Stanley Fischer leaves the International Monetary Fund in defiant mood. Not only does he defend the fund's record, but he suggests it will struggle to react differently to financial crises in future.
Mr Fischer, as much as anyone, is associated with IMF's policy of organising billion-dollar bail-outs of emerging markets. In his last days as first deputy managing director, he has devised a package to rescue Argentina. Six years ago, when he left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to join the fund, he arrived just in time for the Mexican, Asian and Russian financial crises. More recently, currency crises in Brazil and Turkey have tested to the limit his legendary work rate - one IMF official describes him as a "whirling dervish".
But the fund he leaves is quite different from the one he joined. The bail-outs with which he and former US Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers became synonymous are under attack. Paul O'Neill, the present US Treasury secretary, came to office declaring an end to the era of massive aid packages.
Argentina, which conquered inflation but also crippled its economy by pegging its currency to the dollar in accordance with IMF advice, has been a particular source of controversy. But Mr Fischer's defends his belief in sticking by troubled countries and supporting the courses they and the IMF have chosen.
"The currency peg is very, very hard, institutionally as well as politically," he says. "I have not detected anybody who wants to move away from it."
Mr Fischer describes Argentina as an "old-fashioned crisis" - one involving a pegged exchange rate. He admits this is an issue where his own approach has changed, seeing a greater need for countries to get off fixed currency regimes quickly to avoid messy forced exits. In the future, he says, "the sort of crises we will have will be more related to debt sustainability".
But while the nature of challenges may alter, Mr Fischer seems to hold out little hope of a change from the IMF's ad hoc approach to resolving them.
Mr Fischer has aroused some irritation from IMF officials and industrialised countries for his willingness to reach for the chequebook when crisis threatens, particularly since the IMF has failed to find a way systematically to compel private investors to share the pain of debt restructuring.
"I have sat in meetings with Stan Fischer and his first question has always been: 'how much money can we push at this country?'," says a senior central banker.
But Mr Fischer says: "What it will take to help a country stabilise has to be judged on each occasion."
As for the vexed question of forcing private investors to reschedule debt, he clearly has his doubts. "As of now, we don't have the legal mechanisms for making that work. We need to sit down now and look at what a standstill mechanism would look like . . . rather than keep the debate at this very general level where we seem to be getting nowhere. Maybe it is impossible."
In the absence of an over-arching new system, he says, it is difficult to turn down pleas from countries such as Turkey and Argentina promising tough reform in return for emergency loans. "This is a co-operative institution," he says. "It has a responsibility when its members ask for help."
As for those who fret about "moral hazard" - encouraging reckless lending by private investors who know they will be bailed out - he says: "Moral hazard is a feature of every insurance arrangement. Those who emphasise that IMF lending should be smaller and less frequent are implicitly saying there should be much less international lending and reliance on international capital markets."
The IMF in recent years has also come under fire from a more fundamental set of critics: anti-globalisation protesters, some of who m want the fund to close. They have made a start by successfully cutting next month's annual meetings in half. Mr Fischer is refreshingly candid about the faults of globalisation.
"Some of the criticisms about the debt of the poorest countries were valid," he says, in a reference to the heavily indebted poor countries debt relief initiative. This may surprise some debt relief campaigners, who found Mr Fischer characteristically courteous but not particularly sympathetic to their aims. He says: "You need to get countries into the habit of servicing their debt but it doesn't mean that in extremis you shouldn't do something."
Similarly, he accepts that economic globalisation has its downside. "Things do need to be fixed with globalisation," he says, and calls for more transparency about what investors in emerging markets are up to. "Health issues and the transfer of technology in developing countries are also valid concerns. There will be dislocations in the process of integrating into the global economy and we need to find better ways to compensate the losers."
But, like all applied economists, he gets frustrated with abstract debates. "I have concluded that as long as we keep the debate at the level of: 'Globalisation: are you for it or against it?', we will get nowhere."
Following a farewell dinner - the invitation list included Mr Rubin and Mr Summers as well as Domingo Cavallo, the Argentine finance minister - Mr Fischer is now considering what to do next. Some combination of academia, policy advising and working in the private sector seems likely. One rumour in Washington is that Goldman Sachs may secure his services.
But given his evident love of being at the centre of the policy debate and his great popularity with developing countries - 20 of which unsuccessfully nominated him to be managing director of the IMF last year - one natural berth for Mr Fischer might be the World Bank.
As a former chief economist at the bank and having been born in what is now Zambia - though a naturalised American - Mr Fischer could easily turn up in some role at the institution. Nor would it involve much dislocation for him, being just across 19th Street in Washington DC from the IMF.
Is that his intention? "As I said when I was first asked about the World Bank, I will cross that street when I come to it," he beams.