Jeffrey Sachs

Riz Khan with Jeffrey Sachs

Riz Khan interviews economist Jeffrey Sachs. He is courted by activist music stars such as U2’s Bono for his work in helping the world’s poor. Time magazine has described him as one of the world’s most influential people in recent years, and he has advised governments all over the world on economic reform. He believes we can end global poverty in our lifetime.

His day jobs include heading up Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the UN Millennium Project, aimed at reducing extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Jeffery Sachs believes that so much is possible with the right will, as he explains in his best-selling book, The End of Poverty.

Many argue that his greatest skill is making the complex world of economics accessible to ordinary people while his passion for stating his case has won him many high level friends from Bill Clinton, the former US president, to Kofi Annan.

He has proved himself. In the mid-1980s, he stabilised Bolivia’s economy with a policy package that lowered the country’s inflation rate from 40,000 per cent to nearly zero. But his critics believe his cure-all arguments would be impossible to implement. That certainly would not stop Jeffery Sachs from trying.

Watch this episode of One on One here:

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Part 2:

This episode of One on One aires from 15 September 2007 and originally aired on 16th March 2007.

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