Now that disgraced about-to-be-former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is about to draw his next-to-last paycheck from the World Bank, you’d expect that the cronies that helped him crash and burn would be planning their own departures.

Not so for “the other woman” Robin Cleveland, whose imperious and superficial role as Senior Counsellor (and whose rich pay of $275,000 tax-free dollars was a damn sight better than what she pulled down as a “third level official” at OMB) is scheming to join the Global Environment Facility.  Or “burrowing in” as they say in the US government.

Robin is conniving with Monique Barbut, the lovely and charmant Chief Executive of the enormous global fund for the environment that is housed in the Bank “investing in our planet”, to keep her excessive and unwarranted salary for another two years as a “team leader”

Have neither of them any shame? Continue reading →

In May, Washington-based thinktank the Center for Global Development launched an online survey about the selection process, criteria for rating candidates, and ratings for nine candidates chosen by their staff from names put forward in the international media. Over 700 responses were received and now the results are in. Continue reading →

In this insightful Salon.com piece on Bush administration figures who’ve written in support of former Cheney advisor Lewis “Scooter” Libby (you have to go through their ‘click on sponsor’ page), Sydney Blumenthal offers this damning insight on the lengthiest of those letters of support, written by World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz: Continue reading →

South African newspapers have been remarkably quiet about the Zoellick visit over the weekend.  This from the Sunday Times:  Continue reading →

One of the best pieces yet on Zoellick’s time at CSIS and as US trade representative.  Bizarrely, liberal economist Jagdish Bhagwati has accused Zoellick of pushing free trade at the expense of development: “He was using bilateral deals with Chile and Singapore to try to ram through restrictions on the use of capital controls,” Bhagwati says. “I can’t think of a single developmental economist who would say this is a good idea, and it suggests a cavalier interest in developing countries.”