If you have a lot of short-term debt, it means that all of that money can be demanded in a very short period of time. Technically, short-term debt means money that’s coming due within a...

The truth of good economic doctoring is to know the general principles, and to really know the specifics. To understand the context, and also, to understand that an economy may need some tender loving care,...

While the Bush administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of WMD, it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2% of that sum… this year on the Global Fund to Fight...

Countries like Malawi need, require and deserve the increased help of the international community, not only in the form of food aid but in the form of help to grow more food.

We give away tens of billions to Brazil, or to one place or another, without thinking. But in those days, to give even a tiny amount to Russia was viewed almost as anathema by many...

Devaluations are never easy.

It’s not so unusual to run out of someone else’s currency.

An estimated 25 million Africans are infected with HIV. Of those, 3 (million) to 4 million have advanced disease. Of those, only about 10,000 wealthy people with HIV have access to these drugs.

Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.

The war on terror cannot ever be won if the war on poverty isn’t won,

The idea that the UN system could provide real leadership on the great development challenges will strain credulity in some quarters.

A lot of the old apparatchiks came back in, and corruption really dramatically increased in ’94/’95, particularly around Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996, when the government used corrupt practices to give money to business, part of...

The Russian government not only acted corruptly, not only built up a new oligarchy of billionaires out of nothing, basically, but also gave away its most valuable financial assets-its ownership of the huge natural resource...

In 2001, the prices of medications have continued to fall rapidly, … Even though antiretroviral drug prices have declined to around $500 per year, this is still far above what poor countries can afford without...

When countries open up to trade, they generally benefit, because they can sell more, then they can buy more. And trade has two-way gain.

Trade is important, but I visit places that are so cut off from world markets that they aren’t really part of the local economy, let alone the world economy.

The U.S. has a sound economy. It also has a cyclical economy. It also has stock market values right now that are hard to explain on historical norms. While it’s always possible that everything can...

I’m focusing on a world divided between rich and poor, and a world that doesn’t seem to be able to manage the natural base of our lives: air, oceans, or biodiversity. It’s a mistake to...

There’s a lot of strength in the U.S., but there’s a lot of froth also. The froth will blow off. We’re going to have to face up to some realities that we’re not fully facing...

The basic idea was that if a country would put its economy as an integrated piece of the world system, that it would benefit from that with economic growth. I concur with that basic view.

The longer you wait, the less fun. If you wait until the bitter end, the whole economy can be destroyed.

we took on as a project helping a village in western Kenya. It was 5,000 hungry people beset with malaria and AIDS. And we said, ‘let’s apply the recommendations of the Millennium Project in this...

White House and State Department foreign-policy experts are overwhelmingly directed towards military and diplomatic issues, not development issues.

We’re fighting all the wrong wars in this country.

We’re going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There’s no question about that. Let’s face up to that. We’re going to have to put in money if Russia is...

America’s planned contribution to the global AIDS fund is around a sixth of what is needed in 2003, according to the fund itself.

If the whole world went into recession, all the major central banks could cut interest rates and expand the money supply.

I think it is an ‘in-your-face’ move and who knows what’s going to happen,

Globalization was a deep trend pushed by technology and right ideas, as much as anything else.

As of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a kind of professional consensus arose in Washington. It was called a consensus for the world, but how many people really believed all of it is an...

Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world.

In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows… they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren’t going to pay off for five...

We, being the Western world, wouldn’t let Russia off the hook on debt. So there were demands on debt servicing in the early days until they ran out of reserves. There was no real aid...

Business often does a good job supporting communities: the arts, universities, and scientific enterprises… But that philosophy has rarely reached poor countries. Even businesses that are enlightened in their home bases see Africa, Latin America,...

Most companies that are interested in working in the poorest places don’t know how to do it right now, … don’t know how we fit in the broader scheme. This provides a framework where all...

There is no doubt that Malawi needs 100 percent debt cancellation as soon as possible, and I will do everything possible to speed that up.

Roosevelt talked not only about Freedom from Fear, but also Freedom from Want.

The idea that UN commitments should be followed by action is indeed a radical one, especially for the United States, where wilful neglect of its own commitments is the rule.

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

Let’s start fresh with Russia on some real help and some real reform.

The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new...

You can’t fight the greatest pandemic for years without resources,

If you have billions and billions of dollars coming due in a country in a short period of time, and if a sense of panic develops among your creditors, so that everybody demands the money...

Development can really work everywhere. But most of sub-Saharan Africa, the Andean region, and Central Asia face obstacles.

In 1991, a miraculous thing happened, and that’s the Soviet Union ended. So there was an opportunity to build a very healthy and new world, on the basis of the change that the Russian people...

Senior development specialists in the Treasury can be counted on one hand. America’s government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that...

When is the last time anybody heard Vice President Dick Cheney even feign a word of concern for the world’s poor?

We’ve waited 20 years, until we have 36 million infected in the world, before we’ve started to do something, … It’s shocking how we’ve let this go on. And costs of intervening today are vastly...

We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy.

No serious work whatever is under way within the government to link annual budgetary allocations with the international development goals the United States has endorsed. For example, the Bush administration has failed to produce even...