Economics

Breakthrough Leadership for the World Bank

Mar 27, 2012 Jeffrey D. Sachs

The Obama administration's appointment of Jim Kim as President of the World Bank is a breakthrough for the Bank – and for the cause of global peace and stability. Finally, the US seems to have understood that development experts, not bankers and political insiders, must be in charge.

NEW YORK – Last month, I called for the World Bank to be led by a global development leader rather than a banker or political insider. “The Bank needs an accomplished professional who is ready to tackle the great challenges of sustainable development from day one,” I wrote. Now that US President Barack Obama has nominated Jim Kim for the post, the world will get just that: a superb development leader.

Obama has shown real leadership with this appointment. He has put development at the forefront, saying explicitly, “It’s time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency.”

Kim’s appointment is a breakthrough for the World Bank, which I hope will extend to other global institutions as well. Until now, the United States had been given a kind of carte blanche to nominate anyone it wanted to the World Bank presidency. That is how the Bank ended up with several inappropriate leaders, including several bankers and political insiders who lacked the knowledge and interest to lead the fight against poverty.

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Jeffrey D. Sachs

Writing for PS since 1995
354 Commentaries

Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.

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Harry Blutstein Apr 24, 2012

Regardless of whether or not Kim is a good choice, his accession reflects everything wrong with the way the World Bank is run. The same goes for the IMF.

Since day one, the head of the World Bank has been the sinecure of the US. At its first meeting in Savannah the US asserted its authority over the World Bank and IMF, such that Keynes said at the time preferred “the children to fall into an eternal slumber never to waken or be heard again in the courts and markets of mankind". There is more on this early history at http://harryblutstein.com/globalization/election-at-world-bank/.
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Dylan Matthews Apr 22, 2012

Now that Kim has officially been selected, this debate is to some degree no longer relevant, but I do worry about what Kim's record as president of Dartmouth indicates about his concern for women's right issues. As Felix Salmon notes here, Dartmouth's administration has long been too accommodating of a fraternity culture that victimizes women, and Kim's excuse of being an "anthropologist" who didn't want to interfere with that culture is remarkably weak: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/29/jim-yong-kim-and-dartmouths-culture-of-sexual-assault/
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Procyon Mukherjee Mar 28, 2012

There is a public debate brewing in the background for quite some time now, on the ‘goodness’ of finance, its role in facilitating development with a human face. There is no magic wand that finance could accomplish with an equitable and fair distribution, what otherwise could be achieved without its central role in credit creation or risk mitigation. While it is wrong to assume that the gains from it should be for the majority, it is also wrong to infer that losses cannot be socialized. The model we are talking here must look at development needs of the vast majority of poor under the poverty line and it is a shame that we have taken decades to understand that in their ‘upliftment’ lie the key to the lack in demand problem of the world. The appointment of Kim only becomes the right step when policies are directed towards this understanding.

Procyon Mukherjee
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Zsolt Hermann Mar 27, 2012

I agree with the author that we have to celebrate any new steps, initiatives that are moving towards a global direction, global vision.
We learn each day from respected scientific publications how interconnected and interdependent we are.
The fact is that not only those in extreme poverty or need, but even the most affluent countries, regions can only hope for security and sustainable future if we create more new and functional supra-national systems and structures, that are truly work based on the benefit of the whole system instead of the narrow individual and national interest as it has been happening so far.
The worsening and unsolvable global crisis starts to give the motivation from a negative direction for even the most stubborn leaders who start considering global leadership above their "legacy" and reelection hopes, or even if selfishly at least they now see their legacy on a global platform.
On the other hand by studying the already available transparent and factual information about our present evolving reality we could find the positive motivation as well, always moving a step ahead of the crisis and the future blows as a united human network has infinitely greater potential compared to the narrow minded, subjective, self calculating efforts we are making today.
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