Such efforts tend to go in circles. Today's reform is to undo yesterday's reform, and tomorrow's reform will be to recreate the one that we undid today. It doesn't work day-to-day though. But year by year and decade by decade. This is one conclusion one draws from the book REFORMING THE WORLD BANK: TWENTY YEARS OF TRIAL -- AND ERROR by David A, Phillips, The"20 years" number in the subtitle indicates that Phillips focuses especially upon the period 1986 -- 2006, beginning with the appointment of Barber Conable, a former member of the US House of Representatives. That was a time of great concern about Latin American indebtedness to the big New York and London banks, and worry about what a wave of defaults would do to those institutions. That concern led to the Baker plan in the middle of the decade, followed by the creation of "Brady bonds" to allow debt relief short of open default. In this fraught context, Conable immediately hired an outside c...