Bye bye Wolfie bye bye

World Bank President must surely be spending his weekend packing up the office. Today the Washington Post reports:

A World Bank committee investigating president Paul D. Wolfowitz has nearly completed a report that it plans to give the institution's governing board, concluding that he breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend, three senior bank officials said Friday.

Friday evening, the committee was debating whether to explicitly recommend that Wolfowitz resign, according to the sources, who spoke on condition they not be named, citing an ongoing probe into leaks.

Wolfowitz is scheduled to appear before the committee with his attorney on Monday morning and mount his defense, and the bank's 24-member board of directors will convene that afternoon to discuss the report. The sources suggested that a vote by the board could come that day.

Through his attorney, Wolfowitz vowed to continue the fight to keep his job. "He will not resign under this cloud," said his attorney, Robert S. Bennett, when told of the imminent completion of the committee's report. "He's not going to give in to these coercive tactics."

I note that his defenders, of whom there are fewer and fewer as time passes, always seem to suggest that he did all he could to avoid the conflict of interest. They completely ignore the one thing he could, and should, have done and that is to refuse to accept the position because it would create a conflict of interest. Since he chose not to take that path then we he reaps is what he deserves.