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...

The essential truth for developing countries is, if you try to live by yourself, you will cut yourself off from the amazing progress of world technology. You won’t be able to purchase the goods that...

If we continue this combination of high rhetoric and grossly insufficient action, I think the risks to (the United States ‘) own national security … and the risk to global stability are very real.

Unfortunately, the real focus in this country has not been on the rest of the world. It’s been on our own issues and our own problems. Fair enough. But it means that our simple hopes...

It’s time for other candidates to come forward that have experience in development.

In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite...

We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world’s greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst, and then we enter depression? Well,...

The broader issue of the real role of the U.S., the foreign assistance aspect of that, who’s going to pay for the security of a global economy?

The volatility of international capital is obviously destabilizing markets today.

For many parts of the world, the chasm that has to be crossed to get from where they were, whether it’s a dictatorship, economic collapse, financial crisis or all of the above, to the other...

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

Russia increasingly lived on short-term borrowing. Now, this was an extraordinary merry-go-round.

We’ve taken the view that if the rest of the world would democratize and create market economies, that would spread the benefits of prosperity around the world, and that it would enhance our own prosperity,...

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a...

I want the donors to think ahead, not just handle the immediate crisis,

If we did go into a recession, something that’s always possible for the U.S. or Europe, we could lower interest rates and expand the money supply without worrying about the price of gold.

My sense is that the IMF does not have a proper modus operandi for the current conditions in the world. They misjudge rhetorically. They misjudge tactically. They misunderstand the dangers of financial panic, and the...

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...