My colleagues and I took a stand in our work several years ago that we would not look for the magic bullet, because there is none. These are just basic problems requiring basic work. Nothing magic about it.

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

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 is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so.

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.

At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development.

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.