For My Mother: Don’t Let Larry Summers Lead the World Bank

Life has a way sometimes of throwing two superficially unrelated things across your path simultaneously in a way that forces you to contemplate their underlying connections.

Even at this late date, press reports suggest that President Obama is still considering nominating Larry Summers to be the next President of the World Bank.

Yesterday morning, my mother passed away. Continue reading

With Larry Summers’ World Bank Bid in Trouble, Mexico Insists on Open Process

Early last week the New York Times reported that despite all the previous fine rhetoric about the G20 and consultation and open process, the US Treasury Department had decided to rule by decree and impose its own candidate for the next president of the World Bank, the G20 be damned. U.S. officials informed G20 officials that the US intended to “retain control of the bank,” as the Times put it. According to the Times, the G20 countries grumbled but showed no sign of being willing to fight Treasury. The U.S. candidate would be a “lock,” the Times said, “since Europe will almost certainly support whomever Washington picks.” Continue reading

US Rep. John Conyers Urges Obama to Nominate Jeff Sachs to Lead the World Bank

President Obama has a historic opportunity to help reform the World Bank, by nominating development expert Jeffrey Sachs to be the World Bank’s next president. Sachs has said that as president he would sharpen the focus of the Bank on achieving the Millennium Development Goals for reducing poverty and extending access to health care and education. Coming from Sachs, this pledge is “change you can believe in,” because for years Sachs has a leading international advocate of efforts to achieve the world’s poverty reduction goals, currently serving as an adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Continue reading