World Bank

The global recession is expected to push 89 million more people into extreme poverty by the end of 2010, the World Bank said Wednesday as it called on the leaders of the 20 largest economies to engage in "responsible globalization." Although economic data show that the worst recession of the post-World War II era might have ended for the United States and that global trade has begun to pick up again, low-income countries are still reeling from the effects of a financial crisis created by their wealthier counterparts.

The world is falling into the first global recession since World War II as the crisis that started in the U.S. engulfs once-booming developing nations, confronting them with massive financial shortfalls that could turn the clock back on poverty reduction by years, the World Bank warned Sunday. The World Bank also cautioned that the cost of helping poorer nations in crisis would exceed the current financial resources of multilateral lenders.

Global economic growth will slow for a second straight year in 2008 as tighter credit conditions and higher oil prices weaken expansions in the U.S., Japan and Europe, the World Bank said in an annual forecast. The world economy will grow 3.3% this year, down from an estimated 3.6% pace in 2007 and 3.9% in 2006, the bank said. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, will expand 1.9%, compared with 2.2% last year, it said. Japan's gross domestic product is forecast to increase 1.

His staff in open revolt, World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz apologized Thursday for his role in landing his girlfriend a job at the State Department that gave her more than $60,000 a year in raises and a salary greater than that of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I made a mistake, for which I am sorry," Wolfowitz said at a news conference before the spring meetings of the bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Two years ago, when Paul D. Wolfowitz left the Pentagon to head the World Bank, he was under fire over his role in the Iraq war, but he approached his new job with the same moral fervor and appetite for shaking up the status quo that had marked his tenure at the Defense Department. Wasting no time, he launched a campaign against corrupt borrowers. He cut off loans to uncooperative countries without consulting other officials. He created ethics police to monitor employees.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ'S enemies were undoubtedly out to get him from the moment the man best known as the architect of the Iraq war walked through the door of the World Bank. Just as surely, he has handed them ample cause to demand his resignation as the bank's president. But the real shame in this story is that Wolfowitz's most worthwhile initiative -- the World Bank's fight against global corruption -- may fall victim to the appearance of corruption in his personal life.

A defiant Paul D. Wolfowitz said Sunday that he would not resign as president of the World Bank in the face of controversy over his role in securing a State Department job and large raise for his girlfriend, a former communications official at the bank. "This is important work and I intend to continue it," Wolfowitz said when asked if he would step down after the spring meetings of the bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Under beleaguered President Paul D. Wolfowitz, the World Bank may be scaling back its long-standing support for family planning, which many countries consider essential to women's health and the fight against AIDS. In an internal e-mail, the bank's team leader for Madagascar indicated that one of two managing directors appointed by Wolfowitz ordered the removal of all references to family planning from a document laying out strategy for the African nation.

Paul D. Wolfowitz's chances of remaining World Bank president grew more uncertain Friday after the governing board for the multinational aid agency expanded its probe into his role in a job promotion and pay raise his girlfriend received. The bank's 24-member executive board, which could oust Wolfowitz, expressed "great concern" about the controversy and created its second "ad hoc group" to look into the matter.

THERE IS STILL a lot we don't know about the scandal that has engulfed Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former U.S. deputy secretary of Defense who is now president of the World Bank and who is under fire for his reported role in giving a hefty raise and job transfer to his companion, Shaha Ali Riza.