Hand-picked, hand-trained nothingness

Having been there, done that and received oh so many meaningless t-shirts, one can't help but agree with Der Spiegel on this one. However, national-level institutions should be included as well:

In Global Institutions, Mediocrity Is the Way to the Top

Many international organizations suffer from the fact that they are run by uninspiring bureaucrats. In most cases, this is the fault of the heads of state and government who prefer to elevate weak figures, who won't mettle too much, to these positions. Is that the best approach in these times of crisis?

No doubt these criticisms will be taken into consideration and lessons will be learned. If things really hot up we might just get an inter-agency task force whose mission is to streamline the decision-making process, cut red-tape and produce best practices which can then be ignored as the bureaucrati moves on to the next most important thing in the world which must be fixed within the next six weeks. All contingent upon the truly most important factor being in place, funding.

You know the routine.