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Well the specific role of the World Bank is to be ready with financial assistance immediately after this emergency takes place because you need to reconnect water, you need to reconnect power, you need roads, you need bridges, and that has to be done urgently.

Governments of rich countries spend some $6bn of tax money a year on disaster relief and development aid overseas, while each new earthquake, famine or tidal wave can attract 1,000 aid organisations, from the United Nations Children's Fund and Oxfam to the 'Jesus Brigades' of the American south and other charitable adventurers.

Let some people get rich first.

The government can help, but we need to make this transition now to a recovery led by private investment, private.

Let us return, however, to the League of Nations. To create an organization which is in a position to protect peace in this world of conflicting interests and egotistic wills is a frighteningly difficult task.

Politically speaking, it's always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future.

If you really want to help the rest of the world, what you've got to do is encourage free markets, private property rights and the strong rule of law and get rid of the dictators in a lot of these countries.

Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.

Governments, of course, can - and do - soak the rich.

With political will and strategic initiatives, we can prevent more and more of our global neighbors from falling into the abyss of poverty and instead give future generations the opportunities they need to rise to their fullest potential.