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.
-
Fort Payne, Ala., the world's sock capital, doesn't like competition from Honduras, which has enjoyed duty-free sock exports to the U.S. The tariff is set to be reinstated soon, but some say the town should move away from socks if it wants to compete globally. -
A cheap dollar may be boosting exports, but it's also putting U.S. companies on sale. Foreign firms are snatching up U.S. based companies at the fastest pace in seven years. When the topic is foreign takeovers of U.S. firms it doesn't take much to prompt concerns about loss of jobs and control. But many observers see these transactions as an absolutely normal and inevitable part of globalization.
-
Mattel issues a recall affecting more than 9 million toys made in China, citing magnets that could be swallowed and possible problems with lead paint. The company's Fisher-Price division recalled 1.5 million preschool toys from a different Chinese supplier earlier this month.
-
The federal minimum wage goes up 70 cents to $5.85 an hour. More than a million workers will make around $1,500 a year more than they would have without the increase. It is the first increase in a decade.
-
President Bush has selected Robert Zoellick to be the next president of the World Bank, according to senior White House officials. Zoellick has held two very high-ranking jobs within the Bush administration: He is a former deputy secretary of state, and served as a U.S. trade representative.
-
Oil industry services company Halliburton is moving its CEO and other corporate leadership to new headquarters in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
-
Hamas was democratically elected by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Is it still a terrorist organization? Expert panelists consider that question as part of the latest debate in the Intelligence Squared U.S. series.
-
A federal judge orders the Treasury Department to make changes in the way in prints money, so it will be easier for the blind to tell bills apart. The ruling, in response to an American Council of the Blind lawsuit, proposes several options. The Treasury Department has 10 days to appeal.
-
Six months ago, Dubai Ports World reached an agreement with Congress to sell its North American operations to a U.S.-based firm within four to six months. Six months later, the company still owns those ports, but says it will sell soon. Democrats say they will make it a campaign issue if a sale isn’t completed before the November elections.
-
Everyone knows that oil prices are high because demand has boomed in places like China, while supply has remained stagnant or fallen. But some oil analysts are focusing on a different issue: the amount of oil that's being held off the market in storage. These analysts say the oil market has created big incentives to hold on to oil rather then sell it.
