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Shaquille O'Neal and our $600 stimulus

Sometimes the best business insights lie in small details, like a dry cleaning bill or a university's endowment. It was true with Florida's economy this past week. Five scenes come especially to mind:

By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Editor
Published January 27, 2008

Sometimes the best business insights lie in small details, like a dry cleaning bill or a university's endowment. It was true with Florida's economy this past week. Five scenes come especially to mind:

1 One Floridian claims to spend $875,000 a month, from $110,505 on vacations to $23,950 on clothes, laundry and dry cleaning. These megasums belong to Miami Heat basketball star Shaquille O'Neal, and are itemized in court documents from his divorce proceedings. And to think our federal leaders spent last week assembling an economic stimulus deal to send individuals $600 and working couples $1,200 just to respark a sputtering economy.

2 New figures on university endowments are out and, no shock here, Harvard tops all U.S. schools with a $34.6-billion endowment. How timely to learn how dirt poor Florida universities are by comparison. Though 76 universities and colleges boast endowments topping $1-billion, only one is in Florida. According to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the University of Florida reached $1.2-billion last year. Among other institutions: Florida State University $549-million, University of South Florida ($389-million) and University of Central Florida ($116-million). Seems we have a ways to go to make our higher education system competitive in the bigger world.

3 We noted the ongoing fate of existing home sales in the Tampa Bay market. But condos? Sales volume dropped plenty, yet the median sales price slipped only 1 percent, to $181,700. That's encouraging.

4 Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work for" ranking is out. While no Tampa Bay company made it, Publix in nearby Lakeland did. It's one of 14 U.S. companies to make the list every year since the ranking began in 1998.

5 We still can't figure out how to manage our water. Water-restricted St. Petersburg flushes 30-million gallons (which end up in the gulf) a month just to clean its pipes. As nuclear power regains momentum in the Southeast, existing plants could be idled if drought limits their use of freshwater supplies for cooling. And just as Central Floridians are keen not to pump more water to South Florida, North Floridians are even more anxious to safeguard their supplies (including the St. Johns River) from Central Floridians, as a St. Augustine water summit concluded last week. Drink up while ye may.

Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 25, 2008, 23:08:08]