My column is back, in the “Time 100” issue on newsstands today and online here. It begins:
The World Bank is undeniably in crisis. But not because its president, Paul Wolfowitz, got his girlfriend a raise.
It is the Wolfowitz saga that has been grabbing all the headlines, of course. The Iraq-war architect was plucked from the Defense Department and deposited by President George W. Bush at the World Bank in 2005 (by tradition, the U.S. President picks the bank’s chief). At the time, Wolfowitz informed the bank’s ethics committee that he was seeing Shaha Riza, a communications adviser at the bank, and the in-house ethicists told him she should be moved to another agency and given a raise for her troubles. But the size of the pay hike (from $133,000 to $180,000, tax free) and other details about Riza’s transfer raised hackles among bank staff and sparked an investigation. The bank’s board will decide any day now whether Wolfowitz stays or goes.
This dragged-out mess, though, is a distraction. The bigger issue is that the Washington-based bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are struggling to justify their continued existence. Read more.
Given how I worded the end of the second paragraph, I was glad to see when I checked the papers this morning that Wolfowitz was still employed. Whatever you’re going to do, do it next week, guys. I’ll probably post more on this subject later. In the meantime, in case you missed it, here are some earlier thoughts on the Wolforama.