Switch for Volcker?
High on the unofficial agenda, this year, will be the future of 'Tom' Clausen, president of the World Bank. It seems to be limited. Talk will be turning to his successor, and one fascinating name being canvassed is that of Paul Volcker, the world's most respected central banker, chairman since 1979 of the United States Federal Reserve. The World Bank appointment is traditionally in the United States' gift, just as the managing director of the IMF has always come from Europe. When the Reagan administration, in 1981, nominated Mr Clausen for a five-year term, it seemed a mainstream choice. Here was a Californian, a hard-headed commer- cial banker, president of the Bank of America, which at that time was the biggest in the world. But Mr Clausen and his backers have fallen out. The World Bank — 6,000 international civil servants working out of a huge office in the heart of Washington — has often had an uneasy relationship with its major shareholders across the way. Those shareholders now find Mr Clausen not tough enough for their tastes. They cannot complain of his ste- wardship over the Bank's finances, but three years doing his best for what is euphemistically called the developing world may have altered his perspectives. That certainly happened to his predeces- sor, Robert McNamara, President Ken- nedy's whizzkid from Ford, scourge of Vietnam — and scourge, at the Bank, of a world which could tolerate one thousand million of its citizens being without fresh water. The Reagan men will find in Mr Volcker, too, a disturbing depth of human- ity, but the switch might suit them, all the same — and by then suit Mr Volcker too.
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