In his signature keynote, Mark Zandi delivers a clear, data-driven read on where the U.S. and global economy are headed over the next 12 to 24 months. Drawing on Moody’s Analytics’ proprietary forecasting models and his own decades of experience briefing corporate boards, policymakers, and institutional investors, Zandi walks audiences through the forces actually driving the economy right now: the trajectory of GDP growth, the labor market, inflation and the Fed’s response, consumer spending across income groups, the outlook for interest rates, tariffs, and recession risk. He does not hedge. Zandi is known for putting a probability on recession, explaining what would tip it one way or the other, and telling a corporate audience what that means for their planning horizon. He translates the macro picture into practical implications for capital allocation, hiring, pricing, and investment decisions. Whether the economy is accelerating, softening, or stuck in neutral, attendees leave with a structured framework for reading the data themselves and the confidence that comes from hearing directly from one of the most widely quoted economists in America. The session is customized to the audience’s industry and fiscal calendar, and Zandi typically leaves significant time for Q&A, which is consistently the highest-rated portion of the talk.

Few economists have spent as much time inside the mechanics of the U.S. housing and credit markets as Mark Zandi. In this keynote he drills into the interconnected forces shaping household balance sheets: mortgage rates, home prices, rents, consumer debt, savings, and the widening gap between what the top-earning third of Americans can afford and what everyone else is experiencing. Drawing on Moody’s proprietary data, Zandi shows how the housing market is functioning as both a drag and a stabilizer, how Fed policy is filtering down to real households, and what a sustained period of higher-for-longer rates means for homeownership, commercial real estate, and consumer credit performance. For audiences in banking, mortgage, insurance, homebuilding, retail, and consumer goods, this talk answers the questions that actually drive their quarterly planning. Zandi also addresses affordability policy, the supply shortage, and what it would take to meaningfully shift the housing picture. Audiences come away with a grounded understanding of why the consumer behaves the way they do right now, and what to watch for as a leading indicator of change. The talk blends forecast, diagnosis, and practical implication in a way that respects the intelligence of a senior business audience.

The three most disruptive forces shaping the next decade of business planning are a redrawn global trade map, a retreat from the post-Cold War globalization consensus, and the rapid integration of artificial intelligence into productivity and labor markets. Mark Zandi examines all three in this forward-looking keynote. He walks audiences through the actual economic arithmetic of tariffs: how each percentage point of effective tariff rate flows through to inflation, interest rates, and growth, and why the uncertainty alone is already doing measurable damage to business investment and hiring. He then pivots to the AI side of the ledger, where Moody’s research suggests productivity could jump meaningfully as generative AI diffuses through the economy, with implications for the labor market, corporate margins, and long-term inflation. Zandi is direct about the risks of a jobs recession even as GDP holds up, and he frames the tension between deglobalization’s drag and AI’s tailwind in terms any operator can use. The talk is a fit for leadership conferences, industry associations, and private equity or institutional investor events where strategic planning horizons stretch beyond the next quarter. It leaves audiences with a sharper sense of which macro forces deserve the most attention and capital.

Mark Zandi was one of the first economists to warn publicly about the housing and subprime credit excesses that led to the 2008 financial crisis, and he later wrote the book The New York Times called the clearest guide to what happened. In this keynote he turns that experience into a practical framework for recognizing the warning signs of the next systemic shock before it arrives. Zandi walks through the specific conditions that produce financial crises: mispriced risk, leverage hiding in the shadow banking system, regulatory complacency, and the psychological dynamics that let bubbles inflate in plain sight. He then applies the framework to today’s landscape, identifying the sectors and exposures he is watching most closely, from commercial real estate to corporate credit to sovereign debt sustainability. This keynote is particularly well suited to banking and financial services audiences, risk committees, institutional investor events, and C-suite gatherings where leaders want a credible, non-alarmist perspective on tail risk. Zandi is careful to distinguish between genuine warning signs and the noise that dominates financial media. Audiences leave with a sharper analytical lens and a much clearer sense of where real vulnerabilities sit inside the current cycle.