WEBVTT - Dr. Jim Yong Kim 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:03.880 With degrees and doctorates from Harvard and Brown University. Dr 0:00:04.000 --> 0:00:06.680 Jim Young Kim is one of the best educated people 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:09.240 to ever serve as head of the World Bank, but 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:12.559 he's also one of the most unconventional. Kim's degrees are 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.560 in biology and anthropology, and his job history includes time 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.000 as a professor at Harvard and president of Dartmouth College, 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:22.760 where he was the first Asian American to lead at 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:26.720 Ivy League institution. But when President Obama nominated Kim to 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:29.520 lead the World Bank in twelve, he took on the 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.280 role with great zeal, calling the Bank one of the 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:37.080 most critical institutions fighting poverty and providing assistance to developing 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.160 countries in the world. Kim won the election to become 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.159 President of the World Bank in April of twelve, and 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:45.640 he was re elected to the role in September of 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.239 twenty six. He recently sat down with Carlisle Group co 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:53.559 founder David Rubinstein. They spoke on David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.040 program Peer to Peer Conversations. He became the president of 0:00:57.120 --> 0:00:59.600 Dartmouth I think in two thousand nine. Here there for 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.080 a couple of years, and you're a trained as a 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:06.600 medical doctor, and as a social anthropologist, you have no 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:11.759 finance background. Um, all of a sudden, somebody says, would 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:13.959 you like to be the president of the World Bank? 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.000 What would make you think that would be a job 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.200 you would be qualified for? And why would you want 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.000 to leave the academic setting that you've spent much of 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:25.280 your life in. Well, it was a it's a question 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:27.679 that a lot of people in the financial world asked 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:31.360 as well when I was nominated. But you know, we 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.080 had always known, in all of my years working in development, 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.840 that the World Bank was the most important institution for 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:43.800 people who wanted to help poor countries develop. And so, UM, 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:47.319 I came to the interview with President Obama and he 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:50.720 was asking me exactly the same question. He literally said 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.080 to me, why should I nominate you and not a 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.080 macar economist? And so that this is when I when 0:01:57.120 --> 0:01:59.920 I made the pitch, probably the most important pitch I've 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.680 made in my life. I said, well, you know, um, 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:04.880 the first question I asked him was have you read 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.079 your mother's PhD dissertation? And he looked at me and 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.160 he said, well, yeah, I have. And I said, well, 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:12.360 you know, I'm an anthropologist like her. And so I 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.040 said to him, you know, I haven't been in the 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.000 finance world, but I've been on the ground doing development 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.280 work for most of my adult life. I'll be able 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:22.840 to tell you how it's working on the ground. And 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:24.280 he just looked at me and he said, okay, I 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.000 get that. So was he surprised you actually read his 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:32.320 mother's PhD thesis? He was, he was, And he later 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.240 we were together in a more informal setting and he said, 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:37.960 you know, Jim, that was one of the best ploys 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.600 to get a job I've ever seen. All right, so 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.600 did you feel intimidated for this job when you didn't 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.200 have those kind of backgrounds? Are not? Well? I certainly 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.600 felt humbled about about it. And and uh, you know, 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:52.399 we have people here in the audience, many of them 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.240 taught me a lot about how the World Bank works, 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.360 and so um, I I felt like, well, you know, 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.799 learning finance and learning macroeconomics is going to be a 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.800 huge challenge for me, But for the previous presidents coming 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:09.960 in learning development must have been an even bigger challenge 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:12.640 for them. And so I felt like I knew about 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.240 what development was like, what working in developing countries was like. 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.200 And then I really worked hard to learn the other 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:20.840 the other things that I needed to learn when I 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.120 got here. When you show up at a meeting or 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.359 something and you tell people you're the president World Bank 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.000 to they their eyes kind of open wider or their 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.280 jaws drop. It's a pretty good title. But it depends 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.760 on where you are, right. So when I in in Washington, 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:35.360 if you do that, they'll say, well, do you guys 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.760 have a branch in Alexandria? Right? Uh? And do you 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:40.400 have a T M S. I mean so, so some 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:43.480 places you're extremely well known, right in other places you're 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:45.920 not known at all. But when you're, let's playing golf, 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.480 and you're a very good golfer, you're like five handicap 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:50.720 as I understand it, very good golfer. I'll ask you 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.480 about that later. Do people give you punch more than 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:55.600 they used to when your president World Bank? Or that 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.360 doesn't happen, not at all, not at all. You know, 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.440 they have the mistaken impression that that I have access 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:03.320 to cash myself, and so they're trying to get that 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.600 from me. Let's talk about your background. Why did your 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:08.880 parents come to the United States. Your father was a 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:14.680 dentist and your mother was professor philosophy, My father was 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:17.919 a refugee from North Korea. Escaped from from North Korea 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.080 to South Korea at the age of nineteen, and so 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.360 he went into the army as a dentist, and because 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:25.640 he had worked so hard on his English, he became 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.599 a translator from many of the army dentists and became 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:31.840 good friends with him, and so they gave him a 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.599 scholarship to come to the United States. My mother was 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:39.040 the top student in the top high school in Korea, 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.479 because they ranked everybody literally in Korea in terms of 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.200 your high school ranking, and so she got a scholarship 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.680 and she she came to Tennessee by herself. And at 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.719 the time, this was in the early nineteen fifties, they're 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:52.640 probably three or four hundred Koreans and all of the 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.680 United States. And so she and my father were introduced 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.120 to each other through friends. They met in New York 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:00.000 City and they actually got married in New York City. 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.520 And like like all of the Koreans, they the idea 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:06.280 was that they would learn in the United States and 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.560 they would go back to serve their country. And so 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:12.799 they went back, but but inescapably, you know, they saw 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:15.680 how people live in the United States. And so their 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.560 own aspirations for themselves and their children went up. But 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:21.000 did they have It was a hard to get a 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.360 visa to come over to live here permanently. Then, so 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:27.480 so they My father was a fully trained dentist and 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.920 was a professor, but when he came back, he had 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.680 to complete the last two years of dental school again. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.040 So we were in Dallas and he was a uh, 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.120 he was a dental student. At the same time, I 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:40.359 think we're working as a nurse in a hospital to 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.040 make enough money. And then um, we went he finished 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.719 his dental education at Baylor Dental School in Dallas. And 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:50.200 then for some reason that we're still trying to figure out, 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.640 we moved to Iowa. That we grew up in Iowa 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.880 at the time, you did not speak English. So when 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:58.680 I came at the age of five, I didn't speak 0:05:58.720 --> 0:06:01.760 a word of English. So a move to Musketine, Iowa. 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:05.320 Then in high school, Um, this is what I couldn't understand. 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:07.400 How did you manage to be the quarterback of the 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.360 football team, the point guard on the basketball team, class 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.080 president as well. And um also Valiatorian was that like 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:19.320 hard to do where well, well, you know, before you 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:21.719 get too impressed with that. Our football team had the 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.520 longest losing streak in the nation at the town, fifty 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.640 six defeats in a row, and I very proudly say 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:32.360 I kept that streak going UH during recruited to play 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:34.960 at the University of Iowa. No, did you feel discrimination 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.680 because you were Korean or Asian or there wasn't describing 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:39.720 you know, there was one town that I went to 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:44.360 play basketball in where um, there were two African American 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:49.640 UH teammates in me and the people were literally screaming 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.520 at us racial epitets. You know, I can I can't 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.359 repeat them on television, but they were screaming at us, 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.320 and they threw things at us and even spit at 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.880 us as we were coming out to play. So I've 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.440 had that experience. And as a quarterback, you're looking across 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.680 and they're looking in your eyes, and you know, every 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:08.880 racial slury you could imagine was was thrown at me. 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:10.960 So I grew up with I grew up with it, 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.840 and it's a it it. I think it taught me 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.480 a lot. It made me understand what that part of 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:20.440 the world UH can be like, at least you know, 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:25.440 years ago. Okay, so you're in Iowa. You do off 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:27.480 very well in high school, and you go to Brown 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:29.600 and you apply to and I guess get in the 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.280 hardest medical school to probably get in Harvard Medical School. 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.440 So were you surprised you got in and was that 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.680 your first choice? Um? Well, I was really surprised to 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:39.560 get in, And in fact, it was not my first 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.760 choice because I actually I was trying to convince my 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:45.280 father that I was not going to go to medical school, 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:47.640 but I was going to go and study political science 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:52.240 and philosophy. I came home from Brown one summer and 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:54.600 he asked me, so what are you going to study? 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:56.760 And I said, well, Dad, you know, I think I'm 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:58.920 going to study political science and philosophy, and I think 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.320 I'm gonna get into politicy. Tis right. He literally pulled 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:04.280 the car over to the side of the road. We're 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:09.400 coming back from the airport tinittle Town, and he said, hey, um, 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:11.800 when you finish your internship and residency, you can study 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.440 anything you want, right right, And so for him, and 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:17.560 he used to talk like that, he said, look, you 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.320 know and and for him, of course, it was very 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.000 clear who we were in this country. We were in Ioway. 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.520 He said, you're you're you're a chinaman. He used to 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:27.280 say this to me, You're a chinaman. You think people 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:29.800 are gonna pay you to hear your ideas about political 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.280 science and philosophy? Get a skill. And I turned out 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:35.440 that it was really great advice. I mean, there's so 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.920 many things that I've learned and have happened because I 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.319 had this notion that I needed to contribute something concrete 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:44.160 in order to to make it in the world. And 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.760 then you decided to go into another program where you 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.640 get a PhD and anthropology. Now did your parents say, look, 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:51.440 a medical school degree is all you need. Why do 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:54.120 you need a PhD? As well? Well? This was the 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.440 great compromise, and my my father felt that as long 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:01.520 as I was in medical school, uh, that it's okay 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:03.679 to loosen up a little bit. So you get your 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.160 degrees and you meet in Harvard Medical School. Um, Paul 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:09.640 Farmer and the two of you, with a few others 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:12.560 started something called Partners in Health. Can you describe what 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:16.080 that is? Paul and I began talking. You know, gosh, 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:20.800 it was ur We began talking about if you have 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:24.360 what we call these ridiculously elaborate educations, that's what Paul 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.240 called it. What's the nature of your responsibility to the 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.240 rest of the world. And so we thought and thought 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.840 and and we tried to keep asking the questions. So, 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.800 if we have these kinds of backgrounds, what's the nature 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:39.680 of our responsibility to the world. And we came to 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:44.640 the conclusion that our responsibility was to to commit to 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:50.240 the poorest, most uh, most marginalized, most outcast people and 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:52.360 then do everything we can to provide them the best 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:57.280 possible healthcare, education, social protection, and that we would that 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.280 we weren't gonna win. We weren't gonna have some sort 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:04.240 of victorious story because at the time that we started this, 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:07.920 there was very little money available in terms of global 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.040 health or education. We thought, but you know, we're gonna 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.920 continue to to write about and talk about the situation 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:17.920 of these very poor people, and we're going to do 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.640 that for the rest of our lives without any hope 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.640 of being on the winning side. We were. We chose 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.760 at that time. We said we're going to stay and 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:29.439 we're gonna We're gonna We're gonna work and continue to 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:32.160 work on the losing side. You ran Partner's Tale for 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:34.800 a number of years. UH. It was focused initially on 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.000 Haiti later in Peru. And while when you were in 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.360 Peru you once led a protest against the World Bank. 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:43.920 In fact, you had said the World Bank should be 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:46.760 maybe shut down. Yes, um, do you have any regrets 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:48.600 about that? I just want everyone here to know I'm 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.280 very glad we lost that argument and we did. At 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.280 that time. What we were arguing was that the World 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:59.680 Bank Group was too focused on GDP growth of and 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:02.800 that the kinds of investments that were it was making 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:07.040 was not focused enough on things like health and education, 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.120 and that this was this was an argument that was 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:11.880 that was going on in development economics. You were an 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.800 expert initially on tuberculosis. I had been working on drug 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.800 resistant tuberculosis and had done a lot of work on 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:22.040 trying to um just get the global health community to 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:24.600 change its perspective on it. And then when I went 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.120 to it to UH to the health organization was the 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:31.160 same thing. I mean, there were the the the overwhelming consensus, 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.920 like nine percent of all the HIV physicians in the world, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.400 we're saying impossible to treat HIV in developing countries, and 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:40.760 there were twenty five million people in Africa who were 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:44.680 living with HIV, and and the Global Health community was 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:48.360 about to issue a death sentence on all million people 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.440 living with HIV in Africa, and so that's that was 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.040 what I did. So you're you leave the World Health 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.600 Organization after a couple of years heading their HIV program. 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.360 You then go to Harvard Medical School and tea there, 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:02.599 and then somebody calls you and says, would you like 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:04.560 to be president of Dartmouth. Why didn't you decide to 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.720 do that? Uh, it's a great question, and sometimes I 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.200 wonder myself why. And I said to them, you know, 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.880 my work from my entire life has been focusing on 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:20.280 the lives of the poorest. And I said, I don't 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.880 think I can do this because it feels to me 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.920 like you're asking me to turn my back on the poor. 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.959 And um, somebody on the the the committee was, uh, 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:33.880 you know in a in a in was it really 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:36.240 a brilliant recruitment technique? Said no, no, no, we're not 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:38.400 asking you to turn your back on the poor. We're 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.240 asking you to turn the faces of Dartmouth students to 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.400 the poor. So I thought, wow, that sounds great, right, 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:47.400 sounds great. But it turns out that's not actually the 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.960 job of being president of a university, which David, you 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:52.920 know very well. So one of the things you focused 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.240 on with your president Dartmouth was trying to reduce the 0:12:55.360 --> 0:13:00.720 enormous alcohol consumption that undergraduates have. Um, I think you 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:03.079 know for hundreds of years university president to try to 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:05.679 do that with very little success. How did you find 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:10.360 your effort? Um, let's see. Uh. You know, what we 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:14.760 tried at Dartmouth was, Uh. The was bring what I 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:16.680 had learned in medicine, and what I had learned in 0:13:16.679 --> 0:13:19.960 medicine is that the things we do should be evidence based. 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:22.200 So I looked around and I said, there are things 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.560 that we can do, and things we tackled were drinking, 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:26.720 but also sexual assault. We did a major effort on 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:31.160 sexual assault, and we tried to ask the question, so, 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:35.120 what has worked in reducing harm from drinking and what 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:39.600 has worked in reducing sexual assault? And so um, we uh, 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.640 we brought thirty universities together, including including your alma mater, Duke, 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.480 and we over a period of two years, we had 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:50.760 to meet on a regular basis and share insights on 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.199 programs that had been effective. And so I think I 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:58.040 think we reduced harm from alcohol consumption. But um, it's 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.120 very hard to reduce consumption overall. When you came into 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.440 the World Bank, it was the resistance like an organ transplant, 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.240 resistance to somebody who didn't have the same background that 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.920 others had had. Well, So I think, you know, to 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.480 to be fair, I think, um, the resistance is not 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:17.800 was not just to me. There's there's resistance here to 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.480 the way the place is governed as a whole. So 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:24.240 you have people here ten fifty years who have just 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.800 deep knowledge, and every few years someone new comes in 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.320 and they're supposed to run the institution. So I think 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:33.720 there's someone put it to me this way that you know, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.600 World Bank Group staff have always been skeptical about the 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:41.440 way the place is governed from the perspective of the presidency. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:46.880 But uh, you know, when I came in, I tried 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:51.000 to honestly look at how the place was functioning and 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:53.320 and and where it could go, what it could be, 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:56.960 And I brought in great people. Ala Molalley, the former 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.280 CEO of Ford Allen came and spent u quite a 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:02.800 bit of time with us looking at the overall structure. 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:05.440 And I asked Alan, so what would you do if 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:07.960 you saw an organization like this? And you know, I 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:09.840 brought in a lot of people, and you know what 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.880 they said was, Wow, this is an incredibly complex institution. 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.000 And so there were a whole bunch of things that 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.240 needed to be done. And I, you know, having done 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.880 change processes before, I knew it was going to be painful. 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:24.920 But I just felt like, you know, it's my it's 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.720 my moral responsibility to just give it my best shot 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.400 to set up the institution so that it could it 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:35.880 could function as effectively as it possibly could. Let's talk 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:39.680 about the World Bank, right, So we have nine member 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:44.000 countries and we were founded actually before the end of 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:48.920 World War Two. They wanted to stabilize currency exchange rates 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.920 after the war, but they also wanted an organization that 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:53.920 would help to rebuild Europe. But then, of course the 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.360 Marshall Plan came soon after that, and we expanded where 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:59.840 does it actually get its money? Where does that money come? 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:01.960 You have? How much money do you have? You know, 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.520 we have a total portfolio almost four hundred billion dollars. 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.160 That means you know, loans, equity investments that we that 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.360 we have right now. And so the the great um 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:16.280 uh innovation of the World Bank was that countries gave 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:19.400 us capital so that there's paid in capital. We have 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:23.600 a very very good UM credit rating, so we are 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:25.960 credit rating is triple A, but it's probably one of 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:28.160 the strongest triple as in the world. What we've been 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.200 able to do is whatever equity we have, we use 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.640 it to go to the capital markets and then borrow 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.160 at a very low rate and pass that on to 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:38.320 to our client countries. What's the difference between the World 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:41.240 Bank and the and the International Monetary Fund the i 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.240 m F. What the IMF does is comes in in 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:46.960 a situation where countries are in trouble, gives them a 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.640 short term infusion that is paid back in a relatively 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.840 short period of time, and it's really cash related to 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:58.840 policy changes. We actually do things like help countries build roads. 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:02.680 We provide specific loans for roads. We on the private 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.879 sector side, we give loans directly to private sector companies 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.040 who are working in in poor countries. We have another 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:14.240 part of the organization that literally invented political risk insurance. 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.119 There's a much broader range of things that we do 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.320 with the World Bank, But of course we're much smaller 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.480 than than the IMF, so you focus on developing markets. 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.280 But now the developing markets have so much capital coming 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.199 in from private equity firm sovereign wealth funds. Is there 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:30.440 a real need for the World Bank anymore. I don't 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.920 think that they necessarily need our capital, um, but they 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:37.640 certainly need our advice, and they certainly need the capital 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:39.399 in the form that we can provide it. So for 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:41.680 a middle income country, if we can provide them a 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:45.480 twenty five or thirty year loan at you know, two 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.880 and a half or three percent, there are not many 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:49.399 middle income countries who are going to be able to 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:51.680 go to the capital markets themselves and get a loan. 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:53.119 And they also are not going to be able to 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:55.560 get one where we come in and say, okay, we're 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.400 gonna give you this loan, whether it's for a particular 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:01.280 project or for uh, you know, we give it right 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:04.920 to the government budget. But then uh, the government has 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.080 to make policy changes. Uh. There are very few organizations 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:10.000 that will come to them and say we're not going 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.200 to charge you, we're not gonna try to get the afterwork. 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.680 We're coming in and we're gonna give you the benefit 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.800 of our experience and the experience of our client countries 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.800 all over the world. We're gonna give you ten experiences 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:24.360 in the world and how this problem that you're trying 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:26.520 to solve was solved, and we're going to bring the 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:30.040 people who actually know those cases and uh, you know, 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:32.640 as part of the loan, we're going to provide that 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.040 to you for free. Not a lot of countries can 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.600 do that. But also you know, um, there are some 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:43.320 countries that are getting you access to to private equity 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.200 in capital, but the vast majority of low and low 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.840 middle income countries are not getting that. And so what 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:52.280 we're now trying to do is to use the financing 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.399 we have to help those countries become much more attractive 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.480 for the flow of private capital. So after you leave 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:01.199 the World Bank, whenever you leave, what would you like 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:05.560 to do? Well, you know, I've in in um in 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:09.639 trying to look at the evidence for um uh you know, 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:12.520 for development, what what do we need to do? Certain 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:16.080 things are very striking to me. One is that if 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:19.800 indeed everyone in the world eight billion people have access 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:22.639 to broadband, then the experience that my parents had of 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:24.840 coming to the United Sis saying wow, this is what 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.400 the world could look like. Everyone will have that on smartphones. 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.840 As more people get online, their aspirations grow. So there's 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.960 absolutely no way we're going to meet the aspirations of 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:38.959 all eight billion people without massive new investments coming from 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.200 the private sector. And so you know, if I were 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.199 to do anything after this, I would somehow work on 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.119 that problem. Now, did your parents live to see you 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.280 become the president of the World Bank? Not my father, 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:54.399 but my mother. My father passed away early when he 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:57.760 was fifty seven, but my mother has and she must 0:19:57.760 --> 0:19:59.639 be pretty proud. I've been proud to see you to 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:02.439 be president the World Bank. Yeah, yeah, And and then 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:04.640 and soon after, you know, soon after I was named, 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:08.280 she learned what the World Bank was. So so I 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.520 don't play golf because I don't think i'd be very 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:12.760 good at it. You're obviously a very good golfer. Why 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:14.960 don't you have time to learn golf? So I grew 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.800 up in uh In, Iowa, and we lived right near 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.679 the local golf course, and I played it competitively all 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:25.239 through high school. So you've played with President Obama and 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.119 you've played with President Trump. Yes, I have who's better? 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:37.520 Uh ge? So you know, um, let me let me 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:39.880