Thoughts from inside the Bank

Over at David Bosco’s ‘The Multilateralist‘ column on Foreign Policy a World Bank source has some insights into how staff at Bank HQ are reacting to the rumours surrounding Zoellick:

On the inside, it’s surprising how open everyone is about [current president Robert] Zoellick not being around much longer — even in his senior meetings people are speaking about the forthcoming ‘transition’.  Having said this, there is a minority view that until he is reasonably confident that the eventual Republican nominee has a reasonable shot at winning, he will just stay put.  Regarding Larry Summers, there is now a lot of corridor talk, but people can’t believe it’s serious — the NGOs would be all over him after his earlier gaffes at the Bank (famous memo on shipping nuclear waste to developing countries because they have a comparative advantage in absorbing waste) and his gender comments at Harvard.  So I’d say a majority is still watching to see whether Hillary C. comes forward.  Recent talk though seems to suggest that Hillary may swap with Biden to strengthen voter turn-out for the Obama re-election campaign — in which case the Summers story may become more credible.