Richard W. Fisher was President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 2005 to 2015. In this role, Fisher served as a member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve’s principal monetary policymaking group. He also served as the chair of the Conference of Federal Reserve Bank Presidents, the body that oversees the shared operations of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. For five years he served as chair of the IT Oversight Committee for the 12 Federal Reserve banks, putting in place the first system-wide CIO structure.

At his parting ceremony at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Chair Janet Yellen summarized Fisher’s contributions as follows: “You brought us unique perspectives, drawing on deep knowledge of financial markets and global trends… As a reality check on economic theory, you brought to the FOMC table wide-ranging insights gleaned from your ‘interlocutors’—an incredible rolodex of business contacts. And while you dissented many times, you’ve shown great and consistent respect for the views of your colleagues and commitment to listen, to engage in open and honest debate, and to seek common ground…While the media and other Fed watchers attempted to cast you as an “Inflation Hawk” you shunned that moniker—preferring instead to think of yourself and the other FOMC participants as ‘wise owls.’ …You’ve explained the Fed’s mission to the public in plain English, not Fedspeak. I speak for all of us when I say that your keen insights, incomparable candor, and quick wit will be greatly missed.”

Prior to becoming the president of the Dallas Fed in 2005, Mr. Fisher was Vice-Chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm, in partnership with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff in the Clinton Administration. He was also Senior Advisor of FCM Investors in Dallas, Texas, an investment advisory firm that he founded in 1987 (see below). He simultaneously served as Senior Advisor to the law firm of Covington & Burling. He was a member of the Board of Directors of EDS.

From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Fisher was Deputy United States Trade Representative with the rank of Ambassador, responsible for U.S. trade policy and negotiations in Asia, Latin America, and Mexico and Canada. He led numerous high profile negotiations, including the U.S.–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement signed by President George W. Bush in 2002; the initiation of the Free Trade Agreements with Singapore and Chile; the omnibus Free Trade Area of the Americas; and the U.S. Korea Auto Agreement of 1998. He co-chaired the Enhanced Initiative on Competition and Deregulation of the Japanese Economy agreed to by President Clinton and Prime Minister Hashimoto. Ambassador Fisher was also a senior member of the team that negotiated the U.S.–China and U.S.–Taiwan bilateral agreements for accession to the World Trade Organization. He had oversight responsibility for the implementation of NAFTA. While serving as Deputy USTR, Ambassador Fisher served as Vice-Chairman of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and as a member of the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council.

Prior to joining the government, Mr. Fisher was Managing Partner for ten years of Fisher Capital Management (FCM) and Fisher Ewing Partners, with $500 million in equity capital. Fisher Ewing’s sole fund, Value Partners, earned a compound rate of return of 23.6% per annum during Mr. Fisher’s period as Managing Partner.

Mr. Fisher began his career in 1975 at the private banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH), as Assistant to Robert V. Roosa. He was “lent out” to the Carter Administration to serve as Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury for 1977-79 then rejoined BBH to establish their operations in Texas. He was Senior Manager of BBH’s investment management and corporate finance operations in Texas until creating FCM in 1987.

Mr. Fisher was educated at the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard (B.A. cum laude), Oxford (Latin American politics) and Stanford (M.B.A.). He was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas from 1995 to 1997, teaching a second year Masters’ seminar at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College at Oxford University. He serves on the Board of Overseers of Harvard where he is chair of the Finance, Administration and Management Committee and is a member of the university’s Inspections (audit) Committee. He has an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bryant University. He is a trustee of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, the American Council on Germany, and the John Tower Institute at Southern Methodist University. Mr. Fisher is also a trustee of Southwestern Medical Foundation at the University of Texas.

Mr. Fisher is presently Senior Advisor to Barclays. He serves on the Board of PepsiCo, where he is a member of the Audit Committee and also serves on the Board of AT&T.

Mr. Fisher is a first generation American. He is equally fluent in Spanish and English, having spent his formative years in Mexico. He is the proud father of three children: Anders (Harvard ‘99; Stanford MBA ‘04); Alison (Harvard ‘02; U.Texas L.B.J. School, MPA ‘09), James Miles (Harvard ‘06). A fourth child, Texana (Harvard ‘07), passed away in April 2010.

In 2006, Mr. Fisher received the Service to Democracy Award and Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Public Service from the American Assembly. In 2009, he was inducted into the Dallas Business Hall of Fame. In 2014, he received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service. In February of 2015, he received the Order of the Aztec Eagle award, the highest honor given by the Mexican government to foreigners. He received the Neil Mallon Award, one of Dallas’ highest honors, in October of 2015.

Mr. Fisher has been a long history of charitable activities. He endowed the Fisher Family Commons at Harvard, and also the Fisher Family Distinguished International Fellows program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The Fisher Family Award for Community Service is given annually at St. Albans School and National Cathedral School in Washington D.C. and at St. Mark’s School, the Hockaday School and Episcopal School of Dallas. A chair in Women’s Mental Health Studies at Southwestern Medical School, University of Texas is named for his deceased daughter Texana. He has served on numerous eleemosynary boards, ranging from Goodwill of Dallas (chair), the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Symphony, Boys Clubs of Dallas, and The Dallas Committee on Foreign Affairs (chair) to the Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the American Assembly, and the American Council on Germany.

James Grant financial journalist and historian, is the founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a twice-monthly journal of the investment markets. His new book, The Forgotten Depression, 1921: the Crash that Cured Itself, a history of America’s last governmentally unmedicated business-cycle downturn, won the 2015 Hayek Prize of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Among his other books on finance and financial history are Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend (Simon & Schuster, 1983), Money of the Mind (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), Minding Mr. Market (Farrar, Straus, 1993), The Trouble with Prosperity (Times Books, 1996), and Mr. Market Miscalculates (Axios Press, 2008).

He is, in addition, the author of a pair of political biographies: John Adams: Party of One, a life of the second president of the United States (Farrar, Straus, 2005) and Mr. Speaker! The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, the Man Who Broke the Filibuster (Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Mr. Grant’s television appearances include “60 Minutes,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” “CBS Evening News,” and a 10-year stint on “Wall Street Week”. His journalism has appeared in a variety of periodicals, including the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affair. He contributed an essay to the Sixth Edition of Graham and Dodd's Security Analysis (McGraw-Hill, 2009).

Mr. Grant, a former Navy gunner's mate, is a Phi Beta Kappa alumnus of Indiana University. He earned a master's degree in international relations from Columbia University and began his career in journalism in 1972, at the Baltimore Sun. He joined the staff of Barron’s in 1975 where he originated the “Current Yield” column. He is a trustee of the New York Historical Society. He and his wife, Patricia Kavanagh M.D., live in Brooklyn. They are the parents of four grown children.

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

He is the author of fourteen books. His first, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927, was short-listed for the History Today Book of the Year award, while the collection of essays he edited, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, was a UK bestseller. In 1998 he published to international critical acclaim The Pity of War: Explaining World War One and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild. The latter won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award. In 2001, after a year as a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, he published The Cash Nexus. His other books include Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, Civilization: The West and the Rest, and The Great Degeneration.

An accomplished biographer, Ferguson is also the author of High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg (2010) and is currently writing a life of Henry Kissinger, the first volume of which—Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist—has just been published to critical acclaim.

He is an award-making filmmaker, too, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His many other prizes and awards include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).

In addition to writing a weekly column for the Sunday Times (London) and the Boston Globe, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a Cambridge-based advisory firm.

Dr. Pippa Malmgren was a member of The National Economic Council in The White House where she served on the President’s Working Group on Corporate Governance and the Working Group on Financial Markets. She helped negotiate Sarbanes Oxley and the Patriot Act. After 911, she was responsible for looking into terrorism risks to the economy on the National Economic Council. She has had a long career in financial markets serving as the Head of the Asset Management Business for Bankers Trust in Asia and then as the Chief Currency Strategist. She then served as the Deputy Head of Global Strategy for UBS, covering every asset class but equities.

She crowd funded her 2015 book, Signals: the Breakdown of the Social Contract and the Rise of Geopolitics, which became an Amazon best-seller and led to a contract with WME who also represent Malcolm Gladwell and Freakonomics. She is also the author of Geopolitics for Investors, which was released in 2015 and commissioned by the CFA. She also engages in conversations with global policymakers about issues in the world economy for Real Vision TV. Unlike most economists, Dr. Malmgren is part of the real economy as well. She is part of the Maker Movement and co-founded a robotics company. She often talks about the balance of interests between the real economy and financial services and explains how policymakers are seeking to shift that relationship. She also serves on an advisory board at MIT and is part of the Manufacturing Initiative at Indiana University. As an economist, she keenly explains how new technology and innovation together solve old problems and generate new forms of growth. In 2015 she won the Intelligence Squared Debate on Robotics alongside Walter Isaacson, which was broadcast by the BBC to 80 million homes worldwide. She is especially interested in the application of new technology to property from robotic interiors to big data collection processes for managing properties. Dell featured her on their Dell Entrepreneur Spotlight Series in 2013. She has been published in Wired Magazine, Monocle, The International Economy, Economia, Institutional Investor and other publications. She has been named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by Davos twice. She has a certificate from the 101st Airborne Division’s Sabalauski’s Air Assault School. In late 2015, Harpers Bazaar featured her in their Women at Work video series.

She has an M. Sc. and a PhD from LSE. She completed the Harvard Kennedy School Program on National Security. She is a guest anchor for CNBC, Bloomberg and often on the BBC (radio and TV) including Newsnight, The Today Program and Hardtalk. She has lectured at INSEAD, Tsingua, Duke, LSE and elsewhere. She was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony for the London School of Economics in 2013. She is a popular speaker worldwide: Institutional Investor says she was “voted the best/favorite”. The Economist says “excellent”...“inundated with enthusiastic feedback” GAIM says “Showstopper status: charisma, intelligence and chutzpah” “ability to captivate a room is uncanny.” HSBC “highlight of the day” Oil Club “brilliant and fascinating”.

Dr. George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and author of best selling books. As Founder and Chairman of Geopolitical Futures, a new online publication dedicated to forecasting the course of global events, Friedman combines his passion for writing and publishing for his readers world wide who follow international affairs.

Prior to founding Geopolitical Futures, Friedman guided the intellectual vision of Stratfor, the geopolitical intelligence publishing and consulting firm he founded in 1996.

Friedman is the author of numerous New York Times bestselling books. His most recent book, “Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe” (2015), predicts the borderlands where centuries old tensions are re-emerging and will spark new conflicts. “The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21^st Century” (2009), predicts the geopolitical changes shaping the 21^st century and was published in over 20 languages. The prescience of Friedman’s geopolitical predictions keep this book alive as they continue to unfold in many countries. Friedman’s “The Next Decade: Where We've Been and Where We're Going” (2011), was also a bestseller. His other books on warfare and intelligence have included “America's Secret War,” “The Future of War” and “The Intelligence Edge.”

A very popular keynote speaker on the future of international geopolitics, Friedman is in high demand at numerous conferences and industry-specific events. He has briefed for numerous major military and government organizations and is frequently invited to speak internationally.

Friedman appears regularly as an expert on international affairs and intelligence on major television and radio networks and is frequently quoted in leading American and international media publications.

Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Mark Yusko is the Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management. Prior to forming Morgan Creek, Mr. Yusko was President, Chief Investment Officer and Founder of UNC Management Company, the Endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from 1998 to 2004. Throughout his tenure, he directly oversaw strategic and tactical asset allocation recommendations to the Investment Fund Board, investment manager selection, manager performance evaluation, spending policy management and performance reporting. Total assets under management were $1.5 billion ($1.2 billion in endowment assets and $300 million in working capital). Until 1998, Mr. Yusko was the Senior Investment Director for the University of Notre Dame Investment Office where he joined as the Assistant Investment Officer in October of 1993. He worked with the Chief Investment Officer in all aspects of Endowment Management. Mr. Yusko received his Bachelor of Science Degree, with Honors, in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Business Administration in Accounting and Finance from the University of Chicago. Mr. Yusko is an Advisory Board member of a number of private capital partnerships and alternative investment programs and has served as a consultant on alternative investments to a select group of institutions. Mr. Yusko is an Investment Committee member of the MCNC Endowment, a member of the DukeEngage National Advisory Board at Duke University, President and Chairman of the Investment Committee of The Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Foundation at the University of Notre Dame, and President and Head of Investment Committee of the Morgan Creek Foundation.

Charles Gave has been researching tactical asset allocation for over forty years. In 1986, Charles stepped away from pure research to move into money management. He co-founded Cursitor-Eaton Asset Management where he was chief investment officer, managing over $10bn of institutional money in a global asset allocation mandate. Alliance Capital bought Cursitor in 1995, and Charles remained with the firm until 1999. He then elected to go back to his first love, research on tactical asset allocation. He left Alliance Capital to create Gavekal where he is now the chairman. Charles is married and has four children and eight grandchildren.

Dr. Lacy H. Hunt, an internationally known economist, is Executive Vice President of Hoisington Investment Management Company, a firm that manages $6.5 billion for pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, and others. Dr. Lacy Hunt is the author of two books and numerous articles in leading magazines, periodicals, and scholarly journals. Previously, he was Chief US Economist for the HSBC Group, Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at Fidelity Bank, and Vice President for Monetary Economics at Chase Econometrics Associates. A native of Texas, Dr. Hunt has served as Senior Economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Anatole Kaletsky is co-chairman and chief economist of Gavekal Dragonomics, a Hong Kong-based economic consulting and asset management firm. He is also a director of the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Investment Trust and a board member of the Open Society Institute, the George Soros’s philanthropic foundation and a member of the investment committee that oversees its endowment and its relationship with Soros Fund Management.

From 2010 to 2015, Anatole was the founding chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was created after the financial crisis with $150 million in donations from leading financiers to support academic research in non-equilibrium economics. He continues to serve on INET’s governing board.

Before co-founding Gavekal in 2002, Anatole worked for 25 years as an economic journalist on the Financial Times, The Economist, The London Times, and the International Herald Tribune, winning numerous awards including European Journalist of the Year (1998), Newspaper Commentator of the Year (1996), and Specialist Writer of the Year (1981 and 1992). He now writes a monthly column on economics for newspapers around the world for the Project Syndicate’s network as well as a column on Britain’s political economy for Prospect Magazine. His 2010 book Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, which anticipated many of the post-crisis transformations of the global economy, was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Anatole was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics, and at Harvard, where he was a Kennedy Scholar and received an MA in Economics. He has an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Buckingham.

Anatole lives in London and Italy and is married to Fiona Murphy, a documentary filmmaker; they have three adult children.

David Rosenberg is Chief Economist & Strategist for Gluskin Sheff, a Toronto-based independent wealth management firm. David brings a top-down perspective to the firm’s investment management process. He was previously the Chief North American Economist for Merrill Lynch, where he was consistently ranked in the Institutional Investor All-Star Analyst rankings. Financial Post magazine named David one of the five most influential Canadians in investing, and Business Insider called him one of the 12 smartest people on Wall Street. David is also the author of Breakfast with Dave, a daily distillation of his and Gluskin Sheff’s economic and financial market insights.

David Zervos is Chief Market Strategist of Jefferies LLC and Chief Investment Officer of the Global Macro Division of Jefferies Investment Advisers. David is best known across the financial services industry for his timely, insightful macroeconomic commentary and viewpoints. In his role as Chief Market Strategist he exchanges ideas with the world’s leading money managers, hedge funds, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. He appears regularly in financial media and is a frequent speaker at key industry conferences and events.

David joined Jefferies in 2010 after spending 2009 as a visiting advisor in the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. Prior to visiting the Federal Reserve, he held a variety of research, sales and trading positions in the private sector, most recently managing global macro portfolios for Brevan Howard and UBS O’Connor. He began his career as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board in the early 1990’s. He received a B.Sc. in Systems Engineering from Washington University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester.

Dr. Shilling is President of A. Gary Shilling & Co., Inc., economic consultants, and publisher of INSIGHT, a monthly report of economic forecasts and investment strategy. He also is an Investment Adviser Representative, managing institutional and individual client investment portfolios. He has been a Forbes magazine columnist since 1983 and writes the “Financial Strategy” column. He also is an online columnist for Bloomberg View, and is on Investment Advisor magazine’s panel of investment strategists. He appears frequently on business shows on radio and television, including RBCTV.

He graduated from Amherst College A.B. in Physics, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University. While on the West Coast, he served on the staffs of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Bank of America. Earlier, as a high school senior, he ranked twelfth in the nation in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

Before establishing his own firm in 1978, Dr. Shilling was Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of White, Weld & Co. Earlier he set up the Economics Department at Merrill Lynch, at age 29, and served as the firm’s first chief economist. Prior to Merrill Lynch, he was with Standard Oil Co. NJ (now ExxonMobil).

His seventh book, The Age of Deleveraging: Investment strategies for a decade of slow growth and deflation, was published by John Wiley & Sons in late 2010. That followed his sixth book, Letting Off Steam – a collection of commentaries on matters great and small, complex and mundane, serious and frivolous, and its 2013 sequel Letting Off More Steam. His five earlier books covered the economic outlook and related investment strategies.

Twice, the Institutional Investor magazine ranked Dr. Shilling as Wall Street’s top economist and Futures Magazine rated him the country’s number one Commodity Trading Advisor. In 2003, MoneySense Magazine, named him the third best stock market forecaster in the world, right behind Warren Buffett.

He is recognized as an effective and dynamic speaker. He is on a number of charitable boards and is an avid beekeeper.

John Mauldin is Chairman of Mauldin Economics. He writes Thoughts from the Frontline, one of the most widely read investment newsletters in the world. His books, including End Game, Code Red, and Bull’s Eye Investing, have appeared on the NYT best-seller list. John has dedicated his career to helping investors better understand Wall Street, global markets, and the drivers of the world economy. He lives in Dallas and is the proud father of seven children, five of whom are adopted.

Louis-Vincent Gave is co-founder at Gavekal and leads the firm’s China research. Louis began his financial career at Paribas after serving as an infantry lieutenant in the French Army. In 1999, he co-founded Gavekal with Charles Gave and Anatole Kaletsky in London, later moving to launch the firm’s Asia presence in Hong Kong, where he still lives today. Louis has written five books including his latest, Too Different for Comfort. Louis speaks English, French, and once spoke decent Mandarin.

Neil Howe is a historian, economist, and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generations, the economy, and social change. He is the nation’s leading thinker on who today’s generations are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America’s future.

Neil is the founder of Saeculum Research. Saeculum Research’s mission is to reveal and apply the rules of history that govern the shifting rules of the market. By focusing on demography, generations, and historical analogues, Saeculum grasps the big picture that others miss. Based on Neil’s path breaking and interdisciplinary work, Saeculum’s analytical perspective enables you to stop running from the “new normal” and instead to embrace it—and profit from it.

Neil has authored nine books on American generations, mostly co-authored with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), The Fourth Turning (1997), Millennials Rising (2000), and, most recently, Millennials in the Workplace (2010). In his books, Neil coined the term "Millennial Generation." Neil has also authored numerous books and policy reports on fiscal and demographic topics, most recently The Graying of the Great Powers (2008). With Peter G. Peterson, Howe co-authored On Borrowed Time (1989; reissued 2004), a pioneering call for budgetary reform. He later served as senior policy advisor to the Blackstone Group and has testified on entitlement reform many times before Congress. He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the Global Aging Initiative. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University.

Juan Williams, a former White House correspondent at the Washington Post where he worked for over 21 years, has been a senior correspondent and talk show host at NPR. He is currently a political analyst for Fox News and cohost of the daily news roundtable show The Five. He writes a weekly column for The Hill, a Washington, DC,newspaper. Williams is the author of such bestselling and critically acclaimed books as Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, Enough, and Muzzled. He lives in Washington, DC.

Michael Barone is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a contributor to Fox News Channel and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics 1972-2016. He grew up in Detroit and Birmingham, Michigan. He was graduated from Harvard College (1966) and Yale Law School (1969), and was an editor of the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Law Journal.

Mr. Barone served as Law Clerk to Judge Wade H. McCree, Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1969 to 1971. From 1974 to 1981 he was a Vice President of the polling firm of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. From 1981 to 1988 he was a member of the editorial page staff of the Washington Post. From 1989 to 1996 and again from 1998 to 2009, he was a Senior Writer with U.S. News & World Report. From 1996 to 1998 he was a Senior Staff Editor at Reader’s Digest.

Mr. Barone has been the principal co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, the first edition of which edition appeared in 1971, and the 22nd edition, published by National Journal, appeared in August 2013. He is also the author of Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan (Free Press, 1990), The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (Regnery, 2001; paperback edition, July 2006), Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Competition for the Nation’s Future (Crown Forum, 2004; paperback edition, 2005), Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers (Crown Forum, 2007) and Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics (Crown Forum, October 2013).

Over the years he has written for many other publications in the United States and several other countries, including the Economist, the Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times of London. His twice-weekly column is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

Mr. Barone received the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2010, the Barbara Olsen Award from The American Spectator in 2006 and the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association in 1992.

Mr. Barone lives in Washington, D.C. He has traveled to all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts, and also to 54 foreign countries.

Stephen Moore who formerly wrote on the economy and public policy for The Wall Street Journal, is now a Distinguished Visiting Fellow for the Project for Economic Growth, at The Heritage Foundation. Moore, who also was a member of The Journal’s editorial board, returned to Heritage in January 2014—about 25 years after his tenure as the leading conservative think tank’s Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Budgetary Affairs from 1984 to 1987.

Moore was previously the founder and president of the Club for Growth, which raises money for political candidates who favor free-market economic policies. Moore also founded the Free Enterprise Fund before joining The Wall Street Journal.

Over the years, Moore has served as a senior economist at the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, and as a senior economics fellow at the Cato Institute, where he published dozens of studies on federal and state fiscal policy.

He was also a consultant to the National Economic Commission in 1987 and research director for President Reagan’s Commission on Privatization. Steve is a Fox News contributor along with writing regularly for National Review, Forbes’, Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Times, and Orange County Register.

Steve holds a master’s of arts in economics from George Mason University. He has authored numerous books, including “Who’s the Fairest of them All,” “It’s Getting Better All the Time,” “Still an Open Door,” and “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States,” and will soon release “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy.”

Brian Lockhart is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Peak Capital Management, LLC (PCM). With over 20 years of portfolio management experience, he has led the company through exceptional growth since its inception.

Brian directs the company’s suite of portfolios, including the Dynamic Risk Hedged Kinetic Allocation Program, Fundamentally Managed Portfolios, and Alternative Strategies. He has been crafting ETF strategies for nearly a decade, making PCM an early adopter of ETFs. He also serves as the managing editor of the firm’s PCM Report, a monthly publication that provides research and commentary for the investment advisory community.

Brian is routinely quoted in major financial media outlets including Barrons, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, Investment News, and ETF.com and is frequently requested to communicate on a national level on topics ranging from portfolio and risk management to opportunistic fixed income solutions.

Brian is a graduate of California Polytechnic State University in California where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Financial Management. He serves on multiple boards in the investment and non-profit financial sectors. Brian and his wife, Cindy, have been married for over 25 years and love living in Colorado where they raised their two children, Caleb and Jennifer.

Stephen J Cucchiaro is known for his use of proprietary investment research methods including the application of concepts from engineering, system dynamics, and complexity economics in order to analyze the cause and effect relationships that drive the global capital markets. The firm’s approach seeks to blend scientific methodology with sound judgment and practical experience while also recognizing the importance of behavioral factors when making investment decisions. 3EDGE utilizes a research and investment process developed by Mr. Cucchiaro that applies a multi-player game-theory framework to better understand how actions by different actors and agents in both the public and private sectors may materially influence the direction of the global markets.

Mr. Cucchiaro began managing investment portfolios in 1994. He was the founder and served as President and Chief Investment Officer of Windward Investment Management, which was acquired by Charles Schwab in November 2010. At the acquisition, Windhaven Investment Management continued the business of Windward. From the early days of Windward through June 2014, assets under management under Mr. Cucchiaro’s tenure grew from less than $100 million to nearly $20 billion. After more than three years working toward a successful transition following the acquisition, Mr. Cucchiaro left Windhaven in June of 2014.

Mr. Cucchiaro has appeared on Bloomberg TV and Radio, CNBC, and the Nightly Business Report, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, The Financial Times, Forbes, and BusinessWeek.

Mr. Cucchiaro has an SB in Mathematics from M.I.T. and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. During the late 1970s, Mr. Cucchiaro was a member of the US Olympic Team in yacht racing and became national champion of his class in 1978 and Gold Medalist in the 1979 Pan American Olympic Games.

He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Jason Hsu, a co-founder of Research Affiliates, is CEO and Chairman of Rayliant Global Advisors, based in Hong Kong. Rayliant Global Advisors is an investment management firm focused on smart beta strategies tailored to the Asian markets as well as Chinese equity strategies targeted at foreign institutional investors. Jason continues to serve in a non-executive capacity at Research Affiliates as Vice Chairman. He is a strong advocate for investor education and products that add value by systematically exploiting known sources of excess returns and delivering them in low-cost and transparent index chassis.

Jason is at the forefront of the smart beta revolution and is a recognized thought leader in the space. Building on his pioneering work on the RAFI™ Fundamental Index™ approach to investing with Rob Arnott in 2005, he has published numerous articles on the topic, notably including “A Survey of Alternative Equity Index Strategies,” which won a 2011 Graham and Dodd Scroll and the Readers’ Choice Award from CFA Institute and "The Surprising Alpha from Malkiel's Monkey and Upside-Down Strategies," which won the 2013 Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award for Outstanding Paper in the Journal of Portfolio Management. In 2005 and 2013, he received the William F. Sharpe Award for Best New Index Research, which is awarded by Institutional Investor Journals, for his research on smart beta.

Jason is a member of the board of directors at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, as well as an adjunct professor in finance. For his service to UCLA’s Anderson School, Jason received the 2009 Outstanding Service Award. Jason is also a visiting professor in international finance at the Taiwan National University of Political Science.

Jason has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed articles. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Investment Management and serves on the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Index Investing, the Journal of Investment Consulting, and the Journal of Investment Management.

Jason graduated with a BS (summa cum laude) in physics from the California Institute of Technology, was awarded an MS in finance from Stanford University, and earned his Ph.D. in finance from UCLA, where he conducted research on the equity premium, business cycles, and portfolio allocations.

Jared Dillian is the editor of The Daily Dirtnap, Street Freak and The 10th Man at Mauldin Economics. Before joining Mauldin Economics, Jared was one of Wall Street’s preeminent risk-takers. After receiving his MBA from the University of San Francisco, he got hired by Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers where he worked from 2001 to 2008—first as an index arbitrage trader and then as head of the ETF trading desk. During this time, he was routinely trading over $1 billion a day in volume.

After the demise of his employer, Lehman Brothers, Jared left Wall Street to start his own newsletter, The Daily Dirtnap, which has been in publication since 2008. The Daily Dirtnap contains a wealth of trade ideas for the self-directed, sophisticated investor and is published 225 times per year.

Jared’s experiences—the good, bad, and ugly—during his Wall Street career are laid out in his acclaimed book,Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers, published by Simon & Schuster. A tell-all book that shows you what’s really going on behind closed doors on Wall Street’s trading floors. Businessweek named Street Freak the #1 General Business Book of 2011. Named after his highly praised book, Jared’s monthly newsletter, Street Freak, translates the Dirtnap’s unique market commentary and trade ideas into specific, actionable investing advice, complete with portfolio updates and trading alerts. For individual investors who want to trade the trends, but need a little more guidance.

Patrick Cox has lived deep inside the world of technology breakthroughs for the past 30 years. He has written over 200 editorials for USA Today and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and on CNN's Crossfire television program. In the late 1980s, he edited and published one of the first industry-insider software magazines, writing about topics like open-source and user-supported software long before those ideas were widely understood.

Later, he wrote presentations and speeches for the CEO of Netscape. His consulting work has taken him to Fortune 500 boardrooms and inside the war rooms of national political candidates. His 100% unbiased and independent research is based solely on his investigations in transformational wealth-building companies and close consultation with Nobel Prize-winning economists and scientists.

Tony Sagami has worked in almost every part of the financial services industry, including a stint as a life insurance salesman for Prudential; a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, where he built a successful business catering to the needs of conservative, protection-minded clients in his home state of Washington; a portfolio manager at The Donoghue Group; and later in independent market research, analysis, and publishing, eventually becoming one of the most widely read market writers of the last generation.

Tony has written about market topics as varied as investing in Asia, ETF trading, and finding hidden value stocks, as well as how to use short strategies such as put options to protect downside during market slides. Today, he brings his market analysis and trend trading skills to Mauldin Economics as the editor of Yield Shark, Rational Bear, and Connecting the Dots.

Barry Habib is an American Entrepreneur and frequent media resource for his mortgage and housing insights, resulting in a long tenure with monthly appearances for CNBC and FOX.

Barry is the CEO of MBS Highway, a company and platform created to help interpret and forecast activity in the mortgage rate and bond markets.

Barry has created and sold numerous successful businesses including the Mortgage Market Guide, Healthcare Imaging Solutions, and Certified Mortgage Associates. Past highlights of Barry’s mortgage sales career include being recognized as the top mortgage loan originator in the US on two occasions. He personally originated over $2 billion dollars in mortgage loan production over his career.

Crossing the divide from commerce to show business, Barry’s projects have been honored with awards and recognition at the Sundance Film Festival and on Broadway with Tony award nominations. He is the lead producer and managing partner for “Rock of Ages,” a musical theatrical production running on Broadway and internationally. It was released as a major motion picture starring Tom Cruise in 2012.

For the past 20 years, Barry has served as a professional speaker on financial markets, housing, negotiation, technical trading analysis, and more.

Michael E. Lewitt has created several top-ranked credit and hedge funds and managed billions of dollars for institutional and high-net- worth clients over a 29-year career. He also writes one of the industry’s most prominent financial newsletters.

In 1987, he joined legendary investment banking firm Drexel Burnham Lambert as VP in corporate finance. He served alongside Leon Black in NYC, then Michael Milken in Beverly Hills, working on billions of dollars of M&A and corporate finance transactions until the firm filed for bankruptcy in 1990.

He then co-founded Harch Capital Management (HCM) to manage the Milken family’s money, as well as the Drexel Burnham Employee Partnerships, a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of private equity securities that came out of the 1980s LBO boom. Under his leadership, HCM built up a successful money management business. Michael’s investment team managed $1.25 billion in CLOs, one of the top-ranked high-yield credit funds (as ranked by Nelson’s), and a dedicated short fund. They produced strong risk-adjusted returns for clients like Omega Advisors, Investec Bank, Goldman Sachs, and multi-billion-dollar state pension funds LACERA and TRS.

Today he runs The Third Friday Group. The market-neutral fund is BarclayHedge top-ranked (#5 in its category for 2015) and noted for being one of the only funds to generate a positive return in 2008—and, indeed, every single year since inception.

But Michael Lewitt is perhaps best-known for his written market analysis and predictions.

The New York Times published his widely read editorial about the pending bailout of AIG in 2008. He was featured alongside Warren Buffett in the Financial Times and has contributed to Forbes, Barron’s, The New Republic, El Mundo, Trusts & Estates, and PBS NewsHour.

Michael’s Credit Strategist newsletter has gained a large following around the world since 2001. It is read not only by the financial community but also by the media and policy makers. (He was recognized by the Financial Times for correctly forecasting the 2000-2 credit market collapse and the 2008 financial crisis.) He writes Sure Money for a broader audience and contributes to Money Morning as the Global Credit Strategist. He is also the author of two books: “The Death of Capital” (Wiley, 2010) and “The Committee to Destroy the World” (Wiley, 2016).

Michael graduated from Brown University and was a PhD candidate at Yale before earning a JD and LLM in taxation from NYU Law School.

Andersen Fisher Anders Fisher is the Managing Member of Tålamod Asset Management. He has extensive global principal investing experience in public and private equity and credit having worked in Europe, Asia and North America. He is currently an active participant in the corporate credit market, investing in bank loans, bonds, defaulted securities, trade claims and other credit derivatives.

His firm, Tålamod, exists to protect and grow the capital entrusted to it by its partners, which include high net-worth families and individuals, and various institutional investors including endowments and foundations. The hedge-fund’s investment objective is to achieve long-term, absolute returns that meaningfully exceed the risk-free rate regardless of overall conditions in the equity and fixed income markets.

Tålamod invests throughout the capital structure of corporations that are undergoing change, challenges, restructuring, or financial distress. The firm’s investment strategy combines elements of "event-driven” and “distressed” investing with the goal of achieving equity-like returns while taking credit-like risk.

As Managing Member, Anders serves as the chief executive officer responsible for the management of the firm as well as the Chief Investment Officer for the fund. Based in Dallas, Texas, Tålamod was founded by Anders in 2008. The firm takes its name from the Swedish word meaning “patience” and “perseverance”.

Prior to founding Tålamod, Anders worked in San Francisco and Singapore for Watershed Asset Management, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund. Prior to Watershed, Anders worked as an investment professional at Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm focused on buyouts and growth equity investments, and in the London office of Hicks Muse Tate & Furst for their fund focused on European buyouts.

Anders has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an AB from Harvard College.

Much to his chagrin, Grant Williams has reached 30 years in finance.

Over that period, he has held senior positions at a number of investment banks and brokers including Robert Fleming, UBS, Banc of America and Credit Suisse in locations as diverse as London, Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore.

From humble beginnings in 2009, Things That Make You Go Hmmm... has grown to become one of the most popular and widely-read financial publications in the world.

Grant is portfolio and strategy advisor to Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore and also one of the founders of Real Vision Television – an online, on-demand finance channel featuring in-depth interviews with the brightest minds in finance.

A regular speaker at investment conferences across the globe, Grant blends history and humour with keen financial insight to produce unique presentations which have been enthusiastically received by audiences wherever he has traveled.

Danielle DiMartino Booth makes bold predictions based on meticulous research and her years of experience in central banking and on Wall Street. Known for sounding an early warning about the housing bubble in the 2000s, Danielle offers a unique perspective to audiences seeking expertise in the financial markets, the economy, and the intersection of central banking and politics.

Called “The Dallas Fed’s Resident Soothsayer” by D Magazine, Danielle is a well-known speaker who can tailor her message to a myriad of audiences, once spending a week crossing the ocean to present to groups as diverse as the Portfolio Management Institute in Newport Beach, the Global Interdependence Center in London and the Four States Forestry Association in Texarkana. Her success is based on her ability to translate the arcane language of Wall Street thinkers and Fed insiders to the man on the street. Danielle is regularly featured on CNBC and Bloomberg.

From Wall Street to respected columnist to Fed Advisor, Danielle spent nine years as a Senior Financial Analyst with the Federal Reserve of Dallas and served as an Advisor on monetary policy to Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard W. Fisher until his retirement. Fisher called on Danielle to serve at the Fed after becoming a loyal reader of her financial column in the Dallas Morning News. She began her career in New York at Credit Suisse and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette where she worked in the fixed income, public equity and private equity markets. Danielle earned her BBA as a College of Business Scholar at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from the University of Texas at Austin and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

David Hay is the Chief Investment Officer of Evergreen Gavekal, formerly Evergreen Capital Management, an independent registered investment advisor that caters to high-net- worth individuals and families. Evergreen Capital formed an alliance with Gavekal in 2012 and together they manage over $2 billion in assets. Since David joined Evergreen in 2002, and purchased a majority equity interest, the firm has quadrupled its assets under management.

David has been in the portfolio management industry for over 35 years. In addition to focusing on macro-economic research and serving his long-time clients, he has also been the primary author of the Evergreen Virtual Advisor (EVA) newsletter since 2006.

Prior to acquiring majority interest in Evergreen, David was a Senior Vice President and Senior Portfolio manager at Smith Barney; David and his team were instrumental in establishing the Portfolio Advisory Program. He also served on the Smith Barney Directors Advisory Group, gaining valuable experience in merger integration and client service enhancement. David got his start in the securities industry in 1979, when he joined Dean Witter Reynolds, now Morgan Stanley. He rose to the position of Senior Vice President in 1983. In 1985 he was the youngest member to be elected to Dean Witter’s elite Chairman’s Council.

In August 2015, President Enrique Pena Nieto appointed Mr. Jose Calzada as Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food.

As Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Calzada oversees Mexico’s agrifood sector policies and programs geared to strengthen productivity and output growth. Productivity of Mexico’s agriculture is on the rise, posting growth rates of 4 – 4.5% annually, which doubles the average yearly growth rate of 2.4% for the country’s economy as a whole. Mr. Calzada has strengthened existing markets and opened new markets for Mexican exports, like China and South Korea. Moreover, under Mr. Calzada’s watch, Mexico successfully concluded negotiations on agriculture and sanitary provisions of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement or TPP, of which Mexico is a member along with the United States, Japan, and nine additional countries of Asia Pacific and the Americas.

In 2006, Mr. Calzada won a seat in Mexico’s Senate Chamber, serving there until 2009, when he won the governorship election of this home State of Queretaro. Governor Calzada won recognition as the best evaluated among his peers for three consecutive years. During his tenure, Queretaro’s economy experienced the highest GDP growth in the country, approaching a 6% growth annually, aided by large aerospace and automotive plant investments. He also won recognition for implementing the social program “Soluciones” which was the country's most successful program for reducing poverty rates and alleviating malnutrition, especially among young children.

Secretary Calzada was born August 21, 1964. He has a wife, Sandra Albarran, and they have three children: Sandra, José Ramón and Diego. Mr. Calzada earned a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Diploma in Business Administration. He also obtained a Diploma in Metropolitan Government and Regional Administration. Currently, he is a PhD candidate to obtain his doctoral degree in Economic Sciences from the Autonomous University of Queretaro.

James A. Hayward, Ph.D., Sc.D., is Chairman, President, and CEO of Applied DNA Sciences. With over 30 years of experience in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, life science and consumer product industries, Dr. Hayward is actively involved in the global effort to ensure the authenticity of products, and protect supply chains from counterfeiting and diversion

Patented and applied in over a billion products throughout the world, the Company’s SigNature® DNA markers are unique, botanical, “green” DNA sequences that can help preserve the quality and integrity of industries from pharmaceutics to the military. Popular Science Magazine awarded “Innovation of the Year” to the company in 2014.

Dr. Hayward received his bachelor’s degree in Biology and Chemistry from the State University of New York at Oneonta 1976, his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1983, and an honorary Doctor of Science from that same institution in 2000.

Among his honors, he is the 2015 Long Island Innovator of the Year Award. He received the David Award by Networking Magazine in 2014. Dr. Hayward has been twice named “Entrepreneur of the Year;” in 2002 by Inc. Magazine and in 2009 by the Long Island Technology Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of the first “Helix Award” from the International Biotechnology Organization.

James was one of the founding principals and research director of Europe's first public liposome company, Biocompatibles Ltd. From 1984 to 1989, he was responsible for product development at Esteé Lauder Companies, where he served as director of research worldwide.

Between 1990 and July 2004, Dr. Hayward was the Chairman, President and CEO of The Collaborative Group, Ltd., a provider of products and services to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and consumer-product industries based in Stony Brook, New York. The four division of The Collaborative group were separately sold to Dow Chemical, BASF, and to institutional and private investors.

He also served or serves on the Boards of the Stony Brook Foundation, the Research Foundation of the State of New York, Long Island Life Sciences Initiative, and the Ward Melville Heritage Foundation, the LIA, the Regents Advisory Council and several corporate boards.

Dr. Michael West is the Chief Executive Officer of BioTime, Inc. (NYSE MKT: BTX). BioTime and its subsidiaries are focused on developing an array of research and therapeutic products using pluripotent stem cell technology.

He received his Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989 concentrating on the biology of cellular aging. He has focused his academic and business career on the application of developmental biology to the age-related degenerative disease.

He was the founder and first CEO of Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California (NASDAQ: GERN) and from 1992 to 1998 he was a Director, and Vice President, where he initiated and managed programs in telomerase diagnostics, oligonucleotide-based telomerase inhibition as anti-tumor therapy, and the cloning and use of telomerase in telomerase-mediated therapy wherein telomerase is utilized to immortalize human cells.

From 1995 to 1998 he organized and managed the research collaboration between Geron and its academic collaborators James Thomson and John Gearhart that led to the first isolation of human embryonic stem and human embryonic germ cells.

From 1998 to 2007 he was President and Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. now Ocata Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OCAT) where he managed programs in nuclear transfer, retinal differentiation, and PureStemTM, a technology for the multiplex derivation and characterization of diverse clonal human embryonic progenitor cell lines.

In 2013 he led BioTime’s efforts to acquire Geron’s stem cell assets through the subsidiary Asterias Biotherapeutics (NYSE MKT: AST).

Dr. Seymour is a physician/scientist who was a co-founder of NanoViricides, Inc. in 2005. He previously founded a Company that developed a rapid test for HIV now in widespread use. He practiced internal medicine in Los Angeles for over 30 years. He holds a Master’s degree from UCLA in the epidemiology of infectious diseases. He also was on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine. He served in the US Army Medical Corps Reserve during the Vietnam conflict, attaining the rank of Major. He has three children, two of whom are physicians.