George Soros’s Institute for New Economic Thinking – or is it “Old Economic Thinking”?

Frances Coppola sets out a nice description here of a conference organised by the so called “Institute for New Economic Thinking” which according to her, consisted mainly of old duffers setting out OLD ideas rather than new ideas. (Article title: “Beyond Disappointment”.)

So how come?

Well my explanation is that INET was set up by George Soros with a seriously large amount of money: $50million to be exact. And that sort of money is guaranteed to attract those who are skilled at attracting grant money from government departments, the Rowntree Foundation and so on. I mean if you are short of something to do, plus you could do with embellishing your CV with “gave keynote speech at the INET conference at XYZ” or something like that, plus you wouldn’t say no to an expenses paid trip to XYZ, then it’s obvious what you need to do.

In contrast, those who actually do have novel ideas but who aren’t so skilled at the “grant money attracting” business don’t stand a chance.

But if you don’t like my explanation for what’s going on, here is a slightly different, but equally cynical explanation. (Article title: “George Soros’ INET: A conspiracy theory assessment”, by Norbert Haering.)

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P.S.  I am grateful to "Rethinking Economics" for reminding me (via Twitter) about that Coppola article.