Zoellick on the Right Track?
Here, I wrote about the Center for Global Development's Nancy Birdsall's smart thinking about setting a price for the innovative thinking the World Bank does so well. Steven Weisman writes in the New York Times that Zoellick seems to be looking in this very direction:
In his remarks to reporters, Mr. Zoellick also suggested that the international community must rethink having the bank provide loans to countries like China that have access to global capital markets and possess huge foreign exchange reserves. The bank, he said, could move more into providing technical assistance to these countries
Here's hoping. It's easy to see how this idea would appeal to a free-trader like Zoellick, who wrote in the weeks after September 11, 2001 that the American response had to "counter fear and panic, and counter it with free trade”
But these early signs don't necessarily mean a massive shift at the World Bank. How this philosophy will combine with Zoellick's zeal for tough talk, his difficult to diagnose attitude toward global development arena remains to be seen. But we'll all be watching.