The Economic Warrior

Michael Jay Markey, Jr is a co-founder and owner of Legacy Financial Network and its associated companies. His vision has expanded the organization from one location to three, with the hopes to make Legacy a national company. He attained his bachelor’s degree from Eastern Michigan University while playing baseball for the Eagles.

Michael’s accolades include being recognized as the trainer of the year for a previous insurance employer, a Million Dollar Round Table; member in 2010, ’11, ’12, ’13, ’14, & ‘15. He earned Court of the Table honors in ’11, ’12, ’13, ‘14 and ’15 and Top of the Table honors in ’14. MDRT is an exclusive organization designed to recognize those in the top of the insurance services field. In addition to being an investment advisor representative for LFN Advisors LLC, and an insurance agent for Legacy Financial Network, Michael’s main passions are his faith and his family. He shares his faith with his clients and incorporates the values it instills into Legacy’s Four-Step System. For further information please visit www.legacyfinancialnetwork.com

Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute, where he serves as a writer, public speaker, and advocate for property, markets, and civil society. He previously worked as a longtime advisor and chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, for whom he wrote hundreds of articles and speeches. In his years with Dr. Paul he worked with countless grassroots activists and organizations dedicated to reducing the size and scope of government.

Jeff also spent many years as a tax attorney advising private equity clients on mergers & acquisitions To find out more about Mises Institute, visit www.mises.org

William Bruce Dyke has lived in Beijing, China, for more than five and a half years. After graduating from the University of New Hampshire in 2013, he started his first job teaching English as a second language to Chinese students. From there he parlayed his skill set into a business development role at the education franchise RISE (NYSE: REDU), which was eventually brought public on the NYSE by Bain Capital, a private equity firm based in Boston, MA. He has most recently worked as a supervising editor at online education company 51Talk (NYSE: COE). Will is proficient in both Mandarin and Spanish. He has also lived and studied in Budapest, Hungary, which has added significantly to his global perspective. He has a blog at www.willdyke.com where he shares useful information about China, learning Chinese, and insights behind the giant economic and industrial power of China today.

Mike McKinnon is a native of Flora, Illinois. After leaving higher education, Mike opened McKinnon Travel Services. His group travel business allowed him to travel to Europe and the Middle East over 100 times. Mike also became part-owner of the AAA Chicago Lions football team of the Northern States League which won the 1982 championship. In addition, Mike began to buy, restructure and sell numerous pizzerias. Furthering engaging his entrepreneurial side, Mike got involved in the long distance telecommunications industry as it was just expanding. In 1996, Mike founded College Planners of America, Ltd. He brought all his hard-earned understanding of tax law to bear for parents of college-bound students.

Mike was on the Board of Trustees of College of DuPage for 12 years, serving four years as Chairman. He is a past member of the Executive Board of the NICCP and a member of the Junior College Football Hall of Fame. He is married to the former Judy Bazelon and resides in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Mike has also been featured in Frank Bruni’s 2016 best seller, “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.” In the author’s words: “A conversation with [Mike] McKinnon is an eye-opening, option-diversifying revelation.” (p. 144)

“I truly have a passion in working with students and parents. I really feel their pain in trying to navigate a system that changes constantly (and with every change there seems to be a higher cost associated with it!) Nothing beats the satisfaction I feel as I see our students succeed, growing from a teen with no direction into a young, contributing adult.”

You can contact Micheal directly at 630-971-2300, www.collegecost.org.

John "Duffy" McCarthy is a principal for MSA Group, a Hampton NH based sales and marketing firm which has worked successfully in the building supply industry throughout New England and the Northeast for three decades. As well as being a successful businessman, Duffy has been a successful yacht captain traveling throughout the East Coast and the Caribbean. A believer in the underdog, "Duffy" is combating the Big Box and Amazon domination of retail with an online service to serve building contractors and homeowners with a new service to purchase lumber and other building products online. For for more information, contact Duffy directly at [email protected] , visit www.lumberyarddirect.com or call 508-803-2570

Eileen Appelbaum is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC, Fellow at Rutgers University Center for Women and Work, and Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester, UK. Prior to joining CEPR, she held positions as Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University and as Professor of Economics at Temple University. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Appelbaum’s research focuses on organizational restructuring and outcomes for firms and workers; private equity and financialization; and work-family policies. Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, coauthored with Rosemary Batt, was selected by the Academy of Management as one of the four best books of 2014 and 2015, and was a finalist for the 2016 George R. Terry award. Unfinished Business, Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy, coauthored with Ruth Milkman, examines the effects of paid family leave in California on employers and employees. It has been widely cited in discussions of national paid family and medical leave policy. Her current research examines the implications of consolidation of hospitals and decentralization of health services to outpatient care centers for the jobs of non-professional employees in these two segments of the healthcare industry.

Several of Dr. Appelbaum’s earlier books – The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the US with Rosemary Batt, Low Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace with Annette Bernhardt and Richard Murnane, and Manufacturing Advantage: Why Higher Performance Work Systems Pay Off with Peter Berg, Thomas Bailey and Arne Kalleberg – were selected by Princeton University for its distinguished list of Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics.

She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including “Domestic Outsourcing, Rent Seeking, and Increasing Inequality,” RRPE, 2017: 1-16 and “Implications of Financial Capitalism for Employment Relations Research: Evidence from Breach of Trust and Implicit Contracts in Private Equity Buyouts,” British Journal of Industrial Relations 51(3): 498–518, 2013. You can find out more about the Center for Economic and Policy Research by visiting www.cepr.net

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist, columnist, blogger, and former civil servant.He was the United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan in 1981.From 1975 to 1978, Roberts served on the congressional staff. As economic counsel to Congressman Jack Kemp. He drafted the Kemp-Roth bill (which became the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981). He served as economic counsel to Senator Orrin Hatch,The Wall Street Journal editor Robert L. Bartley offered him an editorial slot. He wrote for the WSJ until 1980. He was a senior fellow in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.

From early 1981 to January 1982, Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. After his time in government he turned to journalism, holding positions of editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week, the Scripps Howard News Service as well as contributing editor to Harper's Magazine.

Roberts was professor of business administration and professor of economics at George Mason University and was the inaugural William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at Georgetown University, serving for 12 years. From 1993 to 1996, he was a distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute. He also was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. You can find out more about Paul by visiting www.paulcraigroberts.org

David McKnight graduated from Brigham Young University with Honors in 1997. Over the past 20 years David has helped put thousands of Americans on the road to the zero percent tax bracket. He has made frequent appearances in Forbes, USA Today, New York Times, CBS Radio, Bloomberg Radio, Huffington Post, Reuters, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Nasdaq.com, Investor’s Business Daily, MarketWatch and numerous other national publications. His bestselling book The Power of Zero has sold over 140,000 copies and the updated and revised version was published by Penguin Random House. When it was launched in September of 2018, it finished the week as the #2 most-sold business book in the world. This book was recently made into a full-length documentary film, also entitled The Power of Zero. As the President of David McKnight & Company, he mentors hundreds of financial advisors from across the country who specialize in The Power of Zero retirement approach. He and his wife Felice have seven children.

William D. Cohan, a former senior Wall Street M&A investment banker for 17 years at Lazard Frères & Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorganChase, is the New York Times bestselling author of three non-fiction narratives about Wall Street: Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World; House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street; and, The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co., the winner of the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. His book, The Price of Silence, about the Duke lacrosse scandal was published in April 2014 and was also a New York Times bestseller. His new book, Why Wall Street Matters, was published by Random House in February 2017. He is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and a columnist for the DealBook section of the New York Times. He also writes for The Financial Times, The New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Atlantic, The Nation, Fortune, and Politico. He previously wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The New York Times and an opinion column for BloombergView. He also appears regularly on CNN, on Bloomberg TV, where he is a contributing editor, on MSNBC and the BBC-TV. He has also appeared three times as a guest on the Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, The NewsHour, The Charlie Rose Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, and CBS This Morning as well as on numerous NPR, BBC and Bloomberg radio programs.http://williamcohan.com

Rick Darvis is recognized as one of the leading experts in the financial planning field. He has written several books, developed financial software, and trained financial professionals across the United States. His knowledge has enabled him to be invited to speak on the financial and business development topics to his contemporaries at state CPA and FPA conferences in over 40 states. He has been a featured speaker at the Financial Planner Association’s Success Forum, the Northeast /Mid-Atlantic National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) regional conference, the National Employee Benefit Forum, the New York Society of CPAs Personal Financial Planning Conference, and the AICPA’s Tax Strategies for the High Income Individual Conference. Rick has also given seminars for the University of Arizona and the New York Student Financial Aid Administrators.

Rick's accomplishments in the financial-planning field are:

 Co-author of Paying for College: Tax Strategies and Financial Aid, a guide published by the American Institute of CPAs on college planning for accountants and financial advisors.

 Contributing author of Personal Financial Planning, a Practitioners Publishing Company (PPC) guidebook.

 Co-author of Planning for College Costs, a Practitioners Publishing Company (PPC) guidebook on college financial planning for accountants and financial advisors.

 Author of A Roadmap to College & Retirement – Without Going Broke, a book designed to link college planning to retirement planning.

 Provider of education programs and business development services for organizations, such as Microsoft, American Institute of CPAs, Oppenheimer, Western CPE, OneAmerica Insurance, State Farm Insurance, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, Northwestern Mutual Insurance, Manulife, MFS, American Skandia, Franklin Templeton, Eastern Bank, US Bank, Wells Fargo Financial Advisors, Linsco Private Ledger, Securities America, Genworth, Lincoln Financial, UBS, Thrivent, Wachovia, Smith Barney, John Hancock Financial Network, Legg Mason, Edward Jones, Chase Bank, and Raymond James.

 Quoted in: Forbes, CNN-FN, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Money, Business Week, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, NY Times, Smart Money, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg’s Personal Finance, Money, Bankrate, Nation's Business, Financial Advisor, Dow Jones Newswire, On Investing, Knight Ridder News, Mutual Fund Market News, Research Magazine, Practical Accountant, Offspring, LIMRA's Market Facts, NAPFA Advisor, and AICPA's Planner.

 Owned and operated businesses, such as, 6 CPA accounting firms, a national financial planning network with over 2,000 members, 3 restaurants, 3 insurance agencies, a business development contract with Microsoft, commercial rental properties, a farm/ranch operation, a recreation and fitness center, and retail sporting goods stores.