Nick Stern made various none too successful attempts to teach me economics at Oxford in the early 70s. Probably N. Ireland Sec. Peter Mandelson also was amongst his students - how successful that was I leave to others' judgement... I would then have described him as a left liberal, personally very pleasant and willing to engage in discussion with loony lefties such as myself who spent more time organising sit-ins than mastering what those bloody equations meant. He was only about 30 at the time, so I've no idea how he's likely to have evolved over the years.
Bruce Robinson
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.
-- ========================== Bruce Robinson 1 Cundiff Road Manchester M21 8FS UK
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