George Soros -- the financial crocodile

 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 esti－mated ￡5 bn fortune and his fame to help tackle what he sees as the failures of globalisation. The idea that a man who made billions betting on the financial markets sides with the anti－globalisation 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.

 金融大鳄乔治·索罗斯

    乔治·索罗斯想成为金融界的博诺（U２乐队主唱）。这位在10年前的那个９月份攻击英镑迫使英国退出欧洲汇率机制的投机商有一项使命---利用他大约50亿英镑的财产和他的声名来帮助解决他所认为的全球化失败问题。一个靠在全球金融市场上的投机赚了几十亿的人会支持反全球化运动，这对许多人来说是具有讽刺意义的。很明显，对于每天在各国之间流动的大量资金给经济脆弱国家造成的伤害，索罗斯从心底感到震惊。

"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 liberalisation, privatisation 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.

　   索罗斯说："美国管理国际经济体系是为了保护本国利益，它并不负责保护其它国家的经济。因此，当美国陷入衰退后，美国会出台反衰退政策。而其他国家陷入衰退时，却无力这样做，因为这些国家不能实行自由开放的金融政策，否则资金就会外流?"索罗斯本人并不像一个目光敏锐的金融家，他更具有哲学教授的气质。带着匈牙利母语口音，他轻声地说，现在是修改所谓的"华盛顿共识"的时侯了。他指的是国际货币基金组织15年来宣扬的自由化、私有化和财政透明的综合体制。他说，发展中国家即使执行非常合理的政策，也不能再自由地控制本国经济。他援引巴西的例子说，尽管巴西实行了浮动汇率制和可控国债，但它向资本市场借款还是付出了比正常条件下高出１０倍的成本。liuxuepaper.com