News that Gina Reinhart, heiress to an Australian mining empire, is likely to become the world's richest person - with a personal net worth estimated at $100 billion - comes as Christine Lagarde is made executive head of the International Monetary Fund.
The latter appointment has noticeably bought complaints from some male economists, as Lagarde was an international lawyer before taking up her previous position as French finance minister.
However, Reinhart's potential replacement of Microsoft's Bill Gates (or the founder of IKEA according to some reports) as the wealthiest person on the planet does not seem to have raised many eyebrows.
What it does reflect is the continuing importance of natural assets and resources - coal and iron in this case - to economic development, something the male-dominated economics profession has failed to adequately acknowledge in recent years.
Indeed their frequent inability to see elephants in the room is one very good reason for the IMF to appoint a non-economist as its new head, although Madame Lagarde should remember not to forget her spectacles (as she did at her first meeting as a member of the French government).
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