You could see it as stating the obvious. Or as helping to make it less likely that he’ll have to continue working with his rival and soon-to-be-former boss. Either way UK Chancellor Gordon Brown has briefed Reuters that the next World Bank is likely to be an American (i.e. not Tony Blair). Also ‘peppered’ with questions at the G8 finance minsters’ get-together was US Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, one of the rumoured candidates. Continue reading →

Moisés Naím, editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, served as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry and as executive director of the World Bank in the early 1990s, and has has published a very thoughful opinion piece about the qualifications a WBG president should bring to the job. Posted yesterday in the Dallas News, presumably an outlet that is well-read in and near the White House.

A persistent question keeps popping up in world bank staff comments and discussions inside the bank. Should those closely associated with Wolfowitz and Shaha Riza also resign or be asked, gently or not, to leave. Continue reading →

The US administration is giving every possible signal that the next president of the World Bank will be chosen by the US. Europe seems to be giving its own signals that it agrees. Continue reading →

As the world has moved on to speculating about Paul Wolfowitz’s successor, a special article in the Economist points to the challenges ahead for the Bank and the development business more generally.

The protracted and very public end, the backroom ‘no-fault divorce’ deal struck between PW’s lawyer and three rogue EDs, and the exchange of amicable, if somewhat hollow, statements are intended to get people back to work and the Bank’s stakeholders focused on “what next?” and the business of fighting poverty. 

How quickly that happens, or whether it happens at all, depends on the United States. Continue reading →