The issues before us, as Prime Minister Jospin has noted, are not just financial. Financial issues are inextricably linked to structural and social issues. While we need to have the proper macroeconomic policies in place and to address issues of growth, capital flows, and exchange rates, we also need to attend to structural and social issues. Education is long term. Environment is long term.
Health is long term.
It is also the case that the connections between sound macroeconomic policies and actions, taken at times of crisis and during normal times, are complex. Thus we may find ourselves pleading for social sensitivity at a time of crisis when, because of the financial dynamics, the first things to be cut are social programs. And so there are situations, as in Indonesia, where we are dealing successfully with one social issue keeping children in schools while losing out on another children's health and nutrition. We have new data that show a worsening of child nutrition in Indonesia because adequate resources could not be found to feed and support young children. Because of the need to establish a stable framework of fiscal and monetary policy.