Author Archives: Edward Harrison

About Edward Harrison

I am a banking and finance specialist at the economic consultancy Global Macro Advisors. Previously, I worked at Deutsche Bank, Bain, the Corporate Executive Board and Yahoo. I have a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College and an MBA in Finance from Columbia University. As to ideology, I would call myself a libertarian realist - believer in the primacy of markets over a statist approach. However, I am no ideologue who believes that markets can solve all problems. Having lived in a lot of different places, I tend to take a global approach to economics and politics. I started my career as a diplomat in the foreign service and speak German, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish and French as well as English and can read a number of other European languages. I enjoy a good debate on these issues and I hope you enjoy my blogs. Please do sign up for the Email and RSS feeds on my blog pages. Cheers. Edward http://www.creditwritedowns.com

Is the Bundesbank against an IMF-enabled bailout of Greece?

It seems the wheels are coming off the European experiment. Yesterday, we had a huge meltdown in Greek bonds. Media reports suggest that a recent article in German daily Frankfurter Rundschau are what triggered the latest selloffs in Greek sovereign debt (See the Telegraph’s account here; hat tip Swedish Lex). This article leaked portions of […]

Citigroup’s Chuck Prince confirms that risky behavior drives out prudent when risk is rewarded

Former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince made what could be considered the most infamous statement of this credit crisis when he said: "as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing." –Citi Chief on Buyouts: ‘We’re Still Dancing’, DealBook, July 2007 This statement was correctly interpreted as a […]

Hopes for avoiding a second (fatal) credit crisis

For the majority of us, the credit crisis we are living through has come rather unexpectedly. And because it has been both a surprise to many and a traumatic experience to yet many more, we are all trying to contextualize it using past economic and historical periods. Unfortunately, this is a tricky exercise because it […]

Will the financial media adapt to the changing media landscape?

I originally wrote this post at Credit Writedowns under a different title yesterday. I have changed the title to more accurately reflect what I am driving at in the post. Otherwise the post is exactly the same. The question is: which media companies will find their revenue streams threatened by the shift in the financial […]

Links 4/8/10

Edward Harrison here. Yves is in Cambridge at a conference. So, I am stepping in with some links. The last time I did the links, I had the good fortune of having some of her Antidote du Jours to hand. Unfortunately, I don’t have them to hand yet this go around. But, do send me […]

Three ways to keep NPLs down, recapitalize banks, and socialize losses all at the same time

A post by Edward Harrison Michael Pettis is out with another great piece on the likelihood that non-performing loans (NPLs) will rise in China when the present spate of malinvestment comes a-cropper. What caught my eye were his statements about the hidden ways in which government pays for bank recapitalization in order to deal with […]

Throwing in the towel on policy makers

A post by Edward Harrison. Earlier today, I had a brief e-mail exchange with Marshall Auerback in which I said that I had basically thrown in the towel on US (and global) policy makers. Early on in this crisis, I had advocated a number of policy paths which I think would have been infinitely superior […]

Why the fall in the savings rate means something

A post by Edward Harrison Recently, I wrote a post which examined three different reasons the savings rate in the US could have been falling over the last year. Rebecca Wilder thinks this is a meaningless exercise: Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns is theorizing why the saving rate is falling when it should be rising, […]

FBI warns of mortgage fraud ‘epidemic’: Seeks to head off ‘next S&L crisis’

Rampant fraud in the mortgage industry has increased so sharply that the FBI warned Friday of an "epidemic" of financial crimes which, if not curtailed, could become "the next S&L crisis." Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said the booming mortgage market, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, has attracted unscrupulous professionals and […]

Has Europe put the loaded gun on the table?

A post by Edward Harrison Greek Prime Minister Papandreou asked the European leaders to "put the loaded gun on the table" at this summit i.e. do something concrete to ward off speculators. So they have. The deal which European leaders have now struck is the best we could have hoped for given the political constraints […]

Top ten reasons you know China has a financial bubble on its hands

A post by Edward Harrison. Edward Chancellor, author of the seminal book on financial speculation and manias “Devil Take The Hindmost,” is now turning his eyes to China. He sees a number of red flags which point to excess in China. Chancellor writes: In the aftermath of the credit crunch, the outlook for most developed […]

On China’s currency peg and potential policy actions

A post by Edward Harrison In reading Scott Sumner’s take on the China currency peg dilemma, I see that both he and Paul Krugman hit on the fundamental problem in the debate: reserves. Everyone is talking about the peg as if relaxing the peg will be the magic bullet to America’s current account problem. But […]

Will the Chinese yield to external threats?

A post by Edward Harrison I am going to talk here a little bit about the looming trade war between China and the United States. But I am going to come at it from a side angle via some historical analogies. Common folklore in the United States says that the Soviet Empire collapsed in large […]

Calibrating differences between China and Japan’s bubble blow-off top

A post by Edward Harrison. I was talking to a friend of mine who does emerging market investing for a living and I asked him what he made of recent China-bullish comments by Stephen Roach. The Morgan Stanley Asia head was in Germany speaking to German business daily Handelsblatt last week. The guys from Handelsblatt […]

Spain’s woes and Germany’s export model could mean double dip

A post by Edward Harrison The Bloomberg video below is a bit sensationalist in my opinion. But it gets to the heart of the problem in Europe, namely Spain. Spain has an economy and debt which is an order of magnitude larger than Greece. That means that problems in Spain are more critical for the […]