The Bank is the Colour of Malpasspractice, not Dead Televisions
If you want to understand why Mark Thoma’s 12-year daily-and-then-some blogging effort has become intermittent, consider that President Shit-for-Brains has made his nomination for the person to ru(i)n the World Bank.
David Malpass.
This David Malpass.
The best part of the nomination so far? This Twitter feed from Charles Kenny.
Brad DeLong concurs.
And I’m not the only one bringing back my writings from almost a decade ago. David Glasner at Uneasy Money remains in fine form. (via Krugman on Twitter)
ETA: pgl, chez delong, notes this 2012 piece from Bruce Bartlett as well.
The comment section at DeLong’s place continues with quips that rival that Twitter parade. I would say Malpass is a really bad choice from this White House but then all of his choices are extremely bad.
“Where Mr. Malpass gets his information, I haven’t a clue, but looking at the table of financial and trade statistics on the back page of the July 16 edition of the Economist, I see that in addition to the United States, Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore, had 3-month rates less than 0.5%. Britain, Canada, and Saudi Arabia had rates between 0.5 and 1%. The official rate of the Swedish Riksbank is now 2.5%, but it held the rate at 0.5% until economic conditions improved.” – David Glasner
That blog post was devastating. Malpass did not realize that other nations had very low interest rates at the time? I would suggest he is dumber than even Trump. Some of these nations were soon to see negative nominal interest rates.
Here is a link to that August 5, 2011 WSJ oped by Malpass:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903341404576483952207342740
The title says it all – “Weak Dollar, Weak Economy”
Malpass indeed was a hard money type who wanted higher interest rates and a stronger dollar. Of course most macroeconomists would note his recommendations would lower both investment demand and reduce net exports. Something tells me that Trump’s chosen one has changed his tune when it comes to both matter.