My new goal in life: get a job at the WORLD BANK!

[Che Guava]

Just read this little piece today on the Wolfowitz scandal, and the apparent endemic problems with comfy salaries at the world bank...

World Bank heaven: Rich pay, sweet perks

BARRIE MCKENNA

E-mail Barrie McKenna | Read Bio | Latest Columns
May 8, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The optics, as they say, aren't good.

To avoid conflict rules, World Bank boss Paul Wolfowitz orchestrated a cushy transfer and a series of pay hikes for his girlfriend, a fellow bank employee.

The result is that Shaha Riza saw her tax-free salary quickly rise by $60,000 ( U.S.) to $193,590. If and when she returns to the bank, she'll jump a couple of notches up the corporate ladder and get another raise.

And yet, as excessive as the arrangement appears, the real transgression is that Ms. Riza's generous package is not as unusual as you might think within the privileged environment of the bank. The bank's primary mission is to eradicate poverty, but it treats its own rather well.

Even if Mr. Wolfowitz goes, which now appears inevitable, he's not the only one who comes out of the saga looking bad. (Yesterday, one of Mr. Wolfowitz's hand-picked aides, Kevin Kellems, quit, saying the leadership showdown had made his job impossible.)

From where he sits, Mr. Wolfowitz may well believe he's done nothing wrong. After all, Ms. Riza's cozy deal is a lot closer to the norm than many insiders would care to admit.

Mr. Wolfowitz's own salary - $400,000 a year - seems pretty reasonable when you consider that roughly 1,000 other bank employees earn between $175,000 and $200,000 a year. A remarkable 10 per cent of its staff is in that enviable pay bracket. And the expats among them get theirs tax-free.

The bank is a little like Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Life is too good.

The aura of privilege extends across the street to its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund. Staff there has ballooned since the financial crises of the 1990s, even as the workload has declined.

The fund recently expanded into a posh new building, kitty-corner from the bank. Department directors and senior advisers earn up to $260,000 a year.

Economists make as much as $170,000 - all tax-free if you're not an American.

Top officials at both institutions might not look much better than Mr. Wolfowitz and Ms. Riza if their own pay packages, travel perks and expenditures were exposed to similar public scrutiny.

And why just pick on the Washington-based international institutions?

At the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, secretary-general Angel Gurria is accused of paying himself a series of secret bonuses, giving his daughter a job, lavishly renovating his official residence and making top appointments without fully consulting member countries.

And yet almost no one is demanding his ouster. Canada is among only a handful of countries to publicly admonish Mr. Gurria.

These giant bureaucracies of elite bureaucrats do good and important work. That should not be forgotten.

But they must also be efficient, transparent and accountable - to their member countries and to the countries they serve.

Mr. Wolfowitz's worst sin is not what he did for Ms. Riza. It is that he got a job he didn't deserve. He wasn't hired two years ago because of his management skills, banking credentials or vast knowledge of international development.

He got the job because U.S. President George W. Bush needed to get him out of the Pentagon, where he had become a political liability. He was a key architect of the Iraq war, telling Congress that American troops would be greeted as liberators.

And because of an outdated convention that gives the United States the perpetual right to nominate the head of the bank, Mr. Wolfowitz was hired, even over the stiff objections of the bank's other major shareholders.

But to challenge Mr. Wolfowitz's right to the job implies that Europe must also relinquish its grip on the leadership of the fund, and the spoils that go with that prize.

Too many people have a vested interest in the status quo. And sadly, too few are committed to truly reform these mighty institutions.

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So economists, tell me, what do I have to do to get a job at the world bank...?

 

[ArneHD]

So economists, tell me, what do I have to do to get a job at the world bank...?

Judging from the first part of the article, probably sleep with one.

 

[Leonel]

I would not mind $60,000 a year...

 

[Urederra]

I would not mind $60,000 a year...

I wouldn't mind $60K a year for doing nothing, but you can find jobs with better salaries, working hard, though.

 

[JollyRoger]

So economists, tell me, what do I have to do to get a job at the world bank...?

Sleep with Paul Wolfowitz . . . I don't think any amount of money is worth it.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

Hmm, don't remember what Colbert said exactly few weeks back.. something along the lines "Wolfowitz is being accused of rewarding his girlfriend with nice paycheck and new job - like dating him wouldn't be reward enough?" .

 

[FriendlyFire]

Sleep with Paul Wolfowitz . . . I don't think any amount of money is worth it.

Hey it worked for Jeff Gannon !!!!

 

[Hygro]

My history professor's son works for the world bank in Moscow. I'm sure he is in the top bracket, making at least some 200,000 a year.

To get that job he had:
A Ph.D in econ from a prestigious university.
Taught economics at Stanford for a few years
Got a job at some top world developement organization that wasn't the WB
Got a job at the world bank being mr. important.


So basically it requires the same kind of work as getting a high salary in any other field.

 

[GinandTonic]

(BBC) Radio 4 just had a spot saying that if Bush doesnt remove him he will lose his ability to apoint his sucessors. The concerns over the PoUS appointing the boss of the World Bank, exasorbated by Wolfowitz's appointment, seem to be comming home to roost. The thrust seems to be the Euro's et al saying "play nice or we will block whoever you appoint".

So much for unilateralism.

 

[Fifty]

Get a PhD in econ with a money/banking emphasis, don't tell any professor that you plan to go anywhere but academia, and pretend to be Jewish.

 

[plarq]

don't tell any professor that you plan to go anywhere but academia

No matter how crappy I am, I must keep the fake promise in mind.

 

[Insane_Panda]

My aunt actually has a job at the world bank, and is moderately up there. She even has a picture with Wolfowitz.

...damnit, thats how shes rich!

 

[Homie]

Dang it, I'm getting a job there too. I'm mulitlingual, an econ major, and I'm foreign and thus apparently my salary is tax-free, which is weird because if you're a foreigner in the US you generally still have to pay tax. I gues foreign World Bank employees are exempt.

 

[Shaihulud]

She quit didn't she? I think the later news is that she quited over suggestion that it was favouritism.

 

[WillJ]

Even with the tinge of irony of this being at a place with the goal of eradicating poverty, I'm having trouble seeing something wrong or unusual with brilliant MIT-educated economists making "up to" $175,000 (they could make twice as much in corporate finance), and their managers making somewhat more.... (Of course, at any rate, it's about time that Wolfowitz gets booted.)

 

[downtown]

I have no problem with their salaries.

I have a problem with all this neptosim, considering "eliminating corruption in developing countries" was a HUGE deal to Wolfowitz.

 

[Che Guava]

Even with the tinge of irony of this being at a place with the goal of eradicating poverty, I'm having trouble seeing something wrong or unusual with brilliant MIT-educated economists making "up to" $175,000 (they could make twice as much in corporate finance), and their managers making somewhat more.... (Of course, at any rate, it's about time that Wolfowitz gets booted.)

More like between $175 000 and $200 000 (if you're in the 90th percentile) and likely much more if you make it into 'management'...

..not to mention tax free (if your a non-american...like a canadian!) which I think could make all the difference in a tax bracket like that!

 

[WillJ]

More like between $175 000 and $200 000 (if you're in the 90th percentile) and likely much more if you make it into 'management'...

..not to mention tax free (if your a non-american...like a canadian!) which I think could make all the difference in a tax bracket like that!

Well, the article said economists make up to $175,000; but yeah, managers make more.

True about the enormous benefit of the salary being tax free, but I'm still not sure it's that crazy. Again, for most of these people, I'm assuming working at the World Bank means taking a pay cut, when compared to what they could otherwise be making (I could be wrong, though). Drive down the salaries and you'd end up with worse economists.

 

[Che Guava]

Well, the article said economists make up to $175,000; but yeah, managers make more.

My mistake, Isee what you were looking at now...

True about the enormous benefit of the salary being tax free, but I'm still not sure it's that crazy. Again, for most of these people, I'm assuming working at the World Bank means taking a pay cut, when compared to what they could otherwise be making (I could be wrong, though). Drive down the salaries and you'd end up with worse economists.

Well, if you were making $170K a year, you'd be in the second highest tax bracket in america, meaning that a third of your income would disappear as income tax (down to $113k). That, of course, doesn't include any other states taxes or other deductions made based on your salary, so you could potentially be losing nearly half of that to taxes if you didn't work at the WB.

As for taking a pay cut, I would think that a comfortable 6-digit income would be more than competitive enough, for an economist. Anyone willing to back me up on that?

 

[silver 2039]

Hmm...suppose I got Candian citizenship, renounced my American citizenship and then got a job in the World Bank I could get tax free....whoo!!