Allan H. Meltzer

Allan H. Meltzer (born February 6, 1928) is an American economist and professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was born in 1928 Boston, Massachusetts. Meltzer specializes on studying monetary policy and the US Federal Reserve System, and has authored several academic papers and books on the development and applications of monetary policy, and about the history of central banking in the US.

Meltzer served as president of the Mont Pelerin Society for the 2012–2014 term.

Meltzer's study A History of the Federal Reserve is considered the most comprehensive history of the central bank. Volume I covers the years from the creation of the Fed in 1913 until the accord with the Treasury in 1951. Volume II Book 1 covers the years from the accord in 1951 until 1969, and Volume II Book 2 discusses the period from 1970 until the end of the Great Inflation in the mid-1980s.

Meltzer has confirmed that he originated the aphorism "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn't work."

Tom Dwan

Thomas Dwan Jr. (born July 30, 1986) is an American professional poker player who played online in the highest-stakes No-Limit Texas hold 'em and Pot-Limit Omaha games, primarily on Full Tilt Poker under the screen name "durrrr". Dwan has won prize money in live poker tournaments and has appeared on NBC's National Heads-Up Poker Championship, the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh seasons of Poker After Dark, the third, fourth and fifth seasons of Full Tilt Poker's Million Dollar Cash Game, and the fifth and sixth seasons of GSN's High Stakes Poker.

Poker

Dwan attended Boston College before dropping out to pursue poker full-time.

Online poker

Dwan began playing online poker with a $50 bankroll. He initially focused on sit-and-go tournaments, later switching to multiplayer cash games then to heads-up cash games.

According to HighStakesDB.com, a site that tracks high-stakes online poker, Dwan earned $312,800 in 2007 on Full Tilt Poker and $5.41 million in 2008. Before the 2007 World Series of Poker, Dwan claimed to have lost, at the time, $2 million of his $3 million bankroll, over a four-month period. He recovered from this loss within a year. In January 2009, Dwan lost more than $3.5 million, which he recovered after six months. However, from late October to late December 2009, Dwan suffered his then-largest downswing, losing approximately $2 million to Phil Ivey, Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies and $5 million to Viktor Blom.

Ron Paul

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American politician, author, and physician, who is a former Republican congressman, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in the 1988 U.S. presidential election.

Paul served as the U.S. Representative for Texas' 14th and 22nd congressional districts. He represented the 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and from 1979 to 1985, and then represented the 14th congressional district, which included Galveston, from 1997 to 2013. On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate in the Republican primaries of 2008 and 2012. Paul is a critic of the federal government's fiscal policies, especially the existence of the Federal Reserve and the tax policy, as well as the military–industrial complex, and the War on Drugs. Paul has also been a vocal critic of mass surveillance policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance programs. Paul was the first chairman of the conservative PAC Citizens for a Sound Economy and has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement.