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Now that President Barack Obama must nominate a new President of the World Bank, he's keeping his mouth shut, especially in an election year.
Spokesman Jay Carney Thursday acknowledged rumors bids might be extended to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers.
"There's been a lot of speculation in the press," Carney said. "I'm not going to confirm any of it."
There are several wrinkles in what ought to be an easy nomination. For sure, Obama would like to place a Democrat at the World Bank, which lent $57 billion in its last fiscal year.
Zoellick, 58, a Republican appointed in 2007 by President George W. Bush, was well-regarded for having brought stability to the job after the disastrous tenure of Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary. He resigned in a sex scandal.
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By custom, the U.S. appoints the World Bank president while Europe designates the director of the companion International Monetary Fund. France's Christine Lagarde replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn shortly after his arrest for alleged rape in New York. He was subsequently cleared.
The custom is because the U.S. is the bank's biggest shareholder. The candidate must be approved by the board of directors, not the U.S. Senate.
Conceivably, China, the No. 3 shareholder behind the U.S. and Japan, could lobby for its own candidate, marshaling support from other developing country directors.
That could mean a Chinese or developing world candidate such as Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, 55, China's Xie Xuren, 64 or Brazil's Guido Mantega, 62. Over time, it's expected China will become the world's largest economy.
In another era, a prominent banker might be a good pick. Previous World Bank presidents include James Wolfensohn, who came from Wall Street, and A.W. Clausen, CEO of the Bank of America. So Obama-friendly bankers such as Jamie Dimon, 55, of JPMorgan Chase or Roger Altman, 67, of Evercore are probably out of luck.
Bankers are not popular now.
More likely, Obama, 50, will consider people like Timothy F. Geithner. The Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner, 50, who's spent virtually his entire life in government service, never working on Wall Street, including service at the U.S. embassy in Japan.
Geithner has been designated as an "adviser" in the process but there's no reason why he couldn't be chosen. In 2000, Gov. George W. Bush designated Dick Cheney to screen candidates for Vice President and didn't go very far.
Clinton, 64, has no economics background, and Summers, 57, a former Obama adviser, who said "issues of intrinsic aptitude" keep women out of science when he was President of Harvard, might be difficult picks.
