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Ben Stein


About Ben Stein :


Ben Stein is probably the closest any man comes these days to being a true renaissance man. His financial and economics work was cited in the efforts of the recent Nobel prize winner in Economics, George Akerlof. He is also the host of the long running comedy quiz show on Comedy Central, Win Ben Stein's Money, a show that has won seven Emmies. He has written hundreds of thousands of words about financial fraud and investment policy, but two words made him a household name: "Bueller" and "Anyone, Anyone." (From his iconic role in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off.") He has written novels that the New York Times describes as "stunning," but what you have probably heard him talk about recently are "dry eyes, red eyes, and clear eyes." He worked and demonstrated and struggled for voting rights for African Americans, and he also was a speech writer for Richard Nixon and for Gerald Ford. He introduced the world to complex concepts of the politics of culture, but he also introduced the world to Jimmy Kimmel and made possible The Man Show. Lawyer, teacher, actor, comic, economist, father, novelist, essayist, expert on finance, meet Ben Stein!

    Benjamin J. Stein was born November 25, 1944 in Washington, D.C. He is the son of the economist and writer Herbert Stein.  Growing up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and attended Montgomery Blair High School. He graduated from Columbia University in 1966 with honors in economics. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1970 as valedictorian of his class by election of his classmates. He helped to found the Journal of Law and Social Policy while at Yale. He has worked as a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, D.C., a trial lawyer in the field of trade regulation at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., a university adjunct at American University in Washington, D.C., at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. At American University. He taught about the political and social content of mass culture. He taught the same subject at UCSC, as well as about political and civil rights under the Constitution. At Pepperdine, he has taught about libel law and about securities law and ethical issues since 1986.

In 1973 and 1974, he was a speechwriter and lawyer for Richard Nixon at The White House and then for Gerald Ford. (He did NOT write the line, “I am not a crook.”) He has been a columnist and editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, a syndicated columnist for The Los Angeles Herald Examiner (R.I.P.) and King Features Syndicate, and a frequent contributor to Barron, where his articles about the ethics of management buyouts and issues of fraud in the Milken Drexel junk bond scheme drew major national attention. He has been a regular columnist for Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, E! Online, and most of all, has written a lengthy diary for ten years for The American Spectator. He also writes frequently for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, op. ed. and almost every other imaginable magazine.

                                 Ben Stein on America's Education Crisis

He has written and published fifteen books, seven novels, largely about life in Los Angeles, and eight nonfiction books, about finance and about ethical and social issue in finance, and also about the political and social content of mass culture. He has done pioneering work in uncovering the concealed messages of TV and in explaining how TV and movies get made.

He has also been a longtime screenwriter, writing, among many other scripts (most of which were unmade) the first draft of The Boost, a movie based on Ludes, and the outlines of the lengthy miniseries Amerika, and the acclaimed Murder in Mississippi. He was one of the creators of the well regarded comedy, Fernwood Tonight.


 

Ben Stein on the Economy

 

He is also an extremely well known actor in movies, TV, and commercials. His part of the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was recently ranked as one of the fifty most famous scenes in American film. Starting in July of 1997, he has been the host of the Comedy Central quiz show, "Win Ben Stein's Money." The show has won seven Emmies. He appears regularly on the Fox News Channel talking about finance. He is currently a celebrity judge on the CBS hit, Star Search. He has now finished his book for Simon & Schuster’s Free Press about his life with his ten year old son named Tommy & Me. He lives with his wife, Alexandra Denman (lawyer,) his son and every imaginable kind of pet and consumer good in Los Angeles.

 

Speech Titles :


• Ben Stein can speak on any of the numerous books or articles he has written or films he has been in. He will tailor his speech to fit your needs.
• America: City on the Hill or Looting Opportunity, What Would John F. Kennedy Think?

Books by Ben Stein :

Can America Survive? The Rage of the Left, the Truth, and What to Do About It
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In Can America Survive? authors Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth examine this anti-American rage, providing plentiful and outrageous examples from campuses to foundations to Democratic candidate debates to liberal "fund-raisers" that openly tout hate as their message. The authors then attempt to plumb the psychological wellsprings that generate this anger: Is it infantile narcissism? Is it a desperately incomplete maturation process? Is it competition with patriarchal figures?
How Successful People Win: Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life
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How Successful People Win is a serious self-help book using as its central metaphor the life of the cowboy and his behavior as he leaves his bunkhouse. Based upon a lifetime of observation of the successful and how they got that way, Ben Stein suggests that you imitate the determination, inner mobility, activity, flexibility—and the refusal to indulge in self-pity—of the cowboy in order to get what you want out of life.
How to Ruin the United States of America
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On the heels of his very successful books, How to Ruin Your Life, How to Ruin Your Love Life, and How to Ruin Your Financial Life, Ben Stein, in collaboration with his pal Phil DeMuth, has tongue firmly in cheek once again as he comes up with surefire ways to ruin the greatest nation in the history of the human race.
How to Ruin Your Financial Life
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Anyone can write a book about how to get rich. The bookstores are full of them. They rarely work, though, which isn’t surprising since the people who write them rarely know much about money. But it takes Ben Stein, economist, finance expert for Barron’s, commentator on finance for Fox News, and (fairly) successful investor to write a book called How to Ruin Your Financial Life. Written with the same tongue-in-cheek cheekiness as his bestselling How to Ruin Your Life, this book is a humorous road map showing you how to make something useful of the money that comes in and out of your life. Follow the rules—in reverse gear—and you’re bound to be a lot better off than you are now. Follow the rules as they’re written—and you’re highly likely to wind up in bankruptcy court—as millions do every decade.
How to Ruin Your Life
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Keeping a Chin Up Offering a tongue-in-cheek approach to living well, quiz show host and former White House speechwriter Ben Stein has written How to Ruin Your Life. Asserting that "failure is often a virtual road map to success in reverse," Stein tells readers, "[f]ollow these rules and you're guaranteed disaster. Avoid them, and you're on the high road to achievement...." He proceeds to explain how to "make yourself useless," "be a slob," "convince yourself you're all that matters" and "act like the world owes you." If ignored, his advice is sound and realistic, and may be the perfect way to push recent grads or other impressionable readers in the right direction.
How to Ruin Your Love Life
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A good love relationship isn’t really that important. In fact, it uses up a lot of time you could spend thinking about yourself . . . and doing things all alone or with your drunken, loser friends. That’s why Ben Stein has written How to Ruin Your Love Life. Following up on the wild success of his pioneering "do-the-opposite-of-what-I-say" self-help book, How to Ruin Your Life, he now brings you, in 44 easy-to-follow-steps, ways to definitively and absolutely . . . ruin your love life.
The Gift of Peace: Guideposts on the Road to Serenity
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In ancient Hebrew prayers, the highest wish that any worshiper can offer to another is that the Almighty will give the worshiper "the greatest of all gifts—the gift of peace." Ben Stein’s latest book, The Gift of Peace, comprises more than 500 lessons about how to live life in a state of peace. Drawing from wisdom learned in 12-step meetings and from his own meditations, Stein reveals the guideposts that have taken him (over the last 16 years) to a life incomparably more serene and uncomplicated than it once was.
Yes, You Can Be A Successful, Income Investor: Reaching for Yield in Today's Market
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With the bursting of the stock market bubble, and after 13 rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, yields on CDs and Money Market funds tread at historic lows—a negative return after inflation. With smaller savings coupled with lower returns on what savings remain, retirees and others living on fixed-income investments watch in horror as their income checks shrink with each passing month. However, there are investments that still earn a significant rate of return—and do so reliably and consistently. These fixed-income securities include bonds, real estate investment trusts, preferred stocks, and emerging market debt, among others. As 70 million Americans reach retirement age in the next 15 years, fixed-income investing will become a sociologically inevitable megatrend. This book shows you how you can safely secure the highest possible yield from your savings.
Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life!: Your Lifetime Guide to Financial Planning
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Ben Stein wrote the original guide to this subject almost a quarter century ago. Now, Ben, along with Phil DeMuth, the eminent financial planner and writer, have gotten together to update the book, incorporating the massive changes that have occurred in the economy in the past 25 years. This book tells you what and when to save, how much to save, what to save it in, when to spend, and when to say no to your present and yes to your future. Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life! is a time-traveling guidebook on how to organize the money side of your life for all of the decades of your life.
Yes, You Can Still Retire Comfortably!: The Baby-Boom Retirement Crisis and How to Beat It
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Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth show you how to get back on track. They outline the steps you can take today to assure your future tomorrow. Backed up with facts and figures, they lay out exactly how much you need to save in order to maintain your standard of living, and how to invest your dollars to get the maximum return from your savings. For those already retired, they explain how to tap your nest egg to get the most income while keeping your money safe. This is a survival manual for the difficult but exciting road to retirement security. Don’t leave middle age without it!
Yes, You Can Supercharge Your Portfolio!
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With their trademark wit, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth show you how your current portfolio is radically underdiversified, costing you money. They offer step-by-step instructions to supercharge it across a variety of investment situations to get you the best risk-adjusted returns.
Yes, You Can Time the Market!
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Economist, actor, author, and former quiz show host Ben Stein teamed up with investment psychologist Phil DeMuth to examine a century of stock market data and discovered a profound and original investment truth: Yes, you can time the market! In their instant investment classic Yes, You Can Time the Market!, Stein and DeMuth show investors simple, readily available measurements that tell them when it's time to invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, or cash. Written for the investor who wants to preserve capital and build wealth steadily, this book offers prudent, bedrock advice for anyone who can no longer afford to play games with their money.

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