Newsweek, K. Rogoff: When World Bank president James Wolfensohn steps down next June after 10 years in office, he surely will be viewed as the most influential man to hold the post since Robert McNamara. Less than a decade ago, the bank was under siege by antiglobalization protesters. Today it's popular in many quarters. And just as Wolfensohn has improved the bank's image, he's transformed his own, from hardnosed investment banker to rock star in the aid community. No wonder so many Bush administration officials are lining up for the job in hopes of memorializing their own image.

Wolfensohn's best call was to notice that with the end of the cold war there was no longer any reason for Western-sponsored aid agencies to slavishly fund corrupt Third World leaders. Only the most naive observer /* ;-D */ could fail to recognize that poor governance and weak institutions were at the root of the developing world's growth problems. Wolfensohn asked his staff: Why shouldn't the World Bank president just come clean on the pernicious effects of Third World corruption? And so he did. Why not direct the World Bank's top-notch economists to try to quantify the effects of corruption on growth so that they stared people in the face? He did that, too. Bravo.

Unfortunately, not all of Wolfensohn's calls were quite so successful. Click here to continue reading.