Other People's Money

Sebastian Mallaby: The World's Banker

The New York Sun, September 30, 2004

If there's anything more guaranteed to set off my inner sans-culotte than pampered, arrogant Teresa Heinz Kerry, it's a gathering of international bureaucrats, the spoiled, sanctimonious, worthless, and annoying aristocrats of our own sadly yet to be ancien régime. Locusts in limousines, they periodically descend on some unfortunate city, clogging the streets with their retinues, the restaurants with their greed, and the newspapers with their self-importance. Seen from this perspective, and judging by its remarkably unflattering cover photograph, "The World's Banker" (The Penguin Press, 462 pages, $29.95) an account by the Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby of James Wolfensohn and the World Bank he is president of, promised to be a delightful, malicious treat. Mr. Wolfensohn, thin-lipped and narrow-eyed, glares out from the cover, seemingly disdainful of anyone impudent enough to even pick up the book. There is no attempt at a smile: Why bother to ingratiate? The look is the mask of a predator, a big beast to be avoided in boardroom, brawl, or multilateral institution.

Sadly, it's not always right to judge a book by its cover. While the Wolfensohn portrayed by Mallaby is not an altogether likeable character, "The World's Banker" is far from a hatchet job - either of the man or the institution over which he so imperiously presides. Over the years, both have made themselves into tempting targets for a cheap shot or two, but Mr. Mallaby takes the high road, treating them fairly, if sometimes (deservedly) critically. What's more, with a bright, breezy (occasionally too breezy) and assured style that reflects his years at the Economist, the author takes the complex and (let's admit it), potentially excruciating topic of the World Bank and makes it accessible to the general reader.

That said, the high road comes with a toll. This may be my inner Kitty Kelley surfacing, but this book's narrative would have hung together better with a little more Wolfensohn and a little less bank. Certainly the World Bank, like it or loathe it, is an important, some would say essential, institution. But in trying to tell its story through the partial biography of just one man, Mr. Mallaby has, despite a heroic effort, ended up with a slightly, and probably inevitably, unsatisfactory hybrid. His book does full justice neither to Mr. Wolfensohn nor to his bank.

There's another problem. A book that features the drama that is Mr. Wolfensohn had better be about Mr. Wolfensohn, and only about Mr. Wolfensohn. Anything or anybody else will be hopelessly upstaged. Mr. Mallaby has plenty to say about Bolivia, Uganda, and Indonesia, but much of the significance of what he is writing will be lost as even the most earnest readers find themselves impatiently turning the pages in expectation of the next fabulous, appalling Wolfensohn moment. The goat from Mali! The Frenchman's speech! Rostropovich! Harrison Ford! Um, Paul O'Neill! There are titanic rows, great rages, astonishing coups and, oh yes, that ego, well worth a full biography in its own right.

To describe this magnifico as merely protean would be an insult. He is a force of nature whose talents, personality, chutzpah, and remarkable networking skills took him from a comparatively modest upbringing in the Antipodes to Harvard, the Olympics (fencing for Australia!), Carnegie Hall (he's a cellist!), success in the City of London, Wall Street, and, since 1995, his current role.

As Mr. Wolfensohn ponders the chances of a third term at the bank, it is worth asking how much of a success has he made of the first two. Like many of the titans of high finance, his management skills appear - and this is being kind - rudimentary, a mixture of threats, bluster, overbearing ambition, and impatience. It's perhaps significant that Robert Rubin, whose background at Goldman Sachs must have made him very familiar with such types, was one of those in the Clinton administration most resistant to Mr. Wolfensohn's relentless, and typically skilful, lobbying for the World Bank job. It's no surprise to read that the great man's time in Washington has been marked by staff turmoil, mad fads, vast expenditures, grandiose planning, and feuds with shareholders: All the hallmarks, in short, of a Wall Street grandee at work.

All this sound and fury has signified something, however. In weighing Mr. Wolfensohn's career at the bank, Mr. Mallaby concludes that he can boast of some very real achievements - no small matter in a field where progress can mean a better life for large numbers of the desperately poor and, indirectly, for the rest of the planet. In a world that is ever more complicatedly, and sometimes dangerously, interconnected, it is no longer possible for the West to ignore the less prosperous parts of the globe - even if it wanted to. That is something Mr. Wolfensohn understood well, and that Mr. Mallaby makes clear.

If much of the World Bank's progress has seemed to come uncertainly, awkwardly, in fits and starts and after numerous wrong turns, neither Mr. Wolfensohn nor his employees are wholly to blame. When it comes to development, there is no magic bullet, no one answer, not trade alone or aid alone, not free market fundamentalism, not massive infusions of capital, not 'empowerment', not structural reform, not tough dictates suited to the Victorian workhouse, not the sentimentality and soft targets of the 1970s. And certainly not the leftist prescriptions and cultural imperialism of far too many NGOs. The correct approach probably draws on aspects of most of the above strategies and quite a few others besides.

"The World's Banker" gives a useful introduction to many of these issues, but only an introduction. Nevertheless, given the importance of this neglected topic, it is to Mr. Mallaby's credit that his readers, like the developing countries the World Bank was designed to assist, will be left asking for more.