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Internationalization of the renminbi is a stated goal of the Chinese government, its brief flirtation with Special Drawing Rights and an Asian Currency Unit notwithstanding. Chinese officials understand that a dollar-centric international monetary and financial system is a mixedblessing.

Imperfect knowledge economics, or IKE to their friends, is popular with all the popular kids. George Soros, Bill Janeway and Anatole Kaletsky were in attendance as Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg - or more properly, their students - showed the latest work in progress.

Japan is going to double its money supply, according to today’s front page of the Financial Times (5 April 2013), and a salient question might be what we should compare that to. It sounds like a lot, but is it?

Having lunch next to Edward Fullbrook he told me the story of how the post-autistic economic review got its start, leading to what we today know as the World Economic Association and all the great work coming from this community.

Some personal touches to hospitality at the INET conference, although I feel for the people who have been holding that sign all day.

In his opening remarks, Robert Johnson said that this “is not the institute of anything goes” with INET now getting to a point where it needs to stop criticising the mainstream and should instead “create a new vision.”

The Institute for New Economic Thinking held its annual plenary conference in Hong Kong from April 4-7, 2013 at the InterContinental Hotel in Kowloon. The event discussed Asia’s emergence in the global economy and other core issues.

Healthy innovation economies are the main driver of prosperity in the 21st century. But the three players that have traditionally sponsored basic research and invention in those economies are no longer willing or able to perform that role.

The developed economies of Europe, North America, and Japan are facing tremendous challenges related to indebtedness and stagnation. How will the developing economies of Asia respond to this challenge as they reorient their growth strategies to meet the rising aspirations oftheir people?

The Foundations of Economic Prosperity: The Lessons of Innovation Process and History

In “The Ambivalence of Scarcity” which is my contribution to L’Enfer des choses. René Girard et la logique de l’économie, written by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and originally published in French in 1978, I attempt to apply mimetic theory to modern economics and to economicphenomena, and also to explain why economic issues and economics as a discipline occupy such an important place in the modern world.