Wealth & Money Quote by James Wolfensohn

Wolfensohn frames disaster as a logistical problem with a balance sheet, and that framing is doing real work. The repetition of "you need" turns humanitarian crisis into a checklist: water, power, roads, bridges. It sounds practical, even moral, because it’s hard to argue with basics. But the cadence also subtly narrows what counts as "recovery" to what can be rebuilt quickly, financed cleanly, and measured in visible infrastructure. The dead, the displaced, the political grievances that often caused the fragility in the first place - those sit outside the sentence.

The specific intent is institutional positioning. By emphasizing "immediately" and "urgently", he sells the World Bank as the grown-up in the room: liquid capital, rapid deployment, technocratic competence. It’s a pitch to governments and donors as much as to victims. In the post-Cold War era, when Wolfensohn led the Bank and tried to rebrand it around poverty reduction and "good governance", speed became a legitimacy strategy. If you can wire funds fast and rebuild a bridge, you look indispensable.

The subtext is that emergencies create a window where normal politics can be bypassed. "That has to be done urgently" carries an implicit permission slip: fast-track procurement, suspend debate, accept external guidance. Often that’s necessary. It can also be how reconstruction becomes leverage, where funding priorities steer a country’s policy choices long after the floodwaters recede. The quote works because it sounds like common sense - and common sense is a powerful way to make a contested role feel inevitable.