A news article on the front of the Times business section about President Trump's choice to head the World Bank, David Malpass, reports, "Big questions remain about how Mr. Malpass, a little-known Treasury Department official who has previously criticized multilateral institutions for overstepping their authority, will run the 75-year-old institution."
It seems strange, or at least inaccurate, to describe Mr. Malpass as "little-known." The Times itself has been quoting him as an authority for decades, describing him not as "little-known," but rather, as an "expert." Here's a 2001 Times article in which Malpass, identified as "chief international economist at Bear, Stearns," is quoted alongside Robert Hormats, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker. An article that ran in 2007 on the front of the Times business section reported, "Those in the background giving advice to one or more of the Republican candidates include N. Gregory Mankiw at Harvard, who is aligned mainly with Mr. Romney; Richard Clarida at Columbia; James L. Sweeney and John F. Cogan at Stanford; David Malpass at Bear Stearns; and Kevin A. Hassett at the American Enterprise Institute, working principally with Senator McCain." Readers of the Wall Street Journal know Malpass as a frequent contributor to its op-ed page, and readers of Forbes know him as a columnist. He's even written for the op-ed page of the Times itself. And he ran for U.S. Senate in New York, albeit without a victory.
I guess how known or unknown Malpass is depends on your comparison point. He's less known than many pop culture celebrities. But in the world of Republican international economists, he's not exactly an unknown quantity, at least to anyone who has been paying any attention.