Alan Abelson (October 12, 1925 – May 9, 2013) was a veteran financial journalist, and longtime writer of the influential ''Up and Down Wall Street'' column in '' Barron's Magazine''.

Career

He was editor of Barron's from 1981 until 1992."Editor of Barron's Tells Staff He's Been Asked to Quit Post"
By GERALDINE FABRIKANT, '' The New York Times'', December 22, 1992. Retrieved Jan 31, 2010. Abelson's columns at Barron's often took a skeptical look at the investment favorites and fads of the day, and sometimes spawned controversy and even lawsuits."Debasing Bernanke"
''Up and Down Wall Street'' column in Barron's Magazine, September 24, 2007, By Alan Abelson. Retrieved Jan 31, 2010. While working for Barron's, he was responsible for editing the Investment News & Views section, writing corporate and industry features and the influential "Up and Down Wall Street" column. From July 1982 to October 1990, Abelson frequently appeared on NBC-TV's News at Sunrise as a business commentator. In 1999, less than a year before the crash of the dot-com bubble, he warned, "the market is grossly overvalued, more so, indeed, than it was in 1987 before the crash." Prior to working for Barron's, Abelson worked as a copy boy for the New York Journal- American. He eventually worked his way up to becoming a reporter and then onto the financial desk. From 1952 to 1956, Abelson worked as the stock-market columnist for the paper.

Education

Abelson obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and English from

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

and later received his master's degree from the University of Iowa in creative writing.

Death

Abelson died of a heart attack at a New York City Hospital on May 9, 2013. He was 87. Abelson was predeceased by his wife, the former Virginia Eloise Peterson, who died in 1999, and was survived by his two children, daughter Reed Abelson and son Justin Abelson, and five grandchildren.

Awards and legacy

* 1998 Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award * Abelson is responsible for coining

Yhprum's law Yhprum's law is the opposite of Murphy's law. The simple formula of Yhprum's law is: "Everything that can work, will work." "Yhprum" is "Murphy" spelled in reverse. A more specific formulation of the law by Richard Zeckhauser, a professor of poli ...

in 1974.Alan Abelson, "Up & down Wall Street", ''Barron's'' pp. 1, 27–28, 9 December 1974.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abelson, Alan 1925 births 2013 deaths American economics writers American male non-fiction writers American finance and investment writers City College of New York alumni University of Iowa alumni 20th-century American journalists American male journalists Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award winners