Among the nation's leading experts who can help you through an economic depression, Martin D. Weiss is easily one of the most qualified.

For the past two decades, he has specifically named — and publicly warned about — nearly every large financial failure in the United States, giving millions of Americans the opportunity to get their money to safety well ahead of time.

The New York Times wrote that Weiss was "the first to warn of the dangers and say so unambiguously." Separately, a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that Weiss far outperformed all of the nation's major rating agencies, including Standard and Poor's, Moody's and A.M. Best, in warning of future life and health insurance company failures. And more recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that his company's stock ratings outperformed those issued by all brokers and independent research firms they covered, including JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Piper Jaffray, Credit Suisse First Boston, Smith Barney, S&P Equity Research, Morgan Stanley, and 14 others.

A key factor in Dr. Weiss's success is his devotion to empirical research and zero tolerance for bias, the reason Forbes named him "Mr. Independence" and Esquire wrote he is one of the few who is "free of any possible conflict of interest."

Throughout his career, the author has been an advocate for consumers and investors, providing congressional testimony and proposals for better risk disclosure by financial institutions, sounder accounting by corporations, and more prudent fiscal policies by government.

Dr. Weiss is the CEO and founder of the Weiss Group, Inc., which includes Weiss Research, Inc., a think tank and publishing firm; Weiss Capital Management, Inc., an SEC-registered firm managing money for investors since 1980; and the Weiss School, a pre-K elementary and middle school for gifted children.

The author is also cofounder of the Financial Publishers Association, whose members reach 14 million investors; and Chairman of the Sound Dollar Committee, a nonprofit organization founded by his father, which helped President Dwight D. Eisenhower balance the federal budget in 1959.

Martin Weiss's publications include Safe Money, Money and Markets, and The Ultimate Safe Money Guide, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller. He holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Columbia University and is fluent in nine European, Asian, and African languages. After living many years in Latin America and Asia, he currently resides with his wife of 39 years in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

To contact the author, e-mail martin@weissinc.com or sign up for his alerts at www.moneyandmarkets.com/guide. If you do not have e-mail, and would like to receive one of the free reports mentioned in the book, call 800-814-3029. Or mail your request to Martin D. Weiss, c/o Ultimate Depression Survival Guide, 15430 Endeavour Drive, Jupiter, FL 33478.