In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows... they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren't going to pay off for five or 10 or 20 years.

It's not so unusual to run out of someone else's currency.

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.

There's a lot of strength in the U.S., but there's a lot of froth also. The froth will blow off. We're going to have to face up to some realities that we're not fully facing up to right now.

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.

The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge.

Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world.

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

Let's start fresh with Russia on some real help and some real reform.

Unfortunately, the real focus in this country has not been on the rest of the world. It's been on our own issues and our own problems. Fair enough. But it means that our simple hopes that everything will just work out abroad aren't really coming to pass.

In my view, there is an urgent need to communicate with the public and help to explain where there is consensus, and where are there doubts about the issues of sustainable development.

The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves.

The basic idea was that if a country would put its economy as an integrated piece of the world system, that it would benefit from that with economic growth. I concur with that basic view.

The longer you wait, the less fun. If you wait until the bitter end, the whole economy can be destroyed.

We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy.

Devaluations are never easy.

If you have a lot of short-term debt, it means that all of that money can be demanded in a very short period of time. Technically, short-term debt means money that's coming due within a year. Typically, it means money that's coming due within 30 to 90 days.

Senior development specialists in the Treasury can be counted on one hand. America's government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that would be needed to meet the commitments.

We, being the Western world, wouldn't let Russia off the hook on debt. So there were demands on debt servicing in the early days until they ran out of reserves. There was no real aid program, just a fictional aid program.

In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better.

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows... they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren't going to pay off for five or 10 or 20 years.

Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.

Globalization was a deep trend pushed by technology and right ideas, as much as anything else.

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.

The idea that UN commitments should be followed by action is indeed a radical one, especially for the United States, where wilful neglect of its own commitments is the rule.

We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.

We've taken the view that if the rest of the world would democratize and create market economies, that would spread the benefits of prosperity around the world, and that it would enhance our own prosperity, and our own stability and security, as well.

White House and State Department foreign-policy experts are overwhelmingly directed towards military and diplomatic issues, not development issues.

The essence of Africa's crisis is fundamentally its extreme poverty.

The truth of good economic doctoring is to know the general principles, and to really know the specifics. To understand the context, and also, to understand that an economy may need some tender loving care, not just the so-called hard truths, if it's going to get by.

Its not so unusual to run out of someone elses currency.

Globalization was a deep trend pushed by technology and right ideas as much as anything else.

Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.

History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.

I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.

The association promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in any prior decisions.

Most projects start out slowly - and then sort of taper off.

I haven't really had that many opportunities to play "lead" so I guess I jumped at the chance. I have also never done any "sci-fi" projects and thought it might be fun.

Further, Japan is the second largest donor in Iraq after the United States, with over $5 billion dollars for humanitarian, infrastructure and reconstruction projects.

Most of the auditions I went on, I passed up the projects because I just wasn't interested. When I read A Knight's Tale, that was that. I knew I wanted to do this movie.

The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.

I wasn't a cheerleader or the prom queen. I don't move through the world with a mirror in front of my face, and I've never been attracted to projects that had an emphasis on what I look like.

By failing to keep their end of the bargain, the Bush administration would allow New Jersey projects to deteriorate and make New Jersey highways and bridges less safe.

Now, there is no way to say how long some projects take, that's our principle.

The excitement level for me working on projects is really not a bit different from when I was 26.

They are damn good projects - excellent projects. That goes for all the projects up there. You know some people make fun of people who speak a foreign language, and dumb people criticize something they do not understand, and that is what is going on up there - God damn it!

Certainly I get a lot personally out of it as well, there's the recognition and things like that but mostly I try to take that as an opportunity to explain why I hope we could see more projects like Apache out there and why it's a good thing for society.