Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Dr. Jim Yong Kim

Transcript

Dr. Jim Yong Kim · The David Rubenstein Show

0:00
Speaker 1: With degrees and doctorates from Harvard and Brown University. Dr
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Speaker 1: Jim Young Kim is one of the best educated people
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Speaker 1: to ever serve as head of the World Bank, but
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Speaker 1: he's also one of the most unconventional. Kim's degrees are
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Speaker 1: in biology and anthropology, and his job history includes time
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Speaker 1: as a professor at Harvard and president of Dartmouth College,
0:20
Speaker 1: where he was the first Asian American to lead at
0:22
Speaker 1: Ivy League institution. But when President Obama nominated Kim to
0:26
Speaker 1: lead the World Bank in twelve, he took on the
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Speaker 1: role with great zeal, calling the Bank one of the
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Speaker 1: most critical institutions fighting poverty and providing assistance to developing
0:37
Speaker 1: countries in the world. Kim won the election to become
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Speaker 1: President of the World Bank in April of twelve, and
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Speaker 1: he was re elected to the role in September of
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Speaker 1: twenty six. He recently sat down with Carlisle Group co
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Speaker 1: founder David Rubinstein. They spoke on David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television
0:53
Speaker 1: program Peer to Peer Conversations. He became the president of
0:57
Speaker 1: Dartmouth I think in two thousand nine. Here there for
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Speaker 1: a couple of years, and you're a trained as a
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Speaker 1: medical doctor, and as a social anthropologist, you have no
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Speaker 1: finance background. Um, all of a sudden, somebody says, would
1:11
Speaker 1: you like to be the president of the World Bank?
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Speaker 1: What would make you think that would be a job
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Speaker 1: you would be qualified for? And why would you want
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Speaker 1: to leave the academic setting that you've spent much of
1:22
Speaker 1: your life in. Well, it was a it's a question
1:25
Speaker 1: that a lot of people in the financial world asked
1:27
Speaker 1: as well when I was nominated. But you know, we
1:31
Speaker 1: had always known, in all of my years working in development,
1:35
Speaker 1: that the World Bank was the most important institution for
1:38
Speaker 1: people who wanted to help poor countries develop. And so, UM,
1:44
Speaker 1: I came to the interview with President Obama and he
1:47
Speaker 1: was asking me exactly the same question. He literally said
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Speaker 1: to me, why should I nominate you and not a
1:54
Speaker 1: macar economist? And so that this is when I when
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Speaker 1: I made the pitch, probably the most important pitch I've
2:00
Speaker 1: made in my life. I said, well, you know, um,
2:02
Speaker 1: the first question I asked him was have you read
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Speaker 1: your mother's PhD dissertation? And he looked at me and
2:08
Speaker 1: he said, well, yeah, I have. And I said, well,
2:10
Speaker 1: you know, I'm an anthropologist like her. And so I
2:12
Speaker 1: said to him, you know, I haven't been in the
2:15
Speaker 1: finance world, but I've been on the ground doing development
2:18
Speaker 1: work for most of my adult life. I'll be able
2:20
Speaker 1: to tell you how it's working on the ground. And
2:22
Speaker 1: he just looked at me and he said, okay, I
2:24
Speaker 1: get that. So was he surprised you actually read his
2:28
Speaker 1: mother's PhD thesis? He was, he was, And he later
2:33
Speaker 1: we were together in a more informal setting and he said,
2:36
Speaker 1: you know, Jim, that was one of the best ploys
2:38
Speaker 1: to get a job I've ever seen. All right, so
2:41
Speaker 1: did you feel intimidated for this job when you didn't
2:44
Speaker 1: have those kind of backgrounds? Are not? Well? I certainly
2:47
Speaker 1: felt humbled about about it. And and uh, you know,
2:50
Speaker 1: we have people here in the audience, many of them
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Speaker 1: taught me a lot about how the World Bank works,
2:55
Speaker 1: and so um, I I felt like, well, you know,
2:58
Speaker 1: learning finance and learning macroeconomics is going to be a
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Speaker 1: huge challenge for me, But for the previous presidents coming
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Speaker 1: in learning development must have been an even bigger challenge
3:10
Speaker 1: for them. And so I felt like I knew about
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Speaker 1: what development was like, what working in developing countries was like.
3:15
Speaker 1: And then I really worked hard to learn the other
3:18
Speaker 1: the other things that I needed to learn when I
3:20
Speaker 1: got here. When you show up at a meeting or
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Speaker 1: something and you tell people you're the president World Bank
3:25
Speaker 1: to they their eyes kind of open wider or their
3:28
Speaker 1: jaws drop. It's a pretty good title. But it depends
3:30
Speaker 1: on where you are, right. So when I in in Washington,
3:33
Speaker 1: if you do that, they'll say, well, do you guys
3:35
Speaker 1: have a branch in Alexandria? Right? Uh? And do you
3:38
Speaker 1: have a T M S. I mean so, so some
3:40
Speaker 1: places you're extremely well known, right in other places you're
3:43
Speaker 1: not known at all. But when you're, let's playing golf,
3:45
Speaker 1: and you're a very good golfer, you're like five handicap
3:48
Speaker 1: as I understand it, very good golfer. I'll ask you
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Speaker 1: about that later. Do people give you punch more than
3:53
Speaker 1: they used to when your president World Bank? Or that
3:55
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, not at all, not at all. You know,
3:58
Speaker 1: they have the mistaken impression that that I have access
4:01
Speaker 1: to cash myself, and so they're trying to get that
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Speaker 1: from me. Let's talk about your background. Why did your
4:06
Speaker 1: parents come to the United States. Your father was a
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Speaker 1: dentist and your mother was professor philosophy, My father was
4:14
Speaker 1: a refugee from North Korea. Escaped from from North Korea
4:18
Speaker 1: to South Korea at the age of nineteen, and so
4:20
Speaker 1: he went into the army as a dentist, and because
4:23
Speaker 1: he had worked so hard on his English, he became
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Speaker 1: a translator from many of the army dentists and became
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Speaker 1: good friends with him, and so they gave him a
4:31
Speaker 1: scholarship to come to the United States. My mother was
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Speaker 1: the top student in the top high school in Korea,
4:39
Speaker 1: because they ranked everybody literally in Korea in terms of
4:41
Speaker 1: your high school ranking, and so she got a scholarship
4:45
Speaker 1: and she she came to Tennessee by herself. And at
4:47
Speaker 1: the time, this was in the early nineteen fifties, they're
4:50
Speaker 1: probably three or four hundred Koreans and all of the
4:52
Speaker 1: United States. And so she and my father were introduced
4:55
Speaker 1: to each other through friends. They met in New York
4:58
Speaker 1: City and they actually got married in New York City.
5:00
Speaker 1: And like like all of the Koreans, they the idea
5:04
Speaker 1: was that they would learn in the United States and
5:06
Speaker 1: they would go back to serve their country. And so
5:08
Speaker 1: they went back, but but inescapably, you know, they saw
5:12
Speaker 1: how people live in the United States. And so their
5:15
Speaker 1: own aspirations for themselves and their children went up. But
5:19
Speaker 1: did they have It was a hard to get a
5:21
Speaker 1: visa to come over to live here permanently. Then, so
5:23
Speaker 1: so they My father was a fully trained dentist and
5:28
Speaker 1: was a professor, but when he came back, he had
5:30
Speaker 1: to complete the last two years of dental school again.
5:33
Speaker 1: So we were in Dallas and he was a uh,
5:36
Speaker 1: he was a dental student. At the same time, I
5:38
Speaker 1: think we're working as a nurse in a hospital to
5:40
Speaker 1: make enough money. And then um, we went he finished
5:44
Speaker 1: his dental education at Baylor Dental School in Dallas. And
5:47
Speaker 1: then for some reason that we're still trying to figure out,
5:50
Speaker 1: we moved to Iowa. That we grew up in Iowa
5:53
Speaker 1: at the time, you did not speak English. So when
5:56
Speaker 1: I came at the age of five, I didn't speak
5:58
Speaker 1: a word of English. So a move to Musketine, Iowa.
6:02
Speaker 1: Then in high school, Um, this is what I couldn't understand.
6:05
Speaker 1: How did you manage to be the quarterback of the
6:07
Speaker 1: football team, the point guard on the basketball team, class
6:10
Speaker 1: president as well. And um also Valiatorian was that like
6:14
Speaker 1: hard to do where well, well, you know, before you
6:19
Speaker 1: get too impressed with that. Our football team had the
6:21
Speaker 1: longest losing streak in the nation at the town, fifty
6:25
Speaker 1: six defeats in a row, and I very proudly say
6:28
Speaker 1: I kept that streak going UH during recruited to play
6:32
Speaker 1: at the University of Iowa. No, did you feel discrimination
6:34
Speaker 1: because you were Korean or Asian or there wasn't describing
6:37
Speaker 1: you know, there was one town that I went to
6:39
Speaker 1: play basketball in where um, there were two African American
6:44
Speaker 1: UH teammates in me and the people were literally screaming
6:49
Speaker 1: at us racial epitets. You know, I can I can't
6:52
Speaker 1: repeat them on television, but they were screaming at us,
6:55
Speaker 1: and they threw things at us and even spit at
6:57
Speaker 1: us as we were coming out to play. So I've
7:00
Speaker 1: had that experience. And as a quarterback, you're looking across
7:03
Speaker 1: and they're looking in your eyes, and you know, every
7:06
Speaker 1: racial slury you could imagine was was thrown at me.
7:08
Speaker 1: So I grew up with I grew up with it,
7:11
Speaker 1: and it's a it it. I think it taught me
7:14
Speaker 1: a lot. It made me understand what that part of
7:17
Speaker 1: the world UH can be like, at least you know,
7:21
Speaker 1: years ago. Okay, so you're in Iowa. You do off
7:25
Speaker 1: very well in high school, and you go to Brown
7:27
Speaker 1: and you apply to and I guess get in the
7:29
Speaker 1: hardest medical school to probably get in Harvard Medical School.
7:32
Speaker 1: So were you surprised you got in and was that
7:34
Speaker 1: your first choice? Um? Well, I was really surprised to
7:37
Speaker 1: get in, And in fact, it was not my first
7:39
Speaker 1: choice because I actually I was trying to convince my
7:42
Speaker 1: father that I was not going to go to medical school,
7:45
Speaker 1: but I was going to go and study political science
7:47
Speaker 1: and philosophy. I came home from Brown one summer and
7:52
Speaker 1: he asked me, so what are you going to study?
7:54
Speaker 1: And I said, well, Dad, you know, I think I'm
7:56
Speaker 1: going to study political science and philosophy, and I think
7:58
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into politicy. Tis right. He literally pulled
8:02
Speaker 1: the car over to the side of the road. We're
8:04
Speaker 1: coming back from the airport tinittle Town, and he said, hey, um,
8:09
Speaker 1: when you finish your internship and residency, you can study
8:11
Speaker 1: anything you want, right right, And so for him, and
8:15
Speaker 1: he used to talk like that, he said, look, you
8:17
Speaker 1: know and and for him, of course, it was very
8:20
Speaker 1: clear who we were in this country. We were in Ioway.
8:23
Speaker 1: He said, you're you're you're a chinaman. He used to
8:25
Speaker 1: say this to me, You're a chinaman. You think people
8:27
Speaker 1: are gonna pay you to hear your ideas about political
8:29
Speaker 1: science and philosophy? Get a skill. And I turned out
8:33
Speaker 1: that it was really great advice. I mean, there's so
8:35
Speaker 1: many things that I've learned and have happened because I
8:39
Speaker 1: had this notion that I needed to contribute something concrete
8:42
Speaker 1: in order to to make it in the world. And
8:44
Speaker 1: then you decided to go into another program where you
8:46
Speaker 1: get a PhD and anthropology. Now did your parents say, look,
8:49
Speaker 1: a medical school degree is all you need. Why do
8:51
Speaker 1: you need a PhD? As well? Well? This was the
8:54
Speaker 1: great compromise, and my my father felt that as long
8:58
Speaker 1: as I was in medical school, uh, that it's okay
9:01
Speaker 1: to loosen up a little bit. So you get your
9:03
Speaker 1: degrees and you meet in Harvard Medical School. Um, Paul
9:07
Speaker 1: Farmer and the two of you, with a few others
9:09
Speaker 1: started something called Partners in Health. Can you describe what
9:12
Speaker 1: that is? Paul and I began talking. You know, gosh,
9:16
Speaker 1: it was ur We began talking about if you have
9:21
Speaker 1: what we call these ridiculously elaborate educations, that's what Paul
9:24
Speaker 1: called it. What's the nature of your responsibility to the
9:27
Speaker 1: rest of the world. And so we thought and thought
9:30
Speaker 1: and and we tried to keep asking the questions. So,
9:34
Speaker 1: if we have these kinds of backgrounds, what's the nature
9:37
Speaker 1: of our responsibility to the world. And we came to
9:39
Speaker 1: the conclusion that our responsibility was to to commit to
9:44
Speaker 1: the poorest, most uh, most marginalized, most outcast people and
9:50
Speaker 1: then do everything we can to provide them the best
9:52
Speaker 1: possible healthcare, education, social protection, and that we would that
9:57
Speaker 1: we weren't gonna win. We weren't gonna have some sort
10:00
Speaker 1: of victorious story because at the time that we started this,
10:04
Speaker 1: there was very little money available in terms of global
10:07
Speaker 1: health or education. We thought, but you know, we're gonna
10:11
Speaker 1: continue to to write about and talk about the situation
10:14
Speaker 1: of these very poor people, and we're going to do
10:17
Speaker 1: that for the rest of our lives without any hope
10:20
Speaker 1: of being on the winning side. We were. We chose
10:24
Speaker 1: at that time. We said we're going to stay and
10:26
Speaker 1: we're gonna We're gonna We're gonna work and continue to
10:29
Speaker 1: work on the losing side. You ran Partner's Tale for
10:32
Speaker 1: a number of years. UH. It was focused initially on
10:34
Speaker 1: Haiti later in Peru. And while when you were in
10:38
Speaker 1: Peru you once led a protest against the World Bank.
10:42
Speaker 1: In fact, you had said the World Bank should be
10:43
Speaker 1: maybe shut down. Yes, um, do you have any regrets
10:46
Speaker 1: about that? I just want everyone here to know I'm
10:48
Speaker 1: very glad we lost that argument and we did. At
10:52
Speaker 1: that time. What we were arguing was that the World
10:55
Speaker 1: Bank Group was too focused on GDP growth of and
11:00
Speaker 1: that the kinds of investments that were it was making
11:03
Speaker 1: was not focused enough on things like health and education,
11:07
Speaker 1: and that this was this was an argument that was
11:09
Speaker 1: that was going on in development economics. You were an
11:11
Speaker 1: expert initially on tuberculosis. I had been working on drug
11:14
Speaker 1: resistant tuberculosis and had done a lot of work on
11:17
Speaker 1: trying to um just get the global health community to
11:22
Speaker 1: change its perspective on it. And then when I went
11:24
Speaker 1: to it to UH to the health organization was the
11:27
Speaker 1: same thing. I mean, there were the the the overwhelming consensus,
11:31
Speaker 1: like nine percent of all the HIV physicians in the world,
11:35
Speaker 1: we're saying impossible to treat HIV in developing countries, and
11:38
Speaker 1: there were twenty five million people in Africa who were
11:40
Speaker 1: living with HIV, and and the Global Health community was
11:44
Speaker 1: about to issue a death sentence on all million people
11:48
Speaker 1: living with HIV in Africa, and so that's that was
11:51
Speaker 1: what I did. So you're you leave the World Health
11:54
Speaker 1: Organization after a couple of years heading their HIV program.
11:57
Speaker 1: You then go to Harvard Medical School and tea there,
12:00
Speaker 1: and then somebody calls you and says, would you like
12:02
Speaker 1: to be president of Dartmouth. Why didn't you decide to
12:04
Speaker 1: do that? Uh, it's a great question, and sometimes I
12:08
Speaker 1: wonder myself why. And I said to them, you know,
12:12
Speaker 1: my work from my entire life has been focusing on
12:16
Speaker 1: the lives of the poorest. And I said, I don't
12:20
Speaker 1: think I can do this because it feels to me
12:23
Speaker 1: like you're asking me to turn my back on the poor.
12:26
Speaker 1: And um, somebody on the the the committee was, uh,
12:31
Speaker 1: you know in a in a in was it really
12:33
Speaker 1: a brilliant recruitment technique? Said no, no, no, we're not
12:36
Speaker 1: asking you to turn your back on the poor. We're
12:38
Speaker 1: asking you to turn the faces of Dartmouth students to
12:41
Speaker 1: the poor. So I thought, wow, that sounds great, right,
12:44
Speaker 1: sounds great. But it turns out that's not actually the
12:47
Speaker 1: job of being president of a university, which David, you
12:50
Speaker 1: know very well. So one of the things you focused
12:52
Speaker 1: on with your president Dartmouth was trying to reduce the
12:55
Speaker 1: enormous alcohol consumption that undergraduates have. Um, I think you
13:00
Speaker 1: know for hundreds of years university president to try to
13:03
Speaker 1: do that with very little success. How did you find
13:05
Speaker 1: your effort? Um, let's see. Uh. You know, what we
13:10
Speaker 1: tried at Dartmouth was, Uh. The was bring what I
13:14
Speaker 1: had learned in medicine, and what I had learned in
13:16
Speaker 1: medicine is that the things we do should be evidence based.
13:20
Speaker 1: So I looked around and I said, there are things
13:22
Speaker 1: that we can do, and things we tackled were drinking,
13:24
Speaker 1: but also sexual assault. We did a major effort on
13:26
Speaker 1: sexual assault, and we tried to ask the question, so,
13:31
Speaker 1: what has worked in reducing harm from drinking and what
13:35
Speaker 1: has worked in reducing sexual assault? And so um, we uh,
13:39
Speaker 1: we brought thirty universities together, including including your alma mater, Duke,
13:44
Speaker 1: and we over a period of two years, we had
13:47
Speaker 1: to meet on a regular basis and share insights on
13:50
Speaker 1: programs that had been effective. And so I think I
13:53
Speaker 1: think we reduced harm from alcohol consumption. But um, it's
13:58
Speaker 1: very hard to reduce consumption overall. When you came into
14:01
Speaker 1: the World Bank, it was the resistance like an organ transplant,
14:04
Speaker 1: resistance to somebody who didn't have the same background that
14:07
Speaker 1: others had had. Well, So I think, you know, to
14:09
Speaker 1: to be fair, I think, um, the resistance is not
14:13
Speaker 1: was not just to me. There's there's resistance here to
14:17
Speaker 1: the way the place is governed as a whole. So
14:21
Speaker 1: you have people here ten fifty years who have just
14:24
Speaker 1: deep knowledge, and every few years someone new comes in
14:28
Speaker 1: and they're supposed to run the institution. So I think
14:31
Speaker 1: there's someone put it to me this way that you know,
14:33
Speaker 1: World Bank Group staff have always been skeptical about the
14:37
Speaker 1: way the place is governed from the perspective of the presidency.
14:41
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, when I came in, I tried
14:46
Speaker 1: to honestly look at how the place was functioning and
14:51
Speaker 1: and and where it could go, what it could be,
14:53
Speaker 1: And I brought in great people. Ala Molalley, the former
14:56
Speaker 1: CEO of Ford Allen came and spent u quite a
15:00
Speaker 1: bit of time with us looking at the overall structure.
15:02
Speaker 1: And I asked Alan, so what would you do if
15:05
Speaker 1: you saw an organization like this? And you know, I
15:08
Speaker 1: brought in a lot of people, and you know what
15:09
Speaker 1: they said was, Wow, this is an incredibly complex institution.
15:14
Speaker 1: And so there were a whole bunch of things that
15:16
Speaker 1: needed to be done. And I, you know, having done
15:19
Speaker 1: change processes before, I knew it was going to be painful.
15:22
Speaker 1: But I just felt like, you know, it's my it's
15:24
Speaker 1: my moral responsibility to just give it my best shot
15:27
Speaker 1: to set up the institution so that it could it
15:31
Speaker 1: could function as effectively as it possibly could. Let's talk
15:35
Speaker 1: about the World Bank, right, So we have nine member
15:39
Speaker 1: countries and we were founded actually before the end of
15:44
Speaker 1: World War Two. They wanted to stabilize currency exchange rates
15:48
Speaker 1: after the war, but they also wanted an organization that
15:51
Speaker 1: would help to rebuild Europe. But then, of course the
15:53
Speaker 1: Marshall Plan came soon after that, and we expanded where
15:57
Speaker 1: does it actually get its money? Where does that money come?
16:00
Speaker 1: You have? How much money do you have? You know,
16:02
Speaker 1: we have a total portfolio almost four hundred billion dollars.
16:05
Speaker 1: That means you know, loans, equity investments that we that
16:08
Speaker 1: we have right now. And so the the great um
16:12
Speaker 1: uh innovation of the World Bank was that countries gave
16:16
Speaker 1: us capital so that there's paid in capital. We have
16:19
Speaker 1: a very very good UM credit rating, so we are
16:23
Speaker 1: credit rating is triple A, but it's probably one of
16:26
Speaker 1: the strongest triple as in the world. What we've been
16:28
Speaker 1: able to do is whatever equity we have, we use
16:31
Speaker 1: it to go to the capital markets and then borrow
16:33
Speaker 1: at a very low rate and pass that on to
16:36
Speaker 1: to our client countries. What's the difference between the World
16:38
Speaker 1: Bank and the and the International Monetary Fund the i
16:41
Speaker 1: m F. What the IMF does is comes in in
16:44
Speaker 1: a situation where countries are in trouble, gives them a
16:47
Speaker 1: short term infusion that is paid back in a relatively
16:50
Speaker 1: short period of time, and it's really cash related to
16:54
Speaker 1: policy changes. We actually do things like help countries build roads.
16:58
Speaker 1: We provide specific loans for roads. We on the private
17:02
Speaker 1: sector side, we give loans directly to private sector companies
17:06
Speaker 1: who are working in in poor countries. We have another
17:10
Speaker 1: part of the organization that literally invented political risk insurance.
17:14
Speaker 1: There's a much broader range of things that we do
17:17
Speaker 1: with the World Bank, But of course we're much smaller
17:19
Speaker 1: than than the IMF, so you focus on developing markets.
17:22
Speaker 1: But now the developing markets have so much capital coming
17:25
Speaker 1: in from private equity firm sovereign wealth funds. Is there
17:28
Speaker 1: a real need for the World Bank anymore. I don't
17:30
Speaker 1: think that they necessarily need our capital, um, but they
17:34
Speaker 1: certainly need our advice, and they certainly need the capital
17:37
Speaker 1: in the form that we can provide it. So for
17:39
Speaker 1: a middle income country, if we can provide them a
17:41
Speaker 1: twenty five or thirty year loan at you know, two
17:45
Speaker 1: and a half or three percent, there are not many
17:47
Speaker 1: middle income countries who are going to be able to
17:49
Speaker 1: go to the capital markets themselves and get a loan.
17:51
Speaker 1: And they also are not going to be able to
17:53
Speaker 1: get one where we come in and say, okay, we're
17:55
Speaker 1: gonna give you this loan, whether it's for a particular
17:58
Speaker 1: project or for uh, you know, we give it right
18:01
Speaker 1: to the government budget. But then uh, the government has
18:04
Speaker 1: to make policy changes. Uh. There are very few organizations
18:08
Speaker 1: that will come to them and say we're not going
18:10
Speaker 1: to charge you, we're not gonna try to get the afterwork.
18:12
Speaker 1: We're coming in and we're gonna give you the benefit
18:15
Speaker 1: of our experience and the experience of our client countries
18:18
Speaker 1: all over the world. We're gonna give you ten experiences
18:22
Speaker 1: in the world and how this problem that you're trying
18:24
Speaker 1: to solve was solved, and we're going to bring the
18:26
Speaker 1: people who actually know those cases and uh, you know,
18:30
Speaker 1: as part of the loan, we're going to provide that
18:33
Speaker 1: to you for free. Not a lot of countries can
18:36
Speaker 1: do that. But also you know, um, there are some
18:39
Speaker 1: countries that are getting you access to to private equity
18:43
Speaker 1: in capital, but the vast majority of low and low
18:47
Speaker 1: middle income countries are not getting that. And so what
18:49
Speaker 1: we're now trying to do is to use the financing
18:52
Speaker 1: we have to help those countries become much more attractive
18:56
Speaker 1: for the flow of private capital. So after you leave
18:59
Speaker 1: the World Bank, whenever you leave, what would you like
19:01
Speaker 1: to do? Well, you know, I've in in um in
19:05
Speaker 1: trying to look at the evidence for um uh you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: for development, what what do we need to do? Certain
19:12
Speaker 1: things are very striking to me. One is that if
19:17
Speaker 1: indeed everyone in the world eight billion people have access
19:19
Speaker 1: to broadband, then the experience that my parents had of
19:22
Speaker 1: coming to the United Sis saying wow, this is what
19:24
Speaker 1: the world could look like. Everyone will have that on smartphones.
19:28
Speaker 1: As more people get online, their aspirations grow. So there's
19:31
Speaker 1: absolutely no way we're going to meet the aspirations of
19:35
Speaker 1: all eight billion people without massive new investments coming from
19:39
Speaker 1: the private sector. And so you know, if I were
19:41
Speaker 1: to do anything after this, I would somehow work on
19:44
Speaker 1: that problem. Now, did your parents live to see you
19:48
Speaker 1: become the president of the World Bank? Not my father,
19:50
Speaker 1: but my mother. My father passed away early when he
19:54
Speaker 1: was fifty seven, but my mother has and she must
19:57
Speaker 1: be pretty proud. I've been proud to see you to
19:59
Speaker 1: be president the World Bank. Yeah, yeah, And and then
20:02
Speaker 1: and soon after, you know, soon after I was named,
20:04
Speaker 1: she learned what the World Bank was. So so I
20:08
Speaker 1: don't play golf because I don't think i'd be very
20:10
Speaker 1: good at it. You're obviously a very good golfer. Why
20:12
Speaker 1: don't you have time to learn golf? So I grew
20:15
Speaker 1: up in uh In, Iowa, and we lived right near
20:18
Speaker 1: the local golf course, and I played it competitively all
20:21
Speaker 1: through high school. So you've played with President Obama and
20:25
Speaker 1: you've played with President Trump. Yes, I have who's better?
20:32
Speaker 1: Uh ge? So you know, um, let me let me
20:37
Speaker 1: just put it this way. So President Obama started late
20:39
Speaker 1: in life, right, and so for someone who started late
20:42
Speaker 1: in life, he's very very good. President Trump has been
20:45
Speaker 1: playing for most of his life, and he is extremely good.
20:48
Speaker 1: He's an extremely good golfer. He he can hit all
20:51
Speaker 1: the shots. So it's a it's a it's it's um uh,
20:54
Speaker 1: it's there are two different kinds of golfers. Completely that
20:59
Speaker 1: all right, that's a very diplomatic answer. Now, what would
21:02
Speaker 1: you say is the greatest pleasure of your professional life?
21:05
Speaker 1: For me, I think the thing that I'm most grateful
21:09
Speaker 1: for is that I have been able to learn new
21:12
Speaker 1: things throughout every stage of my professional career. Uh. And
21:16
Speaker 1: so as long as you stay open to it, I
21:19
Speaker 1: think that's the key. And if I would to give
21:22
Speaker 1: advice to anyone, I mean, you know, what we now
21:24
Speaker 1: know is that the jobs of the future will require
21:27
Speaker 1: that people are ready to continue to learn throughout their lives.
21:30
Speaker 1: On the old days, the advice was plastics, but now plastics. Yeah,
21:34
Speaker 1: if you ever want to get into private equity when
21:35
Speaker 1: you leave the World Bank, let me know what you
21:39
Speaker 1: did say that that the highest human calling is private equity.
21:42
Speaker 1: Is I have to tell you that people who are
21:44
Speaker 1: willing to put risk capital into developing countries, Right, that's
21:48
Speaker 1: the key, that's going to be the key and unfortunately
21:51
Speaker 1: there's not enough of it right now. And so if
21:54
Speaker 1: you know, making economies work for for everybody, this is
21:59
Speaker 1: essentially what I say now to everybody here at the
22:02
Speaker 1: World Bank Group. Our job is to make the global
22:04
Speaker 1: market system work for everybody and the planet, and whether
22:08
Speaker 1: you like it or not, whether you like it or not,
22:10
Speaker 1: it really we really have to do that. There's no
22:12
Speaker 1: there's gonna be no way to buffer yourself from two
22:16
Speaker 1: billion people living in Africa by fifty who are going
22:20
Speaker 1: to have aspirations that are every bit as high as
22:22
Speaker 1: Europeans as Americans, and and so we have no choice
22:26
Speaker 1: but to make this system work for everybody. Dr Kim,
22:30
Speaker 1: thank you very much for what you've done for the
22:31
Speaker 1: World Bank. Thank you David