Well, Paul Wolfowitz is finally resigning from his post as president of the World Bank.
And not before time. Wolfowitz's arrangement of a huge package of salary increases and benefits for his girl friend — and his insistence not that he made a mistake but that there was nothing wrong with this act — exemplifies one of the major problems with President George Bush and his appointees, a failing that some have described as "ethical tone-deafness."
Wolfowitz will be leaving at the end of June, but it appears that the bank's board of directors will make sure that his ability to make personnel and policy decisions is effectively castrated, as of now. There is some fear of reprisal on his part against those bank functionaries and employees — a large number — who carried on the campaign to have him ousted.
One other possible casualty of Wolfowitz's departure may, it appears, be the seemingly eternal policy of allowing the President of the United States to select the head of the World Bank. Nowhere is this practice specified in the rules of the Bank, but it's been a given since the late forties (in return, the Europeans get to name the head of the International Monetary Fund). But Bush's blunder in naming right-wing crony Wolfowitz, whose lack of administrative competence has been legendary in government circles, (1) to this post calls the practice into question, and it's possible that the Bank's Board of Directors will find some other way of selecting a bank president.