The Crowd:

The business and social worlds came together last week for lunch. Northwestern Mutual Life, led by Chairman and Chief Executive Ed ZoreEd Zore and Newport Beach-based corporate representative Bob Waltos, invited 500 community leaders to lunch at the Balboa Bay Club & Resort and a lively round-table discussion with Zore and special guest Steve Forbes, president, chief executive and editor-in-chief of Forbes Magazine.

The Monday afternoon confab was designed as a seminar “on the economy, financial markets, taxes and legislation.”

Forbes set the tone with his opening remarks.

“We Americans cannot spend what we don’t have,” he said.

The son of the late Malcolm Forbes, the communications tycoon, referred to his failed attempt at securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2001 as “a mid-life career change that didn’t work out, making it possible for me to be here today!”

The audience of men and women in business suits laughed as Steve Forbes dove into the “substance” of his address.

“You can’t have a recovery with a weak dollar,” he said. “The tax cuts of 2003 expire this year. If capital gains tax, along with other taxes, are reinstituted, small business recovery in particular will be further stalled.”

Zore, who had flown in from his Northwestern Mutual headquarters in Milwaukee with Forbes on a rapid multi-city speaking tour, chimed in.

“We have come to a point where we don’t address problems until they are at a crisis point,” said the executive, who began his career with the financial services firm in 1969 and rose to CEO in 2001. “Americans must return to a philosophy of financial prioritizing — deferring gratification is another way of putting it more directly. We can no longer live beyond our means.”

Forbes blames the U.S. government for our recessionary status, at least partially.

“The Fed printed so much money and maintained artificially low interest rates. Frankly, they did not do their job to provide rules that allow people latitude yet discourage fraud and protect the average citizen as well as the overall national best interest,” he said.

“There is no way to get where you want to go by taking shortcuts in life,” he said. “We’re at the point being called ‘the new normal,’ which basically means Americans must learn to save more money.”

Zore quoted statistics showing that Americans overall had a negative rate of saving in 2005-06.

He shared with the audience that he had come from working-class roots, but that his parents placed a high value on education. He was sent to parochial school rather than free public education and learned some significant “life lessons.”

“Most importantly, I learned to work hard and to know myself, to know what I was good at doing. Sounds simple, but kids today must find their focus,” Zore said

Forbes put much of the philosophy in perspective.

“While we tend to think that certain things were better in the past, the truth is that life expectancy today is far better, even for those living at the poverty level, than it was for the middle class only 40 years ago. Opportunities are exceptional,” he said. “Yes, crisis will hurt you. You will be thrown curve balls. How you respond to them is all about leadership, inner values, the tenacity to see things through.”

Zore emphasized the crucial need to improve American education, or “there will be a permanent class division, and underclass of the uneducated that will undermine American innovation.”

He added a chilling reminder: “When you go to McDonald’s today a change machine tells the clerk what to do. Workers can’t or don’t make change.”

The luncheon was fronted by Waltos of the Waltos Group and the discussion was moderated by Forbes Magazine editor Matt Schifrin. Special guests included Ambassador George and Julia Argyros, UC Irvine Dean Andrew Policano and Chapman University President and economist Dr. Jim Doti.

THE CROWD runs Thursdays and Saturdays.