President Obama should appoint Jeff Sachs President of the World Bank. Jeff is, without doubt, the world's top development economist. He has worked tireless for decades in every corner of the globe helping impoverished countries eliminate hunger and disease, fight inflation and unemployment, and take the steps needed to jumpstart and perpetuate economic growth.
Jeff is extremely well known to every progressive-minded head of state in the developed world. He's spent an enormous part of his life working in these countries, raising development funds for these countries, instituting development projects in these countries, and showing these countries, by his physical presence and tireless work on their behalf, that he cares. This is why so many developing countries are supporting his candidacy. They know Jeff Sachs has a huge heart and a brilliant mind and that both of these organs are focused on their problems 24-7.
Unlike past World Bank Presidents, Jeff is not a banker or a politician, although he has plenty of experience working with both. Instead, Jeff's actually qualified for the job. He knows what does and doesn't work and how to persuade reluctant donors, be they countries or wealthy individuals, that their development aide will be put to good work, whether it is invested in new wells, crop seed, fertilizer, public health, medicine, education, or infrastructure.
Jeff is also an amazing public spokesman on behalf of the world's poor. And his advocacy for their welfare has converted major celebrities to adopt poverty relief as their own life's cause.
I've known Jeff since graduate school. We're very close friends. He took me down to Bolivia to work on pension reform in the mid 1990s after he and President Sanchez de Lozada stopped hyperinflation. More recently, we spent some time in Chile advising another graduate school mate, President Sebastian Pinera, on Chilean economic, education, and social policy. So I've seen Jeff working, in full gear, on the ground and I've also discussed his work in Eastern Europe and Russia and Africa with him at great length.
This guy is the real deal. He's genuine, honest, and has no hesitancy calling a spade a spade. He'll make a real difference starting day 1. President Obama would make an enormous gift to the developing world by appointing Jeffrey Sachs President of the World Bank.
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Bono's new best friend refuses to accept any blame for the disaster, offering the defense that the Russians didn't take his advice, and the West didn't come through with the big aid package he insisted was necessary. Apparently this is an well-practiced strategy. A 1992 Euromoney profile notes: "Sachs is reluctant to acknowledge mistakes, defining them in terms of regret when governments do not take his advice." In that case, he blamed Poland for not privatizing fast enough. Contrasting with Sachs's regrets over advice not taken, several governments he's consulted with have since characterized the material produced by him and his associates as irrelevant, or, as a Slovenian official put it at the time, "simplistic...kindergarten stuff."
much more: http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Sachs.html
Since World Bank has become a known hangout for neoliberal sw.i.n.e, it should not surprise anyone that two of disgusting neoliberals are competing to become its next president. Both are intellectual lightweights. Both have track records that would shame a normal person into disappearing into life of a recluse. So not surprisingly, both have been part of the economics department at Harvard. That institution collects mega-failures who are arrogant enough to be bullies. It's a prime requirement to become a neoliberal, after all.
These are just two of the better-known applicants for top job at the World Bank. There are probably dozens more from within the institution itself who are just as reactionary. The World Bank was formed with some pretty lofty intentions. It would actually be helpful if it fulfilled some of the founders' vision for it. But World Bank lost the narrative sometime around the disastrous presidency of Robert Strange McNamera—another Harvard wünderkind—so maybe Summers or Sachs would be the "logical" choices.
Jeffrey Sachs’ Grab for the World Bank
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There may be worse candidates for the presidency of the World Bank than Jeffrey Sachs (Larry Summers, also a candidate, comes to mind,) but Sachs is well worth raising an alarm about. He combines a new fangled profile as a progressive with policies that amount to full steam ahead for global growth
more: http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2012/03/criminals-gunning-for-world-bank.html
INTERVIEWER: How bad were things in Bolivia? Was inflation still heading up?
JEFFREY SACHS: When I got to La Paz in July 1985, the inflation rate over the preceding six months, if it had continued for the year, would have been something around 60,000 percent. but it was an absolutely extraordinary phenomenon
more: PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_jeffreysachs.html
The Demodernization of Russia
The result was an unmitigated disaster. In the first year of reform, industrial output collapsed by 26 percent. Between 1992 and 1995, Russia’s GDP fell 42 percent and industrial production fell 46 percent—far worse than the contraction of the U.S. economy during the Great Depression. Worse, pace Dr. Sachs, it has yet to recover. Since 1989, the Russian economy has halved in size, and continues to drop. Real incomes have plummeted 40 percent since 1991; 80 percent of Russians now have no savings. The Russian government, bankrupted by the collapse of economic activity, stopped paying the salaries of millions of employees and dependents. Unemployment soared
good short read: http://monthlyreview.org/2000/02/01/the-necessity-of-gangster-capitalism
2. Removing equalizing controls and social protections, free market systems create a feedback loop biased toward the wealthy and powerful elite. Insofar as self-interest is central to free market theory, greed and corruption are unsurprising corollaries.
3. As the free market economy has no social or moral requisites, war, disaster, and instability are suitable avenues for profit. Accordingly, market interests will attempt to privatise sectors like defence and military, and use war and instability to their profit
Naomi Klein
Part 2&3 the Harvard Mafia, alias the Chicago Mob Summers and Sachs destroyed the Chile, Bolivia & Russian economy
Larry Summers' name was floated around a few weeks ago as a possible contender, but he would not serve the World Bank or the developing world well if he were appointed to that post. Summers might be reagrded by some as a brilliant economic mind, but he is a cold and calculating type who lacks tremendously in the area of management skills and in dealing with people in general, and with colleagues in particular, especially female colleagues. There would also be no end to the friction that would arise with world heads of state if it were Summers that had to deal with them on behalf of the World Bank. Diplomacy is a main cornerstone of the Bank's presidency, and Summers does not possess a glowing reputation in that arena.
Conversely, Jeff Sachs would be an amazing president to the World Bank, in so many ways, not least of which being his empathetic nature and his humble persona, not to mention his vast knowledge in the field of aid to developing and under-developed countries. He has just the right temperament, the right credentials, and the right spirit to be a most successful president of the World Bank's.
Examples: Summers at the start of this administration, Geithner as Treasury Secretary, Holder in the DoJ, Napolitano as head of the Department of Homeland Security and now Immelt of GE as the "jobs czar" who brags of jobs created - in CHINA, where GE is expanding.
So don't hold your breath waiting for the "best" choice to be made -