Gordon Brown has called for a global growth pact with global financial standards, in a meeting with Huffington Post staff in New York on Wednesday.
Speaking with Arianna Huffington and senior editors about growth, living standards, and global finance, the former British prime minister painted a bleak picture of global growth and the eurozone crisis.
"Global problems need global solutions," Brown said. "If you can't actually grow your economy, then the danger is that most of the action you take does not achieve the results that you intended it to achieve."
He called for "radical action" to sort the crisis but was not optimistic about Europe's financial leaders, saying that action was coming "too late"
"Every time there's a crisis, they take action that is too little and too late, and so the next time you have to deal with the next problem, it's a bigger problem, and you have to take even more radical action," Brown said. "You move from what was perhaps a manageable problem to a situation that has gone out of control because it hasn't been dealt with adequately."
Brown also warned that the world was not likely to meet the Millennium Development Goals, eight global targets which have been set for 2015. They include halving extreme poverty and stopping AIDS, as well as universal primary education..
But Brown said the world could succeed in the MDG to provide primary education for every child - and he also told Huff Post staff about running into Bono in a classroom in Africa.