There is one other thing. There is some kind of “coup” attempt going on. Some people believe that the World Bank should be run by Europeans, not Americans. That along would put me on Wolfowitz’s side.
I agree with you that it should be run by an American. But I think that there is no way it won’t be. There are two options to ensure it - one is that the US can yank its money if there is no american running it all - and that would be practically all of it. Two, it can demand that the IMF be run by an american and the europeans can see how they like that - there is a perfect quid pro quo going on with this europe stuff.
But I think wolfowitz is the wrong man for the job, I think he should be back in academia, writing papers, not doing executive work which he has no aptitude for. One thing I would like to point out about wolf’s management style is that the imf is run by a flamingly rightwing european, rodrigo rato of spain, who was aznar’s righthand man. He’s had no trouble from the staff because he does know how to manage and avoid even the appearance of corruption. I think wolf has made some mistakes as described by this article, and ought to exit to something better, imho. Bush should appoint him to the UN and the euros can then see how they like that.