Austan Goolsbee is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, one of the most closely watched voices on U.S. interest rates and inflation. A longtime University of Chicago Booth economist who chaired Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, he is equally known for empirical research on the internet and taxes and for being the rare central banker who once won Washington's funniest celebrity contest.
Jonathan Chait is an American political columnist known for picking fights in every direction - skewering conservative economics, needling the progressive left over identity politics, and defending liberalism with the persistence of a man who enjoys an argument. After three decades that took him from The New Republic to New York magazine's Intelligencer, he joined The Atlantic as a staff writer in late 2024. He is the author of 'The Big Con' and 'Audacity,' a self-described liberal who is happy to annoy everyone on his own side.