Robert Zoellick

Speculations surface media resources that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had discussions with the White House to leave her job next year to take the position of the World Bank President.

Earlier Clinton said she had no plans to stay at the State Department for more than 4 years. Rumors say Clinton expressed her interest in having the World Bank job if Robert Zoellick, current head of the bank, would leave his post in the middle of 2012.

"Hillary Clinton wants the job," said one source who knows the secretary well.

Robert Zoellick, the president of World Bank, said that top economies should consider readopting a modified global gold standard to guide currency movements.

Talking to the Financial Times Zoellick said a "Bretton Woods II" system of floating currencies is needed to replace the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange rate regime that broke down in the early 1970s.

Zoellick called for a system that "is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and (yuan) that moves toward internationalization and then an open capital account."

According to the World Bank report published in Wednesday's Financial Times, swift interest rate hikes targeted at containing inflation in product and asset prices could lead to another recession in US and European countries, economies of which are recovering slowly. 

 Robert Zoellick, World Bank President, warned the United States that the dollar’s position as a reserve currency should not be taken for granted as there are other options emerging on the world scene. Zoellick said global economic forces were shifting and it was time now to prepare for the fact that growth will come from multiple sources.

"The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar's place as the world's predominant reserve currency," he said. "Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options."