otto Eckstein was one of the first economists, this was back in the 1960s, who developed a national econometric model of the United States to kind of forecast and predict what you’re interested in, you know, Mac the macro economy, right?
SA:
Up until then, they had regional models for the Southeast and the West and the Northeast, but they didn’t have a whole national model. And this, this gentleman that, that I was a mentor to me, his name’s Gordon Sellen. He grew up in Boston, went to Harvard, was educated, like I just mentioned Otto Eckstein as one of his professors. And, and when he finished his undergraduate degree, he started looking around to go to graduate school. And he thought, you know, what I was doing here at Harvard interests me, I want to go to some other university that’s building econometric models of the United States. And there was really only one doing it. And that was the University of Michigan. So he applied and got, got accepted to the University of Michigan where he got his PhD. When he finished his PhD in economics at the University of Michigan.
SA:
He got a job at the University of Kansas. And guess where I, I went to graduate school. So I met him in this circuitous route, you know, from Harvard to Michigan to ku and I, I showed up there and he had been there a couple years, but he was teaching a graduate level macroeconomics course. And I took that and I just, I fell in love with it. It was just like, this is great. It’s so interesting. And we built models of the United States economy and, and we looked at different things that could occur. And we looked at fiscal policy and monetary policy, and we looked at situations like we just went through in 2008, 2009 with a great recession. And it’s just it is just a living component of my life, is learning about that academically and then experiencing it in the real world.
JW:
That, that’s me as well. I it’s funny, my wife and daughters, I have two daughters, and the only reason I have two daughters, Steve, is because I have two daughters. I hope you don’t mind if I use a circular logic, but they’re, you stop after you get two daughters. But they’ll go somewhere and I’ll drive, of course, pay for the meals, I’ll pay for the shopping, but I don’t wish to shop. That’s just not my thing. So I’ll, I’ll wait for them. And I sit in the mall, and you remember a gentleman named Peter Lynch who had Fidelity’s Magellan Fund as a manager for years, you know, as economists studied what he did as far as wealth management, money management, stock selection, so forth. And I, I just adopted Peter Lynch’s style of investing in some of the retail stuff. I don’t do a lot of retail, but I would just sit down and look at stores from a very much fundamental economic perspective.
JW:
How much is traffic going in? Are they coming out with lots of packages? What is the product they’re selling that’s so appealing? So I wanna ask you a couple of questions about our current economy. Let’s, let’s talk a little bit about what we are experiencing here in the United States. And I’m gonna throw a phrase at you and I, I hope you can give a little more insight to it than what I can, everyone’s talking about, oh my goodness, I can’t buy a house now. ’cause As the Fed, and we’re gonna talk about your role. You were though, you were on the bank board there. So I wanna talk a little bit about that. But they’re going, I can’t buy a house now ’cause interest rates are seven and half, 8% for a 30 year mortgage, for example. And I’ll look at them and I’ll go, but, but just a moment. I said, do you realize that less than about 12 to 15 years ago, maybe 18, that was a standard mortgage, you know, but so, so inflation, this inflation has come back, if you will. Let’s talk a little bit about what did we do to America when we kept that interest rate on the Fed funds rate the loaning to banks at zero for so long? What did we do, Steve, to the thought process of Americans?
SA:
Well, that was a, a difficult time, obviously, when we went through that great recession of 2008, nine, and 10. I mean, the economy really went in the tank. And so both the fiscal and monetary policy authorities had to step in and, and, and do something about that. Sorry about that. And so I think that was the catalyst for, for some of the actions that the Fed, I don’t think it certainly was the catalyst because things were so bad and they started to drop rates from, you know, 5% or five and a quarter, five and a half percent. They just continued to ratchet it down to nearly zero. And this is interesting, but it’s actually one of the things I studied in graduate school when, when the economy is so bad that the Fed has to lower interest rates nearly to zero, we call that the liquidity trap, which means there’s a lot of money out in the economy, and interest rates are so low that the Federal Reserve has basically given up their best option about controlling the economy.
SA:
Because when they get to zero on the interest rate, they can’t go below zero. Right? Okay. I mean, they, they could pay, I guess, banks, but they’re not gonna do that. They could have negative interest rates, but that’s some place that the United States hasn’t chosen to go yet. So they lowered these rates, and it did create a very false economy because we had rates about zero for many years and, and made money very accommodative. This is the Federal Reserve word, I would say cheap. Okay? So, right. You could borrow money at a very low interest rate, and a lot of businesses did. A lot of consumers did. And it really was a false economy because it shouldn’t have been that low. But it did help stimulate the economy. We came back out of that great recession, we recovered from that, and then we were rocking right along until covid hit.
SA:
And when Covid hit, you know, we fell off the cliff again, that was what economists call an exogenous shock. Something we just right. Didn’t see, didn’t anticipate. And so sometimes those shocks occur. And according to economic history, if you, you know, you’ve studied economics. So you know, what John Maynard Cain’s proposed back in the 1930s as a result of the Great Depression, was that the, the government needed to step in at that time when consumers weren’t spending. And we know that, you know, 65 to 70% of our gross domestic product comes from consumer spending. So if that drops off precipitously, then the government needs to step in according to Kane’s and kind of bolster things until we recover. And then when the consumers come back in and spend the, the government kind of, kind of tamp down on their spending, of course, that’s been the problem. Once government starts spending on things, they don’t stop. And that’s, that’s a real dilemma that we need to address.
JW:
Yeah, I always tell people it’s so easy to start programs in our government. It is so difficult. Once you have a constituency that’s utilizing it or perhaps even needing it for basic needs, it’s hard to amend it or at least even cease it from occurring. Let’s talk about that third rail that, you know, I’m gonna put you on the spot today. Now, Steve, and keep in mind you just tell me your opinions here, but what’s, what about the third rail? So we’re looking at, O M B has come out office management budget for our federal government, which is responsible for giving us the predictive calculations of, hey, when things are gonna run outta money. And they’ve looked at Social Security, for example. They think our current social security system will be fine till the year 2033. Now they had 2035, now they’ve lowered it to 2033, according to Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. What do you think we could do? What should we do to be prudent for those upcoming individuals like yourself that may wanna start drawing your benefits? Or even better, what about our children? You have children, I assume. So what about our children? What, what can they look forward to and how could we preserve this?
SA:
Well, I think that Congress needs to really sit down and take a hard look at that and, and get our spending under control and try to allocate sufficient resources going forward that they can protect social security. I believe they’ll do that. You know, they’ve had, they’ve had bumps in the road in the past, and they’ve always managed to kick the can down the road, but they’ve always managed to fund social security, and I believe they’ll, they’ll come up with a plan to do that.
JW:
Yeah, I agree. And I’ve, I’ve talked to a lot of our clients. We specialize in retirement planning. So most of our clients are almost to that point of age 67 or 66 and six months, depending on the year they were born of, when they can get those full benefits. And we’re, we’re sitting here doing analysis for them and saying, well, wait a minute though, if you’ll wait until age 70, which is the maximum age for social security, hey, we get these 8% bonus years. You know, that could really help for your spouse that may or may not have had the earnings years that you had, for example, if, if you were predeceased her or him. And so at the end of the day, I’m sitting there talking about it, but I said, what, how would you feel? And I ask each one of ’em, Steve, how would you feel though if we extended the date from an age of 66 and six months? What if we move that to a day, let’s say make the age mandatory 70. And they look at me real funny, and they go, oh my gosh, I don’t know. And I said, but by doing that, that really doesn’t solve the problem in itself. We still have funding issues, but I’m saying the criteria for qualification. What are your thoughts about maybe a combination of those two as being a solution by Congress?
SA:
I think that is very viable. I think that’s something that Congress needs to take a hard look at. What what you’ve described fits me perfectly, and I know you didn’t realize that when we had this started this conversation, but I turned 70 this past May. Okay? Oh, well,
JW:
Happy birthday Doc!
SA:
Thank you! I turned 70 and I waited to retire until I turned 70, just like you described, because I knew I could maximize my benefits and I, I needed to start taking it. So I would encourage people if they can, to wait until they’re 70 to retire and, and start engaging with social security. Of course, Medicare, they need to sign up for when they’re 65. I’m sure you advise all your clients about that. But I, I think it’s probably very wise for Congress to take a look at the age, you know, this happened in France and they had a lot of protests and, but their retirement age was like 62 or 63, and they wanted to raise it to 64 or 65. So it’s even below our standards. But you know, people will object, you know, if they think they’re not gonna get what they deserve.
SA:
And but I think in the best interest of the entire country, this is what we call a micro versus macro issue, okay? So at the micro level, it’s you and me as individuals that are making these kind of decisions, but at the macro level, we need to look at all of the citizens and how much they pay in, and how much we paid in historically, and what’s in the trust fund, and how much they can pay out of the result of that. So there’s a lot of, of variables they need to look at in order to make a decision on this.
JW:
You know, and one of the things too, we always address with our clients is, is if you are what most of our are like you, they, they love what they do, so they work longer than the typical age of retirement, for example. So at, at the end of the day, what we do basically is say, look just do what you wish to do whenever you’re ready to go. But at age 70, there’s no more benefit to waiting on social security. You’re gonna get all you’re going to get at maximum payout. But the other thing too about this is, is we have found for retirees, and I’m gonna ask you a kind of a personal question. What do you do with all that passion once you’ve quote retired officially? What do you do with all that creative passion that you still have?
SA:
Well, that’s a great question. And when I was younger, I looked at some of my mentors in the oil and gas business, and I said, yeah, when you’re not here, we lose all this knowledge, this institutional knowledge. It’s just, it’s terrible when people retire and then they stop, right? So I never encourage anyone to stop. So what I’ve done, my, my course is I, I was the dean of the Miner School of Business at Oklahoma City University for 11 years. And I stopped that two years, two and a half years ago now. And I stepped down as dean, but I stayed on as full-time faculty. So I was still a full-time faculty member at O C U, but this last June 30th, when I re I effectively retired. I’m no longer full-time faculty, so I no longer enjoy those benefits. I am, they asked me to stay on and teach one graduate energy management class, which I’ve taught the last 10 or 12 years, and I’ve agreed to do that.
SA:
So I’m now an adjunct professor. So I am staying active at the university. I still have an office there. I still see students I still teach there, but it’s, it’s scaled down quite a bit. And so what I’ve done, Jimmy, I’ve decided to pursue other interests. I’ve always wanted to play the piano. Sure. So a year and a half ago after I stepped down as Dean, I started taking piano lessons. So I’m, I’m into learning how to read music and play the piano. I wanna keep my mind active, my brain functioning and, and learning music is like learning a new language. And so I would encourage anyone that’s thinking about retiring before you do it, to think about, okay, what am I gonna do with that free time? What do I wanna travel? Do I wanna learn a foreign language? Do I wanna learn to play music? Do I wanna play more golf? I mean, what do I wanna do? And then kind of map that out a little bit, because just stopping what you’re doing and without a plan is not a good idea. It’s not healthy for you mentally or physically.
JW:
Yeah, I don’t want to get biblical, but I do wanna say that a man must have purpose. That’s his whole reason for being on the planet is some purpose, whatever that mean. Well, there’s playing the piano at your first concert at the age of 74, or what, whatever that may be. But a man has to have purpose. I, I gotta tell you, my goal in life, had a client just last week said, Hey, you’re you’re getting up there a little bit. You’re 58, when are you gonna retire? And I said, well, I have the capability to retire today if it were purely a quantitative matter. The issue for me is more heavily weighed again, that economic thinking, the qualitative matters for what gets me. I’m still passionate about what I do. I I enjoy working with people. So I told ’em, I said, here’s my retirement plan.
JW:
Never as long as I’m competent and able to do what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna continue. Now, someone else will take the reign. Someone else will run the day to day, just similar to what you did when you said, Hey, I’m gonna retire from the dean’s chair. I’m gonna do the same thing, but I am going to continue in my field as long as I’m capable and competent to do so. But I’m like, you, I have other interests. And so I’m doing some of those pursuits even now, not as heavily as I’d like, but so, so let’s talk just a little bit about your time on the board of Governors. Tell me a a little bit about what is a typical day like in those meetings for you?
SA:
Well, we met every few weeks. Okay. My position at the Fed was a board member. I, I didn’t, I wasn’t on their staff. I didn’t run or wasn’t involved in running day-to-day operations at the Fed. But what we would do is we would meet periodically and we would, we have contacts. So in the state of, the state of Oklahoma is one of several states in the 10th Federal Reserve District. Okay? There’s 12 Federal Reserve districts throughout the country. We’re in the 10th district. The 10th district includes Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, the western third of Missouri, and the northern third of New Mexico. Okay? So we’re in that district, the head office for the Kansas City Fed, the 10th District is in Kansas City, and we have three branches. One here in Oklahoma City, one in Denver, and one in Omaha. And I was on the Oklahoma City Branch board for six years.
SA:
And so what we did, we would meet here in Oklahoma City every, about every six weeks, and we would have contacts out in the business world. So they picked me to be on the Fed, I think for two reasons. One is because I had a PhD in economics, and two, I had connections in the energy industry in Oklahoma and especially here in Oklahoma City. The gentleman preceded me was Larry Nichols, who’s the chairman emeritus of Devon Energy. And he and his father, John Nichols, started Devon Energy back in 1971. So Larry was on that board before I was, and I su succeeded him. So they wanted someone knowledgeable about the energy industry that had contacts in the energy industry. And so I was their choice. So we had about six members on the board, and each one of them came from a different part of the state. And I remember we’d have some from northeast Oklahoma around Bartlesville and Muskogee and Tulsa and Southeast Oklahoma, where you’re from. Governor Anna Tubby was on the board for three years when I was the chairman of that board. And I got to know Governor Anna Tubby really well, and talk about a good supporter of East Central University and what’s going on in Ada. I mean,
JW:
And just a great leader, it in his own right. Just a great leader. Yeah.
SA:
He’s remarkable man. Absolutely re remarkable. So I got to meet people like him and what they would do, every member of our board in Oklahoma City would come to these meetings with information from their business contacts. So my business contacts were in energy. So I would have people from the drilling industry, from the production industry, from the rig industry, I, I would call them and collect a lot of information from them before our meetings. And then I would submit a report to our draft, to our board here in Oklahoma City that would all get compiled, all of our statements and comments would get compiled into our port, which would go to Kansas City. The Kansas City Federal Reserve President would then take the information from our input and from the Denver BO Board’s input and from the Omaha Board’s input. And when, when our president, which was Tom Hoig at the time, I was there, and then later Esther George became president.
SA:
They would go to Washington, to the Federal Open Market Committee meetings with all this information. And then they’d have their discussions and they would, you know, meet at the F O M C at the Federal Reserve in Washington. And they make decisions about monetary policy predicated upon the information that they collected out in their various districts. And so this happened all over the country. So every one of the 12 Federal Reserve banks have their branches. They collect this information, they go to Washington, and they use that information to make informed decisions, data-driven deci decisions about the economy.
JW:
One of the last couple of questions I wanted to ask you is this, you’ve told us a lot about your involvement in the economy from the oil and gas perspective, academics serving as one of the bank board members for the Oklahoma City branch of the Fed. Let’s talk just a little bit though about Steve Agey, the person. So we’re taking piano lessons as kind of a challenge to us in, in terms of a second phase of life. I don’t like the term retirement, Steve, it sounds almost like a nefarious term to me. I I wanna do something to call it re retirement. So you’re doing something new in life. Tell me one of the typical days for Steve Aging now, where you blend not just your past economics. I’m sure you can’t turn that off if you’re like me. I still read the Wall Street Journal. I still have to get my fingers into the numbers but also the piano lessons and things. Tell me, tell me what you do to keep you motivated.
SA:
Well, of course, my students, I still teach. So my students continue to keep me motivated, and that’s always fun. These are graduate students, so most of them are working adults. They come prepared, they ask good questions. The other thing, I mentioned networking earlier in our conversation. Yes. And so what I do in, in my classes is I invite executives in from various components of the energy industry to meet and talk with my students. So I mentioned Larry Nichols with Devon yeah, he, a week ago tonight, he visited live with my class tonight. I’m gonna have Doug Lawler, who’s the Chief Executive Officer of Continental Resources.
JW:
I know, I know Mr. Lawler. Yes.
SA:
CEO at Chesapeake. He and I are very good friends. I’ve had Mike Ming, who’s a former energy secretary for the state of Oklahoma. I’ve had Sean Troskey, who’s the current c e o of OG and e the largest public utility in the state. So because of my age and history and background, I just had an opportunity to meet and network with hundreds and hundreds of executives. And, and I call upon them from time to time to visit with my students. And it’s always intellectually stimulating for me, you know, to stay current with what’s going on in the economy, especially the energy economy. But I do the same in banking because when I was at the Fed, I, I had a large number of banking connections that were developed. So I just have been really fortunate in my life to connect with a lot of smart people in banking, in academics, in energy you name it. Be and, and I, I yolk their strength. And I, I I I drive a lot of satisfaction from that.
JW:
Awesome. Well, folks you can’t see him. This is audio only, but I’m gonna tell you, Dr. Agee looks very youthful. I would assume that he’s also taken up exploration of fountains of youth that pon Deion could not do. Looks like you’ve done it ’cause you look pretty young. Give us one last word of advice. If you could look back on your career and you see someone that is now going into freshman year of college or even high school senior year, what words of advice would you give that person regarding the field of economics or life in general, to live life to its fullest?
SA:
You know, Jimmy, I’ve had conversation with hundreds, literally hundreds of students about that very question. And the thing I always tell them is to follow their passion. You know, if you’re interested in something, go try it. You know, follow your passion. If you’re interested in economics, pursue it. If you’re interested in music, pursue it. If you’re interested in, you know, baseball or football or whatever you, you, you love, go do it and try it. And, and especially at that age when they’re like 18 years old or 17 years old, and they really may not know what they wanna do, you know, for their lifetime. And most people don’t at that age, right? So I said, if you’re curious about something, pursue that curiosity. And if you, if you get out of school and you major in something, you want to go on to graduate school or law school, pursue it. As long as you’re interested in that and don’t give up, keep charging ahead. When I was in graduate school it was it, it was a challenge. I mean, it was really a challenge. And so there were times when I thought, I don’t know that I can do this. I, the math got so complicated that I thought, this is really hard, but I stuck with it. So persistence is really important too, but I would say follow your passion and be persistent.
JW:
Man, what a great way to end a wonderful interview. Dr. Ag. Thank you so much for your time. I know you’re very busy in your second phase of life, as I’m gonna call it. And I want you to know, our listeners, appreciate your candor today, your input and, and your just your intellectual insight is phenomenal. So thank you so much for joining us.
SA:
My pleasure, Jimmy. You call me anytime.
JW:
Take charge of what you are passionate about and have the endurance, and have the tenacity to complete those tasks. As Dr. Agee said, he had options when he was graduating with his bachelor’s degree at the University of Oklahoma. He wanted to exercise his potential, and he sought it out, made a goal that was in passionate for him, but also for him to have something that he could see when he reached that goal and then celebrate. Today, I want you to think about this weekly challenge. I want you to sit down and take a piece of paper and simply write a goal that is measurable in time, that’s exciting to you. That is something that is going to cause you to grow, because that’s what goals do. You know, I, I tell people, Jim Rohn had a statement, I love this. He says, you never really accomplished goals.
JW:
You just grow into them until you reach them. So are you growing in your world? Are you growing in your career? Are you growing in the way you see yourself in the world? Well, in this episode, think like an economist. Think about your opportunities. What are the costs if you don’t take advantage of what life is offering you today? Thanks for joining me. We hope you appreciate this new episode type, and we’re gonna be back next week with some great information that hopefully will help you make more sense in a world that’s very, very filled with craziness. Thank you for joining me again, Jimmy Williams here for Live a Life by Design. Hope to see you soon.
