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.”