Jakaya Kikwete Quotes

Democracies can't handle austerity measures very well.

If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty.

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.

Third world kids are dying today to pay off the debt.

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 global policy shift toward neo-liberalism that took place during the 1980s and 1990s was supposed, according to its proponents, to bring a convergence of living standards of richer and poorer nations. This never actually happened.

During the 1990s the United States sought to impose the 'Washington Consensus' on Latin American governments. It embodied what Latin Americans call 'neo-liberal' principles: budget cuts, privatization, deregulation of business, and incentives for foreign companies. This campaign sparked bitter resistance and ultimately collapsed.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

But such IMF pressure is very much helpful for me to push such a, you know, reform. So in this sense I think IMF is very much helpful for alien society.

The World Bank is now the biggest culprit in the debt crisis.

The political ramifications of our festering financial and economic crisis have reached the sidewalks of New York, as well as other large and small cities across the US.

To reduce inequality, employment must be sustained by appropriate macroeconomic policy.

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.

It was demographic necessities which constrained Italy to this policy of reforms; and it was also geographic necessities, for with her naturally poor south she had to overcome in some way the economic inequality between her regions.

There was a brief moment, after Haiti's 2010 earthquake, when even Bill Clinton recognized what had been done to Haiti in the name of 'free trade': the destruction of local markets and rice production.

I can't for the life of me think of the link between Iraq and why a fruit vendor self-immolates in Tunisia and cracks this seemingly solid crust that turns out to be so fragile that societal unrest touches off.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth.

Austerity is, devastatingly, not a party political issue.

Federal policies must understand the linkages between economic growth, social mobility, and a strong middle class.

For a hundred years we have been one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world but with a 60 percent poverty rate and now we are canceling the historical debt.

You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

This is taking place inside Europe. This is taking place inside a once great nation. The nation that invented democracy. We are on the edge of total social breakdown. And frankly, as far as the euro is concerned and the austerity measures are concerned, the medicine is killing the patient.