Brian Wesbury

Brian Wesbury is chief economist at First Trust Advisors LP, a financial services firm based in Lisle, Illinois. Mr. Wesbury has served as the vice president and economist for the Chicago Corporation and senior vice president and chief economist for Griffin, Kubik, Stephens, & Thompson. The Wall Street Journal ranked him the nation's number one US economic forecaster in 2001, and USA Today ranked him as one of the nation's top ten forecasters in 2004. In 1995 and 1996, he served as chief economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. Mr. Wesbury began his career in 1982 at the Harris Bank in Chicago. He writes frequently for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and is the economics editor of The American Spectator. He is the author of The New Era of Wealth. Mr. Wesbury serves on the Board of Advisors to First Trust Capital Partners, an affiliated private equity firm and is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Additionally, he sits on the Board of Managers of Three-Sixty Advisory Group, a Pasadena, California-based consulting and private equity firm. Mr. Wesbury is an adjunct professor of economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a BA in economics from the University of Montana.