British academic faces stern test at World Bank
The World Bank has hardly been a haven of sweetness and light in recent years. But Nick Stern, the British academic who takes over as its new chief economist in a couple of weeks' time, must be wondering what he let himself in for.
On Monday, at the bank's annual development economics jamboree in Paris, bank president James Wolfensohn was in feisty mood. Fresh from a dispute with his own board over whether the bank should publish an independent report slating its lending plans in China, Wolfensohn paid barbed tribute to Joe Stiglitz, Stern's predecessor in the hot seat.
Wolfensohn declared he was a great admirer of Stiglitz. But in the next breath he described him as "someone I understand I have met in the past few years - when he wasn't travelling".
Warming to his task, he then promised not to pre-empt Stiglitz's address to the conference. "I won't do to him what he will do to himself and repeat a speech he has made before", Wolfensohn said.
Perhaps the bank president feels a little out of the loop. Asked later if the US Treasury had excessive influence over the World Bank, he first denied any such suggestion and then used sinister terms to describe the debate between economists with Treasury links. "It is a masonic order I don't want to be a member of," he said. Observer just hopes Stern is ready to enter such a secret world.