Barack Obama's choice of the South Korean-born doctor and health expert Jim Yong Kim to be the next president of the World Bank was a surprise: Kim did not feature in the betting for one of the biggest international jobs going. Barring a miracle, though, he will get it.
Since the Second World War, the Europeans have chosen the managing director of the International Monetary Fund with U.S. support, and the White House has nominated the president of the World Bank with Europe's backing. This is called a “gentleman's agreement,” although a better description would be a stitch-up.
Pressure from the bigger developing countries, which now make up a much larger share of the global economy, has meant the appointments are supposed to be open and transparent. In reality, nothing has changed, although the Europeans have at least put up heavyweight candidates — Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Christine Lagarde — on the last two occasions. The expectation was that Obama would do the same, hence the speculation that Hillary Clinton would get the nod. Instead, he has gone for a virtual unknown. Kim's job as president of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire could hardly be said to prepare him for the huge task of running the Bank.
The bigger developing countries might see this as presumptuous, particularly as there is an alternative in Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank vice-president. But Obama believes Kim's east Asian origins and his time at the World Health Organisation will win their support and that the Europeans will not rock the boat. He is almost certainly right, although that does not alter the fact that the process stinks. ( Larry Elliott is economics editor of the Guardian.) — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012
