Obama Considering Summers for World Bank

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January 18, 2012

Obama Considering Summers for World Bank

President Obama is considering nominating Lawrence Summers, his former National Economic Council director, to lead the World Bank when Robert Zoellick's term expires later this year, Bloomberg reports.

"A nomination of Summers would bring scrutiny of his previous stints in government, both as former President Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary and Obama's NEC director, as well as his tenure as the president of Harvard University."

Felix Salmon thinks it's a bad idea: "The only way to be an effective World Bank president is to be an effective diplomat... Summers himself is the first to admit that he's no diplomat: he prides himself on speaking the truth as he sees it. Which is fine if you're making millions of dollars advising DE Shaw on their investments. But it's not going to help you run the World Bank -- or run anything larger than the Treasury Department, really. Even Harvard was too much for him to run; giving him the World Bank job would be a disaster."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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January 18, 2012