> [so who's going to be his successor? will this weaken the US hold
> over the office? very interesting...]
I'll bet (a) Bob Zoellick and (b) no, at least in the short term -- it will have to increase it, because it's never been as low as when Wolfie was there.
But the answer to (b) in the medium term could be yes in the sense that this definately puts more momentum behind the long-muttered argument that the whole Bretton Woods customary system of giving the WB chair to the US and the IMF chair to Europe is an offense against international good governance. The CFR report you posted yesterday about the reforms necessary to reinvigorate the IMF seems to point in the same direction: if the institutions are to claw back their power and effectiveness in forwarding the US's economic interests in marketizing the world, they are going to have to be more multilateral -- in which case the US will have to give up some of the trappings of its overt political control in order to forward its economic agenda. It'll have to fall back to ruling things behind the scenes with bribes like it does at the UN :o)
Michael