The BBC sat down with Bill and Melinda Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for a 14-minute video interview today, during which the couple discussed foreign aid and the economy.
“We’re certainly going to look back at this one and say, ‘Boy I wish we’d caught that sooner, I wish the overspending in the U.S. market, the financial flows–we hadn’t let things get so out of whack,'” Bill Gates says of the current economic crisis. “Now we’re paying the price for that. It could be two, three, even four years before we’re back on the positive growth track. But I don’t know anybody who questions that the system is fundamentally sound; it’s led to incredible innovation, incredible opportunity.”
Like many foundations buffeted by the market woes, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is down 20 percent in value, but the two tell the BBC they are accelerating spending even if it means shortening the life of the foundation.
The BBC doesn’t use an embeddable player, so we published a screenshot of the interview.
–Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
