Announcer:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Street in New York City, your Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years.
Announcer:
Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now, here's your host, Josh King, head of communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Hi, everyone. It was impossible given the volatility in the markets the last few weeks not to reach out to a man who's seen a peak or trough or two in his 50 years on Wall Street. My old friend, Joe Plumeri, the legendary Citigroup exec and former chairman and CEO of Willis Group, to share his memories of when markets really dipped. Black Monday, October 19th, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6% before mercifully the closing bell sounded.
Josh King:
Joe's now on the board and vice chairman of another NYSE listed company, First data, but he's got an even more important role than steering a company through the ups and downs of days trading, fighting the scourge of opioid addiction that plagues so many parts of the country, as the chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. Our conversation with Joe Plumeri on defying the odds, playing in traffic, and his toughest battle yet right after this.
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Inside the ICE House is presented this week by the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure or the SFTI Network. SFTI is the backbone of the ICE platform providing high security, high speed direct market access and trade execution capabilities to over 150 global markets. SFTI connects data and analytics for more than 600 proprietary and third party market sources. More on SFTI later in the show.
Josh King:
Joe Plumeri has seen it all in a career that began just blocks from where we're talking here in the library of the New York Stock Exchange. A top lieutenant to the legendary Sandy Weill, he took Willis Group public at the NYSE in 2000 and made billions for shareholders during his 13 years at the helm.
Josh King:
But if you've never had the privilege of being in a packed house, as Joe takes off his jacket and brings the audience to their feet following a two hour stem winder, I'm sorry, you really haven't learned to, as Joe says, play in traffic. The best selling author of The Power of Being Yourself, Joe, our listeners won't get the full Plumeri with this conversation, but we'll try. Welcome to the ICE House.
Joe Plumeri:
Thanks, Josh. Nice to be here. Nice to be in this building.
Josh King:
First, Joe, at this stage of your life, you are a diversified investor, but what's your reaction to the volatility that we've seen in the market over the last few weeks? What's a message you'd share with an investor keeping a close eye on their 401(k)?
Joe Plumeri:
I would say that the markets are what they are. I am blessed by having the experience and the history of having seen markets be volatile. The markets have been fantastic over the last year. The markets have been fantastic in January. We all know what goes up must come down This is not going to happen forever. They correct. Technicians correct them. People concern themselves with inflation.
Joe Plumeri:
They concern themselves with interest rates, when in fact interest rates and inflation are signs of healthy economies, not unhealthy economies. When you see that as an underlying basis and you see that the growth is now at 3% or better in a GDP, I look at all that and I say the underpinnings of the society we live in and our economic culture is good. It's not bad. What's happening out there is technicians. It's the volatility of the market. It's I think I'll take a little bit off and take some profits.
Joe Plumeri:
It's things like that. If the economy was not doing what it's doing, earnings are pure. Earnings are good. Job rate is great. When you look at all these things, which stems from the fact that the Fed thinks it's okay to raise interest rates, they wouldn't raise interest rates if they didn't think that there was a cushion in the economy.
Josh King:
If you've got a time horizon, two, five, 10 years, fasten your seatbelt, go along for bumpy ride, but things go up, things come down.
Joe Plumeri:
I was on Wall Street so long. I mean, I walked in this building in July 8th, 1968 for the first time and the markets were in the 900 range. I will say that again. The markets were in the 900 range in July of 1968. We closed on Wednesdays to get the book straight, because the volume was so big. We were trading, I don't know, a couple three, four, five million shares a day. It was crazy, but we closed because everything was done manually.
Joe Plumeri:
I remember being hired by Carter Berlin & Weill and they told me to come on over and spend a day with our floor broker and he'd go over and take something off the ticker, look at the ticker and said, "Buy a hundred shares." Walk it over to the booth where that stock was traded. Everybody was pushing and shoving and it's crazy, but capitalism at its best. I've been in this building so much and the memories are so great.
Joe Plumeri:
It gives me a great deal of comfort to be able to know that it's still standing, which means the basis of capitalism is standing. The day you talked about the market crashing, if you will, the market was at 5,000.
Josh King:
Well, let's actually-
Joe Plumeri:
I mean, it wasn't 25,000.
Josh King:
Let's actually go back, Joe, to that Monday over 30 years ago, October 19th, 1987. To set the stage, here's how Sam Donaldson laid out the wreckage on ABC News
Sam Donaldson:
Wall Street is closed tonight after the stock market's historic day of panic selling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped roughly 508 points. But around the world at this hour, where it is already Tuesday, other stock exchanges are open for business. And the bad news is the massive selling is continuing elsewhere.
Josh King:
Joe, that day, you're director of marketing and sales for Shearson Lehman Brothers. You see the stock market tanking. What do you do?
Joe Plumeri:
Well, the first thing I did is I have 12,000 financial consultants who are getting calls from their clients panicking. We had what was called a radio FCN, radio financial consultant network, which I put in so that I can communicate with 12,500 brokers. At the end of the day, I got on and I gave them our view of what we thought the markets were doing and the fact that historically these things happen. That if you own a good stock, this market shouldn't reflect on that stock.
Joe Plumeri:
If you bought the stock because it was a growth stock and you were in for the long-term, don't let this bother you. If you bought the stock because it was a growth stock and it gave dividends and it's still doing that, don't let this bother you. You got to separate the markets from the individual stocks that you buy and what they're doing for the individuals you're doing them for.
Joe Plumeri:
If your objective is growth, it's still growing, the company's earnings are growing, the dividends are still being paid out, don't worry about the market. They're two different things. And that's the kind of conversations you have to have with people. That day was a long, long day. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was on with the brokers from 4:00 or 3:30 in those days when we closed, 3:30 until I said, "I'll sit here all night if you want me to, guys," because I knew that they wanted to talk to somebody because their clients were talking to them.
Joe Plumeri:
It's an emotional thing. It's a human thing. I finally got home at 11:00. I'll never forget this. The phone rings. There were no cell phones. The phone rings and it's my father, who always wanted me to be a lawyer, and he said... He didn't know what was going with the markets, but you couldn't help that day. Just being alive, you turned the TV on. He said, "How you doing?" That's the way my father... "How you doing?" I said, "I'm doing okay, pop. I had a long day. I'm doing okay."
Joe Plumeri:
He said, "Your mother wants me to ask you..." Every time he wanted to say something, he always said, "Your mother wanted me to ask you." He said, "Your mother wanted me to ask you if you still have that thing we gave you when you've graduated from law school." He was talking about the Joe Plumeri attorney at law sign, the shingle. I said, "Yeah. I still have it, pop." He says, "Your mother says maybe you should go find that thing."
Josh King:
Joe, your journey to Wall Street began, I don't know, a couple blocks away from where we are right now.
Joe Plumeri:
Yeah. 55 Broad Street.
Josh King:
You were a student matriculated at New York Law School. How did you get from the hard scrapple streets of Trenton, New Jersey following your parents' dream that you might become a lawyer and instead knock on the door that sends you in a completely different trajectory?
Joe Plumeri:
Well, I believe in playing in traffic. Playing in traffic doesn't mean go get hit by a car. It means show up. It means knock on doors. It means engage, because you'll never know what's going to happen if you don't engage. I registered for my first year of classes at New York Law School, which is up the street on Worth Avenue, Worth Street. My classes were over at noon. I thought it'd be a great idea to go knock on doors and find a job at a Wall Street law firm. I didn't know anybody in New York.
Joe Plumeri:
I was by myself. I thought all law firms had three names. I'm looking at directories in the buildings and I saw Carter, Berlind and Weill at 55 Broad. I think that's a law firm. It doesn't say it's a brokerages firm. I go upstairs and I say to... Those days you could just walk in and out and do anything you want. I said to the receptionist, "Who can I talk to about a job?" And she said, "Well, this is very small. We don't have a personnel director." She says, "Go down the hall and ask for Mr. Weill."
Joe Plumeri:
I go down the hall and asked for Mr. Weill and he said, "What can I do for you?" And I said, "Look, I'm going to law school in the morning and I want to learn the academic in the morning and learn the practical parts of the law in the afternoon." I give him the whole spiel and it was great. It was a great spiel. He says, "That's a great idea, but what makes you think you can do that here?" I said, "This is a law firm." He said, "No, it's a brokerage firm." This was July 8th, 1968.
Josh King:
Carter, Berlind and Weill, it sounds like a law firm to me.
Joe Plumeri:
It sounds like a law firm. I'm not easily embarrassed, but I wanted to get out of here fast. Number one, I was in the wrong place, and two, I wasn't sure what a brokerage firm was. He said, "No, I like your moxie." He said, "I'll give you a job after school." That's exactly what he said. He took me down to where the brokers were and they had nice suits. I'm a kid just going to law school. They said, "Give the kid a job in the afternoon." They said, "We don't have many place to put him."
Joe Plumeri:
Sandy said, "Take the door off the closet and stick a desk in the closet," so half of the desk will be in the closet and the rest of me is in the hall. People are walking around me. Hit me in the back of the head. I'm the kid. That's how I started on Wall Street when I thought I was going to law firm. Well, after three months, I'm listening to brokers. I see the way they're dressed. I like trading stocks. That's fun. After three months I said, "I think I want to be a broker."
Josh King:
The firm named then Carter, Berlind and Weill, it eventually became Citigroup. The number of years that you worked?
Joe Plumeri:
32 years.
Josh King:
32 years with Sandy Weill and its successor companies. Your memories of this building and being involved with companies. You were head of a company called Primerica Financial Services that eventually spun out and had its IPO right here.
Joe Plumeri:
Right here. What was great about playing in traffic that day is that not only didn't I wind up at a law firm or wind up at a brokerage firm. It happened to be the one that went from a very little firm to Citigroup. Along the way, Shearson Lehman Brothers, great acquisitions, and E.F. Hutton, which were great companies of the day. It's 1968 from a closet to 1990 I became CEO of Shearson Lehman Brother.
Joe Plumeri:
I think less of that goes on today, Josh, because of technology, where people think texting somebody or emailing somebody or Instagramming somebody or doing all the technological things you do is enough, when in fact what people are really going to be driven by is what they see in your face, your desire, your passion, your sense of vision, your sense of yourself. That's going to make the difference between who you are and the other guy.
Josh King:
When your 32 years, Joe, were over at Citigroup, I think it was 1999, you could have just rode off into the sunset, but you played in traffic again and ended up ringing the bell of the New York Stock Exchange for an IPO of your own. How did that happen?
Joe Plumeri:
Well, I had been at Citi and its predecessors, as you say, for 32 years and everything I had done primarily was domestic. I'm a what else guy, not a what is guy. I always asked him, "What else? What else is there?" And what else for me was is that I had never run a global company. I had visited as a vacationer, a tourist, but not somebody that had a sense of the way things should be done here. I wanted to see if the same techniques and the same style could be transported across the sea or other seas.
Joe Plumeri:
I run into Henry Kravis playing traffic. I run into Henry Kravis in Paris. I'm there between jobs. I had finished a Citigroup at the end of '99. I still hadn't found a job yet, but I was looking. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm looking for a next adventure." He said, "I got this company I just bought called Willis." I didn't know what Willis was. I thought it was that kid on television.
Josh King:
Different Strokes.
Joe Plumeri:
Different Strokes. He says, "It's a British brokerage firm." I wasn't sure what that was. He says, "It's the oldest brokerage firm in the world," and I said, "Ah, I'm not sure I'm interested," because I'm trying to picture Joe Plumeri in London, like Fonzi in London.
Josh King:
It doesn't quite fit.
Joe Plumeri:
It's not going to fit. It was a polite conversation, but it was because I was walking, because I was out playing traffic. He happened to be walking. He called me a couple weeks later and obviously I went to see him because of who it is. He generously and he offered... He said, "Why don't you go over to see the company?" So I did. Talked to the chairman, but I went and I guess I was overwhelmed by the fact that I could run a company that 200 years of its existence was never run by anybody, but a Brit.
Joe Plumeri:
Obviously I'm an Italian American from New Jersey, so I was as far away as you could get. I wanted to prove that that would work. It was a company that didn't make any money. I wanted to prove that that would work. Obviously my style is a little different than the Brit style or the style of a lot of the people in Willis at that time. I wanted to take it public, it was private, to be able to fix it. It was all those motivations. I went to London, played in traffic. I didn't know what was going to happen.
Josh King:
They wanted you to take it public within a couple years?
Joe Plumeri:
They wanted me to take it public within three year, and they said that was my goal. I took a public in eight months. They bought the stock right here, June 12th, 2001. I'll never forget it. I took pictures outside with my friend, Dick Grasso. It was cool. We brought the stock at 13 and a half eight months after and the stock was valued at three when I got there. The first tick was 16 and a half. I got the ticket. It's in a frame. Those days there were tickets. It was paper. It was cool.
Joe Plumeri:
Which just goes to show you, if you got imagination, you got a sense of vision, you got a sense of anything's possible, anything can happen if you have that about yourself. I worry today with technology that that's taken the human spirit away from really what's made the difference between the way the world was and the way the world is today. I think that's got to be injected back into the scheme. I was at Willis for 13 years. I finally left. I don't know. The stock was 44 or 48 or whatever it was.
Joe Plumeri:
It was a great run. I got to see the world. I got a lot of great friends. Opened a brokerage business in China. Great stories about that. A little kid from the neighborhood in New Jersey. It was all about playing in traffic, but also having that sense about yourself that anything's possible. Your imagination is important if you're going to achieve a vision of any kind.
Josh King:
An incredible run. Imagination and vision, two attributes that you need in incredible proportions now in what may be your greatest challenge. We'll talk about more with Joe Plumeri after this.
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Josh King:
We're back with my friend, Joe Plumeri, the former chairman and CEO of Willis Group, the vice chairman of First Data. And as you'll hear very shortly taking on his greatest challenge ever. Joe, we were talking about your time at Willis, a lot of highs there and some very tough lows. One of your board members was Joe Califano. Why did you pick Califano to be on your board and how did that relationship extend beyond the board room?
Joe Plumeri:
I picked Joe Califano for a couple reasons. I had the utmost respect for Joe Califano. If anybody's interested in why we smoke less and why you don't smoke in buildings and restaurants anymore, it dates back to Joe Califano. I always like to question why things are the way they are. When he was Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Jimmy Carter, he banned smoking in federal buildings without asking Carter, knowing full well that Carter wouldn't want him to do it.
Joe Plumeri:
There was such a backlash that he got fired, and he knew he'd get fired, but he thought it was a good cause. That's what actually began the whole non-smoking effort in this country. I always applauded what he had done. He went from there right into addiction, and he created an organization called CASA, the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse.
Joe Plumeri:
I thought that the work he was doing, especially with alcohol and tobacco, huge addictions in this country, bigger than the opioid addiction that we face today and cocaine and heroin, is what he got involved in. CASA did enormous research. He wrote 19 chapters of books. He wrote papers. There was 500 conferences. The place where you wanted to know and get the information on addiction was CASA. He did all that.
Joe Plumeri:
I was very, very proud to know him and I thought that he could be very helpful to us, because I love people with causes and I love people who have conviction. He had a cause and he had conviction, and he's a great man. We became good friends, and he was on the Willis board for a long time.
Josh King:
You've been on the CASA board I think for 20 years. Why at this point did you decide to become the executive chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse yourself when Joe Califano decided it was time for him to retire?
Joe Plumeri:
I guess a couple of reasons, Josh. I mean, you get to a stage of your life when God's been good, I've done well, and I think the essence of this country is give back. I really do. I think it allows us to be able to provide for ourselves and our families the opportunity the country gives us. When you get that opportunity and it's good to you and you're able to get some degree of success, you got to take that and you got to help other people. Secondly, I had the unfortunate death of my oldest son die of overdose.
Joe Plumeri:
He had been addicted for quite some time. It was a long struggle. I write about it in my book as candidly as I possibly could so other people could learn from it and not make the same mistakes I did. I have a personal reason and personal reasons are good because that's where the heart is. I think the biggest epidemic of our age, New York Times said this, the biggest epidemic of our age is the addiction crisis. It goes beyond opioids. I mean, opioids is the drug of the day, if you will.
Joe Plumeri:
Three years from now, it'll be something else. It has to do with changing the culture, changing what's wrong with the culture that allows for people to want to be become addicted. You got to understand that these are not choices people make. It's a disease. No different than catching a cold. Nobody goes to look to catch a cold, but they do because the atmosphere makes them catch a cold.
Joe Plumeri:
We need to be able to educate people about what allows for addiction to happen in this country and why are young people are becoming addicted by this disease. I mean, you got 63,000 people who died last year of some sort of an overdose or effect of a drug. Now, if I take guns and I take car accidents combined, it doesn't equal that. You got 180 people dying a day of addiction. Now, if I told you we're going to have an Ebola attack tomorrow and 180 people are going to die, everybody would leave the building.
Joe Plumeri:
There would be a state of emergency in the city. The sirens would go off and everybody would run for the hills. But that's what happens every day because it's something that we've just taken for granted. We are aware of this problem, but not quite ready to make it a national emergency like we would if Ebola was going to happen. If I take hurricanes Sandy and Irma and Harvey together, they don't equal 180 deaths. And that's what's happening every day.
Joe Plumeri:
I want to do something about that, because those statistics are overwhelming. What's even more overwhelming, Josh, is that if I take the terrible, terrible plight of cancer, and my family's been affected by cancer, so I know all about cancer, 19 million people are affected by cancer. 40 million people are affected by addiction. Now, that's the 40 million that we know of. I don't know of all the people who suffer from a stigma that won't raise their hand and say, "I'm affected by addiction."
Joe Plumeri:
The number is probably about 60 or 70 million people are affected by addiction or close to 25... I mean, you're talking about close to 25% of the population of this country. That's a big deal. We got to be more aware of that. We have to raise the awareness to the fact of the matter that it's an urgent problem and it's a crisis.
Josh King:
A few months ago, Joe, last October, I think it was, President Trump took out his pen in the East Room and spoke about the opioid crisis. Let's go back to that moment Courtesy of David Muir and Cecilia Vega from ABC News.
David Muir:
President Trump declaring war on the nation's opioid crisis today and offering a very personal story about his brother and his battle with addiction. But the president was careful with his words calling it a "public health emergency" and why the words he chose could determine how much money the government will spend to fight this. ABC Senior White house correspondent Cecilia Vega tonight.
Cecilia Vega:
With the stroke of a pen today, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic, the worst drug crisis in American history.
Donald Trump:
I am directing all executive agencies to use every appropriate emergency authority to fight the opioid crisis.
Josh King:
Joe, what response have you seen since the president declared a national health emergency and is the crisis getting worse or better?
Joe Plumeri:
I was excited when I heard that. I don't want to see any more parents burying kids. I don't want anybody to go through what I went through. What I went through is the worst thing that you can... Nothing is worse than that. I don't want kids not to lead a full life. That's what we got going on here. That's a national emergency. What I am dedicated to do is to do something about that. You're going to say, "Well, that's an awesome task. It's overwhelming. You're talking about the entire country changing its direction."
Joe Plumeri:
I told you earlier, I think anything's possible. That's got to start from the heart and it's got to start with having a personal role in what's going on in this country. And that's what we're going to do.
Josh King:
As you mentioned, Joe, earlier, you were brutally honest with readers in the pages of The Power of Being Yourself that for all of your successes as a businessman, you could have been a better parent yourself. Why is parenting such a crucial component when it comes to preventing addiction?
Joe Plumeri:
I think there's two ingredients to parenting as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not a parenting expert. Only an expert at what you shouldn't do. I didn't say I love you enough, and I did not become involved enough in my son's life. I think those two ingredients missing from a child's life where you don't get the ongoing support of a parent and you don't feel the ongoing love of a parent. I mean, immersion. I don't mean high and let's go get some ice cream or let's go to a movie once in a while.
Joe Plumeri:
But I mean, immersion. I don't mean immersion to the point where they call it helicopter parenting and you're all over the kid, but make them understand or her understand that you love them and you want to be involved in their life and you want to support them in a loving way. I didn't do that. The statistic, unfortunately, is that one out of 10 eighth graders have tried drugs. It's on its way. When you're 15 years old, you've gotten to about 50% have tried drugs, vaping. You can't smell.
Joe Plumeri:
That's another way to get marijuana. They crush opioids that the parents leave in their medicine cabinet. Crush them and put it in punch at parties. By the way, most of the people that are addicted become addicted before they're 18. Think about the one thing that affects all of the aspects of society. If you take the criminal justice system, you take education, you take the economy, you take productivity, addiction hits all of those issues and that's an emergency to me and that's a call to arms by a society.
Joe Plumeri:
When you hear my rage, it's a rage against addiction. It's a rage against all of the people and the organizations that don't do anything about this problem that we have.
Josh King:
What's the one thing that you wish every parent knew about in this country?
Joe Plumeri:
I wish every parent understood that every child holds dear to them the comfort and the clarity that their parents love them and their parents are there to support them all the time. If you had that kind of environment, there's no need to go elsewhere to find it. You're not going to find anything that's cosmetic in a drug that's going to give you that feeling to be made up for what your parents should be doing. We wrote a book at CASA called A Guide to Raising a Drug-Free Kid. The corpus of that book is about that.
Joe Plumeri:
I experienced it myself. What I would call what I just said, Josh, was parent power. Parents can do a great deal in this country if they just absorbed what I was saying and think about it for a minute. It's a powerful, powerful weapon that has to be mechanized in this country, organized in this country in such a way that bigger than any army that we've ever put together to fight any war. This is a biggie. You got 180 people a day dying. That's a big deal.
Joe Plumeri:
When I go through these statistics with people, their eyes are wide open and their mouth is open and they can't imagine how big a deal that is. You know the outrage when there's a shooting, an unfortunate shooting, and there's an outrage over guns. 30,000 people die from guns and you got 63,000 people dying from addiction. I don't see a march against addiction. There's lots of marches for other things and appropriately so.
Joe Plumeri:
Don't misunderstand me, but I'm trying to speak on a relative basis about what should be the biggest problem. I think that that kind of awareness and rising to that level is important.
Josh King:
Joe, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse is now concluding its 25th year, a historic one, on the track to make a meaningful difference in the opioid epidemic. You've written the book. You've done the research, and now you're focused on enacting meaningful change. What's needed from CASA in the future and what you got planned?
Joe Plumeri:
I think CASA's done a great job in all the research. We've done papers, books, papers on what states should do with the opioid crisis. If you want to find out what to do, CASA will tell you. The one thing we didn't do is do it. We left it out to somebody else to do it and, unfortunately, I don't think it was done. I want to kind of move in the next 25 years from a think tank to a do tank and create the programs that the research said we ought to create.
Joe Plumeri:
I'd love to put a model cities program together where everybody in the city, from the mayor to the principal of the school to all the parents in the community say, "Not one more. Not one more death in this city." If everybody does that, Josh, and everybody raises their hand, that's not going to happen, but you got to mobilize everybody. There's got to be a sense of leadership. We need to work into states. We need to pass laws and policies as it relates to what pharmaceuticals can manufacture.
Joe Plumeri:
It's insane when somebody has an injury or an operation or whatever the case may be to get 30 oxycodones or any number of other pain killers. Most people use two, three, four, or five. I don't touch them. Tylenol Extra Strength is fine with me. But you put it back in the medicine cabinet and then you know what happens. Somebody finds them and then all heck breaks loose. Cities and states. It's policy. It's laws.
Joe Plumeri:
It's working with pharmaceuticals to get this right, work with companies to put programs in place to help companies, help families of employees, which gets to the kids, because it's all about adolescence and prevention. The healthcare system, I want to know what the healthcare system is going to do about cannabis in this country, because it seems to be growing and everybody thinks it's okay. I think treatment is still something that is elusive, because treatment costs a lot of money.
Joe Plumeri:
It's a political debate as well as to whether there's criminalization of people who are drug addicts. I do not think that's the case. I think it's a disease. If I got a disease, I'm not a criminal. I simply have a problem that needs to be treated. The whole treatment system has to be looked at, what hospitals do, treatment centers do, and then the cost of all of that.
Joe Plumeri:
And then you got the notion of families and what families should be doing and the education of a family and what they should be doing to ensure that their children lead a full life. Those are lots of things that we have to do, but must do if we're going to do something about what I think is a culture changer in this country.
Josh King:
Joe Plumeri, you've got your hands full not only for this year, but for really decades to follow to get this problem solved. Thank you very much for joining us today Inside the ICE House.
Joe Plumeri:
Thanks for having me. Thanks for allowing me to express how I feel and everybody listening, how I feel about the national emergency that we have. If we can do this, we can do anything. History tells us that Americans are great when we're down, but we all fight together for a common purpose or a kind of cause, we can do that.
Josh King:
Indeed, Joe, indeed. That's our conversation this week. Our guest was Joe Plumeri, a man who's seen the world from the podium of the New York Stock Exchange, but is now making a difference where the rubber meets the road on one of America's toughest challenges, as executive chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse and vice chairman of First Data. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so that others know where to find us.
Josh King:
Got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show? Tweet at us @NYSE. Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolff, with production assistance from Ken Abel. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. See you next week.
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