Very like a whale
KINGSLEY Amis records that his contem- porary Philip Toynbee was inspired to write an epic in blank verse. He was then 'inspired to go through the verse again, making it blanker. This work of supererogation has now been matched by James Wolfensohn at the World Bank. He was gone through his costs and come up .n,ith proposals for making them costlier. wow. As the world's leading development institution, it holds splendid meetings, pub- lishes any number of reports, keeps the air- lines busy, is apt to measure its success by its output, and has just built new offices for the thousands of people it employs in Washington, Chairmen before now have found that getting to grips with the World _Bank is like wrestling with a whale. Lewis Prestonpromised a sustained attack on Costs, and Mr Wolfensohn has talked of shedding staff and moving senior people out. Now he suddenly finds himself burst- ing out of his budgets. The bank's running costs, so he now says, will rise sharply and stay that way for the rest of the century. Then they are supposed to sink back until they are not much higher than they are now. In budgeting, distance lends enchant- ment to the view.
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