Mark Zandi is chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, where he directs economic research. Moody’s Analytics, a subsidiary of Moody’s Corp., is a leading provider of economic research, data and analytical tools. Dr. Zandi cofounded Economy.com, which Moody’s purchased in 2005.

Dr. Zandi is on the board of directors of MGIC, the nation’s largest private mortgage insurance company, is the lead director of PolicyMap, a data visualization and analytics company used by policymakers and commercial businesses, and is a director of the Coleridge Initiative, a nonprofit that facilitates the exchange of data across governments. 

He is a trusted adviser to policymakers and an influential source of economic analysis for businesses, journalists and the public. Dr. Zandi frequently testifies before Congress and conducts regular briefings on the economy for corporate boards, trade associations and policymakers at all levels. 

Dr. Zandi is the author of Paying the Price: Ending the Great Recession and Beginning a New American Century, which assesses the monetary and fiscal policy response to the Great Recession. His other book, Financial Shock: A 360º Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis, is described by The New York Times as the “clearest guide” to the financial crisis. Dr. Zandi is host of the Inside Economics podcast. 

Dr. Zandi earned his BS from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.

Samim Ghamami is currently an economist at the US Securities and Exchange Commission where he has been working with the SEC Chair and leadership team on the reform of the Treasury market and several other capital market initiatives. Ghamami is a recipient of the SEC Chair’s Award for Excellence due to his work on Treasury market reforms.

He is also an adjunct professor of finance at NYU, a senior advisor at SOFR Academy, and has been a senior researcher at UC Berkeley Center for Risk Management Research and the Department of Economics. He is a member of the Economic Club of New York and the Bretton Woods Committee. Ghamami has been a senior economist and a senior strategist at Goldman Sachs and at Millennium Management. He has been an adjunct associate professor of economics at Columbia University. In 2019, Ghamami moved to the Financial Services Forum through Goldman Sachs, where he was the senior economist and managing director. He has also been an associate director and a senior economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and an economist at the Federal Reserve Board.

Ghamami’s work has broadly focused on the interplay of finance and macroeconomics. His work on asset management, private credit, banking, macroeconomic policy, financial stability, financial regulation, central clearing, and digital asset markets has been presented and discussed at central banks and international financial institutions. Ghamami has discussed his work on Treasury markets, interest rates, inflation, and public debt at the Mercatus Center’s Macro Musings Podcast, MNI’s Market News & Fed Speak Podcast, and Moody’s Inside Economics Podcast. In his 2020-2021 research carried out for PIMCO, he anticipated the joint impact of the Fed’s revised monetary policy framework and the Covid-driven fiscal stimulus on inflation and stock-bond return correlation. He has also discussed his work at the Financial Times’ Global Banking Summit and the Outstanding Directors Exchange events. Ghamami has been an advisor to the Bank for International Settlements and has worked as an expert with the Financial Stability Board on consequential post-global-financial crisis capital market reforms. He has also served on the National Science Foundation panels on Financial Mathematics and on the advisory board of the Mathematics in Finance Program at NYU Courant Institute.

Ghamami has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley, a financial economist at Barclays, an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, and a post-doctoral researcher at the CREATE Homeland Security Center. Ghamami received his Ph.D. in Finance and Operations Research from USC in 2009. His publications have appeared in top academic and practitioner journals.

Antonio Weiss is an investor at SSW partners and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center. He served until January, 2017 as Counselor to the Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury, where he oversaw the department of Domestic Finance and served as point-person on the debt crisis in Puerto Rico. 

Prior to joining Treasury, Mr. Weiss served in various leadership roles at Lazard in New York and Europe, including as Global Head of Investment Banking. Mr. Weiss is a director of The Volcker Alliance, a trustee of the Citizens Budget Committee and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He is a trustee and past Publisher of the leading literary quarterly, The Paris Review. 

Mr. Weiss earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale College and M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and Loeb Fellow.

Damien Moore is a Director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics. He covers U.S. financial markets, provides research on finance-related topics, develops market risk models for stress-testing and other applications, and works on various Moody’s Analytics models and tools related to government and corporate finances. He has broad expertise in financial economics including asset pricing, valuation methodologies, portfolio analytics, macro finance, and financial econometrics.

Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics, Damien spent 12 years at the Congressional Budget Office, most recently as the head of the agency’s Financial Analysis Division, where he supervised projects analyzing the federal role in the financial system and the costs of federal financial programs. Under his supervision, the Division produced numerous reports including analyses of policies to rescue the U.S. financial system during the 2008 financial crisis, the federal conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal role in housing and mortgage markets, the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation, and federal student loan programs. Before his time at the CBO, Damien was a lecturer in the School of Business at the University of Sydney. He taught classes in investments, fixed income securities, and corporate finance.

Damien holds a PhD in economics from Northwestern University as well as undergraduate degrees in economics and accounting from the Australian National University.

Martin A. Wurm is a senior economist with Moody’s Analytics. He covers financial markets, with a focus on market risk, as well as regional economies in the U.S. Before joining Moody’s Analytics, he served as associate professor of Economics at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma WA. Dr. Wurm has published on financial market development and informal economies and has conducted local impact studies and forecasts. He holds a doctorate and master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and completed his undergraduate work at the University of Potsdam and the Ludwig-Maximilian’s University in Munich, Germany.