Jeffrey Sachs

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

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

“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 really going to consolidate a democracy.”

“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, and our own stability and security, as well.”

“Let's start fresh with Russia on some real help and some real reform.”

“Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.”

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

“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 well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better.”

“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.”

“It's not so unusual to run out of someone else's currency.”

“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 or 10 or 20 years.”

“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 up to right now.”

“I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.”

“In my view, there is an urgent need to communicate with the public and help to explain where there is consensus, and where are there doubts about the issues of sustainable development.”

“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, some things are not different.”

“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 that everything will just work out abroad aren't really coming to pass.”

“The essence of Africa's crisis is fundamentally its extreme poverty.”

“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 world of shared prosperity.”

“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.”

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