I just ran into Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, in the run down but historic commons pub of Kings College at Cambridge University
Rogoff is over-the-top accomplished, but just one essay of his made me a fan — written in 2004, Rogoff authored an oped titled “A Debtor’s Empire” that laid out quite clearly that America’s superpower credentials were being eroded by a lack of attention to dependencies it was building on other countries to finance its never-ending binge of cheap toys and expensive wars.
Rogoff is speaking in the first session of a star-studded conference opening here at Cambridge University today under the auspices of the new George Soros-initiated Institute for New Economic Thinking. The meeting will start at 10:00 am EST time; 3:00 UK time.
Here is the agenda for the three-day session.
Why Kings College. The reason is simple. It was here where John Maynard Keynes once conceptualized how to change the laws of economic gravity when the world needed it. The drivers behind the Institute for New Economic Thinking believe that the time for revision of economic thinking has again arrived.
Rob Johnson will head INET as its founding executive director. Johson is also Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on Global Finance at the Roosevelt Institute, was previously a managing director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. He has also served on the United Nations Commission of Experts on International Monetary Reform under the Chairmanship of Joseph Stiglitz and served in past years as Chief Economist of the US Senate Committee on the Budget.
Other speakers and participants at this meeting include Joseph Stiglitz, George Soros, Richard Koo, Perry Mehrling, Charles Dallara, Adair Turning, Robert Dugger, Simon Johnson, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Gillian Tett among many others.
By special arrangement, the Washington Note will be posting a lot of video takes with speakers at this meeting — as well as interviews with some of the principals.
— Steve Clemons
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