Billionaire George Soros warns that the United States must act immediately to save emerging-market countries from the global financial crisis.

Developed countries enjoy far more regulatory power over financial markets than do emerging markets, Soros writes in the Financial Times.

As evidence, Soros cites the veto rights the United States holds at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The result of this imbalance is that international monetary policies provide less stability and protection for emerging markets.

“The so-called Washington Consensus imposed strict market discipline on other countries, but the U.S. was exempt from it,” Soros notes.

And while the IMF is discussing a new credit facility for countries at the periphery, Soros says that what’s being proposed would be too little and too late.

"Unfortunately the authorities are always lagging behind events," Soros says. "That is why the financial crisis is spinning out of control."

"It is time to start thinking about creating special drawing rights or some other form of international reserves on a large scale, but that is subject to American veto.”

Many emerging market countries have strengthened their banks and other financial institutions and built up significant central bank reserves since the 1990s, Citibank CEO William Rhodes told the Financial Times.

However, without measures that reduce the impact of the global liquidity crisis, “emerging markets could enter an intensifying downward spiral … that will eradicate the progress made during the last decade,” Rhodes says.