Steve Liesman is a senior economics commentator for the cable news/business TV channel CNBC from Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in the U.S. He is well-known for appearing on the CNBC programs Squawk Box and the canceled program Bullseye, where he used his "easels" while explaining the state of the economy.

Before beginning his current position in April 2002, Mr. Liesman was a senior economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering the domestic and global economies as well as corporate earnings and the Enron accounting scandal.

Mr. Liesman joined the Journal as a reporter in the Moscow bureau in 1994 and was named Moscow bureau chief in August 1996. He transferred to the New York bureau in May 1998 when he began covering the international oil and gas industry. He was named senior economics reporter at the paper in June 2000 during which he has focused, among other things, on the productivity revolution, macroeconomics and the myriad problems of corporate earnings reporting.

Mr. Liesman was a leader of the team of Journal reporters awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in the international reporting category for in-depth analytical coverage of the Russian financial crisis. He received the first runner-up award in the 1998 SAIA - Novartis Prize for International Reporting for the four part series, "Markets Under Siege." The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in the coverage of international affairs.

From August 1987 to June 1992, Mr. Liesman was a business reporter first at the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune and later at the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. He moved to Moscow in August 1992 as founding business editor of the Moscow Times, the first English-language daily newspaper in Russia. He created the Moscow Times Index, the first stock index in Russia.

Born in Bronxville, N.Y., Mr. Liesman received a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master's degree from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.