Paul Erdman

Paul Emil Erdman (May 19, 1932 - April 23, 2007 in Sonoma County, California) was one of the leading business and financial writers in the United States who became known for writing novels based on monetary trends and historical facts concerning complex matters of international finance.

Erdman was born in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, on 19 May 1932 to American parents. He graduated from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He received his PhD from the University of Basel, Switzerland. In 1958 he worked as a financial analyst for the European Coal and Steel Community. Between 1959 and 1961, he worked as an economist at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California.

Erdman returned to Switzerland where in 1965, he founded and was the president of a Swiss bank - the Salik Bank. In 1969, the United California Bank in California bought a majority stake and renamed it the United California Bank in Basel. The bank collapsed after taking large losses speculating in the cocoa market. Erdman and other board members were accused of fraud and Erdman spent time in jail awaiting trial. Several officers of his bank were convicted and served prison terms. In television interviews, Erdman has observed that Swiss prisons had better food (he could have meals sent in by hotels and restaurants of his choice) but Swiss laws did apply to the "privileged classes" as well as to ordinary prisoners. The whole episode has been well documented in Chapter 4: How My Swiss Bank Blew $40 Million and Went Broke of the book Supermoney by George Goodman written under his pseudonym Adam Smith.

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