Kim Dae Jung Quotes

For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups, and the collapse of public services.

Indebted countries can only grow out of their debt troubles through strong economic growth; austerity measures alone cannot work. It is imperative to engage in deep structural reform to spur growth.

The government is determined to continue the process of fiscal consolidation and structural reform in order to secure sound public finances and improve the country's international competitiveness.

Our choice of a reform framework dictated that we looked at the fundamental assumptions that had driven Nigeria's economy, society and policy hitherto and to seek ways of either abandoning or transcending those assumptions and their supporting institutions.

I mean, the world has already done a big, big effort to forget debt to countries heavily indebted and with low income. And that has given good chances to countries to get out of poverty.

To claim the World Bank is just an extension of U.S. foreign policy is just wrong.

When foreign assistance has a clear mission, buy-in from the aid-recipient country, and explicit metrics for implementation, the United States will be able to transition aid-recipient nations into strong trading partners. One of the greatest examples of this successful transition is South Korea.

The call for debt cancellation is welcome, but debt does not just go away.

Why is it so hard for the IMF and the U.S. government to understand that putting out the fire comes before fireproofing the building?

The only way really to influence countries, in terms of poverty, is to get them to change their policies and get them to understand what the issues are.

International aid as a means of development is a major failure, and not just in Haiti.

We interpret our agreement with the IMF - our participation in the IMF's system of cooperation - as a borrowing agreement. The IMF sees it as an economic policy agreement. This is not in our interest.

Austerity is, devastatingly, not a party political issue.

We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble - and that's where the real bubble is - and the tuition bubble, we don't have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic.

Energetic action on debt would make a radical difference to the prospects of many of the poorest countries in the world, at no practical cost to creditor countries.

Through my studies, I became increasingly disillusioned with the international aid system. I think we systematically deny poor people the chance to engage as equals in the global economic order. At best, we give them handouts or tiny loans and hope they will suffer a bit less from extreme poverty. We don't view them as equals.

For a long time, rich countries have promised to reduce poverty but have failed to match their words with adequate action. Of course, some important progress has been made and millions of lives have been saved, but millions more could be saved.

But you are absolutely right that when the international community decides to help in a meaningful manner a country like Afghanistan, then coordination between the various actors that are involved in these processes is very, very difficult indeed.

What we need is fundamental tax reform.

The Global Poverty Project's mission is to stand up for the world's poorest people. We fight for the full funding of Millennium Development Goals and advocate meaningful change to government and corporate policies that block progress and entrench injustice.

We have learned by now, or should have, that the best-intended designers of aid programs can make ghastly mistakes in their sophisticated plans.

The United States spends more money on African aid than any nation on earth.

Discussions of the economy, especially during times of crisis, are often framed in terms of lessons we supposedly learned during the Depression of the 1930s. If we are not to endure terrible times like those again, we are told, we must support whatever form of state intervention is currently being peddled.

When nations are willing to undertake serious economic reform, we should help them to do it.

Third World nations will recognize [their] debts only so long as they're able to get them rescheduled and have money lent to them.