Back in 1998, Steve Hanke achieved brief fame as a sort of economic bomoh, or witchdoctor, to the late Indonesian president General Suharto.
With the Indonesian economy crumbling around the ears of Suharto's cronies, and the rupiah in complete collapse, Mr Hanke offered a beguiling cure. Fix the rupiah's exchange rate to the US dollar once and for all with a currency board mechanism like Hong Kong's, he advised, and the crisis will be halted in its tracks.
His recommendation earned the professor of applied economics from Johns Hopkins University in the United States widespread ridicule. Other economists insisted his scheme was dangerous nonsense that threatened to do far more harm than good. In front of Credit Suisse's Asian investment conference in Hong Kong that year, Mr Hanke was publicly lambasted as an 'economic snake-oil salesman'.
Mr Hanke's influence in Indonesia failed to survive the fall of General Suharto a couple of months later and his plans for the rupiah came to nothing.
Yet he remained undismayed. Yesterday Mr Hanke was back in the same venue 10 years on speaking to the 1,700 delegates at Credit Suisse's 2008 conference. And this time he was promoting a Hong Kong-style fixed exchange rate, not as the cure for Indonesia's economic ills, but for China's.
Mr Hanke argues that Beijing made a big mistake in 2005 when it revalued the yuan. By adopting the crawling peg against the US dollar that has operated since, the Chinese authorities created an irresistible opportunity for speculators.
'The system will eventually blow up,' he says, 'but in the meantime it is a super one-way bet. The yuan will go to the moon. There is no way the Chinese can stop the speculation.'