Category: General

If you can excuse the acronym-speak in the title of this post, I hope you’ll share my disappointment that the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) is falling on hard times.

Greetings folks — a lot going on today. First, by close of business today, we will know the broader character and substance of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz’s defense. I will post on that this afternoon. I also have some comments about this Posada trial fiasco that will be up later today.

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has to present his defense to the Bank board by close of business tomorrow [Friday]. He may resign (or be told he’s effectively fired) then or late that evening (sneaking past the news cycle). . .or may just decide to do nothing and leave town for a bit.

Tony Blair has informed his Queen and his Cabinet that he is stepping down as Prime Minister. Americans tend to look at other country’s heads-of-state through the prism of their own president — but Blair even more so. Blair used to seem a lot like Clinton. Now sadly, he looks a lot like Bush.

Rep. Tom Allen kicked off his campaign to oust Maine Republican Susan Collins from the Senate by declaring the invasion of Iraq “the worst foreign policy mistake in our nation’s history.” Allen is generally on the right track.

Ambassador Khalilzad’s first speech before the U.N. General Assembly is pasted below the fold. Bush administration policy hasn’t substantially changed over the past five months, but, with the switch from John Bolton, the tone has. And at the United Nations, tone matters.

In international finance circles, Michael Mussa is a legendary figure who used to work at the thin air levels at the International Monetary Fund.

Barack Obama‘s policy shop is kicking out some good stuff. I find this proposal reported by Bloomberg of his to help American automobile manufacturers offset retiree health care costs for gains in cutting carbon emissions intriguing.

One of the unwritten but hard as concrete rules in the governance of the world’s two most important transnational financial institutions is that a European heads the International Monetary Fund and an American heads the World Bank. . .always.