When you think of the president of global banking organizations you think of Wall Street types or world renowned economists. You might consider someone from the banking world with global credentials or someone known as business expert with dealings across the globe. What you wouldn’t likely think of is a medical doctor. Apparently President Obama doesn’t think like the rest of us.
In Obama’s World, Jim Yong Kim is Qualified
Yesterday president Obama nominated Jim Yong Kim to be the next president of the World Bank replacing Bush’s appointee Robert Zoellick. The announcement took most World Bank watchers by complete surprise as Kim has no financial background unlike all prior nominees for the position.
Robert Zoellick has an amazing resume as a U.S. Trade Representative, Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae and Senior International Advisor to Goldman Sachs. When named by Bush Zoellick was hailed as a great pick and has been well respected for his tenure as the leader of the World Bank.
Jim Yong Kim has none of the fiscal credentials of past World Bank presidents, spending his life as a physician, Harvard Medical School lecturer, college president and Director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDs program.
The choice is befuddling given Kim’s lack of financial background, but there are clues in Jim Yong Kim’s past that offer familiar explanations to past Obama nominees.
Jim Yong Kim was a founding partner and former executive director of Partners In Health (PIH), a not-for-profit organization that supports a range of health programs in poor communities. The organization was founded in 1987, where Jim Yong Kim remained until 2004 when he took the position with the World Health Organization. PIH believes that primary health care is a right and therefore it should be available to everyone. The organization works to break down barriers to treatment and provide free care to everyone, decrying free market principles and taking a noted socialist approach to healthcare.
Partners in Health’s advocacy arm, the Institute for Health and Social Justice (IHSJ), has a history of being critical of market forces and capitalism, explicitly supporting the redistribution of wealth. PIH is a conspicuously liberal organization that focuses on using students, academics, donors, policy makers, and lay people to advocate its policies.
The nomination of Jim Yong Kim literally the week before Obamacare is taken up by the Supreme Court demonstrates once again that everything the Obama Administration does is directly tied to their political goals. With Obamacare being assaulted from all sides and the potential it could be handed a death-blow by the high court, what better way to spread your goals for socialized medicine than nominating the poster-child for government-run health care to an organization that controls much of the world’s wealth?
Obamacare’s New Advocate will be Jim Yong Kim and the World Bank
Jim Yong Kim will likely sail through and become the next president of the World Bank and nothing that will happen this November can change that for at least the next five years; the initial term for World Bank presidents.
Once again the Obama Administration has chosen to employ the philosophy that if they can’t openly alter societal norms they’ll find a stealth manner to achieve their goals.