Lost the page on the way to my hotel tonight in McLean, but it was a section page 1 right column piece in the Financial Times saying that the smartest man in the Bush Administration (my term), Robert Zoellick, was leaving to join a Wall Street firm, having had it made clear to him by the White House that he won't replace John Snow as Secretary of the Treasury.

[webmaster update] Zoellick 'to quit for job on Wall Street'

Sad news for this now largely lost administration.

Bad news for U.S. foreign and security policy.

Really bad news for China.

Serious loss for Doha Round, and thus globalization as a whole.

I am now officially depressed at the notion of three more years of this sort of lame-duckness and lack of strategic imagination.