Some material for discussions or arguments here:World economic reports (May 1- 7): the economic decline abates"This week's peek at the global economy shows some economic calm. The signs of hope remain mostly in the soft data - US and China purchasing managers surveys posting consecutive monthly growth - while the hard data - export growth, inflation, and unemployment - continue to deteriorate. Going forward, the story that "economies are declining less quickly" is gaining some momentum. And for some, a turning point may be on the horizon."See also, The Emerging Global Financial Architecture - May 7Events, particularly these days, tend to outrun the best laid plans to anticipate research trends. And it might seem that this was true in the case of this conference, sponsored by UCSC's Santa Cruz Center for International Economics, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The conference was planned last year, at a time when most academic researchers were aware and concerned about the incipient economic slowdown, and whether the major economies would "de-couple", and in turn how these factors would impact the constellation of global imbalances.As it turns out, the papers were all, in my opinion, remarkably germane to issues we're concerned about right now: how the composition of debt determines vulnerability to crises, the effect of capital controls on capital flows, the role of the IMF, and the usefulness of macroeconometric models to predict exchange rates even during periods of financial disorder. ...Discusses select papers and conference proceedings.