true grit

Wolfowitz will no doubt be gone from the World Bank soon enough, but it will be on his terms, not theirs.

Today, he got a ringing endorsement in the NYT from the Nigerian politician Nuhu Ribadu:

Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the bank’s energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He is a champion of using international development institutions to deal with some of the world’s major problems. And he has been a steadfast supporter of the efforts of African organizations to rescue our people from the scourge of misrule, which leads to poverty, disease and early death. …

 When disgruntled lawmakers here tried to cut off our financing and shut down critical aspects of our operation, a World Bank grant of $5 million allowed us to bring to closure important cases of political corruption involving key members of Nigeria’s ruling elite, including members of the executive branch and Parliament.

 

In this fucked-up world, where the dedicated and driven are burned at the stake

and the mind-bogglingly ignorant, crass, and incompetent

 
are offered countless venues in which to strut their very wrong stuff (really, Rosie?), just for the sake of our amusement (because Infotainment Rules), it is refreshing to watch Wolfowitz, a dignified human being, take a three-week-long pounding and still have the stuff to stand up for himself:

The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone, even if the ethics charges are unwarranted,” he said. “I, for one, will not give in to such tactics. And I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest.”

And I for one enjoy hearing him call out certain of his enemies by name

Wolfowitz’s defense was striking in that it singled out three longtime bank officials as having specifically ordered him to handle Riza’s compensation package himself in 2005. He said they were Roberto Danino, the general counsel; Xavier Coll, vice president for human resources; and Ad Melkert, head of the bank board’s ethics committee.

and to clarify the actions he took:

“…In working to resolve the potential conflict of interest that was created by my and Ms. Riza’s relationship, I acted, transparently, sought and received guidance from the bank’s ethics committee, and conducted myself in good faith in accordance with that guidance,” he said. Riza’s salary, in excess of $190,000, is in the same range as that drawn by about 1,000 other bank employees, Wolfowitz said.

Indeed, Wolfowitz’s final point was most interesting. It was elaborated upon in a New York Sun piece that throws light on the gravy train that is known as the World Bank.

A closer look at bank pay packages suggests that the trouble here is not that Ms. Riza gets a “girlfriend” salary, a mysterious wage not quite tethered to market reality. It is that World Bank staffers also do — and almost all without spending a minute alone with the bank’s embattled president.

The bank’s administrative budget is $1 billion a year. It employs well over 10,000 people. Thousands of others consult.

The bank doesn’t publish current salaries. But according to its annual report for 2006, a senior professional, or “G” level employee, starts at $92,230 and can go up to $167,860, a little more than the $165,200 for a member of the 110th Congress. A manager, or “H” level staffer, can make $226,650. This was the category for which Ms. Riza was on the shortlist.

There are aproximately 1,000 H level staff at the bank. So the portrayal of Ms. Riza as receiving compensation unheard of is inaccurate.

The next salary level, “I,” includes directors or senior advisers, who earn up to $268,650. There are more than 200 of these, and they supervise many others. Mr. Wolfowitz stirred ire by bringing two allies into the bank at salaries of, reportedly, $240,000 and $250,000. He may have misstepped in the execution, but the “I” data suggest those pay levels were not out of line.

Move up a tier to the 25 or so professionals, the “J” level employees, or vice presidents: Top salary, $289,540. Senior vice presidents and managing directors who have made it to the “K” class received as much as $311,000. The president’s pay, when you include expenses, lands in the mid-$400,000 range.

In other words, Mr. Wolfowitz is paid like the American president, a foundation head, or a not-very-good securities analyst.

Of course you may not want to take this at face value, since the New York Sun, where this story ran, was recently smeared by Gawker as a “Zionist daily rag.” And the otherwise decent-seeming but always hostile to Israel Robert Wright, he of bloggingheads.tv fame, voiced similar disapproval by referring to the Sun as a “neocon paper.”   

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.***

I’m stumped and, as I said, tired. But even if I have nothing illuminating to say, I’m still reading the papers and the blogs and watching some of the infotainment that passes for news. Now that I’ve lifted the self-imposed pressure to produce, on average, four posts a day, I find myself gaining a bit of perspective and maybe seeing more of the forest.Time will tell. Check back.

Also: I took another 20 pictures this morning. I’m sure to post more of them by tomorrow.

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***Thank you, Buffalo Springfield, for the lyrics.