Business
Obama to nominate Jim Yong Kim For World Bank top post
Obama administration officials said the pick was already being well-received in the developing world. After learning of Kim’s nomination, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said the physician was “a true friend of Africa” and “a leader who knows what it takes to address poverty.”
Kim is expected to travel around the world on a listening tour to rally support for his nomination ahead of the World Bank vote.
The World Bank opening put Obama in the awkward position of choosing between his desire to be seen as a supporter of rising economic powers and the pressures of a political year in which support for a non-U.S. candidate could have opened him to criticism.
“If the administration had pushed a non-American for the job, this could have been attacked as Obama fostering the decline of American influence in the world,” said former IMF official Eswar Prasad, now an economics professor at Cornell University. “In an election year, Obama would have been accused of caving in to outside pressures and not being willing to protect U.S. interests.”
Obama picked Kim over several more well-known candidates, including Susan Rice, current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.; and Lawrence Summers, Obama’s former director of the National Economic Council.
Others mentioned for the World Bank post included Indra Nooyi, the head of soft drink company PepsiCo, and Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who served in top economic jobs in the Clinton administration.
Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the U.S. at age 5. He is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard University. He co-founded the global health organization Partners in Health and served as director of the World Health Organization’s department of HIV/AIDS.
He began his tenure as president of Dartmouth in 2009, becoming the first Asian-American to lead an Ivy League institution.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
