Martin S. Fridson is a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch & Co., and a member of Institutional Investor's All-America Research Team. He is the author of Financial Statement Analysis, Second Edition and Investment Illusions, both published by Wiley. Fridson also serves on the editorial board of Financial Analysts Journal.

Charles Mackay, L.L.D., was a Scottish journalist in the nineteenth century. He received an honorary law degree from Glasgow University and was a renowned poet and songwriter.

Joseph de la Vega was a businessman and poet residing in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. He lived in a community of Portuguese Jews whose ancestors had fled the Spanish Inquisition.