His appointment at the head of the world Bank was expected to be a formality: David Malpass, deputy secretary of the Treasury in charge of international issues and 62 years old, candidate of the United States, was the only potential candidate for the succession of president Jim Yong Kim, who resigned three years of the end of his second term. Logic: since its creation in 1946, on the base of the Bretton Woods two years earlier, the world Bank has always been headed by an American while the international monetary Fund (IMF) falls almost invariably a European, as is currently the case for the ex-French minister of Economy and Finance, Christine Lagarde.

But the beautiful mechanics of this " gentleman's agreement " ground to a standstill. The emerging countries do not resign themselves more to this sharing of the world between Europe and the United States and would like to run for them, too, the direction of the multilateral financial institutions. The texts, in the absence of the last three quarters of ...