As the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine, Steve represents a third generation in publishing. His grandfather founded the magazine in 1917 and he took over after his father Malcolm’s death in 1990. Thus, he has lived through and helped direct the transition to digital publishing — the biggest technological innovation since the invention of typography, roughly 1450 AD.

As a business editor, he has a passionate interest in economic issues, and especially in the government’s impact on them. Some of his sayings on the topic end up in collections of quotations, notably,

“The Declaration of Independence, the words that launched our nation — 1,300 words. The Bible, the word of God — 773,000 words. The Tax Code, the words of politicians — 7,000,000 words — and growing!”

and

”The politicians say ‘we’ can’t afford a tax cut. Maybe we can’t afford the politicians.“

Forbes hosts a podcast, What’s Ahead, on top business news and he has authored, with others, two books, Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It (2014) and Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How to Fix It (2022)

Understanding what money is is the first step

Forbes’s greatest strength — and likely his most useful contribution to reflections on the economy at COSM this year — is his ability to capture truths in unique formulas that are easy to remember. For example, he urges us to think of money as a sort of battery: it is our stored power to buy things.

The push for cryptocurrencies, he says, is easier to understand if we keep in mind that we already store that sort of exchange value quite often in private media other than the dollar:

The airlines’ frequent-flier miles are really a form of money that customers can earn and use to buy trips and various other things. Credit card companies, hotels and numerous retailers have all sorts of loyalty programs in which people earn points that will let them buy all manner of goodies.

He views crypto itself as a “high-tech cry for help” from people who worry about the stability of government currency in the face of ever-expanding debt.

His overall approach is common sense conservative. As his Britannica entry says, he is a fan of “low taxes and deregulation, as the best means of stimulating growth.” For example, at COSM 2025, he recommended ending the debt ceiling because, unlike any other ceiling, it is simply raised as needed. As a result, the anxiety it creates never results in meaningful change. Rather, he argues, “Productive policies would include cutting tax rates; cutting unnecessary spending; rooting out waste, fraud and abuse; pursuing deep deregulation and generating more revenue from expanding energy production.”

And, where AI is concerned, he noted last summer at the New York Post that the future depends on the ability to harness energy — and a big problem is that much energy development is currently stymied by government regulation.

Forbes had to chart a course for his own company through disruptive technologies

New tech has presented special challenges to established traditional businesses like the publishing firm he inherited. He told COSM back in 2020:

When we started our electronic publishing in the mid-90s, most publishers thought you just took a printed page and put it on line. And that was electronic publishing.

That was like, when Edison and others invented film 120 years ago. Some people thought that a feature film was like filming a stage play. No. Very different medium.

One of the first things we did was separate Forbes.com from Forbes Magazine. Separate staff, separate buildings, separate support systems. We wanted the baby away from the rollover of the mother.

He soon found, however, that for the publishing business, there was “no play book, no formula, no painting by the numbers…” to guide the process. Success entailed constant experimentation for him as well as for so many others today.

And now at COSM 2026… whither the U.S. economy? Takeoff, glide path, or stall?

At the Wednesday evening panel discussion at 7 pm on November 18, Forbes will be joined by David Bahnsen, Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group and philosopher of technology George Gilder Co-Founder and Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute. The moderator will be John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets. There’s lots more too: here’s the agenda and the lineup of speakers.

If you’d like to get in on the action at COSM 2026 at the Westin Kierland Hotel and Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona, register here and you can still get the standard rate (but only for five more days). Don’t wait.