Our friends at the Social Justice Committee Canada have set up a website, www.worldbankpresident.ca to formally make suggestions on who should succeed Wolfowitz. The poll’s results will be sent to the Canadian Finance Minister, who will be urged to make a nomination based on them. more…
After being one of the Vulcans running GWB bid for the 2000 White House race, Zoellick had been serving as policy director for the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) , reports Chris Cillizza in his Politics Blog The Fix. It is mentioned that he would have been the candidate for the position of Secretary of State, should McCain win the POTUS position . more…
The International Trade Union Confederation’s general secretary Guy Ryder has said that the May 29 statement by the board “goes some way to allay the legitimate criticism of what have been unacceptable procedures for deciding who will lead the two main global financial institutions”. more…
Although the U.S. Congress has no formal role to play in the World Bank presidential nomination game, they are poised to appropriate annual funding for the World Bank’s IDA and consider an authorization for the next IDA replenishment. Most reported reactions on Zoellick’s nomination have been generally positive from both sides of the aisle. But key World Bank overseer and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is not impressed: “The second, high-ranking George Bush administration foreign policy, national security official in a row, I think is a mistake.” more…
In a letter to the FT, Dr. Ngaire Woods, director of Oxford University’s Global Economic Governance programme, calls on Gordon Brown to “step up to the plate”. more…
One person who has doubts on the suitability of Zoellick is Nobel Prize winner and former Chief Economist of the WBG, Joseph Stiglitz. As told to La Republica and reported in The Times, Stiglitz asked the following: “Robert Zoellick defended American agricultural protectionism until the bitter end when he was responsible for commercial talks. How will he, as the future president of the World Bank, ask for the dismantling of aid to agriculture that favours developed countries at the expense of those that are poor?” more…
Sarah Anderson has a piece at Foreign Policy In Focus on Zoellick’s track record of pushing a trade as counter terrorism agenda. The best line: “But is a tone-deaf, name-calling steely opportunist a good choice to lead the World Bank?”
Yesterday Swedish finance minister Anders Borg answered a question from two MPs on the Swedish position on the selection process. more…
The Editors at the Wall Street Journal continue to be the most reliable source of comic relief in this whole Wolfowitz-Zoellick episode. Today they’re warning of another World Bank “putsch” — their term for what happened to Wolfowitz — this time against Suzanne Rich Folsom from the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT). more…
David Woodward of the UK thinktank new economics foundation, provides a thorough assessment of Zoellick’s time as US trade representative concluding that it is “a track record of arm-twisting, blackmail, pay-offs and abuse of power in the WTO to promote US interests at the expense of the developing world”. more…
