Category Archives: Candidates

What are the odds? And where are the Chinese?

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We’ve been waiting with bated breath for the odds makers to get active. After all, free-market thinkers tell us that the market always has the best outcomes and sets the right prices. So surely speculation on this blog, and elsewhere in the media, will be wrong and the market will be right. Finally, yesterday, Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaker (betting site), answered the call. Of course they weren’t the only ones; John Cassidy of the New Yorker made up his own odds last weekend. But Paddy Power, with odds set by the frequency of bets, should give us the pulse of the market. Will they be right?

A review of the odds as of 21 Feb:

Larry Summers  4/11
Susan Rice  9/2
Hillary Clinton  9/2
Kemal Dervis  9/1
Tim Geithner  9/1
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala  20/1
Trevor Manuel  20/1
Lula da Silva  20/1
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Calls for developing country candidates growing stronger

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With over 2,200 votes on the worldbankpresident.org poll within less than a week of its launch, the demand for developing world candidates has perhaps never been stronger.

Devesh Kapur, who co-authored the official history of the World Bank, calls the nomination process “dreadfully antiquated” in an article for the New Europe Post Online, arguing that the Bank in reality has little choice but to look to the growing emerging-market economies, rather than the indebted West, for resources. But they would then “rightly demand a greater voice in running the Bank”. Kapur lists Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Ernest Zedillo of Mexico and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria, to name a few, as favoured developing country candidates. But he also doesn’t rule out Hilary Clinton as a credible candidate.

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Candidates, nationalities and some misunderstandings

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Timothy Geithner said yesterday that Washington would put forward a candidate “in the coming weeks”. But with Hillary Clinton seemingly ruling herself out of the race there are more questions than answers on who will be Obama’s candidate.

Larry Summers was together with Hillary Clinton the most mentioned contender, but selecting someone who proposed dumping toxic waste in poor countries does not seem to help the purpose of improving the Bank’s legitimacy in the developing world. Unless Obama wants to ignore this detail the two initial contenders for the Bank’s leadership would be ruled out even before the selection process starts. Continue reading →

With the Eurozone in a mess, Obama has the political space for a “radical” stand

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Robert Zoellick, the only neo-con who survived the Bush era because he left in time , has just announced that he will step down from the top job in the World Bank, and not look for a new term in 1818 H street in Washington.

This move, already in the air given the ambition of the democrats not to leave a Republican-appointee in place for a second term at the World Bank, renews again the well known saga about the appointment of next Bank president: again an American politician or banker? Or for the first time ever since Bretton Woods in 1944 will a non-American citizen be allowed to head the institution?

Despite the whole debate and new commitment to a procedure for a transparent and merit-based selection process to find the best candidate for the top job of the IMF, the Europeans gave a bad example in 2011 by forcing through Madame Lagarde at a time of profound crisis in “old Europe”. Hence the need for European governments to be sure that the IMF will intervene in case of a show down of the Eurozone. This is quite understandable for a bunch of countries who are not able even to decide among themselves about how to help each other out of the crisis. Continue reading →

Poll: who should be the next World Bank president?

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The US has monopolised the Bank presidency since 1944, but leadership selection at the International Financial Institutions is becoming increasingly contested. There have been repeated promises by the Bank to open up the process and select candidates based on merit, in a fair and transparent way. As developing countries become increasingly confident and assertive this could be the year that sees the emergence of a real challenge against the US hold over the position.

But who would the credible candidates be?  Below are nine heavy-weight possible candidates from developing countries. Who do you think would be the best for the job?

Who should be the next World Bank president?

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Is this finally the week? Reality check in the US

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Inside sources in Washington are abuzz. It seems this will be the week according to people in the know, and Zoellick will imminently be announcing his attention to not seek a second term. They didn’t have an exact date for the announcement – could be Tuesday or as late as Friday. But now is really the time to start thinking about the processes – after all a well designed process would have started 6 weeks ago.

So the post yesterday by Nancy Birdsall over at CGD provides a timely look into the US political constraints. She asks:

Can the Obama White House in an election year, facing a Congress suspicious of a globally honored president, eschew pushing through its own American candidate? …

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I am a pessimist about leadership change at the IFIs

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I am a pessimist about leadership change at the IFIs. I don’t know what is required to actually get change. At the IMF all the forms and papers were lined up to have a genuine change, but the emerging market economies could not get their act together; the Mexican Carstens bravely stood as a candidate garnering a full 2 votes; the Russians nominated a thief from one of their neighboring countries.

And of course the French marched out an impeccable candidate without a moment’s hesitation. I don’t think CSOs can do much more. On the World Bank Side, the US is so irritated with the behavior of the Europeans in the lead up to the 2010 summit in Korea—their absolute refusal to let go of even one of their 8 chairs, and then NO country supported the US in being in-the-face of the Europeans, that the US has decided no other country is willing to go to the line for major reforms in the IFIs, so the US needs to keep its veto at the IMF and in the WB IDA.

I wish it were not so, but it seems realpolitik continues to trump normative considerations. Despite my firmest desires, my bet is the US will continue to hold the WB Presidency. So, I will support efforts, while scanning the US horizon for an honorable and good person to lead the WB.

Clinton fights back?

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Just heard from a very senior and well placed individual that Hilary Clinton is still campaigning for the job, but – get this – is also still keeping the option of running for US President next time round on the table. So that’d be 2 years max of Hilary… can this really be true?  Answers on a comment please….

Larry Summers? You have to be joking.

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Although a certain former first lady has been constantly mooted as Zoellick’s successor it seems that Obama may be also considering another candidate. Larry Summers is former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, and head of the National Economics Council under Obama, and is currently a professor at Harvard. He is also rather notorious for his part in the deregulation of the finance sector, brazen comments on the ‘scientific aptitude’ of women, and for advocating increased pollution in developing countries as a cost-cutting exercise.

Needless to say he is what is politely called a ‘divisive’ figure. After a brief period in which commentators seemed to be momentarily stupefied by the news, Summer’s candidacy has now provoked a rapid, and incredulous, response from the political blogosphere.

Felix Salmon at Reuters pleads:

Please, Barack, don’t do it! … giving him the World Bank job would be a disaster.

Before adding that:

giving the job to any American is a bad idea. We’re long past the point at which it makes any sense at all that the president of the World Bank should always be an American.

David Dayen at popular blog Fire Dog Lake likens Summers to a zombie, and seconds Salmon’s view that he should not be appointed to the role:

You just can’t get rid of zombie Larry Summers. He can get drummed out of Harvard. He can see the deregulation policies he pushed in the Clinton Administration lead to a financial meltdown. He can preside over a sluggish economy for two years during the Obama Administration, after which Congress flips to the opposition. And he just keeps falling upwards

Over at the Huffington Post Jason Linkins asks whether ‘Surely President Obama Is Joking About This ‘Have Larry Summers Run The World Bank’ Thing!’. His view is no less damning:

At any rate, it seems pretty clear that his prickliness, his record of being a source of dysfunction, and that teensy little thing where the policies he supported helped wreck the economy would all disqualify Summers

Any thoughts on Summers dear readers?