We need to react in real time to a growing crisis that is hurting people in developing countries. This global crisis needs a global solution and preventing an economic catastrophe in developing countries is important for global efforts to overcome this crisis. We need investments in safety nets, infrastructure, and small and medium size companies to create jobs and to avoid social and political unrest.

Debt issuance by high-income countries is set to increase dramatically, crowding out many developing country borrowers, both private and public.

—Robert Zoellick, World Bank President, announcing finance gaps and a recessionary forecast for the global economy

This crisis is the first truly universal one in the history of humanity. No country escapes from it. It has not yet bottomed out.

—Michel Camdessus, former IMF Managing Director, at an ADB forum in Manila, 9 March 2009

Asia is mainly suffering a cyclical slowdown because of problems in the developed economies, it is not suffering a structural economic breakdown. There is no reason to think that the growth engines that have been unleashed in many parts of Asia are likely to weaken.

—Manu Bhaskaran, head of economic research at Centennial Group

The loss of financial wealth is enormous, and the consequences for the economies of the world will unfortunately commensurate. There are serious economic and political stumbling blocks that may well cause the recovery to be costly and slow to consolidate…There is no room for denial or populist policies. Otherwise the crisis will become even deeper and harder to reverse.

—Claudio Loser, president of strategic advisory firm Centennial Group

Clearly, fiscal resources do have to be injected in rich countries that are at the epicenter of the crisis, but channeling infrastructure investment to the developing world where it can release bottlenecks to growth and quickly restore demand can have an even bigger bang for the buck and should be a key element to recovery.

—Justin Yifu Lin, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, London, 9 March 2009, on reconciling investment in rich countries in the face of the immediate effect on poorer nations.