Mister Wolfhenson

I read his thoughts first before I had the chance to post a question directly at him.

When I was finishing my Paper in my Graduate studies, I had to read about the World Bank and their publicized policy on the banking system and during that time, it was him who sat as its President. If I remember correctly, the steep learning curve of the Bank back then was the lesson-filled Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.

For a banker, he is grandfatherly. Maybe time has already done its beautiful work on him. I can only see a Monet-shade of a man driven by wealth-creation.

What struck me most was the off-the-cuff remark when he tried to put into context the perceived emergence of The Dragon (China) and of The Elephant (India) unto the global economic stage. He said that it was nothing new. What we are seeing now is a world liked the one we all had back in the 15th to 16th century when most of the world GDP could be directly traced back to this two very old civilizations.

It was a surprise to hear it because you will not hear those insights or facts from the current broadcast media.

I also was surprised when he agreed to the evolving notion that the world is not anymore a cut and dry "developed countries and developing countries". He agreed to the framework that we now live in a 4-wheeled global economy: the developed, the globalizers, the developing and the poor.

Coming from someone who saw the world a lot better than most of us would in our lifetime, due to the fact that in the the ten years he held the office as The President of the World Bank, he has visited around 180 countries, the 4-wheeled world hypothesis have a credible witness.

And from those visits, he saw the relationship of poverty to environmental abuse.

When I asked about what are the top 3 environmental issues that we all face, he pointed to: [1] Energy, [2] Water and [3] Making the next generation feel that they are custodians of Mother Earth.

Upon reflecting, those three carried a lot of weight.

The lifestyle we embrace depends so much on energy. Think "malling". How much energy does it take to airconditioned such a huge space for free? If we are to green-up energy, we will "touch or change" the very lifestyle we all like and embrace.

The battle of the early recorded history was always about who really "owned" the resources. Think Nile River and the wars waged by Ancient Egypt against its neighbours. And the fact that we won't survive without potable water, puts water, a resource we currently hold lightly, to a dramatic spotlight = )

The last, really embraces the truth that we are really connected. The past to the present and to the future. The old to the young and to the hope of the next generation.

Serious, I did not expect those insights from a banker. Maybe it's just a fitting reminder to the jaded part of me that, at the onset, the World Bank (and the IMF) had noble ambitions. They were created after the World War II to help the devasted countries rise up from the evils of war.