I think America and yes DT [Donald Trump] should pick the next [World] Bank president and should pick an American. How do you think it is going to go the next time the Bank calls for more capital from the US and UK? Whose certification there do you think is most important? And which country is the most nervous about the World Bank doing something geopolitically unpopular, as say the UN repeatedly has done? All this will run most smoothly if the U.S. feels, to some extent, that the Bank is its preserve. And of course the “we’ve really got to up China’s quota and get it more involved” days are long since past.
This is from Tyler Cowen, “The World Bank Reappointment Process,” Marginal Revolution, January 9, 2019.
What Tyler is getting at with his second and third sentences is that increasing the capital of the World Bank, courtesy in part of U.S. taxpayers, will be easier to do if the head of the World Bank is an American. I agree.
But it strikes me that believers in economic freedom, which includes the freedom of people not to pay for the World Bank, should not want to increase the capital of the World Bank. Tyler Cowen seems to disagree. He doesn’t say why, but seems to accept that the World Bank is a good thing that deserves subsidies from governments. I disagree.
READER COMMENTS
Jairaj Devadiga
Jan 10 2019 at 4:55am
Cowen is often supportive of big government, using justifications that fall outside the realm of economics.
What I gathered from his post is that if Trump appoints the next World Bank president, it will be better for “American interests” as opposed to Xi Jingping or someone else doing so.
It is interesting to see his recent Bloomberg columns, which are more often categorised as politics rather than economics. In this respect he is very similar to Paul Krugman, who used to write good economics, but started finding politics more interesting later.
David Seltzer
Jan 10 2019 at 4:22pm
NOPE ! NOPE! NOPE!
Benjamin Cole
Jan 10 2019 at 7:31pm
I am also dubious about the World Bank, and many other globalist institutions.
That said, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve have printed up trillions of dollars in quantitative easing programs in the past 10 years.
Really, would printing up another trillion dollars matter? If the World Bank is so great, have the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve give it a trillion bucks.
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