I know that most of you know that the president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, is, as I am, a member in very good standing of the Elders of Zion. So it follows that anything I say in his behalf might be dismissed as an act of fraternity or, worse yet, ethnic clannishness. But there is an article by Steven Weisman on the front page of the business section of today's New York Times about a controversy in and around the Bank over the tough stand Wolfowitz has taken with regard to rampant corruption in particular countries that are recipients of the institution's loans and contracts. The Times specifies India, Chad, Kenya, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia (a place he knows quite well, since he was once the American ambassador there), Kenya, Bangladesh, and even Argentina as particular villains, which is to say, targets of Wolfowitz's disciplined wrath. He has even barred more than 300 companies from business with the World Bank. But that's not what the article is really about. It's about the opposition that had coalesced in international banking circles against Wolfowitz and his struggle against one of the mainstays of Third World economies. To be blunt: This means his struggle with people and institutions whose very habits are corrupt, degraded, and inimical to the lives of poor people whom the Bank tries to help. The culture of the World Bank itself is hostile to Wolfowitz, because he was an architect of the Iraq war. Another criticism is that he has not paid sufficient tribute to his predecessor, James Wolfensohn. Horrors! What's especially intriguing is that Wolfowitz's inside critics seem prepared to go on funding those who pilfer from the public till. It's as if combating fraud is "somehow at odds with development." What fraud means in these circumstances, of course, is the diversion of funds from the approved projects to the pockets of men and women who probably have been lining their pockets with other people's money for years.