In the good old days, the biggest fear of World Bank staffers was the perfect storm that occurred when things didn’t go the right way for Jim Wolfensohn, the Australian-American multi-millionaire who headed the bank for a decade until 2005.

His successor, prickly Paul Wolfowitz, is doing a lot more than bruise the egos of those who work for him. For a start, he has a talent for bad publicity. Remember the scene in the Michael Moore documentary where Wolfowitz, thinking he is off-camera, sticks a comb into his mouth before sliding it through his hair? Remember the photograph in The Economist of the holes in his socks after removing his shoes to enter a mosque in Turkey?

These endearing moments are now eclipsed by the scandal surrounding his girlfriend’s massive pay increase. Wolfowitz has employed Bill Clinton’s celebrity lawyer to rescue him from the wrath of staff, former staff, many governments, NGOs and others. They want him to do the honourable thing and quit for the sake of the institution.

But narcissism is a tricky thing. In this case, it means that the world’s premier development organisation, dedicated to alleviating poverty in poor countries, is taking a big hit to its authority and credibility, not least for the apparent personal hypocrisy of Wolfowitz’s emphasis on combatting corruption.

On arrival from the Pentagon two years ago, fresh from the mess he had done so much to create in Iraq, Wolfowitz was greeted by staff (including more than 2000 PhDs) with all the warmth of turkeys told that tomorrow was Thanksgiving.

Presidents of the bank are appointed by whoever is in the White House, even though the organisation is a multilateral institution such as the United Nations, with staff drawn from more than 100 member countries. With the single, biggest shareholding, the US has always been pushy about pursuing its interests.

But this time it got out of hand. The new boss brought with him several trusted headkickers from the Pentagon and isolated himself in his suite to pursue an ideological agenda along the lines of his neo-con colleague John Bolton, whom President Bush tried to impose on the UN as US ambassador.

Together they set about the task of favouring allies such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan while getting tough on a number of countries outside the ideological circle. The word from Washington is that the Bush beliefs on family planning and climate change were also being eased into policy and projects. This, as much as that lavish pay increase, is what worries those who want Wolfowitz to go.