Posted on 04/25/2025 3:01:09 AM PDT by hardspunned
Thank you for that kind introduction. It’s an honor to be here.
In the final months of World War II, Western leaders convened the greatest economic minds of their generation. Their task? To build a new financial system.
At a quiet resort high up in the mountains of New Hampshire, they laid the foundation for Pax Americana.
The architects of Bretton Woods recognized that a global economy required global coordination. To encourage that coordination, they created the IMF and the World Bank.
These twin institutions were born after a period of intense geopolitical and economic volatility. The purpose of the IMF and the World Bank was to better align national interests with international order, thereby bringing stability to an unstable world.
In short, their purpose was to restore and preserve balance.
(Excerpt) Read more at home.treasury.gov ...
This status quo of large and persistent imbalances is not sustainable. It is not sustainable for the United States, and ultimately, it is not sustainable for other economies.
Now I know “sustainability” is a popular term around here. But I’m not talking about climate change or carbon footprints. I’m talking about economic and financial sustainability—the kind of sustainability that raises standards of living and keeps markets afloat. International financial institutions must be singularly focused on upholding this kind of sustainability if they are to succeed in their missions.
China, in particular, is in need of a rebalancing. Recent data shows the Chinese economy tilting even further away from consumption toward manufacturing. China’s economic system, with growth driven by manufacturing exports, will continue to create even more serious imbalances with its trading partners if the status quo is allowed to continue.
China’s current economic model is built on exporting its way out of its economic troubles. It’s an unsustainable model that is not only harming China but the entire world.
Instead, the IMF has suffered from mission creep. The IMF was once unwavering in its mission of promoting global monetary cooperation and financial stability. Now it devotes disproportionate time and resources to work on climate change, gender, and social issues.
These issues are not the IMF’s mission. And the IMF’s focus in these areas is crowding out its work on critical macroeconomic issues.
The Bank should no longer expect blank checks for vapid, buzzword-centric marketing accompanied by half-hearted commitments to reform. As the Bank returns to its core mission, it must use its resources as efficiently and effectively as possible. And it must do so in ways that demonstrate tangible value for all member countries.
The Bank can use its resources more efficiently now by focusing on increasing energy access. Business leaders the world over identify unreliable power supply as one of the primary impediments to investment. The World Bank and African Development Bank’s joint “Mission 300” initiative to expand energy access to 300 million more people in Africa is a welcome effort. But the World Bank must respond to countries’ energy priorities and needs and focus on dependable technologies that can sustain economic growth rather than seek to meet distortionary climate finance targets.
We applaud the recent announcement that the World Bank will seek to remove prohibitions on support for nuclear energy, which could revolutionize energy supply for many emerging markets. We encourage the Bank to go further in giving countries access to all technologies that can provide affordable baseload generation.
The World Bank must be tech neutral and prioritize affordability in energy investment. In most cases, this means investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production. In other cases, this may mean investing in renewable energy coupled with systems to help manage the intermittency of wind and solar.
Instead, the World Bank continues to lend every year to countries [China]that have met the criteria to graduate from World Bank borrowing. There is no justification for this continued lending. It siphons off resources from higher priorities and crowds out the development of private markets. It also disincentivizes countries’ efforts to move away from dependency on the World Bank and toward job-rich, private sector-led growth.
Great speech. Really great.
Bessent is sounding the alarm: the IMF and World Bank have lost the plot, chasing climate goals, gender programs, and social agendas while ignoring their core mission—stabilizing the global economy. He calls for a hard reset, demanding they stop playing global activist and start acting like the financial stabilizers they were built to be.
Meanwhile, America has become the patsy of global trade, absorbing the world’s excess supply and debt while our competitors hoard surpluses, suppress wages, and exploit lax rules.
Bessent says: no more.
The Trump Administration will lead with clear-eyed realism—not retreating from the world, but reshaping it to be fair, focused, and sustainable. This means holding China accountable, ending handouts to advanced economies like China, reasserting U.S. leverage in global institutions, and making sure the Bretton Woods system works for us—not the other way around.
America First isn’t about going it alone. It’s about refusing to be played. It’s about a return to the core principles that made the postwar global economy stable and prosperous, UNDER U.S. LEADERSHIP.
Common Sense!
As an aside, it's funny how freaks now constitute a separate "race."
mark
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