Practice 2George Soros the Financial Crocodile　　“The US governs the international system to protect its own economy. It is not in charge of protecting other economies. ”Soros 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 faces 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.　　Soros credits the anti-globalization movement for having made companies more sensitive to their wider responsibilities. “I think [the protesters] have made an important contribution by making people aware of the flaws of the system,” he says. “People on the street had an impact on public opinion and corporations which sell to the public responded to that.” Because the IMF has abandoned billion dollar bailouts for troubled economies, he thinks a repeat of the Asian crisis is unlikely. The fund ‘s new “tough love” policy—for which Argentina is the guinea pig——has other consequences. The bailouts were a welfare system for Wall Street, with western taxpayers rescuing the banks from the consequences of unwise lending to emerging economies.  Now the IMF has drawn a line in the sand, credit to poor countries is drying up. “It has created a new problem-the inadequacy of the flow of capital from center to the periphery,” he says.　　The one economy Soros is not losing any sleep about is the US. “I am much more positive about the underlying economy than I am about the market, because we are waging war not only on terrorism but also on recession.” he says. “I have not yet seen an economy in recession when you are gearing up for war.” He worries that the world’s largest economic power is not living up to its responsibilities. “I would like the United States to live up to the responsibilities of its hegemonic(霸权的) power because it is not going to give up its hegemonic power, ” he says. “The only thing that is realistic is for the United States to become aware that it is in its enlightened self- interest to ensure that the rest of the world benefits from their role.”