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Adam Davidson

Adam Davidson is a contributor to Planet Money, a co-production of NPR and This American Life. He also writes the weekly "It's the Economy" column for the New York Times Magazine.

His work has won several major awards including the Peabody, DuPont-Columbia, and the Polk. His radio documentary on the housing crisis, "The Giant Pool of Money," which he co-reported and produced with Alex Blumberg, was named one of the top ten works of journalism of the decade by the Arthur L. Carter of Journalism Institute at New York University. It was widely recognized as the clearest and most entertaining explanation of the roots of the financial crisis in any media.

Davidson and Blumberg took the lessons they learned crafting "The Giant Pool of Money" to create Planet Money. In two weekly podcasts, a blog, and regular features on Morning Edition, All Things Considered and This American Life, Planet Money helps listeners understand how dramatic economic change is impacting their lives. Planet Money also proves, every day, that substantive, intelligent economic reporting can be funny, engaging, and accessible to the non-expert.

Before Planet Money, Davidson was International Business and Economics Correspondent for NPR. He traveled around the world to cover the global economy and pitched in during crises, such as reporting from Indonesia's Banda Aceh just after the tsunami, New Orleans post-Katrina, and Paris during the youth riots.

Prior to coming to NPR, Davidson was Middle East correspondent for PRI's Marketplace. He spent a year in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2003 to 2004, producing award-winning reports on corruption in the US occupation.

Davidson has also written for The Atlantic, Harper's, GQ, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. He has a degree in the history of religion from the University of Chicago.

  • The face of manufacturing has changed. In the future, the pool of workers is expected to be smaller. And if workers want to succeed, they'll need continuous improvement with on-the-job education.
  • More than 330,000 people filed new claims for unemployment insurance benefits last week. That sounds like a big number — and is a slight increase over the previous week — but it's being taken as some very good news. For a month, now, fewer new people are asking for unemployment insurance than at any time since November, 2007. That's before the Great Recession.
  • A break down of who buys and what exactly sells at the U.S. Treasury bond auctions.
  • Artisanal food makers in Brooklyn have a lesson for America's manufacturers: Focus on the picky customers who are willing to pay extra for quality products.
  • Large banks are repaying the bailout money they received much faster than expected. The administration says the cost of the TARP program will be about $200 billion less than estimated. Big financial firms are making profits again because the government has driven down borrowing costs for banks and safeguarded their debts.
  • A key component of President Obama's plan to overhaul the financial regulatory system is the creation of a consumer protection agency. The agency would oversee consumer financial products, which have been regulated in the past, but whose oversight was exposed as lax.
  • Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner explained this morning how $350 billion will facilitate banks to start lending again. Some members of Congress are concerned that the first $350 billion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program money did not actually help banks loosen credit.
  • President Bush has said the U.S. is using a "wide range of tools" to address the chaos in the financial markets. The stock market, however, has continued its downward slide. Many finance-watchers say the credit markets are to blame. Banks are simply not lending money to one another.
  • The government announced Tuesday that it plans to buy huge amounts of short-term debts from companies. The Fed will buy "commercial paper," a short-term financing mechanism that many companies use to finance their day-to-day operations, like meeting payroll or purchasing supplies.
  • Questions have been raised about whether it is wise to let foreign governments buy up stakes in U.S. financial institutions. Now, with Lehman Brothers, the U.S. is getting to see what happens when a foreign investor walks away.