評(píng)論
打印
Finance and Economics
財(cái)經(jīng)
Free exchange: A lost decade
自由交流：失去的十年
Governments prevented a second Depression, but left the world vulnerable.
各國政府防止了二次衰退。但是，卻讓世界變得脆弱不堪。
Ten years ago this month, America entered the “Great Recession”.
十年前的這個(gè)月，美國步入了“大衰退”。
A decade on, the recession occupies a strange space in public memory.
十年后的今天，這場衰退在公共記憶中占據(jù)著一處奇怪的空間。
Its toll was clearly large.
它的損失顯然是巨大的。
America suffered a cumulative loss of output estimated at nearly $4trn, and its labour markets have yet to recover fully.
美國遭受了估計(jì)將近4萬億美元的累計(jì)產(chǎn)出損失。
But the recession was far less bad than it might have been, thanks to the successful application of lessons from the Depression.
但是，由于得自大蕭條經(jīng)驗(yàn)教訓(xùn)的成功應(yīng)用，衰退遠(yuǎn)不如可能的那樣嚴(yán)重。
Paradoxically, that success spared governments from enacting bolder reforms of the sort that might make the Great Recession the once-a-century event economists thought such calamities should be.
吊詭的是，這種成功反而使得各國政府免于實(shí)施那種或許會(huì)讓大衰退成為經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家認(rèn)為此類災(zāi)難理應(yīng)是百年一遇事件的更大膽的改革。
Good crisis response treats its symptoms; the symptoms of a disease, after all, can kill you.
好的危機(jī)應(yīng)對(duì)，因病施治，對(duì)癥下藥；畢竟，病癥可能置人于死地。
On that score today's policymakers did far better than those of the 1930s.
在這一點(diǎn)上，今天的決策者要比上世紀(jì)30年代的決策者做得好得多。
Government budgets have become a much larger share of the economy, thanks partly to the rise of the modern social safety net.
政府預(yù)算已然成為了一種大了很多的經(jīng)濟(jì)占比，這部分是拜當(dāng)今的社會(huì)保障網(wǎng)所賜。
Consequently, public borrowing and spending on benefits did far more to stabilise the economy than they did during the Depression.
因而，社會(huì)福利上的公共舉債和開支為穩(wěn)定經(jīng)濟(jì)起到了比它們在大蕭條期間更大的作用。
Policymakers stepped in to prevent the extraordinary collapse in prices and incomes experienced in the 1930s.
決策者介入了進(jìn)來，以防止在上世紀(jì)30年代曾經(jīng)經(jīng)歷過的價(jià)格和收入方面的大崩潰。
They also kept banking panics from spreading, which would have amplified the pain of the downturn.
他們還控制住了或許會(huì)放大衰退痛苦的銀行業(yè)的恐慌，使之未能外溢。
Though unpopular, the decision to bail out the financial system prevented the implosion of the global economy.
盡管不受歡迎，救助金融體系的決定防止了全球經(jīng)濟(jì)的內(nèi)爆。
But the success of those policies, and the relatively bearable recession that resulted, allowed governments to avoid more dramatic interventions of the sort which, after the 1930s, gave the world half a century of (relative) economic calm.
但是，這些政策的成功以及由此所帶來的相對(duì)可以承受的衰退卻給了各國政府避免那種曾在上世紀(jì)30年代之后讓世界獲得了半個(gè)世紀(jì)的(相對(duì))經(jīng)濟(jì)平靜的更加劇烈的干預(yù)。
