“World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged Thursday that he erred in helping a close female friend get transferred to a high-paying job, and said he was sorry. His apology didn’t ease concerns among the bank’s staff association, which wants him to resign.” (Yahoo! News) The overt issue is Wolfowitz’s nepotistic promotion of a woman with whom he was romantically involved. However, he has been a disaster in his role heading the Bank, hiding himself behind a cadre of imported conservative advisors, unilaterally denying funding to projects that do not meet his priorities, and dissing European members’ priorities in particular to the point that some Western European countries are threatening to seriously decrease their level of funding for Bank projects. His campaign against corruption is, critics say, a thinly-veiled cover for spreading a neocon/neocolonial notion of “democracy.” Of course, Bush has recently expressed his fullest confidence in the job Wolfowitz is doing, bolstering concerns that the World Bank is becoming the development arm of the Pentagon (Guardian.UK). All of this is coming to a head on the eve of the World Bank/IMF’s spring meetings (NPR). Sparks should fly…