Jeff Madrick is a journalist, economic policy consultant and analyst. He is editor of Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs, visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and director of policy research at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School. He was educated at New York University and Harvard University, and was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard.

He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and a former economics columnist for The New York Times. He has also contributed to online publications such as the Daily Beast and the Huffington Post.

Madrick is the author of several books, including Taking America, and The End of Affluence, both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Taking America was also chosen by Business Week as one of the ten best books of the year.

His book The Case for Big Government, was named a Finalist (runner-up) for the PEN Galbraith General Non-Fiction Award for 2007-2008.

His latest book, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present, is a history of the American economy since 1970, which argues that deregulation of the financial sector allowed the industry to do tremendous damage to the American economy.

Paul Robin Krugman ( /ˈkruːɡmən/; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, the prize was given for Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic concentration of wealth, by examining the impact of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.

Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance),liquidity traps and currency crises. He is the 17th most widely cited economist in the world today and is ranked among the most influential academic thinkers in the US.

Keith Theodore Olbermann ( /ˈoʊlbərmən/; born January 27, 1959) is an American political commentator and writer. Most recently, he was the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of the Current TV weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, until March 30, 2012, a program he hosted with the same title and a similar format on MSNBC from March 2003 to January 2011.

During his time at MSNBC, Olbermann established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of mainly right-leaning politicians and public figures such as Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly,President George W. Bush and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain. Though he has been described as a "liberal", he has resisted being labelled politically, stating "I'm not a liberal. I'm an American".

Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. From 1998 to 2001, he was a producer and anchor for Fox Sports Net and a host of Major League Baseball on Fox.