
This week, I had the pleasure of attending a conference at the University of Michigan.
The conference was called “Roots of Exchange: Emerging Markets,” and it focused on “the global exchange of goods and services and the evolution of exchange rates over time.”
The conference kicked off with an hour of keynote speeches from prominent economists and policymakers.
It was the first time in years that a conference like this, which is all about exchange rates and economic policy, had a keynote from someone from a government.
And it was a big success.
I had a chance to speak with three of the conference’s speakers: John Cochrane, who leads the International Monetary Fund’s International Economic Research Unit, which has worked on the evolution and future of exchange rate rates for more than a decade; Peter Kuznick, who was one of the authors of the IMF’s 2007 study that established the dollar’s “true” value; and Joseph Estrada, a former senior economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
In their talks, all three speakers discussed the problems facing the U