[2008.11.15] 全球经济峰会：萧瑟秋风后

The global economic summit
全球经济峰会

After the fall
萧瑟秋风后

Nov 15th 2008
From The Economist print edition

World leaders are meeting in Washington, DC, to fix finance. They have their work cut out
世界领袖们齐聚华盛顿来修正世界金融体系，他们任务艰巨

Illustration by Bill Butcher

THE leaders arriving in Washington, DC, for this weekend’s economic summit are being presumptuous. If they want what they are calling Bretton Woods 2 to live up to the original, which took place in New Hampshire overshadowed by war and the Depression, it will have to establish a new economic order for the capitalist world. In 1944 that meant creating the IMF, the World Bank and a body to oversee world trade. Imagine Hank Paulson, America’s treasury secretary, as John Maynard Keynes; or picture Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, as Winston Churchill (as Mr Brown himself secretly may), and you get a sense of the task ahead.

来华盛顿出席本周末举行的经济峰会的领袖们大都非常自以为是。如果他们想使其所谓的”布雷顿森林体系第二版”达到第一版（在战争和大萧条阴云笼罩下诞生于新罕布什尔的布雷顿森林体系）的效果，就必须为资本主义世界建立一个新的经济秩序。在1944年（译者注：布雷顿森林会议于此年召开）经济新秩序意味着：创建国际货币基金组织和世界银行以及一个监督国际贸易的机构。将美国财政部长汉克•保尔森想像成约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯，或者将英国首相戈登•布朗描绘成为温斯顿•丘吉尔（也许布朗先生私下里会这么做），那么你就可以想象下一步会是如何了。

The Bretton Woodsmen of 2008 are grabbing the credit before they have earned it-rather as all those subprime householders did. More than two years of gruelling technical work laid the ground for the wartime conference of officials and finance ministers (prime ministers and presidents had other things to deal with). By contrast, the leaders gathering this weekend from the G20, a mix of industrial and emerging countries, plus the European Union, have cobbled together an agenda in a few frenetic weeks. They will doubtless produce no shortage of promises. Just what these are worth will depend on sweat and summits yet to come.

2008年准备制定布雷顿森林体系这帮家伙正在透支其信誉额度–就像之前那些用次级贷款买房的房主一样。对于参加上次战时（译者注：当时二战还未结束）会议的官员和财政部长们（因为首相和总统们还有其它事情要去处理）来说，超过两年的紧张而繁重的技术工作准备为其工作提供了前提。相对而言，本次出席峰会的二十国（发达国家和新兴国家加上欧盟）领袖只是草率拼凑了几周狂乱的议事日程。最后，他们必定不会缺少承诺。而这些承诺有多少价值则是取决于其辛苦努力的工作，但是峰会马上就要开始了。

The summit is sure to stir up a debate about the institutions that oversee the international economy. By convening the G20 rather than the closed, rich club of the G7, the old order has in effect acknowledged that the rest of the world has become too important to bar from the room. But what new order should take its place? Answering that question has been a parlour game for economists since long before the crisis. By encouraging them to dust off their pet ideas, the summit will at the very least create a bull market in new schemes for global economic governance.

这次峰会必定会激起对那些监督国际经济的机构组织的辩论。召开二十国峰会而不是七国峰会，这就意味着旧的秩序实际上已经承认其它世界其它国家已经变得非常重要而不能拒之门外了。但是新的秩序应该怎样开始呢？早在本次金融危机很久之前，这就是经济学家们津津乐道的话题。通过鼓励这些经济学家们重温他们喜欢的话题，这次峰会至少会在全球经济治理的新秩序下创造出一个看涨的市场。

Because everyone agrees that something big needs fixing and that the world expects action, calling the summit Bretton Woods 2 could yet come to be seen as a rallying cry for reform. And yet there are lots of reasons to see it as vainglory. The agenda is vague and sprawling. With so many of the world’s political leaders sitting around the table, it will be hard to escape platitudes and hypocrisy. There may be disagreements-especially where sovereignty or competitiveness is threatened. And most of all, the recent international financial collaboration is fraught with in-fighting and complexity.

因为每个人都同意需要进行大的调整，而且世界希望的举措–称之为”布林顿森林体系第二版”–甚至被看为改革的战斗口号。但是仍有很多原因证明这只是噱头而已。议事日程是模糊而且杂乱无序的。有如此多的政治领袖齐聚一堂，免不了些繁文缛节，陈词滥调。而且可能会有分歧–特别是在主权和竞争力受到威胁的时候。最重要的是，在最近的国际金融合作中，充斥着明争暗斗和纷繁交错情况。

At first sight, this summit seems no different. For instance, consider how Mr Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, have vied to claim paternity of the summit for their own domestic reasons. Mr Sarkozy sees a chance to show he is a man of action, and he will find it easier to force through domestic reform if he can show he is not in thrall to all that Anglo-Saxon free-market ideology.

乍看起来，这次峰会没什么不同。例如，可以想象，由于国内的原因，英国首相布朗和法国总统萨科齐肯定会争着声称自己是本次峰会的发起者。萨科齐先生想找个机会来显示下他是个实干家，而且如果能显示出他不屈服于盎格鲁撒克逊人的自由市场意识形态，他国内的改革必将会推进的更容易些。

Mr Brown has been calling for a global summit for weeks, emboldened by international acclaim for his plan to rescue Britain’s banking system. The prime minister is keen to show that the crisis is one of those worldwide messes that-honestly-has nothing to do with the past 11 years of Labour government. And he wants to play the lead in Washington so as to protect the free-market City of London from the Gallic machinations of Mr Sarkozy.

这几周来布朗都为召开一个全球峰会而高呼，他需要获取对英国银行体系救援计划的国际支持来为其壮胆。这位首相非常迫切地显示这次金融危机是世界金融动荡的一部分而（的确如此）与工党的十一年执政没有任何关系。而且他还想在华盛顿扮演领导者的角色，以保护自由市场的城市伦敦不要中了萨科齐高卢人的诡计。

But there is more to the summit than politics. Perhaps inevitably, the run-up to the summit has produced dozens of different proposals. Broadly, they fall into three areas. First and most urgent is the need to limit the crisis, which is even now spiralling from the rich world to emerging economies. Second is financial regulation: its flaws have been laid bare, and the summiteers will want to put it right. Third is global macroeconomics. The G20 needs to find ways to correct the imbalances-Asian saving and Western spending-that lay behind the boom.

但是除了政治之外峰会还有很多内容。可能不可避免的是，峰会的预备阶段已经产生了许多提议。大体来说，这些提议都落在三个范围之内。第一，也是最重要的就是必须遏制这场正在从发达国家蔓延的新兴国家的危机。第二是金融规则：过去金融体系的缺陷已经暴露无遗，峰会的与会者想使其调整完善。第三便是全球宏观经济。二十国集团必须找出纠正在繁荣时期不均衡（亚洲人储蓄而西方人挥霍）的方法。

There are two ways of thinking about this weekend’s summit in Washington. To be charitable, look on and wonder at the sheer ambition of taking on so many hard, important questions. A severe financial crisis may be the only time when the technicalities wallowing near the bottom of policymakers’ agendas receive the attention they deserve. But there is a more cynical interpretation. Perhaps the summiteers will bask in the headlines and then, out of the glare of the television lights, set about something disappointingly modest.

看待本周末的华盛顿峰会有两种方式。仁慈一点来看，会惊讶于其解决如此艰难和重大的问题的十足雄心。也许只有在一场严重的金融危机时，被政策制定者所轻视的技术性问题才能得到其应有的重视。然而也有些更愤世嫉俗的理解：或许这些与会者会对登上新闻头条感到非常享受，于是，在失去了电视镁光灯聚焦后，他们便开始适度地发出些失望的牢骚。

译者：rushor  http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=15401&extra=page%3D1