About the Authors

Ben Stein can be seen talking about finance on Fox TV News every week and writing about it regularly in Fortune magazine, The American Spectator, and Newsmax. Not only is he the son of the world-famous economist and government advisor Herbert Stein, but Ben is a respected economist in his own right. He received his B.A. with honors in economics from Columbia University in 1966, studied economics in the Graduate School of Economics at Yale while he earned his law degree there, and worked as an economist for the U.S. Department of Commerce. He taught law and economics for many years at Pepperdine Law School.

Ben Stein is known to many as a movie and television personality, especially from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and from his long-running quiz show, Win Ben Stein’s Money. But he has probably worked more in personal and corporate finance than anything else. He has written about finance for Barron’s and the Wall Street Journal for decades, and was a columnist for the New York Times for many years. He was one of the chief busters of the junk-bond frauds of the 1980s, has been a long-time critic of corporate executives’ self-dealing, and has written numerous books about personal finance. He frequently travels the country speaking about finance in both serious and humorous ways, and is a regular contributor to the CBS News Sunday Morning, Fox News Network, and CNN. He was the 2009 winner of the Malcolm Forbes Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism.

Web site: www.benstein.com.

Phil DeMuth was the valedictorian of his class at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1972, and then took his master’s in communications and Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Both a psychologist and an investment advisor, Phil has written for the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, the Journal of Financial Planning, and forbes.com, as well as Human Behavior and Psychology Today (or anybody who will publish him), and is co-author of eight books with Ben Stein. His opinions have been quoted in Yahoo! Finance, On Wall Street, and Fortune magazine, and he has been profiled in Research magazine and seen on Forbes on Fox, Wall Street Week, and various CNBC shows (basically, anybody who will have him). All this pales before his major achievement, which was when Phil’s high school rock band opened for Herman’s Hermits at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. Today Phil runs Conservative Wealth Management LLC in Los Angeles, a registered investment advisor to high-net-worth individuals, institutions, and foundations.

Web site: www.phildemuth.com.