The public can now "blog" the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund on such matters as global growth or turmoil in financial markets.

The IMF's Economic Counselor, Simon Johnson, launched the blog in conjunction with the fall meetings of the IMF and its sister organization, the World Bank, in Washington from Saturday through Monday.

Later, Johnson weighed into globalization and inequality with Gary Becker, the 1992 Nobel laureate from the University of Chicago, before turning to the thorny issue of sovereign wealth funds -- the surplus money oil-rich Middle East countries and emerging economies like China invest in riskier assets in search of higher returns.

From comments posted so far, Johnson's statements at a news conference earlier on Wednesday that the U.S. dollar is overvalued and needs to fall further have generated most of the interest.

The blog can be found here.

This entry was posted by David Choi, on Thursday, October 18, 2007. You can leave your response.