[3] His father arrived in the United States at age 17 and worked as a dishwasher for Union Pacific Railroad and roomed on a caboose.

[2] In 1923, George opened and then ran a Greek diner, Central Café, in Kearney,[2] after changing his name from Georgios Petropoulos.

[2] Expelled from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for plagiarizing a term paper in his freshman year, Peterson enrolled at Northwestern University and The Kellogg School, graduating in 1947 with highest academic honors, summa cum laude.

[11] In 1951, he received an M.B.A. degree from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, before returning to Market Facts as an executive vice president.

To stem that decline, according to Peterson, the U.S. must challenge competing nations in the trading sphere by adopting industrial policy.

The report established some of the intellectual foundations of Nixon's decision in August 1971 to upend the Bretton Woods agreement.

[15][16] In 1992, he was one of the co-founders of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan citizens' organization that advocates reduction of the federal budget deficit.

"[17] In February 1994, President Bill Clinton named Peterson as a member of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform co-chaired by Senators Bob Kerrey and John Danforth.

[1] Peterson succeeded David Rockefeller as chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1985 and served until his retirement from that position in 2007.

[18] Peterson funded The Fiscal Times, a news website that reports on current economic issues, including the federal budget, the deficit, entitlements, health care, personal savings, taxation, and the global economy.

He was one of 40 billionaires, led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who agreed to give at least half their wealth to charity.

[22] The next year, Peterson married Joan Ganz Cooney, the co-creator of the popular American educational children's television series Sesame Street.

[24] In his autobiography, Peterson recalled his business and private life and blamed himself for the failure of two of his three marriages but expressed pride for having grown close to his children.