Ground Floor: The World Bank isn't really a bank at all; it's more of an umbrella lending agency supported by the international community in order to provide finance to the world's low-income countries.

The organisation was founded in 1944 to assist in European reconstruction after the second World War, but now, of course, that mandate has changed.

My only dealings with the World Bank were in buying some of its debt a few years ago. The bonds are rated AAA, so they can support a conservatively risked portfolio quite happily and the World Bank issues them to finance its expanded lending activities throughout the globe.

The World Bank has its supporters and its critics. Everyone wants to believe in an altruistic institution lending money to countries that wouldn't otherwise be able to finance infrastructural borrowing themselves, but there is a vocal opposition group which believes that the loans made by the bank have not necessarily achieved their intended aims. This group urges the boycotting of World Bank bonds by institutional investors.

The bank is in the news at the moment because George W. Bush has nominated his deputy secretary for defence, Paul Wolfowitz, to succeed James D. Wolfensohn as the bank's president.

In Ireland, the stories about the World Bank succession have mainly concentrated on the fact that Bono had been tipped, albeit not very convincingly, as a potential candidate for the job.

If George W Bush wanted to ignite the flames of controversy around the World Bank, he couldn't have done it any better than by nominating Wolfowitz.

There's no love lost between Wolfensohn (a Clinton appointee) and the current administration. He has worked hard, though not always successfully, to move the bank away from a discredited lending agency to an agency where loans would be linked to progressive outcomes which would help the bank's tarnished image.

Wolfensohn refused a request from Wolfowitz to cancel Iraqi debt. Nor did he rush to provide reconstruction loans for Baghdad.

Joseph Stiglitz (who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001), former chief economist at the bank, is dumbstruck by the nomination. He is quoted as saying it is "either an act of provocation or so insensitive as to look like provocation".

Stiglitz's book, Globalisation and its Discontents, should be required reading for anyone who is interested in the politics of economics. His view is that many of Wolfensohn's reforms will be rowed back by his nominated successor and he is concerned that the World Bank will become an instrument of US foreign policy, thus compromising it as a development body.

He points out that Wolfowitz has no training or experience in economic development or financial markets.

Of course, most politicians have no experience of the departments they head up in government. And the World Bank is a political organisation, not a financial one. Nevertheless, the nomination has re-opened some of the wounds between Europe and the States, with the Dutch suggesting another nomination would be welcome.

Their finance minister, Gerrit Zalm, said that it is "always elegant to have more than one candidate for a job", but the chances of that happening are zero. The job is always a US nomination - because Europe usually nominates the head of the International Monetary Fund. So it's pretty much a done deal.

There has been talk of Europe blocking Wolfowitz as payback for the Americans blocking the European candidate for the IMF job five years ago, but most think it's unlikely, despite the fact that when asked about his candidature, most of the bank's board were said to be horrified.

The website www.worldbankpresident.org has been running information and stories on potential candidates for months and conducted a poll on whether the appointment is a stroke of genius or a disaster. Just 10 per cent of respondents think it's a stroke of genius, 86 per cent think it's a disaster and the rest don't care.

The site has urged the bank's employees to express their views on the forum and suggested points to make in letters to heads of states, asking them to block Wolfowitz's candidature.

Meanwhile, the European Network on Debt and Development organised a petition against the appointment and says it received 1,255 signatories from 68 countries within 30 hours.

Many of us think that the corridors of power echo differently to anywhere else, but nipping into the forum and seeing the comments shows that people concerned with the World Bank are no different than any other. They say that the site is there to expose the absurdity of the appointment process and don't endorse any candidates themselves.

Many employees thought the floating of Wolfowitz's name was simply to distract from the real candidate as nobody thought him plausible - one poster said the nomination would arouse so much anti-administration passion that it was hard to believe it could happen.

It also said, albeit ironically, that a Wolfowitz presidency would bring longed-for transparency to the bank - it would be able to take up its "imperialist mission without having to mouth pieties about reducing poverty". Right.

Many people going into a job would feel challenged by the fact that their staff don't want them, their potential clients don't want them and most of the world doesn't want them either. But politicians don't think like that. Especially George W. Bush's politicians.

Another constituency believes that this sounds the death knell for a bank which they feel has lost its credibility and its mandate. To quote another forum poster, it is "bureaucracy at its best; high overhead with Mercedes-driving, latte-drinking primadonnas at the wheel". You know, I can visualise Wolfowitz as many things, but a latte-drinking primadonna isn't one of them!