China's dominance is creeping up on us.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today’s David Owen Malpass. He was president of the World Bank and he was also Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs for the United States. David Malpass, so many things are happening in the world. There’s nobody better qualified to give us an evaluation of, well, how do we say it back in America? What the heck

0:23 is going on?

0:24 Speaker 2 Hi, John, It’s good to be with you. Yeah, it’s a wild world. You know, there’s two wars, meaningful wars, you know, with people dying, with arms flowing. The Poulbaser meeting in Davos in the snow, and at the same time in Iowa they held a vote and it was democracy and action with people actually expressing their opinions. I

0:49 think a lot of people are looking for better government and what we could sure use that.

0:55 Speaker 1 Ya your boss, one ninety nine of your old boss y nine of your of one hundred precincts. That was pretty good.

1:06 Speaker 2 That was a good showing. And it’s you know, there’s this concentration in the Republican Party of people that really want to find a way to have faster growth, to not have the tax increase that is scheduled for twenty twenty five. You know, that’s overhanging the US economy, but at the same time in Davos looking for global government

1:29 and this I think this is the tension in the world that the US is the world leader in terms of the economy, in terms of innovation, in terms of potential, but we’ve got to live up to.

1:42 Speaker 1 It, understood. And you know, with Davos going on and so many things happening in Europe. I heard that even Jamie Diamond met with the president of the Ukraine. Things going on in the United States is snow in Iowa, snow in New Hampshire, snow in Davos. I mean, what’s going on? What do you think is happening?

2:14 Speaker 2 Leaders, people that are running businesses, that are running governments have to meet. I met frequently, multiple times with President Zelenski of Ukraine. He’s stuck in a war. That’s a very difficult war. It’s important to the world, but it’s not getting itself resolved. And I think I want to come back to this issue that there’s a tension in

2:41 the world between those that really are are angling for global government. Remember the International Tax Deal says it tries to dictate from the center of the world what everybody can do on their tax policy. I think one of the things the US could step forward and do is say we want a fourteen corporate minimum tax, not the

3:04 fifteen percent that’s been required by the world to be the minimum. Who is the world to set a minimum for the corporate tax rates of countries around the world. But it’s the same on bank regulation. You’ve got central bodies trying to be global government and telling all the banks around the world what they can and can’t do

3:28 in terms of their lending behavior. And so Jamie Diamond, the head of JP Morgan, the biggest, biggest bank in the US and giant within the world, it has to really toe the line, meaning do what they’re telling him.

3:48 As far as international regulators, they’re not elected and they are not really following the goals that I think the people in Iowa showed that they simply want a much better economy and better decision making out of Washington. That’s not what they’re getting. What they’re getting, it’s huge amounts of spending that just seem endless tacked under the national

4:14 debt understood.

4:19 Speaker 1 Do you think with what’s going on in the United States, the price of oil is hovering around seventy right now. The price of interest rates a rumored to come down. The markets has been doing well. It’s an election year.

4:42 Is there a struggle going on between either European, the Asian countries, Russia, the Opic nations on what the real price of oil should be versus what maybe President Biden wants it out to get elected.

5:01 Speaker 2 Well, sure, energy is that the core of how countries make their economies grow and allow them to grow. So all over the world people are desperate for oil. For the US is fortunate because it can produce huge amounts of oil. I think it could be a lot more than what’s being produced. But it goes as the core

5:21 of how do you make all of the things that we use around the world. So this comes straight to this point of where the US can show more leadership. You know, if putin you’re sitting there thinking, boy, I’ve really made a killing out of the high oil prices that are going on. I can’t believe that the US

5:46 is letting me do this month after month of producing and settlling oil at giant prices. The US as well, We’re going to prohibit you from prohibit countries in the world from from paying Russia. Remember the sanctions idea, but it simply hasn’t worked. There’s all this access of evil in the world that really wants to buy oil from

6:11 Russia don’t care about the sanctions from the US. And so that’s a tension going on within the world that the US is just not stepping up to challenge.

6:25 Speaker 1 Understand, and there’s a there’s a big problem going on in the world with the price of war. Like we talked about during the speech in Iowa the other night, when President Trump won, he says, I’m in a drill, baby drill. That means if he drills as much as he is threatening to drill, could bring down the price

6:52 of world down during fifty like it was last time. Does that hurt the Opic nations? Does that hurt Russia? And what do we do?

7:01 Speaker 2 Then? You know, these political phrases are you know, they are attractive by supposing you simplify it down. But the reality of the world, I think is there needs to be avenues on all forms of energy. We need to be doing more with nuclear energy. I don’t know if you saw that Japan is behind in restarting or in

7:25 starting its nuclear reactors. They’re one of the most powerful ways to make energy, and they’re what’s needed for baseload on the grid. One of the challenges you know, worldwide is what we enjoy electricity in the US that’s twenty four to seven, but in a lot of the world that the electricity goes off, and then if you’re rich,

7:48 buy you buy a generator, a diesel generator, and that’s really where the world is descending. John. Let me tell you. One of the things I’m concerned about is as the as the fiscal depthsit in the US is so large year after year, even when we have supposedly an expansion going on in our economy that takes money from the

8:14 whole world. And so the consequence of that, so the US is always going to be the first borrower. It can get money from anyone in the world in these unlimited, seemingly unlimited quantities, but it means that the rest of the world doesn’t have the capital needed to invest in their own energy production. In fertilizer, and one of the

8:36 problems in the world is farmers aren’t going to get enough fertilizer outside of the rich countries, and so this is not the way to reduce world tension. I think we really have to come back to peace through strength, and strength comes from good regulatory policy, good energy policy, good tax policy. And we’re not we’re not playing in

9:01 that game properly right now.

9:04 Speaker 1 The other item that’s at war between the Americas and Russia and Opic in the Far East, it’s this reliance on electric vehicles and pushing towards these environmental projects that seem to be well going brokens in a lot of places.

9:27 What say you about that.

9:29 Speaker 2 Well, the people are in Davos, you know, they kind of have stopped talking as much about climate. They’ve stopped talking as much as about crypto, and now they’re going into artificial intelligence. So it’s whatever the the the the the topic of the moment is that gets them away from what wasn’t working, and clearly what wasn’t working was

9:51 on climate. They never really got the idea that they needed to choose. There needed to be cost benefit analysis in of things that they were that they the global government people were dictating, and electric vehicles is a case in point. They oftentimes within these international conferences, there was the decision that everybody in the all the rich people

10:18 in the world, should mandate rules to make people do things that were really expensive so they could make a lot of money, and electric vehicles is a center part of that. There needed to be a thoughtful process of letting out what are the goals and what’s a cost benefit way of getting to those goals. And everybody in

10:40 the world, I think wants better living conditions for people around the world. That’s not what’s happening. Poverty is going up because so much of the capital is getting sucked into these dead end projects.

10:56 Speaker 1 Understood well, David mount Pass, We’re we’re out of time, but I want to thank you for coming on and I want to continue this discussion. Uh so, we hope you’re available in the next few weeks to continue this discussion of what’s going on in the world economy. Thank you so much for coming on this Sunday.

11:15 Speaker 2 Let’s do it again. Thank you. Bye.