Author

Edward Harrison 7783 posts 575 comments

Edward Harrison is a senior Editor at Bloomberg. He is also the founder of Credit Writedowns newsletter, a former career diplomat, investment banker and technology executive with over twenty five years of business experience. He speaks six languages and reads another five, skills he uses to provide a more global perspective. Edward holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College.

Political Economy

Deregulation efforts from the late 1990s were blocked

Edward Harrison Feb 4, 2009

There is a lot of anecdotal fodder in support of my last post tagging deregulation as a root cause for the build up of excesses in the financial services industry. Let me give you one example from 1998.

Political Economy

Was repealing Glass-Steagall the cause for the present Depression?

Edward Harrison Feb 4, 2009

There is a view making the rounds now that repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 is the root cause for all of the excesses we have experienced -- and by extension for the present economic Depression. Glass-Steagall was enacted in 1933…

Political Economy

Where is the outrage?

Edward Harrison Feb 3, 2009

UPDATE: 12 Jan 2010: I am re-publishing this for the third time because of the situation at AIG. The question that Tim Iacono asked on his site a year ago in the post "Why aren't Americans rioting?" is based on an article from Alternet.…

Markets

Goldman says fund managers expect deflation

Edward Harrison Feb 3, 2009

Goldman Sachs London conducted a poll of fund managers today that had interesting results. The poll demonstrated that fund managers are expecting deflation more than inflation and that they expect the U.S. or Asia to escape the downturn…

News

Links: 2009-02-03

Edward Harrison Feb 3, 2009

Twitter, Communication, and My Intermittent Inner Luddite - naked capitalism (Yves Smith doesn't like the always on culture. Neither do I. I use all the new media but I have similar misgivings about them) Fin24.com - SA house prices…

Economy

California starts issuing IOUs as bankruptcy nears

Edward Harrison Feb 2, 2009

I just picked up two reports on California's desperate situation. California, whose legislature and Governor have been hold up in around the clock negotiations, is now issuing IOU's instead of cash. They have also been downgraded by Moody's…

Political Economy

Why are the Swiss now issuing debt in U.S. Dollars?

Edward Harrison Feb 2, 2009

What are the Swiss doing selling dollars? I don't have an answer to this question. But, I thought I would posit it because a reader tipped me off to a development via the Blog Alea:

News

Links: 2009-02-02

Edward Harrison Feb 2, 2009

Happy Groundhog Day. By the way, the word on the street is that Germans who came over to Pennsylvania wanted to use hedgehogs in this mythical are-we-going-to-have -six-more-weeks-of-winter ritual. But, because there are no hedgehogs, they…

Economy

U.S. ISM Survey shows some positive signs

Edward Harrison Feb 2, 2009

The ISM Manufacturing Survey came out. The PMI index was 35.6, up from 32.4 in December. It was bad (50 is the tipping point between recession and growth), but it's not all bad. There were two industries with growth: textiles and petroleum.…

Economy

Depression in Japan

Edward Harrison Feb 2, 2009

The statistics coming out of Japan have been truly awful of late. In my last post, you saw a small video connecting reduced spending in the U.S. to Japan. However, I need to be more explicit about how things are unraveling in Japan. The…

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