About John
As the award-winning author of 13 books, Wasik has spoken to crowds from coast to coast on investing, retirement and protecting your money. As a personal finance columnist/blogger for Reuters, the world's largest news service, he covers investing/investor protection, financial planning, taxes, insurance, retirement, college and life planning. His columns have been seen in newspapers on five continents and he regularly comments on top economic news in all media.
He's also appeared on NBC, NPR, PBS, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, CNNfn, Bloomberg TV and radio and on hundreds of TV and radio stations across the country. He earned his B.A. (psychology) and M.A. (communications) from the University of Illinois-Chicago and resides north of Chicago with his wife and two daughters.
As former special projects editor for Consumers Digest magazine, he has won 18 awards for his columns and investigative reporting, including the National Press Club award for Consumer Journalism. He has spoken at the New York Money Show, the National Home Center Show and the University of Chicago Business School. He is also a popular lecturer on investing at the University of Chicago's Graham School.
Wasik also has contributed to Reader's Digest, The New York Times, Bloomberg News, Fortune.com, Morningstar.com, AARP Magazine/Bulletin, eFinancial Careers, Minyanville, Modern Maturity, Parade, Smart Money, Popular Science, Health, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Barron's, The Chicago Tribune and newspapers across North America.
His books include:
- The Audacity of Help
- The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome
- iMoney
- The Merchant of Power (2006)
- The Bear-Proof Investor (Owl, 2002)
- The Kitchen-Table Investor (Holt, 2001)
- Retire Early and Live the Life You Want Now (Holt, 2000)
- The Late-Start Investor (Holt, 1999)
- The Green Company Resource Guide (NCI, 1997)
- The Investment Club Book (Warner, 1996)
- Green Marketing & Management: A Global Perspective (Blackwell, 1996)
- The Green Supermarket Shopping Guide (Warner, 1995)
- The Electronic Business Information Sourcebook (Wiley, 1987)
Contact information: 847/223-9814; (847) 223-9854 fax
Articles
To See John Wasik's Reuters columns, http://blogs.reuters.com/prism-money/
Hear John Wasik's recent NPR Interview on the housing crisis (and read the transcript):
Will The Housing Downturn Create New Rust Belts?
For Speaking or Interview Information
Contact John: johnwasik@gmail.com or 847-223-9814.
The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome
After a lifetime of research and observation, an agonizing decline of the housing market, publication delays and collapse of the stock market, my Cul-de-Sac Syndrome has braved all odds to be published.
Why should you care about this book? It's about our homes and communities and how we need to re-invent, re-envision and re-build the American Dream if we want to survive in this contentious century. Economics meets ecology in this radical new look at what we've taken for granted as a birthright.
NOW IN PAPERBACK AND KINDLE.
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Hear What the Initial Reviewers Had to Say
"John Wasik's The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome offers enough to chew on for three sets of teeth, enough to digest for three stomachs, and the alerts the mind faster than an approaching siren."
--Ralph Nader, Consumer advocate
"Get ready for a totally original look at the American dream. Wasik delivers the first truly multidisciplinary examination-using planning, law, architecture, and history to focus on working solutions that can keep the dream alive. This is a winner!"
- Paul B. Farrell, JD, PhD. Columnist, MarketWatch.com and author of The Millionaire Code
"This excellent book takes a ground-level look at the causes of our housing crisis and offers a myriad of ideas on reinventing the concepts of home and community."
-Ilyce R. Glink, syndicated real estate columnist, author of 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask
"A genuine kick to the head, showing how our individual quests for the biggest house on the hill is destroying our environment, the economy, and our health. But The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome is no dead end. It offers a new, green, urbanized promised land with real community, more free time, and a higher living standard. It's a masterful blueprint to unpave paradise and restore the world we cherish."
- Laurence Kotlikoff, Co-author of Spend 'Til the End: The Revolutionary Guide to Raising Your Living Standard-Today and When You Retire", and Professor of Economics at Boston University
Recent Blog Posts
My Latest Book
The Audacity of Help is a provocative new look at the Obama economic plan. How will it stimulate the worst economy in a generation? Who will gain? Who will lose? What are his plans for reviving public education, small business, the environment, credit reform, health care, homeownership and entitlement programs? Which industries will benefit? What new jobs will be created? I take an incisive look at one of the boldest economic restructuring programs since the New Deal.
When President Obama took office, banks were severly impaired, companies were cutting pensions, and market disruptions and unemployment left more than 45 million people without health insurance or retirement security.
In his new book, THE AUDACITY OF HELP: Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America (Bloomberg Press, August 2009), John Wasik presents powerful insights into what our new president has promised and how Congress is reshaping -- and sometimes sidelining -- his ideas to deliver final pieces of economic legislation. Each chapter is clearly structured to show "what Congress passed," and "who benefits most," on issues such as Unemployment Insurance Benefits, COBRA, Home Energy Credits, Early Childhood Education, and more.
Wasik calls the huge agenda that Obama has taken on the "Green Deal," because Obama wants a more ecological sense of shared responsibility - interrelationships within society and the economy and not just the environment. For example, Obama wants to:
- Redefine connections between government investments and economic growth - a stable and comprehensive safety net makes even greater innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation possible.
- Focus on renewable energy - translates into lower operating costs for industry and lower household utility bills.
While Obama relies on humanistic economics and social capitalism, he may not be able to boost incomes, restore sanity to financial markets, or even make health care affordable and available to all, yet he will surely provide a new agenda for tackling these problems.
Wasik writes that the success of the Obama plan comes down to how much Americans rally behind this renaissance; whether it is sustainably funded over the long term; and whether Congress listens to the electorate instead of the lobbies that still have undue influence on the people's business.
In THE AUDACITY OF HELP, Wasik wraps up his thorough coverage by itemizing what the new economy agenda will look like, industry and employment trends and how it will remake America.
*Note: the Appendix includes a detailed list of the spending in the stimulus plan.
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