Fred Harrison

Fred Harrison (born 1944) is a British author, economist, economic commentator, and corporate policy advisor, notable for his stances on land reform and belief that an overreliance on land, property, and mortgages weakens economic structures and makes companies vulnerable to economic collapse. Dirk Bezemer, a professor of economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that Harrison was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis. They have one daughter, Nina Harrison.

Journalism career Harrison's first career was in newspaper journalism, working at papers such as the Wellington Journal and Shrewsbury News, in Shropshire, England. After a stint in news agencies, he moved to The Camberley News as sub-editor, working there for a year before moving to The People newspaper, where he became chief reporter.

Most of his stories involved investigating criminal and anti-social behaviour, such as stories about speedway riders buying championship titles, but Harrison's most famous and intricate assignment was a long campaign of reports, interviews, and interaction with police to convince them to reopen the case on the serial child killings between 1963 and 1965 that were called the Moors murders.

Economic advisor to Russia With the fall of the USSR, Harrison took an opportunity to work with the Russian government as a response to his disaffection for the choices of the Russian Duma on these and other issues.

Economist, media figure, and author

Harrison is inspired by the writings of the American political economist Henry George.

After his sojourn in Russia, Harrison returned to his work in England. He had already become the Research Director of the Land Research Trust, London, in 1998

Predicting the 2007-08 crash

Harrison says he warned Gordon Brown as far back as 1997

In 2009, Dirk Bezemer, a professor of economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that Harrison was one of the earliest to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis. with dozens of newspaper and magazine articles, and many TV and radio interviews.

Harrison argued that building more properties is not the solution because speculative demand will always outstrip supply in the winner's curse stage of the cycle: "In the land market, a rise in demand cannot result in an offsetting increase in supply in places where people want to live and work. So prices are driven to dizzying heights by speculators, who outbid each other with offers for tracts that cannot yield an economic return. The market stalls and the house of cards comes crashing down.

In 2015, Harrison published the first of a trilogy of Handbooks on Humanity. He integrated cultural studies with economic theory to test hypotheses that seek to explain why governments persist with sub-optimal fiscal policies. Harrison concluded that Western ("neo-liberal") culture had been shaped by rent-seeking to deliver sub-optimum outcomes through tax policies that have the permanent effect of mal-distributing income and retarding economic growth.