Sonny Callahan, a small businessman from Mobile in Alabama, is not a name that means much to the coterie of finance ministers, bankers and bureaucrats converging on Washington for this year's annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. But the omission of Callahan's name from the "must-see" lists of highly influential people could be a costly mistake.
Callahan, a Republican congressman, has more power over US policy towards the multilaterals and US foreign aid than either president Bill Clinton or secretary of state Madelaine Albright. It may be Clinton and Albright who travel the world, meet government leaders, exchange views about big intellectual ideas and promise billions of dollars in assistance. But it is 67-year-old Callahan, a down-to-earth southerner and a self-confessed "first grader" in the realm of international finance, who signs the cheque.
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Callahan is chairman of the US House of Representatives' subcommittee on foreign operations, export financing and related programmes, one of 13 sub-committees making up the all-powerful House appropriations committee. Under "foreign ops", as it is known on Capitol Hill, falls jurisdiction for funding IMF quota increases, the World Bank's soft loan window the International Development Association (IDA), other multilateral funding and foreign aid.