Who Next at the ECB Helm?

Good government requires good people at the helm who have leadership qualities and the best interests of the people at heart.

I take this opportunity to extend to him our appreciation for the impressive leadership he is displaying at the helm of the CTC.

The type of person at the helm of any central bank is always important but now more than ever, because financial crises always threaten central banks independence.

My country has full confidence in his integrity and competence, which he has demonstrated over the years, both as a staff member and at the helm of the Organization.

Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.

Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.

The anxiety over Jacob Zuma s election as president of South Africa obscures a significant milestone for the first time in decades, a sub Saharan nation has at its helm a champion of ordinary people.

If politics is defined as the art of compromise, Arafat was a master of it at the Palestinian and Arab levels. He managed to stay at the helm for over forty years with no serious challengers.

But it is likely to have a weaker president at the helm. Hollande now has three years to prove that, animated by the right ideas, he can transform his image and that of France with economic results, if not by his personal behavior.

Yet Sharon s untimely departure has by no means reversed the fundamental political and strategic shifts that he initiated. In the short term, while Kadima will get fewer votes without Sharon at the helm, some voters will be swayed by sympathy for the stricken leader.

But I can surely tell you that in my country, much like on Wall Street and the city of London and elsewhere, men were at the helm of the game of the financial sector, and that kind of lack of diversity and sameness leads to disastrous problems.

During that visit, I was able to attend meetings with him and other top Iranian leaders, including Mohammad Zarif, Iran s foreign minister and, later, its chief negotiator in the negotiations in Vienna. I quickly saw that with these men at Iran s helm, an agreement would be possible.

National unity is a pathetic political maneuver, she complained, after she was not invited to a rally the day after the attack. But, if the right leaders are at the helm, the January 7 attack could spur a renewed sense of collective purpose and political revival.

The President welcomed the new Executive Director, Ms. Ann M. Veneman, saying that she took the helm of UNICEF as it developed its new medium term strategic plan (MTSP) for 2006 2009, accelerated efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals and proceeded with United Nations reform.

It is a little precious to hear such pontifications from those who, at the helm of central banks, finance ministries, and private banks, steered the global financial system to the brink of ruin and created the ongoing mess. Worse, seldom is it explained how to square the circle.

The leadership crisis did not reflect a weakening commitment to the governance agenda either by the Bank s professionals or by the countries and shareholders with whom we work. On the contrary, that anti corruption good governance agenda precedes and outlives the person at the helm of the institution.

In economics, we seldom have a clearly defined counterfactual Would the economy have performed even better or a little differently if someone else had been at the helm? We can t know, but there is little doubt that those managing the economy receive more credit than they deserve, if sometimes less blame.

While the Muslim Brotherhood has such an organizing principle, its internal rigidity at least with Morsi at its helm made it unfit to govern. Meanwhile, infighting among Egypt s liberals prevented them from establishing a disciplined, reliable alternative to the Brotherhood based on principles like diversity, plurality, respect for women, and freedom of expression.

Regardless of whether it charts a course toward a brighter or darker future, a country s political leadership by definition plays the central role at the helm. Leaders of both China and Japan need to accept their position in this process and, above all, not simply ride on the froth of current events.

Whether Germany can continue to perform this role, however, will depend on what kind of EU emerges over the next few years. In particular, if Europe is to succeed with Germany at the helm, Germans and everyone else will have to break more decisively with the past than they have managed to do so far.

And this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right.

The rotating presidency of the EU is about to shed a spotlight on one of these countries. Hungary s turn at the EU helm comes at a time of fierce debate over Prime Minister Victor Orbán s alteration of constitutional law and suppression of press freedom, as well as a new round of worries about the country s financial sustainability.

Dick Cheney clearly cannot be held responsible for corporate misconduct after he left Halliburton, but there is mounting evidence about misconduct that took place while he was at the helm. Similarly, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bush appointed in the person of Harvey Pitt a fox to guard the chickens until public outrage forced Pitt's resignation.

Since he took the helm at the ECB, Draghi has brilliantly walked the fine line required to do whatever it takes to keep the eurozone intact. (After all, there would be little point in upholding pristine principles if doing so resulted in a breakup, and fiscal austerity alone was never going to return the periphery countries to sustainable debt paths.)

Never mind that one would be hard pressed to find anyone in business or financial circles these days with a nice thing to say about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or the AKP that he led before ascending to the presidency in 2014. And make no mistake Though Turkey s president is supposed to be above party politics, Erdoğan remains very much at the helm.

Yes, elections also allow many to vent extreme views. There are those who wish for India to become a Hindu Rashtra, a land of and for the Hindu majority those who wish to raise even higher the protectionist barriers against foreign investment that have started to come down and those who believe that a firm hand at the national helm would be preferable to the failures of democracy.

Surprisingly, both local and international analysts had predicted them to finish third, behind the Nepali Congress (NC) and the United Marxist Leninists (UML), the two largest parties that have been at the helm since multi party democracy was restored in Nepal in 1990. While experts are busy trying to explain the Maoists unprecedented triumph, much hope rests on the newly elected members of the 601 seat Constituent Assembly.