New president for the World Bank?

Bush has nominated Paul Wolfowitz to be president of the World Bank. According to an article in the NYTimes, Mr. Wolfowitz developed a passion for development issues when he was Ambassador to Indonesia. And that makes him qualified to be president of the World Bank? Previous presidents have been well-respected economists. As pointed out in an article about the appointment in The Economist online, there is a tradition that the the president of the World Bank is usually from the U.S. and the president of the IMF is usually European. (Formally, voting on such positions is weighted by contributions to the funds, which explains why the U.S. and developed nations of Europe get more votes.) We can only hope that the Europeans try to stop Bush, but the tone of these articles suggests that it’s a long-shot.

P.S. We still have power, so a strike must have been averted. More on that tomorrow…