First let’s accept the obvious. The US is going to pick the next president, and if you care about the World Bank that’s a good thing. If the world’s largest economy and reigning great power doesn’t get a special say in the governance of global institutions, those institutions rapidly lose relevance (see, eg, the UN General Assembly). Continue reading
Category Archives: Candidates
Chinese candidates
Several previous discussions talked about potential Chinese candidates. Best to look at internal names. Over the last ten years, there have been only four Chinese names Continue reading
Obama advisor says why Larry Summers won’t be the US nominee
Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House advisor, made it clear in an interview why it’s just as well Larry Summers is happy as President Emeritus at Harvard.
In this Daily Beast interview Jarrett used the occasion to hint how important women are to Obama’s re-election. He enjoys solid support and higher approval ratings than his Republican challengers.
Jarrett was pretty clear: “The jobs of the future are science, engineering and math, and those are the jobs that women have shied away from,” she said. The guarantee of a strong education for every child is the magic bullet, and the administration is working toward that goal. “If you have an education, then the sky is the limit,” she said. Teaching our daughters and colleagues confidence is crucial to the formula for women’s success.”
Summers would, no doubt, agree on the future of good American jobs, and how important it is for more women to be in these STEM fields. That’s not his reputation, alas, after his speech at Harvard before the faculty removed him, and the White House isn’t going to risk alienating a key bloc of supporters in November.
Discuss among yourselves, journalists. If the reaction to the earlier White House leak didn’t take Summers out, this interview should make it clear that Larry will be staying in Cambridge.
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
Kenya nominates Sachs?
Jeff Sachs claims to have cleared his first main hurdle – a nomination from a member country of the Bank. His website carries the following quote from the Prime Minister of Kenya: Continue reading