Trump Nominates Critic of Global Institutions to Lead World Bank
By David Lawder | 6 February 2019
REUTERS — U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the World Bank Group should be led by U.S. Treasury official David Malpass, a Trump loyalist and critic of multilateral institutions who has vowed to pursue “pro-growth” reforms at the development lender.
Trump’s nomination of Malpass, the Treasury Department’s top diplomat, is subject to a vote by the World Bank’s executive board and could draw challengers from some of its 188 other shareholding countries.
The United States is the largest shareholder with 16 percent of its voting power and has traditionally chosen the bank’s president, but Jim Yong Kim, who stepped down from the job on Feb. 1, faced challengers from Colombia and Nigeria in 2012.
The nomination of Malpass signals that the Trump administration wants a firmer grip on the World Bank. He was an economic adviser to Trump’s 2016 election campaign. […]
Trump Taps Bear Stearns Economist Who Said Not to Worry About Credit Crisis for Key Treasury Job
By Jordan Weissman | 5 January 2017
SLATE — Talk about failing up.
Donald Trump is reportedly set to nominate David Malpass, the former chief economist of Bear Stearns, for a key post at the Treasury Department. Bear Stearns was, of course, the first major American investment bank to sink during the 2008 financial crisis after going all in on mortgage bonds.
Malpass was one of the many guys on lookout who didn’t see the iceberg coming. On Aug. 7, 2007, at a moment when bond markets were beginning to look increasingly shaky, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Don’t Panic About the Credit Market,” in which he argued that, “Housing and debt markets are not that big a part of the U.S. economy, or of job creation.” This was not correct.
“While it’s frowned upon to look for a silver lining when markets tumble and painful losses accumulate, the housing- and debt-market corrections will probably add to the length of the U.S. economic expansion,” he added. This was also not correct. […]
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