A Conquistador for the World Bank

The appointment of former deputy secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick — to replace Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank marks a predictable return to normalcy. The script for the Zoellick regime should follow a well-rehearsed Washington morality play: Reassure World Bank bureaucrats and European allies alike that the “neocon” boat-rocking will end, conduct business as usual, and for goodness sake, promise to drop all that upsetting talk about the endemic corruption of the developing world.

Zoellick would do better, however, for the world’s poor and for the credibility of the World Bank’s mission if he did the unexpected. He should reorient World Bank policies around the insights of a Peruvian economist, a man with the name of a conquistador and the heart of a Bartolome de las Casas, the world’s first human-rights activist. Zoellick should labor to enact the policies of Hernando de Soto, and perhaps install de Soto in the prestigious post of World Bank chief economist.

MD

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Mark Davis

The appointment of former deputy secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick — to replace Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank marks a predictable return to normalcy. The script for the Zoellick regime should follow a well-rehearsed Washington morality play: Reassure World Bank bureaucrats and European allies alike that the “neocon” boat-rocking will end, conduct business as usual, and for goodness sake, promise to drop all that upsetting talk about the endemic corruption of the developing world.

Zoellick would do better, however, for the world’s poor and for the credibility of the World Bank’s mission if he did the unexpected. He should reorient World Bank policies around the insights of a Peruvian economist, a man with the name of a conquistador and the heart of a Bartolome de las Casas, the world’s first human-rights activist. Zoellick should labor to enact the policies of Hernando de Soto, and perhaps install de Soto in the prestigious post of World Bank chief economist.