George Soros wants to be the Bono of the financial world. The speculator whose assault on sterling ejected Britain from the European exchange rate mechanism that September of 10 years ago has a mission—to use his estimated $5 bn fortune and his fame to help tackle what he sees as the failures of globalization. The idea that a man who made billions betting on the financial markets sides with the anti-globalization movement might strike some as ironic. Soros is clearly genuinely appalled at the damage wrought on vulnerable economies by the vast sums of money which flow across national borders every day.
“The US governs the international system to protect its own economy. It is not in charge of protecting other economies，”he says.“So when America goes into recession，you have anti-recessionary policies. When other countries are in recession，they don’t have the ability to engage in anti-recessionary policies because they can’t have a permissive monetary policy，because money would flee. ”In person，he has the air of a philosophy professor rather than a gimlet-eyed financier. In a soft voice which bears the traces of his native Hungary，he argues that it is time to rewrite the so-called Washington consensus—the cocktail of liberalization，privatization and fiscal rectitude which the IMF has been preaching for 15 years. Developing countries no longer have the freedom to run their own economies，he argues，even when they follow perfectly sound policies. He cites Brazil，which although it has a floating currency and manageable public debt was paying ten times over the odds to borrow from capital markets.