Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: David Malpass. Many of you will know him as a
Speaker 2: driving force for Alan Schwartz at bear Stearn's Economics years ago.
Speaker 2: Of course, the service to the nation at the World
Speaker 2: Bank for President Trump. And we're thrilled he can join
Speaker 2: us in the studio. Now there's four or five six
Speaker 2: topics David we can talk about. You are the rarest
Speaker 2: of rare ducks, a Colorado College physicist who was so
Speaker 2: dumb he actually ran for public office. I want to
Speaker 2: focus on this election. Come on, you're an institutional guy.
Speaker 2: You can do the foreign the foreign policy and all that.
Speaker 2: Forget about it.
Speaker 1: What was it like.
Speaker 2: Campaigning in Broome County in twenty ten against Senator Gillibrand
Speaker 2: Tom That was.
Speaker 3: An experience for the lifetime. I had the minivan and
Speaker 3: drove around New York State and really talked about how
Speaker 3: could Washington actually stopped growing? And so remember it was
Speaker 3: the tea pot of the year in twenty ten. The
Speaker 3: Senate seat had been Hillary Clinton's Senate seat and Jillibrand
Speaker 3: was holding it in twenty twenty nine and ten. So
Speaker 3: I decided to run because I really think that the
Speaker 3: issues can be changed in Washington if you have people
Speaker 3: leaders in Washington talking about what to do about the budget,
Speaker 3: what to do actually about the dollar and keep it stable.
Speaker 3: These are important topics.
Speaker 2: Most important tweet of the last twenty four hours was
Speaker 2: the wonderful Michael besh Loss who put out a photograph
Speaker 2: of a Puerto Rican in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform. And
Speaker 2: the bottom line is the rhetoric and dialogue across all parties,
Speaker 2: but particularly what we've seen in the last forty eight
Speaker 2: hours is just totally unexcusable. And this guy hired you
Speaker 2: to run the World Bank. How can guys like you,
Speaker 2: in your lovely wife who ran Manhattan GOP support this
Speaker 2: guy with a rhetoric we're.
Speaker 3: Hearing Tom I'm not into the election itself, but into
Speaker 3: the policies. And as you look at where the US
Speaker 3: stands in the world, it's a it's a voice of
Speaker 3: weakness around the world. It's causing instability all through Africa.
Speaker 3: Any international meeting I went to, people were almost pleading
Speaker 3: saying can't the US have a voice? And that it's
Speaker 3: not there. And the policies that are being projected by
Speaker 3: the current administration and into the future look like the
Speaker 3: more wants to get.
Speaker 2: In here pause looking at me like, what is this
Speaker 2: a monologue? But I was just in Rome, and I'm
Speaker 2: sorry they're petrified of a certain candidate winning here. How
Speaker 2: does your part? Could you run for secretaries? Could you
Speaker 2: take secretary of State under a new Trump administration? Would
Speaker 2: you accept that position?
Speaker 3: That's not not even a question? Can the US grow more?
Speaker 3: And will that be stabilizing in the world? And the
Speaker 3: answer is yes. And is the budget that's now in
Speaker 3: front of the US nation from the Biden Harris administration acceptable?
Speaker 3: The answer is no, it's an unacceptable budget and it's
Speaker 3: not going to lead to growth. They are willing to
Speaker 3: have the country grow at one and a half percent
Speaker 3: per year with big government. That's their dream of how
Speaker 3: a country will look.
Speaker 1: What will become of the World Bank if Trump wins
Speaker 1: on Tuesday.
Speaker 3: As an institution, it's got its shareholders, so I don't
Speaker 3: think that would be the focus of change. And the
Speaker 3: World Bank's not very big within the world scene. One
Speaker 3: of the things that has to be discussed the United Nations.
Speaker 3: Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations, just went
Speaker 3: to the Bricks Summit in Russia, why aren't people talking
Speaker 3: about that? And did the US protest that Here he
Speaker 3: is in Kazan, Russia with uh, you know, shaking hands
Speaker 3: bowing at the time of a vicious war that's going
Speaker 3: on in Ukraine, And so how does the world really
Speaker 3: interact with these institutions that are that are harming people
Speaker 3: around the world.
Speaker 1: Trump presidency was kind of more, you know, just nationalistic
Speaker 1: as opposed to internationalism. Doesn't he want to step back
Speaker 1: from the world stage? Doesn't he want to? I mean,
Speaker 1: how does that project world US influence globally.
Speaker 3: Case by case? For one, you don't want to have
Speaker 3: permanent wars. And it sure looks like we've gotten into
Speaker 3: a very long term war in Ukraine and Russia where
Speaker 3: we're arming one side and they're arming the other side.
Speaker 1: Not on the field. We're letting the Ukrainians fight our
Speaker 1: wars and that's the best strategy.
Speaker 3: No, that's not a good strategy at all. They're dying
Speaker 3: and so that's a best fight.
Speaker 1: All we're doing is funning and we're letting them fight
Speaker 1: against your your.
Speaker 3: Question of nationalism. So Trump's been pretty clear that he
Speaker 3: would pick his pick his fights, and that through deterrence,
Speaker 3: the US would be a stronger nation. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a very defensible position to be in. If you
Speaker 3: say to Putin or to China, we are going to
Speaker 3: be the strongest growing country. We're going to have the
Speaker 3: best technology. We're supporting our troops one hundred percent. They're
Speaker 3: going to be more reluctant to start wars.
Speaker 2: The three percent economy that we have. Everyone, every political persuasion,
Speaker 2: every economic persuasion, has been shocked by the growth that
Speaker 2: we've seen. David Malpass, do you equate the growth we
Speaker 2: have in twenty twenty four directly to the stimulus of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one or can we actually say there's a productivity,
Speaker 2: a technology overlay going on right.
Speaker 3: Now, some of both, but with a big thing is
Speaker 3: the government is running a six and a half percent
Speaker 3: fiscal deficit. Now, this has never happened where you have
Speaker 3: a full employment economy and the government treed, and so
Speaker 3: some part of our GDP growth right now is just
Speaker 3: the expansion of the national debt. The government borrows money.
Speaker 2: Okay, so go there, David. It's good Colorado College physics.
Speaker 2: But the bottom line is, do you hear either candidate
Speaker 2: going on the path of Peterson Paul Saugus and Sam
Speaker 2: Nunn and getting our debt and deficit trajectories in better control.
Speaker 3: No, but to those three people, those were austerity policies,
Speaker 3: and what Trump is talking about is growth policies. They're
Speaker 3: very different. That means changing the regulatory policy so that
Speaker 3: people will actually build things. You know, a giant part
Speaker 3: of the semiconductor problem right now is you can't build
Speaker 3: a factory because of the rules that go into that
Speaker 3: IRA Bill, and so they're pumping money into the economy
Speaker 3: but getting nothing for it. That can all be changed,
Speaker 3: and that's not as hard to change as people think.
Speaker 3: It just means sensible decisions at the top in Washington
Speaker 3: to spend the money less wastefully.
Speaker 1: Is there a will in Congress to get that done.
Speaker 3: No, to some extent, they're part of the problem. That's
Speaker 3: why I ran in twenty ten for the Senate. So
Speaker 3: they love it when you just spend money and it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter if it has effect. But that can change
Speaker 3: through leadership from the top. We're just not getting it now.
Speaker 2: Tell us about money and running a campaign. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I look at the day to day battle
Speaker 2: of each of the candidates and all that out in
Speaker 2: the trenches as you were in twenty ten. Are you
Speaker 2: just basically waking up in the morning and trying to
Speaker 2: raise money.
Speaker 3: Yes, Plus I was spending quite a bit of my
Speaker 3: own money because I really believed in the cause. But
Speaker 3: the secret, I don't know that it's very much of
Speaker 3: a secret, is there's corruption across the whole system. How
Speaker 3: is it that Washington is the richest part of the country.
Speaker 3: That doesn't make sense? And with them moving up every
Speaker 3: year on a leader on the leaderboard, Washington's the big winner, right,
Speaker 3: And so that comes from campaigning constant campaigns.
Speaker 2: This has been a really successful interview. Everyone that's been
Speaker 2: listening to it thinks that I'm a piece of garbage
Speaker 2: floating around the East River. David Malpass, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining us and for a spirited debate here
Speaker 2: as we go to November fifth. Mister Malpass, of course,
Speaker 2: is a former president of the World Bank.