John Richard Sandbrook Quotes

In general the principle of the World Trade Organization … is that sovereignty and democratic rights have to be subordinated to the rights of investors

Mobilize population and all partners—the public sector and the private sector. Development is everybody’s business.

Most of the oil rich exporting countries were not really helped in the long run by their oil resources. Oil wealth distorted the development of the country. Corruption, the concept of something for nothing, the lack of development of a manufacturing or agricultural base, the resources to keep a dictator in power without depending on the people—all were problems.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states extract the oil in their ground.

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.

In the field of economy, for instance, we … members of the developing world follow the currents of globalization, with conditions set by the rich countries, and at a speed dictated without our slightest input.

Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land and the workmen's tools, but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive.

If the Board of Trade or Local Government Board managed their business after the fashion of the Foreign Office and Colonial Office, you and I should deserve to be hung.

Africa has no time to lose. The global economy is fast leaving our continent behind.

People are dying because we in the West are unwilling to change and to actually live by the free market rhetoric we often spout.

The Bretton Woods agreement will enthrone a world dictatorship of private finance more complete and terrible than an Hitlerite dream. It offers no solution of world problems, but quite blatantly sets up controls which will reduce the smaller nations to vassal states and make every government the mouthpiece and tool of International Finance. It will undermine and destroy the democratic institutions.

Fundamentally all social and political questions are economic.

We must be cognizant of the fact that the absence of economic rationality and perpetual political instability in our societies prevent us from fully benefiting from our resources as well as capabilities. In the extreme case, we find ourselves in devastating wars. Our conflict-ridden geography has substantially undercut our ability to develop economically. Natural wealth, including oil revenues has been wasted and the focus of attention has been other than human development

We must combat the over-riding interest of organizations such as The World Bank, The International Monetary fund … They work in collaboration of the most reactionary elements of Argentina.

There is no single sustainable model for national success. … the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.

In the first phase of economic development you have rising inequality.

The Secretary General has endorsed a propaganda exercise for international finance institutions whose policies are widely held to be at the root of many of the most grave social problems facing the poor all over the world.

The biggest drag on global growth in the coming decade will be war, corruption, and imperfect institutions.

The former apostles of class hatred now begin to preach one of the commonplaces of classic political economy: the quicker capital is developed the more profitable it will be for labor, for it will be so much the easier for the labor that is for hire to find employment.

… of the world’s nearly 200 economies, only 35 have reached developed status and stayed there. The rest are still emerging, and many have been emerging forever.

Part of our struggle is to make the international community understand that we are a poor country not because there is an insufficiency of resources and investment, but because we are deprived of the basic institutions and practices that make for good government.

Corporations and financiers have used their growing influence to induce governments and international organizations to construct a global framework of institutions and regulations that enable elites to maximize their rental income.

Government after government has prioritized the preservation of corporatist loyalties over the promotion of economic growth and emphasized clientelist distribution over entrepreneurial innovation and creation of level economic playing field.

The stock of materials by which any nation is rendered flourishing and prosperous are its industry, its knowledge or skill, its morals, its execution of justice, its courage, and the national union in directing these powers to one point and making them all center in the public benefit.