評論
打印
(A sailor who had already depleted his supplies, leaving him with no additional hardtack of his own to eat today, would be in no position to repay borrowed biscuits either.)
(早已耗盡了自身供給，讓自己今天沒有額外的干糧吃的船員也不會有能力去償還借來的干糧。)
That was bad news for thrifty seafarers.
對于勤儉的船員來說，這屬于壞消息。
But worse scenarios were possible.
但是，更壞的情況是有可能的。
If the sailors had washed ashore with perishable figs rather than imperishable hardtack, the rate of interest would have been steeply negative.
如果船員們是帶著容易腐爛變質的無花果而不是不容易腐爛變質的硬面包被沖到岸上來的，利率會是陡峭的負的。
"There is no absolutely necessary reason inherent in the nature of man or things why the rate of interest in terms of any commodity standard should be positive rather than negative," Fisher concluded.
“在人或物的屬性中，不存在為什么以任一商品標準來表示的利率應當是正的而不是負的的絕對必然的內在理由，”費雪總結道。
Two years ago, when the Bank of Japan(BoJ) began charging financial institutions for adding to their reserves at the central bank,
兩年前，當日本銀行開始對金融機構增加它們在央行的儲備而收費時，
its negative-rate policy was harshly criticised for unsettling thrifty households, jeopardising bank profitability and killing growth with "monetary voodoo".
它的負利率政策受到了嚴厲地批評，被認為是攪亂了節儉的家庭，危及到了銀行的盈利，而且還以“貨幣政策巫術”扼殺了增長。
Behind this fear and criticism was perhaps agut conviction that negative rates upended the natural order of things.
在這種擔憂和批評的背后，可能是一種本能的認識，即負利率顛覆了事物的自然秩序。
Why should people pay to save money they had already earned?
為什么人們應當為存儲早已掙到手的錢付費呢?
Earlier cuts below zero in Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and the euro area were scarcely more popular.
瑞士、丹麥、瑞典和歐元區的早先低于0的減息幾乎一點也不受歡迎。
But these monetary innovations would have struck some earlier economic thinkers as entirely natural.
但是，這些貨幣政策方面的創新卻會作為完全自然的創新而打動某些較早時候的經濟學家。
Indeed, "The Natural Economic Order" was the title that Silvio Gesell gave to his 1916 treatise in favour of negative interest rates on money.
《自然的經濟秩序》是西爾沃.格塞爾(SilvioGesell)給他1916年的一篇主張貨幣負利率的論文所起的題目。
In it, he span his own shipwreck parable, in which a lone Robinson Crusoe tries to save three years' worth of provisions to tide him over while he devotes his energies to digging a canal.
在那篇論文中，他勾畫了自己的海難寓言——獨自一人的魯濱遜一邊試圖把價值三年的給養儲存起來渡過難關，一邊把精力都用在開鑿一條水道上面。
文章來自經濟學人
