Trump's World Bank Turns Its Back On the World.

It has become an informal protocol that the White House gets to appoint the president of the World Bank while the EU gets to nominate the leadership of the International Monetary Fund. Think of it as another dubious artifact of the post-war world order.

One of the first things the most diabolical president in American history implemented was the appointment of David Malpass to head the World Bank. Ever since, Malpass has focused on taking the "world" out of the World Bank.

Hopes of using Davos to forge a new international consensus to tackle poverty and the climate crisis have been thwarted by the decision of the World Bank president, David Malpass, to boycott the event. 

To the surprise of the other multilateral institutions, Malpass turned down his invitation to attend despite being in Europe this week for the UK government’s Africa investment summit in London. 

One source said Malpass’s decision not to attend the World Economic Forum reflected the Bank’s go-it-alone approach under his presidency. “He has effectively declared UDI [unilateral declaration of independence],” the source said. “We saw it at last year’s G7 summit in France. President [Emmanuel] Macron wanted a collective statement from the international organisations but Malpass vetoed it. He wouldn’t have the word multilateralism in the statement.”

So who is this joker, Malpass? Wikipedia has a rich rundown on this character. Among the highlights are his six year stint as chief economist at Bear Stearns that appears to have ended with the firm's collapse. He's got a bit of the "Wrong-Way Corrigan" in him.

Malpass has been noted for his forecasts before the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and in the time period following the Great Recession. In 2007, before the housing market collapse, Malpass wrote for the Wall Street Journal that "Housing and debt markets are not that big a part of the U.S. economy, or of job creation...the housing- and debt-market corrections will probably add to the length of the U.S. economic expansion." He also called for the raising of interest rates in 2011 at a time when others believed this would be harmful to the economy. Bruce Bartlett cited Malpass's 2008 forecast of economic growth and his 2012 forecast of recession as specific examples of partisan bias in economic forecasts.

By all appearances the World Bank is now transformed into an in-house organ of the Trump White House. And we know what Trump thinks about the calamities now setting in around the world.