There is a lot to be said for sitting around under trees contemplating matters. The Buddha achieved enlightenment meditating under a bo tree. Isaac Newton came up with his law of gravity sitting under an apple tree. And monetary economist John Greenwood devised Hong Kong's exchange rate link to the US dollar while lying under a coconut palm on the Micronesian island of Palau.
When it was introduced, the link succeeded in halting a slide in the Hong Kong dollar and restored faith in the currency (see chart). But in the 24 years since the Hong Kong government put Mr Greenwood's idea into action, his peg has come in for plenty of criticism.
It got the blame for the inflation and asset market bubbles of the early and mid-1990s, as well as the deflation and unemployment which followed.
Today, with the US dollar weak on international markets and the yuan increasingly important, more and more analysts argue that the link is a concept past its sell-by date.
Mr Greenwood disagrees - strenuously. In a new book* he re-examines the original arguments in favour of the peg compared with other possible exchange rate mechanisms and concludes they are as valid today as they were in 1984.
He rightly dismisses the notion of linking the Hong Kong dollar to the yuan on the grounds that any anchor currency must be freely tradeable while the yuan's convertibility is restricted.