Clinton, Summers Leading Contenders for World Bank
Hillary Clinton Lawrence Summers
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Vice President Joe Biden, right, talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, during a meeting between President Barack Obama and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Oval Office on April 2009. Standing behind, at center, is National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers.
Vice President Joe Biden, right, talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, during a meeting between President Barack Obama and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Oval Office on April 2009. Standing behind, at center, is National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers. Photographer: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are two leading candidates to succeed World Bank President Robert Zoellick when he leaves at the end of June, according to two people familiar with Obama administration discussions.
While Summers has expressed interest in the position and has supporters inside the administration, the position would be Clinton’s if she sought it, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity about the private conversations.
Clinton, who said previously she doesn’t plan to remain in her post if President Barack Obama wins a second term, repeatedly has denied having an interest in the World Bank job. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland repeated those denials today.
“The secretary has addressed this issue many times since last year,” Nuland said at a briefing in Washington. “She has said this is not happening. Her view has not changed.”
Summers was traveling and unavailable for comment, his assistant, Julie Shample, said.
Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, refused to comment on possible successors to Zoellick, who was nominated for the position by then-President George W. Bush in 2007.
“There’s been a lot of speculation in the press,” Carney told reporters traveling with the president to an event in Wisconsin. “I’m not going to confirm any of it.”
U.S. Nomination
By tradition, the U.S. president chooses the leader of the World Bank while the head of the International Monetary Fund is selected by European leaders. The nomination is subject to approval by the World Bank’s executive board.
While Clinton, 64, told State Department employees at a town hall last month that she’s tired after 20 years in public life, many of her associates say she might be willing to take the World Bank presidency. It requires fewer hours and less travel than being secretary of state, the people said.
Summers, 57, was Obama’s first director of the National Economic Council and served as Treasury secretary in former President Bill Clinton’s administration. He left the Obama administration at the end of 2010 and returned to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he’s a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Zoellick’s five-year term expires June 30. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in a statement today that the U.S. will put forward a candidate for the job “in the coming weeks.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net
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