As the story is told, the list was drawn up by Summers’s assistant, Timothy Geithner (then in charge of international affairs at the Treasury), and Caio Koch-Weser, former managing director at the World Bank and then at the German finance ministry. With data for GDP, population and world trade to hand, they went down the list “ticking some countries and crossing others: Canada in, Spain out, South Africa in, Nigeria and Egypt out, Argentina in, Colombia out, and so on.”
