Ben Stein

At 79 years old, Ben Stein has this physical status:

He was first a poverty lawyer in New Haven, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. before becoming a trial lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission.

Stein's first teaching stint was as an adjunct professor, teaching about the political and social content of mass culture at American University in Washington, D.C. He subsequently taught classes at the University of California, Santa Cruz on political and civil rights under the United States Constitution. At Pepperdine University Stein taught libel law and United States securities law and its ethical aspects. He was a professor of law and economics at Pepperdine University Law School from about 1990 to 1997.

Stein writes a regular column in the conservative media outlets The American Spectator and Newsmax. He has also written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Penthouse, Los Angeles Magazine, and Barron's Magazine. He wrote a regular biweekly column for Yahoo! Finance online, with his last article dated August 7, 2009. His bestselling books (with investment advisor Phil DeMuth) include Yes, You Can Retire Comfortably; Can America Survive?; and Yes, You Can Time the Market. In 2009, he published a collection of essays, The Real Stars.

Stein was fired from his position as a Sunday Business columnist at The New York Times in August 2009 owing to a policy prohibiting writers from making product endorsements or advertising. Stein had recently become an advertising spokesman for credit information company Freescore.com and, according to a Times statement, had assumed there would be no conflict provided that he did not discuss credit scoring in general or FreeScore.com itself in his column. However, the publication felt that it would be inappropriate for him to write for them while he was involved in advertising and terminated his contract. Writing in The Spectator, Stein states his belief that the real reasons for his firing were budget cuts at the Times, his criticism of Obama, and pressure from those critical of Expelled, who "bamboozled some of the high pooh-bahs at the Times into thinking there was a conflict of interest".

Stein began his political career as a speechwriter and lawyer for President Richard Nixon, and later for President Gerald Ford. On May 3, 1976, Time magazine speculated on the possibility of Stein having actually been Deep Throat. Stein responded over the years not only by denying he was Deep Throat but by going further and accusing journalist Bob Woodward of falsifying the famous secret source. In the May 14–21, 1998, edition of the Philadelphia City Paper, Stein is quoted as saying, "Oh, I don't think there was a Deep Throat. That was a fake. I think there were several different sources and some they just made up." After Mark Felt's identity as Deep Throat was revealed, Stein stated that Nixon would have prevented the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge if he had not been forced to resign. For his actions leading to that resignation, Stein said:

In 2005, Stein said in the American Spectator:

Stein acted as the monotonous economics teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In one scene, he lectures on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 and the then-current debate over supply-side economics.

Stein played similarly bland and unemotional characters. He had a recurring role in the TV series The Wonder Years (as science teacher Mr. Cantwell, who would narrate 16mm films in monotone) and played himself in Dave.

He appeared in several television advertisements, such as for Clear Eyes eye drops throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Godfather's Pizza in 1987, a bland science teacher in 1990 for Sprinkled Chips Ahoy! cookies, and in 2013 for small business accounting service firm 1-800Accountant.

From 1997 to 2003, Stein hosted the Comedy Central game show Win Ben Stein's Money along with co-host Jimmy Kimmel (replaced by Nancy Pimental and later by Sal Iacono). True to its name, the money that contestants won on the show was subtracted from the $5,000 pay that Stein earned per episode (in addition to his salary). The show won five Daytime Emmy Awards before ending its run in 2003.

In 1999, Stein also hosted the Comedy Central talk show Turn Ben Stein On. One of the mainstays of the show was Stein's dog, Puppy Wuppy, who had free run of the set. In 2001, Stein appeared on a celebrity episode of The Weakest Link entitled "TV Hosts Edition" alongside other television hosts and was voted off in round 6 despite being that round's Strongest Link. Anne Robinson's quip was that while he "might win Ben's money; you're NOT taking ours!".

Other movies and television shows in which Stein has appeared include Charles in Charge; Seinfeld; Full House; Casper; Casper: A Spirited Beginning; Casper Meets Wendy; The Mask and its sequel, Son of the Mask as well as the television show, The Mask: Animated Series; Earthworm Jim; Star Search; MacGyver; Tales from the Crypt; Richie Rich; Game Show Moments Gone Bananas; Cavuto on Business; The O'Reilly Factor; CBS News Sunday Morning; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Family Guy;the 1998-2004 version of Hollywood Squares; the Michael Berger-hosted version of Match Game; The Fairly OddParents; Duckman; Married... with Children; The Emperor's New School; My Girl 2; Ghostbusters II; and the intelligent design documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

In addition, Stein's voice roles include The Pixies, magical creatures on the animated series The Fairly OddParents; Mr. Purutu on the animated series The Emperor's New School; Professor Wisenstein in Bruno the Kid; the birthday party clown, Mr. Giggles, on The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius; a bingo caller on Rugrats; and Pip on Animaniacs. Futterman in Freakazoid. Stein also voiced a psychiatrist, again named after himself, in the USA TV series Duckman; he once appeared in the sitcom Married... with Children as a receptionist in the animal afterlife. He also made a cameo appearance in the comic book Young Justice, as Ali Ben Styn. Another cameo appearance was as Rabbi Goldberg in the Family Guy episodes "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" and "Family Goy". Stein also voiced the character Sam Schmaltz in the 1996 computer adventure game Toonstruck.

Stein has written for the television industry, including outlines for the TV movie Murder in Mississippi and for the lengthy ABC miniseries Amerika. He has also contributed to the creation of the talk show parody series Fernwood 2 Night.

Stein hosted a show on VH1 called America's Most Smartest Model. The show aimed to find the smartest among 14 models through a series of challenges.

On May 14, 2006, during an appearance on the Fox News program Your World with Neil Cavuto, Stein called for a tax increase of 3.5% for wealthy Americans, to be earmarked for soldiers and military initiatives. Stein wrote an editorial for The New York Times critical of those who would rather make money in the world of finance than fight terrorism.

On December 28, 2009, Stein appeared on CNN's Larry King Live with Ron Paul to discuss the attempted bombing of an American plane on Christmas Day 2009. Stein said that Paul's stance that the United States were "occupiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan was antisemitic. The comment started a shouting match between the two men. Two days later, Stein clarified that "if Rep. Paul says he is... not an anti-Semite, I believe him".

Stein's political and economics commentary has appeared on CNBC's The Kudlow Report and CNN.

In the period preceding the late-2000s recession, Stein made frequent and vehement claims that the economy was not in recession, and that the issues in the housing market would not affect the broader economy. On March 18, 2007, in a column for the online version of CBS News Sunday Morning, Stein proclaimed at the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis that the foreclosure problem would "blow over and the people who buy now, in due time, will be glad they did," the economy was "still very strong," and the "smart money" was "now trying to buy—not sell—as much distressed merchandise" in mortgages as possible.

In an August 12, 2007 column in The New York Times, titled "Chicken Little's Brethren, on the Trading Floor", Stein, while acknowledging "I don't know where the bottom is on subprime. I don't know how bad the problems are at Bear (Bear Stearns)" claimed that "subprime losses are wildly out of all proportion to the likely damage to the economy from the subprime problems," and "(t)his economy is extremely strong. Profits are superb. The world economy is exploding with growth. To be sure, terrible problems lurk in the future: a slow-motion dollar crisis, huge Medicare deficits and energy shortages. But for now, the sell-off seems extreme, not to say nutty. Some smart, brave people will make a fortune buying in these days, and then we'll all wonder what the scare was about."

On August 18, 2007, on Fox News Channel's Cavuto on Business, Stein appeared with other financial experts dismissing worries of a coming credit crunch. Thirteen months later, in the global financial crisis in September 2008, global stock markets crashed, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the US government, AIG was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America Corporation, and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs confirmed that they would become traditional bank holding companies.

In a Yahoo! Finance article written on October 17, 2008, Stein explained that his understanding of debt obligations based on real estate loans was less than the "staggeringly large" amount of obligations that were created through trading in derivatives of those, and so why it wasn't as similar to collapse of junk bond empire in early 1990s as he thought it would be: "Where I missed the boat was not realizing how large were the CDS [credit default swaps] based on the junk mortgage bonds."

Business commentator Henry Blodget wrote a piece for Business Insider in January 2008 entitled "Ben Stein is an Idiot", stating that Stein's criticism of those with bearish views and positions on the market was either "delusional" or a deliberate and "shrewd" attempt to create false controversy and drive up web traffic.

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