The World's Banker

by Sebastian Mallaby

"Unstoppable force, meet immovable object. Scene: the World Bank, a mighty kingdom of many fiefs, its ten thousand employees operating in almost one hundred countries, responsible for tens of billions of dollars in aid to the world's poorest nations. Enter: James Wolfensohn, the smooth global deal maker and power broker of gargantuan appetites who furiously worked his many connections to become the World Bank's president." "In 1995, Wolfensohn struck the World Bank like a whirlwind, determined to reinvent the institution founded by Franklin Roosevelt and his World War II allies. Wolfensohn embraced debt relief for the poorest countries, put taboo subjects such as corruption on the development agenda, and faced off against the riotous critics of the antiglobalization movement. Never has the World Bank's work been more important, more in the public eye, or more controversial than in the past nine years, when challenges from global financial crises to AIDS to the emergence of terrorist sa