Broken Systems. Devesh Kapur, co-author of the Bank's official history, pins the blame on the World Bank's Board and shareholders for "sleeping at the switch" and ignoring Wolfowitz's management failings for so long.

"The fact that this problem arose in the first case and continued for so long is a severe indictment not just of Wolfowitz but of the bank's Executive Board, and by extension its principals, the member countries of the bank. And therein rests a disquieting foretaste of a deeper malaise facing not just the World Bank, but international organizations in general."

Kapur goes on to argue that the "entitlement of the US" to appoint the Bank's president is the real issue, coupled with the obligatory "strategic morality" of developing countries.

"Industrialized countries have not given up their privileges and the rising powers are unwilling to exercise leadership. The outcome of the mismatch between a global institutional architecture set up six decades ago and subsequent fundamental shifts in power is a growing indifference toward international organizations set up in the post-war era."

And when he's not being blamed for destroying global insitutions, Wolfowitz faces charges in the AP that he's yet another indicator of Washington's moral bankruptcy.

"Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz could be poster boys for what's wrong with politics today _ cronyism, incompetence and a brazen lack of accountability that has voters craving change."

While Wolfowitz and Gonzales will eventually go, "the system in which these two men flourished will still be broken."

Shannon Lawrence ~ May 17, 2007

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The Washington Post

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