And one high-profile "no-thanks":
Hillary Clinton to World Bank? 'Not happening,' aide says
By Paul Richter, February 15, 2012
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/natio...0452.story
Some related less recent happenings:
IMF elects Christine Lagarde to replace sex charge boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 1st July 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-Kahn.html
Monti forms new Italian govt with no politicians
By FRANCES D’EMILIO and COLLEEN BARRY, November 16, 2011
Economist Mario Monti formed a new Italian government
without a single politician Wednesday, drawing from the ranks of bankers, diplomats and business executives to make sure Italy escapes looming financial disaster...
http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/88702...cians.html
"Monti actively participates in several major think tanks. He is a member of the Presiderium of the Friends of Europe. He was the founding chairman of Bruegel, another European think tank, which was formed in 2005.
He is also the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a think tank founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller.[46]
Monti is a leading member of the exclusive Bilderberg Group.[47] He has also been an international advisor to Goldman Sachs[48] and The Coca-Cola Company.[49] He has also been a member of the "Senior European Advisory Council" of Moody's[50] and he is one of the members of the "Business and Economics Advisors Group" of the Atlantic Council[51]."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Monti
Eurozone crisis: stained hands of banker tasked with cleaning up the Greek mess
By Damien McElroy, 10 Nov 2011
Greece installed a former central bank chief as its new prime minister on Thursday night, despite criticism that he was one of those responsible for getting the country into its current mess.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/finan...-mess.html
Lucas Papdemos
"Papademos was born in Athens but his parents were from the town of Desfina in Phocis.[2] After graduating from Athens College, Papademos attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gaining a degree in physics in 1970, a masters degree in electrical engineering in 1972, and a doctorate in economics in 1978.
In 1975, he worked with Franco Modigliani on the NAIRU concept, introduced under the term NIRU (non-inflationary rate of unemployment). He taught economics at Columbia University from 1975 until 1984, and then at the University of Athens from 1988 to 1993.[3]
He has served as Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1980. He joined the Bank of Greece in 1985 as Chief Economist, rising to Deputy Governor in 1993 and Governor in 1994. During his time as Governor of the national bank, Papademos was involved in Greece's transition from the drachma to the euro as its national currency.[4][5]
After leaving the Bank of Greece in 2002, Papademos became the Vice President to Wim Duisenberg (and then Jean-Claude Trichet) at the European Central Bank from 2002 to 2010. In 2010 he left that position to serve as an advisor to Prime Minister George Papandreou.[4]
He has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998.[6][7]
He is a member of the Academy of Athens.[3] He has published numerous articles in the fields of macroeconomic theory, the structure and functioning of financial markets, monetary analysis and policy, theory of chaos as well as on subjects concerning the economic performance, financial stability, financial instability and economic policy in the European Union. He has also delivered addresses on the Greek debt crisis.[9]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Papademos
How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
By Beat Balzli, 02/08/2010
[...]
Greece's debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of US investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002. The deal involved so-called cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period -- to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.
Fictional Exchange Rates
Such transactions are part of normal government refinancing. Europe's governments obtain funds from investors around the world by issuing bonds in yen, dollar or Swiss francs. But they need euros to pay their daily bills. Years later the bonds are repaid in the original foreign denominations.
But in the Greek case the US bankers devised a special kind of swap with fictional exchange rates. That enabled Greece to receive a far higher sum than the actual euro market value of 10 billion dollars or yen. In that way Goldman Sachs secretly arranged additional credit of up to $1 billion for the Greeks.
This credit disguised as a swap didn't show up in the Greek debt statistics. Eurostat's reporting rules don't comprehensively record transactions involving financial derivatives. "The Maastricht rules can be circumvented quite legally through swaps," says a German derivatives dealer.
In previous years, Italy used a similar trick to mask its true debt with the help of a different US bank. In 2002 the Greek deficit amounted to 1.2 percent of GDP. After Eurostat reviewed the data in September 2004, the ratio had to be revised up to 3.7 percent. According to today's records, it stands at 5.2 percent.
At some point Greece will have to pay up for its swap transactions, and that will impact its deficit. The bond maturities range between 10 and 15 years. Goldman Sachs charged a hefty commission for the deal and sold the swaps on to a Greek bank in 2005.
The bank declined to comment on the controversial deal. The Greek Finance Ministry did not respond to a written request for comment.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/euro...34,00.html
BANK RESIGNATIONS REVISED AND CORRECTED LIST
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/for...ead=231050