Trump nominates US Treasury’s David Malpass as next World Bank President

U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday nominated David Malpass, who has been a critic of the World Bank, to lead the institution focused on global poverty.Praising Malpass, Trump said he "has been a strong advocate for accountability at the World Bank for a long time."Now the undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, Malpass has been an outspoken skeptic of the 189-nation World Bank, a leading source of funding for economic development.The World Bank provides low-cost loans for projects around the world. Among its key missions is helping combat poverty in developing countries.Malpass has called for curbing the World Bank's financial reach and has criticized its lending to China, one of the bank's leading recipients of aid.If the World Bank's directors approve his nomination, Malpass would be positioned to overhaul an institution that, he has argued, has become too focused on its own expansion and prestige rather than on the interests of poor countries.Having Malpass at the helm of the World Bank would fit a pattern inside the Trump administration of tapping officials to lead institutions whose core missions they have publicly questioned or opposed. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, have under Trump been led by some of their sharpest former critics.Malpass, 62, has straddled the top echelons of government and Wall Street, having worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and as the chief economist for the defunct bank Bear Stearns.He also unsuccessfully sought the 2010 Republican nomination for a Senate seat from New York.