Goldman Sachs and the World Bank
The Independent’s take on Zoellick as new World Bank kingpin:
Goldman Sachs marches on with Bush’s candidate for World Bank
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 31 May 2007
… Mr Zoellick, 53, is a senior executive of Goldman Sachs, who until recently was the deputy US Secretary of State. Before that he was the US trade representative, where he dealt abrasively with “globalisation nihilists,” as he described opponents of American trade policy towards the developing world.
… President Bush’s nomination of another Goldman Sachs senior executive is unsurprising given that the bank enjoys virtual revolving door access to the White House. Last year the Wall Street bank raised eyebrows when it handed its employees a $500m (£250m) bonus, or $623,400 for each one. The chief executive was given an extra $52m spending money.
At the World Bank he will have to quickly apply balm to the raw wounds caused by the forced removal of Mr Bush’s neoconservative ally Paul Wolfowitz. Those wounds were still in evidence as Mr Bush went out of his way to thank Mr Wolfowitz, while he lavished praise on Mr Zoellick’s record as a diplomat and trade negotiator. Mr Wolfowitz left under a cloud after pressing for a large compensation deal for his girlfriend Shaha Riza, who also worked at the bank. …
Favourite bank
Robert Zoellick
The World Bank nominee is formerly a deputy to Condoleezza Rice. He was a key diplomat in Washington’s China policies before joining Goldman Sachs as managing director and vice-chairman for international strategy.
Joshua Bolten
The White House chief of staff is also a former Goldman Sachs executive.
Robert Rubin
The former United States treasury secretary is a former partner with Goldman Sachs.
Jon Corzine
The governor of New Jersey was co-head of Goldman Sachs with Mr Paulson until he left due to a power struggle.
Henry Paulson
The US Treasury Secretary was formerly Goldman Sachs’ chief executive. As a China expert for Goldman Sachs, he helped to manoeuvre the investment bank into pole position in China as the country joined the World Trade Organisation
I’m writing to let you know about the new Foreign Policy In Focus commentary on the appointment of Robert Zoellick to the World Bank.
Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for
Policy Studies , criticizes President Bush’s recent appointment of Robert Zoellick in her article “Mr. Hardball Goes
to the World Bank .”
Anderson examines the polarizing rhetoric and aggressive tactics that Mr. Zoellick has
used to promote free trade, and expresses her concern over the ineffectiveness of this failed diplomacy in previous trade negotiations. She writes, “despite the wreckage of the Wolfowitz debacle, there appears to be little resistance from the rest of the world to the imposition of yet another Bush administration insider.”
Sincerely,
Matthew Goetz
Media Department
Foreign Policy In Focus
A comment that got misplaced:
garhane |
It may be time to ask just who is in charge. I know we have all these vague corporate types who float in and out of US appointed government roles but where do they get their orders and how is consensus developed. If you check articles in what should be the standard setters, like co.on foreign relations, you will now see hopeless collections of current buzz phrases. Their pres. cannot get two sentences out that make sense, and the authors of his nearly illiterate speeches point at a variety of directions. Most of their business men are devoted to looting the public, the treasury, their stockholders, or their workforce. There seems to be no national institution that sews it all together, just a bit of flag waving. The news has been reduced to strangled bleats between commercials on radio and not even that on TV where even the news channel is disappearing into really vulgar entertainment. If there are big decisions to make (and do not tell me planning a big embassy for 100 years is any more than the same vainglorious idiocy that led Bush to his brag of “mission accomplished†is such a decision, where is the appearance they are being cogitated. I can see this crowd of bandits is falling apart, but I just do not see that anyone is really in charge or desirous of being so. It is just a bunch of fits and starts leadilng no where, now the old cold war, then big speeches about climate change (no action), now talk about what must be a distant future in the middle east (long after the oil is gone!), and then utterly vapid crap about American leadership which does not exist. At this rate they are speedilng toward an economic brick wall, dragging the rest of us with them.