Posted on 05/17/2007 3:14:10 PM PDT by yoely
Just Breaking
I see today Blair in London will replace him.
Tell me the fix was not in long ago.
The first thing you have wrong is the last - "demanded". He did not make any official "demands". There was no point in his discussions where anyone said - "I think we should do X" and Wolfowitz DEMANDED "no, that's not enough, I want to do Y and I demand you do that". When the ethics official did not accept Wolfowitz attempt to recuse himself, he then approached the HR officials. By the end of their discussions - his questions, their knowledge of bank pay scales and practices and past practice in like situations, and the financial implications of various options, he submitted his preferred options to them and to the ethics official; he did not demand anyone's acceptance of anything and the HR officials or the ethics official could have, by bank policy and by their official responsibilities, formally objected and asked Wolfowitz to suggest different terms. There were no official objections.
The objections came from later (two years) public disclosure of the terms that no one, even among the directors, had objected to and they had all known of the terms. Now, what the press has not done is give as much media attention to the hypocrisy of the directors by revealing many of their own pecadillos with as much of a public crusade with which the media has made themselves the willing pawns of those directors. What is NOT a scandal at the World Bank is rampant nepotism at the highest levels. What is a scandal is that directors that don't like Wolfowitz have masqueraded their politic attack on him in the language of "ethics" while hiding the hypocrisy of their own actions.
I think your problem is that your understanding of World Bank practices and procedures, policies, their salary structures (sky high) as well as the position the person was in, whether or not she was in line for a promotion which her forced resignation would prevent, the length of the "guarantee" on a future raise, as well as the internal oversight and review given the financial particulars by the HR officials and by the ethics official, without objections - which was part of their official responsibilities to make, underscores the fact that you are unaware of the World Bank context of the entire set of conditions. The facts are that in the scheme of things for the World Bank, in their own context and within their own structure, there was nothing extraordinary or out-of-character with past practice in any of the conditions in her agreement to resign.
If there were, then the current sitting director from China could not have forced the promoted his own wife to a position that reports directly to him and the director from the UK could not be carrying on a multi-year affair (he's married) with a bank employee which he has consistently obtained promotions for which she has no education or experience for - according to the banks own job requirements for positions he has obtained for her. The fact is that the bank is a cesspool of nepotism which collectively makes Wolfowitz and ALL the actions he took look like a boy scout by comparison - for all they have done and are doing, and hiding while all his actions were transparent and open.
Moreover, it shows astounding arrogance and tone-deafness on Wolfowitz's part to have done it. That's not the kind of behavior any organization -- business or otherwise -- wants to have at its head.
You know nothing of the moral and ethical elitist "arrogance" and "tone-deafness" at the World Bank and particular among its European members and staff, for which their corruption, historic and ongoing unethical behavior makes their manufactured "scandal" simply a huge pot calling a small kettle black. It's international political hypocrisy at the highest. There is at least two directors and many deputy directors which Bush should have demanded the resignations of, in order for U.S. participation in the organization to continue - if they wanted to persist in their hypocritical attack on Wolfowtiz.
Wanna start a pool on who is next??
That's not necessarily so. It's simply custom that the Europeans get to pick the IMF head and the US gets to pick the head of the World Bank, and the Europeans are saying that after Wolfowitz they may decide not to allow the US to pick the World Bank head, and instead open it up as an open election by member states. That seems pretty likely, to be honest, and that means the US will lose its perogative.
True but he helped set himself up. As they say, never put your meat where your bread and butter is, if you’ll excuse the vulgarity.
I’m concerned about Blair taking over. He was raked over hot coals for his closeness to Bush, and if he takes this helm he may try to distance himself from the U.S. and administrative positions rather than encourage support for them. The poodle label was his undoing in England, and he’s likely too smart to keep on carrying that. Hoping that the administration puts an assuredly loyal person (one of the defeated Senators or an ‘06 senatorial candidate?) into that slot rather than a formally very liberal ex-ally like Blair. Sudden thought, maybe this was the deal all along—Blair for Wolf—when Wolfey found the coyotes lunging at him and it became obvious to everyone that he could only hold on for so long.
Wolfowitz was set up in more ways than one.
For one-—His moral incompetence led to this
And I suspect that “girlfriend” helped move it along.
I like Blair, but the problem with that is that it will go against the tradition of an American running the World Bank since we give most of the single nation money to it, so I’m told. Next thing you know, Kim Il Sung will want to run it, and then what do you do?
Blair’s a great guy, but not for this job. The WB needs someone to go in there with a bullwhip. Wolf wasn’t the guy for that either. He kissed up to Bono, hugged Geldof, mouthed platitudes about saving the earth, demanded that the US leave its borders unguarded, exuded pride in his carbon credits program, cried crocodile tears about the love of the Palestinian children - it was gross! - in short, he tried too hard to fit in, and compromised his principles in the process. He was I guess a rightwing guy in leftwing drag as he did all this stuff but real leftists aren’t fooled that easily. The WB needs someone whom the leftists will right away know where he stands.
Bolton.
The Dems sure know how to get rid of those folks who they think get in the way of their agenda. They are really experts with it. I wish the Republicans could learn this tactic from the Democrats.
The girlfriend had a lot to do with his downfall. He was afraid of her, and Bennett his lawyer said it. He told her too much, she knew too much and she was vindictive and powermad. It was a bad scene.
The US would still get a 16% vote, the biggest of the bunch. I could live with it, so long as it applies to the IMF too. It would widen the talent pool.
Another reform they need to make is to start hiring staff at market rates. The cossetted, padded salaries of the staff are an outrage. They are also the root of their arrogance.
Who are the two directors the US should have demanded the resignation of?
Oh really???? I wonder then if the set up is real...she dupes a sexually naive man and he’s toast.
IN any case, the World Blank needs to be dismantled, so while they are atill cleaning house the whole shibboleth should be deep sixed.
There is so much going going than we know, but suffice it to say that the Muslim Turks are behind this...that’s how they pay back their apologists like wolfowitz who dared to criticize them, albeit mildly, after years of bending over to them.
The director from China, whose wife is installed in a position directly under him, and the director from the UK whose paramour has been promoted, more than once, at his insistence, into positions she had neither education or experience for under the job requirements for the positions she was promoted to.
The China case was done according to standards and the Chinese guy was married to his wife and not in a supervisory role, a case very different from Wolf’s. I understand he is now suing.
As for the English guy, why was the Bank President at the time, a certain Paul Wolfowitz, merrily letting this kind of crap go on? Wolf’s office of professional responsibility, called INT, was run by an explicit crony of Wolfowitz’s, a person named Suzanne Rich Folsom, who apparently got a lot of complaints and did nothing. She was only roused to move on the guy when she leaked the reports about him to Bret Stephens, thus using a corruption issue for her man’s political advantage.
It was a move that can only be described as ‘pure Wolfowitz.’ Fine, let corruption run wild so long as it’s around. Only if there’s political advantage to be reaped is anything to be done about it, and only if it can be done by media war instead of administrative action. The cronyism, the leaks, and the failure to do anything about that UK guy problem is emblematic of Paul’s selective and politicized approach to corruption enforcement. You definitely wouldn’t want a guy like that to be your boss.
“The China case was done according to standards and the Chinese guy was married to his wife and not in a supervisory role, a case very different from Wolf’s.”
BS - she, the Chinese directors’ wife, reported to him and she came into that position at his behest.
In Wolfowitz case, (1) his girlfriend and he had many operational and lines of authority between them; (2)she was not put into her bank jobs by him but was already working there when he arrived and (3)regardless of the lack of official interactions or conflicts in their work - unlike the Chinese guy - Wolofowitz and his girlfriend agreed that his taking the job would mean that she would resign. He hid nothing and tried to hide nothing about any of it and apparently the directors had no objection to it two years ago when they were given all the facts.
The acts of the U.K. guy regarding his paramour began, and were predominately, prior to Wolfowitz; and again, unlike Wolfowitz, the U.K and the bank staff elements his paramour has reported to have tried to keep all her promotions out of the public light.
They are just hypocrits and Bush should have gone public with all their hypocrisy, of which the directors are the mere tip of the iceberg. A large number of deputy directors, going back years, have spouses employed at the bank in positions representing conflict of interest. It has all been given a wink and a nod by the directors for years, and some of those deputies have as much political clout in their home countries due to their many years in the musical chairs of “international aid” positions for their nations foreign affairs offices and international lending bodies.
The World Bank is a cesspool and if anything Wolfowitz advocated some air freshner in his policy approaches and it was resented.
We’ll each have to provide sources on the chinese guy, our accounts clearly differ.
As for wolf disclosing his girlfriend, there was no merit in that, the washpost had already reported about their loud parties at her house in dc, so it was very well known already. Of course i can get you the link to that but i trust you already saw it, it’s a famous story.
as for how he got there, he was enticed there by the girlfriend who set up her own little alternative power centers and wanted a big patron (and lover) to facilitate it. when the ethics committee said she couldn’t work at the bank, they knew that that was what was going on already - she brought her boyfriend to the bank and then sought to harness his power for her own ends. that’s why she was sent out and THAT’S why she was so enraged about it - her masterplan had gone awry.
Now she was a controlling arab woman and he’d already told her a lot of secrets, probably ones he shouldn’t have, so he was afraid of her. He claimed she said she was going to sue but that is bogus because you can’t sue in us torts courts and get us style torts court settlements if you are living taxfree as a worldbank employee. your only recourse is the world bank arbitrators, and somehow they don’t give out torts settlements. so the lawsuit thing and wolf pretending to be all concerned about protecting the bank from a lawsuit is screamingly bogus. Bob Bennett told reporters that riza had dictated her inflated salary terms and if it’s him saying it, it must be true. she wanted that extra case because she knew too many of paul’s secrets and she was blackmailing him. remember: paul has lotsa zipper problems along the lines of bill clinton and she wasn’t his first honey, only the first one who blackmailed him.
as for the UK guy, go back and read the stephens story, it took place in 2006, i checked the dates myself, 2006 was solely on wolfowitz’s watch, so why he let this go on is beyond me, if he was a big corruption fighter, some action should have been taken but instead none was, the only action that was taken was to leak it to the press by folson’s office, which is the only place it could have come. well, what does that say for such a crony? she sure wasn’t interested in corruption fighting unless there was something she and her boss could get out of it politically.
I believe you meant to post against #61. But that’s OK. I think the Wolf guy is OK as far as politicans go.
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