Dr. Loren C. Scott is the President of Loren C. Scott & Associates, Inc., a 43-year old economic consulting firm whose clients include such large national firms as BP, BellSouth, Capital One Financial, Entergy, ExxonMobil, J.P. Morgan Chase, Nucor, Sasol, and a diversity of others. He is one of the 50-member National Business Economic Issues Council, which meets quarterly to discuss issues of state, national, and international interest. This group has experts who cover international trade, Washington economic policy, retail trade, trucking, steel, chemicals, etc. Dr. Scott is an energy specialist on the NBEIC. He has been interviewed on CNBC, MSNBC, and Bloomberg TV, in addition to several local TV stations, and his work has been cited in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Financial Times, to name a few. His career started at Louisiana State University in 1969 where he spent the next 33 years, rising through the ranks from assistant professor to the prestigious Freeport McMoran Endowed Chair of Economics and the Director of the Division of Economic Development and Forecasting. Over the thirteen-year period from 1983-96, he was the chairman of the Economics Department at LSU. During that time, the Department’s ranking among the 3,000 economics departments in the U.S. rose from 101st to 38th. He is presently Professor Emeritus at LSU. He gives 50+ speeches each year on the state of the economy.