Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments... Rightwing pundits bemoan the evident intention of Obama and team to 'tell us what kind of car to drive'. Yet that is exactly what they intend to do...and rightly so. Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change.

It's quite possible to arrive in the year 2030 where people are no longer dying of poverty. We could actually help lead a global end-not a reduction, but an end-to absolute poverty...I have always found that a committed, powerful group of leaders, can make a huge difference.

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

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

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.

The rich do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the economic ladder . . . Economic development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on itself. But it must get started.

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.