The good news is that the IMF has already shown some interest in the idea of forward guidance. At the annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde suggested that the Fund would intervene to help emerging markets in crisis.

Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?

Now, I used to work the weekends at the Hole in the Wall off season programming to make some extra money as I was trying to get my feet off the ground, and this kid who was just this really hyper kid, I started calling him Monkey Boy, and I went home and wrote a book called Good Night, Monkey Boy.

This is the type of situation in which fiscal policy should come to the rescue. Draghi made that very point in his speech at the annual gathering of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in late August, and several economists have suggested that it is time for the eurozone to engineer a temporary fiscal expansion.

NEW YORK At the end of every August, central bankers and financiers from around the world meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the US Federal Reserve s economic symposium. This year, the participants were greeted by a large group of mostly young people, including many African and Hispanic Americans.

And I sent this book out to a dozen publishers and it was rejected every single time, but I was also involved with the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, an amazing camp for kids with all sorts of critical illnesses, and it's those kids at the camp that read my stories, and I read to them, and I saw that they responded to my work.

JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING As central bankers from around the world gather this week in Jackson Hole for the Federal Reserve s annual Economic Policy Symposium, one key topic of discussion will be the current global stock market turmoil. There are many reasons for these gyrations, but the expectation that the Fed will start to raise interest rates perhaps as early as September is clearly one of them.

If growth and employment expectations remain dismal, it will be difficult to rekindle demand, particularly private business investment, no matter how low interest rates are, or how many resources banks have for potential lending. ECB President Mario Draghi s message in his speech last month in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as at his September press conference was a clear call for more fiscal support to boost effective demand.

CAMBRIDGE Inflation its causes and its connection to monetary policy and financial crises was the theme of this year s international conference of central bankers and academics in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But, while policymakers desire to be prepared for potential future risks to price stability is understandable, they did not place these concerns in the context of recent inflation developments at the global level or within historical perspective.

The future of the housing boom, and the possible financial repercussions of a substantial price decline in coming years, is a matter of mounting concern among governments around the world. I learned this first hand while attending this year s Jackson Hole Symposium in the remote wilderness of Wyoming, where, ironically, there are almost no homes to buy.

At the Jackson Hole conference, Paul McCulley of PIMCO, the world s largest bond fund, argued that in the past month or two we have been witnessing a run on what he calls the shadow banking system, which consists of all the levered investment conduits, vehicles and structures that have sprung up along with the housing boom. The shadow banking system, which is beyond the reach of bank regulators and deposit insurance, fed the boom in home prices by helping provide more credit to buyers.