Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Quotes

A new forum is needed that reflects the realities of today's globalised world and the rising importance of emerging markets.

This is the first global crisis that doesn't start in poor countries and it was caused by the rich countries. So it's necessary to take advantage of this crisis - the financial system has to be regulated. It's necessary that the central banks in the world should control a little bit the banks' financing, because they cannot bypass a certain range of leverage. And I believe that there's no other - more any reason for a G-8 group or any other "G." I believe that we should guarantee that the G-20 should be now an important forum to discuss the major economic issues of the world.

I was with top CEOs in 2009, and they were clearly shaken. Top leaders of Wall Street and elsewhere, shaken. The ones at the top did get by because if they are seeing a decline somewhere, there is also growth elsewhere, like in emerging economies.

The world over, it was believed that, down the line, India will emerge as a major economy along with U.S. and China.

If the Asian financial crisis had the impact of accelerating China's rise, the transatlantic financial crisis has had the effect of accelerating Germany's rise.

The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries — these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint.

Italy is one of the eight major industrial nations. What will happen if a G-8 country within the European Union goes bankrupt? Does anyone think Germany wouldn't be affected? Italy is one of our key markets.

Fortunately poorer countries, such as China, are showing leadership and beginning to demonstrate to the world how to invest in low-carbon growth.

I understand we're on our way to being a Third World country. Could we just stop at 'Second World' before we get there?

The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.

How does the richest country in the history of the world fail to pay its bills?

I also believe that most of the emerging economies have a fairly large amount of foreign exchange reserves, relative to 10 years ago.

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.

I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of "accuser" and "accused" is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode.

If you do the things that Britain needs to do - namely, withdraw from NATO, get rid of the bomb, and stop being aligned with one side of the Cold War - then presumably the run on the pound, the result in the stock exchanges of the world, will be fairly catastrophic for the economy. But some sort of political realignment is plainly what this country needs.

America's in deep trouble. We don't know what we're doing when it comes to devaluations and all of these countries all over the world, especially China. They're the best, the best ever at it. What they're doing to us is a very, very sad thing.

Even a China growing at 7% or indeed less is still adding to the world economy an economy equivalent to the UK or more.

There's something beautiful about working in the one place in the world where the world is present, like United Nations. Otherwise, one would have to go to each of these countries to negotiate.

I think that for the developing world there are many versions of capitalism, and countries have to choose one that's appropriate.

I think this country and the world would be far better off if the US is not an outlaw state.

Globalization makes our economy, our health, and our security all captive to events on the other side of the world. And no other nation on earth has a greater capacity to shape that global system, or to build consensus around a new set of international rules that expand the zones of freedom, personal safety, and economic well-being. Like it or not, if we want to make America more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure.

South Africa is regarded as being an extraordinarily important country - not just for South Africa, but for Southern Africa, for the BRICS, working now in a new way in which power is becoming more shared - thankfully.

Forget startup companies. The next frontier is startup countries.

There is not a single country in the world that is not interested in doing business with China. And no one is seriously concerned about human rights. But Africans are criticized for wanting to do business with China.

I do wish that the IMF and the World Bank would disappear soon.