Deeper Questions about Pay and Rations at the World Bank

OK, confession time. I grew up in a World Bank household. My mother started working there when I was two; my father joined the International Finance Corporation when I was four. As a child I heard snippets of conversation about West African travels and poverty around the world. I also picked up talk of “golden handshakes” and benefits such as my own private school education being subsidized by the Bank. At some later point, I hope to capture a lot of these contradictions in a book. At the moment, it’s worthwhile asking whether these benefits and high salaries are necessary for an institution that claims to be about “poverty reduction”. In this article, Wolfowitz’s Golden Parachute, I look at Wolfowitz’s attempt to take these policies to an extreme, and argue that it’s time to end the hypocrisy.

Environmental ‘hero’?

Steve Clemons on The Washington Note blog writes that “Zoellick was one of the ‘heroes’ who got the US government to sign on to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Zoellick headed the US effort and was the guide for EPA Administrator William Reilly through that effort. Clemons adds that he has spoken with “a number of environmental leaders at organisations such as the World Resources Institute who have said that Zoellick has been actively engaged with them – from the early 1990s up until now”. Cue that panda photo.

Zoellick appointment “grotesque” – Bachelet.

South Africa’s Independent Online reports that Chilean president Michelle Bachelet criticised the decision by the US administration to nominate yet another American to head the World Bank as “grotesque”. South African president Thabo Mbeki is also quoted as saying at the International Monetary Conference (a gathering of the world’s top officials from private and central banks) on the weekend that “future appointments should be made using an open and transparent selection process with candidates not restricted by nationality.” Continue reading