Every morning our newspapers could read, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, sad stories rarely get written.

The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.

Soil mapping is one of the pillars to the challenge of sustainable development

The world got side-tracked from development issues during the post-9/11 crisis period.

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.

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

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.