The resignation of David Malpass, President of the Wolrd Bank, must boost actions and mobilizations towards the replacement / the demise of both the WB and the IMF in a context of acute climate and environmental crisis

18 February by CADTM International


David Malpass, President of the World Bank since April 2019, has announced his resignation on or before 30 June 2023. In the context of a major ecological and climatic crisis, which threatens all living beings on the planet - mainly in the so-called “Southern” countries - the CADTM recalls the need to abolish the IMF and the World Bank and to completely rethink the international financial architecture.



David Malpass, the 13th President of the World Bank, like his predecessors: he is an American citizen with ties to big financial capital.

David Malpass, the 13th President of the World Bank World Bank
WB
The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

, like his predecessors: he is an American citizen with ties to big financial capital.

Washington has so far succeeded in imposing a precedence that is totally contrary to the spirit of the United Nations and to democracy: the post of President of the World Bank is reserved for an American appointed by the President of the United States.

Like most previous World Bank presidents [1], David Malpass has ties to big finance: after working for the US Treasury dealing with international affairs during the terms of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, David Malpass became chief economist of Bear Stearns, a large investment bank that failed in 2008, while he was still in office. In August 2007, Malpass published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, in which he urged his readers not to worry about the state of the financial markets, going so far as to say that ’the housing and debt markets are not a significant part of the U.S. economy or job creation” [2].

David Malpass then joined Donald Trump’s team, as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, before becoming President of the World Bank in 2019. Like Donald Trump, David Malpass is a climate sceptic. In October 2022, at a roundtable discussion organised by the New York Times, he refused to take a position on the role of fossil fuels in global warming, arguing that he was ’not a scientist’ [3].

Read also : Banque mondiale, une histoire critique

At a time of ecological and climate emergency when all economies should be geared towards protecting natural resources, reducing air pollution and fighting inequality [4], the president of the World Bank - an institution that distributes loans, that finances projects in the so-called ’South’ - was not convinced by the role of fossil fuels in global warming... This is extremely serious.

Nor did David Malpass question the World Bank’s scandalous voting system, which effectively gives the US a veto on every major decision. The US has 15.47% of the voting rights for every decision taken by the IBRD [5]. For a decision to be adopted, it must receive 85% of the votes. No decision can be adopted without the agreement of the United States. No decision of the World Bank (or the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund
Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org
) can be contrary to the interests of the United States.

Call for a global counter-summit of social movements to the IMF-WB Annual Meetings to be held in Marrakech from 9 to 15 October 2023

This system puts the World Bank and the IMF institutions at the service of an international oligarchy composed of ’great powers’ and multinational companies whose interests are almost systematically defended by Western governments. The decisions taken by these two international institutions since their creation have proven this. They have:

As the US has a veto over any meaningful decision, these institutions will not change from within. They will continue to grant loans in exchange for imposed conditionalities that reinforce and deregulate capitalism, increase social and gender inequalities and worsen the climate and ecological crisis. The CADTM International network therefore calls for:


Footnotes

[1Alden W. Clausen was President of the Bank of America before becoming President of the World Bank (1981-1986), Robert Zoelick held a key position at Goldman Sachs before becoming head of the WB from 2007 to 2012, after resigning as President of the WB in 2019, Jim Yong Kim joined a private equity fund.

[2 « 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. » Cité par Jordan Weissmann, « Trump Taps Bear Stearns Economist Who Said Not to Worry About Credit Crisis for Key Treasury Job », 5 January 2017 https://slate.com/business/2017/01/trump-picks-ex-bear-stearns-economist-for-treasury-position.html

[3Julien Bouissou, « Derrière la démission de David Malpass, la question du rôle de la Banque mondiale face aux crises économique et climatique », Le Monde, 16/02/2023, (in French) https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2023/02/16/derriere-la-demission-de-david-malpass-la-question-du-role-de-la-banque-mondiale-face-aux-crises-economique-et-climatique_6162048_3234.html (in French)

[4Because the richest are the biggest polluters. In 2020, Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute showed that the richest 1% generated more emissions than the poorest half of humanity.
T. Gore (2020), Tackling the Inequities of CO2 Emissions: Climate Justice at the Heart of the Post-Covid-19 Recovery. Oxfam. https:// oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621052/mb-confronting-carbon-inequality-210920-fr.pdf

[5“ International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Subscriptions and voting power of member countries”, World Bank, https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/a16374a6cee037e274c5e932bf9f88c6-0330032021/original/IBRDCountryVotingTable.pdf

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