Business, Economics and Finance

Journalist Martin Mayer writes about finance, advertising, education and law, but his expertise is in finance. His written many books. His latest: "The Bankers: The Next Generation: The New Worlds of Money, Credit and Banking in an Electronic Age" is a rewritten, updated version of his best selling book on banking which he wrote 20 years ago.

Greider is National Editor for Rolling Stone, and a former Washington Post editor. He assesses the state of the global economy in his new book "One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism." He writes that an industrial and economic revolution is taking place in the world, and that its effects may be far greater than that of the industrial revolution.

Fortune Magazine's senior editor Joe Nocera and Ron Chernow. They can both be seen in the new Frontline documentary "Betting on the Market." The documentary is based in part on Nocera's 1994 book, "A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class." It traces America's obsession with Wall Street, and looks at the consequences. Nocera serves as correspondent in the film. Chernow is the author of "The House of Morgan," which received a National Book Award in 1990.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg talks about corporate language.

Philip Hilts, correspondent on health and science policy for The New York Times. His new book is "Smokescreen: The Truth Behind the Tobacco Industry Cover-up" (Addison-Wesley). Hilts first broke the story of the now-infamous Brown and Williamson tobacco papers, which revealed when tobacco executives first learned about the addictive nature of nicotine and the dangers of smoking. Hilts' stories for the New York Times led to Congressional hearings.

Journalist Richard Kluger. He's written a new history of the tobacco industry in America: "Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris." (Knopf). Kluger was literary editor of the New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote for The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

Compensation expert Graef Crystal. He used to design compensation packages for CEOs. But he's since become critical of the widening gap between what top executives make and what workers do. He recently conducted a preliminary survey of executive compensation in the nation's largest corporations. The survey found that the pay of chief executives has been rising, while that of workers has stagnated.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the language of downsizing.

Ira Kay is the Practice Director of Watson Wyatt's Executive Compensation Practice. He's also the author of "Value at the Top: Solutions to the Executive Compensation Crisis" (Harper Collins).

International investor and philanthropist George Soros and one of the world's wealthiest men. He's been called the "world's greatest investor." As head of the Soros Foundation, (a philanthropic organization) he's given away millions internationally, funding such things as a water-treatment plant for Sarajevo, low-income housing units for South Africa's urban townships, and a University for Central Europe in Budapest.