My guest for the 56th episode of the Hale Report is David Malpass, Former President of the World Bank Group, Under Secretary of the US Treasury, and leading Wall Street economist. He is an advocate for equitable development and sustainable global growth. He sees two obstacles to achieving a more prosperous world: poorly thought-out policies, and misallocation of capital. His strong view is that recent policy choices in Washington do not favor growth—and that we could be facing a fiscal cliff in 2025.
We discussed Mr Malpass’s experience leading the World Bank. He is concerned that the post-Covid explosion in sovereign debt worldwide is not being addressed, and fundamentally, that our priorities do not align with our values. If we stay along our current path, he believes that the result will be an increasingly large and dangerous divide between rich and poor countries.
To hear his ideas about what can be done to stimulate global growth and alleviate poverty, from someone who has worked at the highest levels of international policymaking, I invite you to listen to this podcast and leave your comments. This is a discussion worth having at a critical policy juncture, not just for the United States, but the rest of the world.
Some of the topics we discussed:
The respective roles of the World Bank and the IMF
The role of the Federal Reserve: “A smaller Fed would be beneficial for growth”
The US dollar
Private and public debt worldwide
Issues with restructuring debt in the poorest countries
Debt transparency and sustainability
Government spending, debt and taxes
Role of the private sector
Sanctions and tariffs
The response to Covid-19 and the next pandemic
Balancing climate change investment
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David Malpass: The Hale Report Ep. 56