Derivatives, off-balance-sheet operations and diversification across countries and sectors have made traditional risk-management techniques obsolete and have increased the scope for and the speed of contagion. A liquidity shortage in a particular market can rapidly spread throughout the global market.
Fifth, no country in the world can aspire to achieve sustainable improvement in the living standards of its people unless it has invested in education health, nutrition, drinking water, in other words, in human development. This is going to be even more pressing in the 21st century as the world becomes a knowledge-based economy.