Dying for Growth

Abstract

A new president would take the helm at the World Bank Group on July 1, 2012. Robert Zoellick was preparing to join Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, hoping he would be considered as a potential secretary of state or secretary of the treasury. Speculation on likely candidates for Zoellick’s successor at the World Bank included Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Kerry, former presidential candidate and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and none other than Larry Summers, former secretary of the treasury and president of Harvard. Summers’ nomination would certainly have sent a signal—20 years earlier, as chief economist of the Bank, he had argued that the only way to solve environmental problems was through more growth.¹