作者：shiyi18

A special report on financial risk

财经风险特别报告

Blocking out the sirens’ song

不要被海妖之歌蛊惑

Moneymen need saving from themselves

金融家们需要自救

Feb 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

RISK antennae twitch after a crisis. Bankers, regulators and academics, shaken from their complacency, jostle to identify the next tempest. Right now gusts are blowing from several directions. Many countries’ fiscal positions are deteriorating fast after costly interventions to shore up financial systems and restore growth. There is talk of demanding collateral even on deals with formerly unimpeachable sovereign entities. Recent terrorist incidents have raised the spectre of external shocks.

危机之后， 风险天线开始四处探指。银行家，市场监管者和学者们从他们的洋洋得意中惊醒过来，争论着下一轮金融风暴将如何到来。而今风暴的气息来自多个方面。在运用代价高昂的抢救金融系统措施过渡干预金融系统和支持恢复经济增长之后，很多的国家的财政状况开始急剧恶化。传说现在即使和之前未陷入经济危机的国家之间的交易也开始需要抵押。而新近的恐怖袭击事件也引发了对海外股权市场的恐惧。

Yet at least a fragile sort of optimism has surfaced, born of ultra-cheap money and relief at having avoided a depression. In some markets fresh bubbles may be forming. Stockmarkets have rebounded sharply. America’s, though still well off their peaks, are up to 50% overvalued on a historical basis. Banks are once again throwing money at hedge funds and private-equity firms (though with tougher margin requirements). Issuance of structured-loan funds, which a few months back looked dead, is booming. Investment banks’ profits, and bonus pools, are back near pre-crisis levels. International regulators have been issuing warnings to chief executives about a return of irrational exuberance. Banks have been ordered to run stress tests involving a sudden jump in interest rates, in preparation for central banks’ withdrawal of monetary adrenaline.

至少现在一种不切实际的乐观主义正在浮出水面，因为他们实施超低息政策来避免经济衰退。这在一些市场中正在形成新的泡沫。股市已经大幅回升。尽管美国股市指数比他们的巅峰值低的多，但是从历史数据看来仍然被高估百分之50.银行一再的向对冲基金和私募主权（基金）公司投资（尽管额定保证金率已经上调）。几个月前看起来已经死亡的结构化贷款基金也在扩大发行。投资银行的利润和分红池也回到接近经济危机前的水平。国际监管者们已经向高管们发出关于非理性繁荣回归的警告。银行界已经被命令进行关于突然上调银行利率的压力测试，为央行取消货币刺激政策做准备。

Many will already be doing this as they try to show that they have learnt their lessons. Like the best chess players, bankers insist that they are now concentrating as hard on avoiding mistakes as on winning. Those that sidestepped the worst mortgage-related landmines now top the industry’s new order. Blackrock’s Mr Fisher defines risk as “deviation from objective”, on the upside as well as the downside. If your models tell you that a security is safer than its returns imply, as with CDOs, that might just suggest hidden risks.

很多人都准备好了应付着一切，正如他们在尽量表现得已经从过去吸取了教训。就好像最优秀的国际象棋选手那样，银行家们声称如今他们对于避免发生错误的重视程度等同于对于成功的追求。绕过次贷地雷区逃过一劫的公司现在都成了行业翘楚。黑石集团的费舍尔先生将风险定义为“偏离目标”，过高过低都算。如果你的模型告诉你某一债券比其回报率所暗示的安全性要高，比如担保债权凭证，那么你就得假设其中有隐藏的风险。

Fancy mathematics will continue to play a role, to be sure. But finance is not physics, and markets have an emotional side. In their struggle with the quants, those who would trust their gut instinct have gained ground.

顶级的数学家们将毫无疑问继续扮演重要的角色。但是经济并非物理学，而市场也有它感性的一面。在和这些金融数学工程家们的对抗中，那些相信自己直觉的人们开始得势。

Learning to tie knots
自己学会系鞋带

Governments are taking no chances. Bloomberg counts some 50 bills and other serious proposals for financial reform in America and Europe. Leaders in America’s Senate hope to pass new rules by March. But there are limits to what can be expected from regulators and supervisors. Like bankers, they have blind spots. As the mortgage fiasco showed, they are vulnerable to capture by those they police.

政府不想冒任何风险。 根据彭博社的统计， 欧美各国政府一共通过了50多个法案和其他重要的议案。美国参议院的领导人希望在3月前通过一些新的法案。.我们期望监管者能干的事毕竟还是有限度的。比如银行业，监管者们就有自己的盲区。像在抵押贷款危机中所体现出来的那样，监管者很容易被那些接受监管的人所俘虏。

Their job will be made easier if new rules tackle incentives for the private sector to take excessive risk. It is human behaviour, more than financial instruments, that needs changing, says Mr Mauboussin of Legg Mason. Like Odysseus passing the sirens, bankers need to be tied to a mast to stop them from giving in to temptation. Pay structures should be better aligned with the timescale of business strategies that run for a number of years and should not reward “leveraged beta”, unremarkable returns juiced with borrowed money. In securitisation, originators will have to disclose more information about loan pools and hold a slice of their products.

如果新的规矩能打消（tackle）私人部门过分承担风险的激励动因，那么他们（参议院）的工作也许会简单很多。就像美盛集团的马博新先生所说，需要改变的与其说是金融工具， 不如说是人的行为。像奥德赛经过塞壬海妖时所做的那样，银行家们需要被绑在桅杆上来避免他们屈从于诱惑。薪酬结构最好跟行之数年的企业战略的时段互相挂钩， 而不是拿来酬庸“杠杆贝塔”，酬庸那种用借来的钱灌水的原本稀疏平常的回报。在证券行业，发起人将必须披露关于贷款池的更多信息而且自身必须持有一定该产品。

Some of the worst abuses in securitisation stemmed from the use of credit ratings. Rating agencies systematically underestimated default risk on vast amounts of debt, resulting in puffed-up prices and a surfeit of issuance. Paid by issuers, they had every incentive to award inflated ratings and keep the market humming: average pay at the agencies rose and fell in tandem with the volume of asset-backed issuance (see chart 7).

证券业一些最严重的错弊起源于信贷评级的使用。信贷评级机构常常低估大额贷款的违约风险，致使价格不切实际的上涨和大规模发行。由证券发行商们支付佣金，他们尽一切可能来获得高的信贷评级同时保持市场信心：平均支付给信贷评级机构的佣金的高低和资产抵押贷款的发行规模直接相关。（见下图7）

An obvious way to deal with this would be to eliminate the agencies’ official “nationally recognised” status, opening the business to unfettered competition. Raters would then have to persuade investors of their competence, rather than relying on a government imprimatur. This, in turn, would force investors themselves to spend more time analysing loans. Oddly, proposed reforms fall far short of this, with no sign of anything tougher on the horizon. CreditSights, a research firm, awarded ratings firms its “Houdini was an Amateur” award for 2009.

一种解决此事最直观的方法就是取消这些代理商的官方“国家承认”的地位，将此行业推向自由竞争。评级者们就必须使投资者们信任他们的自身能力而不是依赖于他们的官方背景。这么做同时也使得投资者必须让自己花费更多的时间分析贷款。奇怪的是，预期的改革在这方面落后很多，且该方面的改革并无太大困难。信贷视野，一家研究公司，给信贷评级公司颁发了他设立的2009年度“外行的胡迪尼”奖。

Nor, alas, is there much appetite to tackle some of the public policies that contributed to the crisis. The non-recourse status of mortgages in large parts of America, for instance, gives the borrower a highly attractive put option: he can, in effect, sell the house to the lender at any time for the principal outstanding. An even bigger problem is the favourable tax treatment of debt relative to equity. Phasing this out would discourage the build-up of excessive leverage. But the idea has little political traction.

唉，其实解决一些助长经济危机的公共政策更为合适。举例来说，在美国多数地区无追索权抵押贷款具有法律地位，这对借款人来说是极具吸引力的看跌期权：事实上，他可以在任何价格合适的时候将房子卖给借款者。而更大的问题是对于权益性负债的税收优惠。或许取消这些会打击过度使用杠杆的趋势。但是这些观点几乎没什么政治影响。

There are, to be sure, risks to rushing reform. Post-crisis regulation has a long history of unintended consequences, from the pay reforms of the early 1990s (when new limits on the deductibility from corporate tax of executive salaries merely shifted the excesses to bonuses) to key parts of the Sarbanes-Oxley act on corporate governance. Another danger is the pricing of risk by regulation, not markets. The credit-card act passed in America last year leaves providers with a choice between underpricing for some products, which is bad for them, or restricting their offerings, which is bad for consumers.

激烈的改革肯定会有风险。过去的经济危机中，变革常常带来意想不到的后果，从1990代初期的工资改革（当时给可抵扣公司税的管理人员工资额设定了新的上限，而这部分超过新上限的二队就被转移到了奖金中去了）到萨班斯奥克斯里法案在公司治理方面的核心变革皆是如此。另一项危险来源于管理而非市场带来的风险定价。去年美国通过的信用卡法案留给供应商们两种选择，要么降低某些商品的价格–这对他们自身不利，要么限制他们的供应量–这对消费者不利。

Most would agree, however, that markets need both tighter rules and better enforcement. The biggest question mark hangs over the fate of those institutions whose collapse would threaten the system. America’s proposal to cap banks’ size and ban proprietary trading has fortified those calling for radical measures to tackle the “too big to fail” problem.

但是多数人都认为，市场既需要严格的管理规则也需要良好的推动力。当前最大的问题就是那些行业巨头们的命运，他们的垮台将会危及到整个系统。美国计划设立银行规模上限同时取消所有权交易，就是在对解决“因为太大而不能倒闭”问题的呼声做出的回应。

The virtues of scepticism

怀疑态度的可贵

By itself, though, the plan does little to back up Barack Obama’s promise to stop such firms from holding the taxpayer hostage. Proprietary trading and investments are a small part of most big banks’ activities and played only a minor role in the crisis. Nor does the plan cover brokers, insurers or industrial firms’ finance arms, all of which had to be bailed out. To persuade markets that the giants no longer enjoy implicit state guarantees, whether they are banks or not, policymakers will need to present a cocktail of solutions that also include tougher capital and liquidity standards, central clearing of derivatives and credible mechanisms to dismantle firms whose losses in a crisis would overwhelm even a strengthened safety buffer.

尽管这些计划本身并不能帮助巴拉克 奥巴马兑现他的诺言，奥巴马总统曾承诺不会再让大公司把纳税人作为牺牲品。所有权交易和投资仅仅是大银行业务中很小的一部分而且在经济危机中也不扮演什么重要的角色。而那些必须被取缔的经纪人，保险家，或者产业公司们的经济武器却不在此列。为了向市场证明这些产业巨头们（无论他们是不是银行）不再享受暗中的政府支持，政策的制定者们需要推出一项混合计划，该计划必须包含严格的资本和流动性标准，衍生产品的中央结算。以及可靠的机制来取消那些无论安全缓冲机制多么完善遇到危机便一败涂地不可收拾的大公司的出现。

Together, intelligent regulatory reforms and a better understanding of the limitations of quantitative risk management can help to reduce the damage inflicted on the financial system when bubbles burst. But they will never eliminate bad lending or excessive exuberance. After every crisis bankers and investors tend to forget that it is their duty to be sceptical, not optimistic. In finance the gods will always find a way to strike back.

总而言之，当经济泡沫破裂时，智能化监管系统的革新和对风险管理模型局限性的理解可以帮助我们降低其对金融系统的影响。但是这些永远不能消除坏账和过度活跃。每当经济危机过去，银行家和投资者们都容易忘记他们应该保持怀疑的态度，而不是乐观。在经济上，上帝将随时反戈一击。

译者：pandaren
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Japan’s fragile economy 日本脆弱的经济

Kabuki economics 夸张的日本经济

A set of positive indicators hides troubling realities 一组表现优异的宏观经济指标暗藏着许多令人不安的现实。

Feb 18th 2010 | TOKYO | From The Economist print edition

PICK a number, any number. Statistics released this week show that the Japanese economy staged a vigorous rebound in the fourth quarter of last year. Real gross domestic product grew by 1.1% from the previous quarter, which amounted to an annualised rate of 4.6% (see chart). The economy is growing, but the closer you look the murkier things get.
（分析日本经济）挑选一组数据，任一数据（都藏有不安）。这周公布的数据表明，去年第四季度日本经济出现了强势反弹。第四季度实际国内生产总值较第三季度增长了1.1%——按年率计算为4.6%（见图表）。日本经济正在回升，但是你越仔细观察她，越是难以看清她。

The bounce in fourth-quarter GDP partly reflects the economy’s starting point. In the previous quarter growth had been nil, having been readjusted downward twice, from an initial estimate of 1.2% in November and a revised one of 0.3% in December. (If the latest numbers are to be believed, Japan’s GDP ended up contracting by 5% last year.)
去年第四季度国内生产总值的回升在一定程度上可以看成是经济发展的起点。上一季度（指2009年第三季度——译者注）的经济增长率为0%，（该季度经济）增长年率向下调整了两次——一次是从1.2%（11月）下调到0.3% （12月），后又从0.3%（12月）下调到0%。（1.2%和0.3%均是按年率计算所得，若以0.3%的年率为计算基础，则第三季度环比经济增长率为0.0749%。根据第三季度年增长率为0，得出该季度经济环比增长率为0%——译者注）（如果最近的数据可信，那么2009年日本国内生产总值会以缩水5%收官）

（这里的-5%与前面的季度环比增长率的年率计算和季度环比增长率的计算都没有关系，其计算公式为A*(1+R)^y=B 其中A为计算增长率的期前数，B为期末数，R为增长率，y为所覆盖到的年份数，此处A为2008年日本国内生产总值，B为2009年日本生产总值 R即为这里要求解的-5%,y等于1. 如果第四季度（the latest number）的环比增长率今后不改动，那么日本2009年全年的GDP不会变动，故可求出2009年的经济增长率——译者注）

Similar revisions are possible this time round. Japan’s number-crunchers continually update the economic numbers using new information and eschew statistical methods to smooth the figures, as in other countries. Like Japanese kabuki theatre, in which characters use exaggerated gestures to energise the audience, the country’s statistics unrealistically magnify both good news and bad.
这次可能也要做出类似的数据修正。日本内阁府中的财务省屡屡利用新信息来更新宏观经济数字并且没有像其他国家一样采用统计方法来平滑数据。在日本的歌舞伎座剧场里，表演者利用夸张的举止来感染观众，同样，这个国家的宏观经济数据不切实际地同时夸大利好消息和利空消息。

The uncertainties do not end there. The big drivers of growth last quarter were domestic demand, which contributed 2.1 percentage points to annualised GDP growth, and exports, which contributed 2.2 percentage points. (The balance came from public-sector demand.) This might suggest that Japan’s economy is gradually rebalancing away from a dependence on external demand. Not so.
经济发展的不确定性依然存在。上一季度经济增长的主要驱动力是国内需求，它给GDP的年增长率贡献了2.1个百分点，同时还有出口，它则贡献了2.2个百分点。（剩下0.3个百分点来自于公共需求）。这或许表明日本经济正逐渐恢复平衡，告别了（过去两个季度中）依靠外需的经济增长模式。但是事实并非如此。

Nearly all the growth in consumer spending came from durable goods like cars and electronic gadgets, which have benefited from government subsidies introduced last year. These subsidies are ending in September (for cars) and December (for electronics and appliances). Once durable goods are removed from the data, consumer spending in the fourth quarter was flat. That is unsurprising. Wages are falling and unemployment, though below its peak of 5.7% last July, remains above 5%, high by Japanese standards. Household consumption fell in 2009 as a whole but sales of beansprouts, a classic belt-tightening purchase in Japan, jumped by more than 10%.
几乎所有私人消费开支的增加都来自于耐久商品诸如汽车和电子设备的购买，这得益于去年政府推出的补贴计划。汽车补贴在9月份结束，而在12月，家用电器的补贴也告一段落。一旦将耐用消费品的开销不纳入数据，那么第4季度私人消费开支便呈低迷之状。这一点都不奇怪。工资在下降并且失业率，尽管低于去年7月份的峰值5.7%，但是依然徘徊在5%以上，这高于日本标准。家庭消费在2009年整体下降但是豆芽菜的销量却跳升了10%还多，在日本，豆芽菜是勒紧裤带度日的传统食品。

What about investment? Capital expenditure rose by 1% in the final three months of 2009, the first increase in seven quarters. But that came after a cumulative 25% decline since mid-2008. Firms’ capacity-utilisation rate, which measures the usage of existing equipment, is low. This suggests that capital expenditure has stabilised but not recovered, says Hiroshi Shiraishi of BNP Paribas.
那投资如何呢？资本开支在2009年最后一个季度上升了1%，是七个季度以来的首升。但那是在经历了自2008年中期以来累计下跌25%之后出现的。企业的产能利用率——用来测量现有设备的利用程度——处于低位。这表明资本开支一直稳定但是并没有恢复，法国巴黎银行的Hiroshi Shiraishi如是说。

That leaves exports, Japan’s normal route out of recessions. Exports produce the bulk of corporate profits, even though domestic consumption accounts for about 60% of GDP. The recovery is fragile here too. The country’s biggest export destination last quarter was China, sales to which increased by 43% in December alone. As Beijing tamps down on bank lending to address potential overheating, that number may yet turn out to be another illusion.
剩下的就是出口了，它是日本摆脱经济衰退的正规之路。日本的出口带来了丰厚的企业利润，尽管国内需求在GDP中的比重约占到60%。 经济复苏（的基本面）依旧脆弱。去年第四季度日本最大的贸易出口对象是中国，单单在12月，日本对中国的贸易额就上升了43%。 随着中国政府打压银行信贷来应对可能出现的经济过热，那一数据还可能最终证明是另一番幻影。

译者：Intel英杰
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Europe’s financial crisis
欧洲金融危机

The spectre that haunts Europe
徘徊在欧洲的幽灵

A bail-out for Greece will not be the end of the euro area’s fiscal troubles
对希腊的救助绝非欧元区国家财政困境的终结

Feb 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

AS FINANCE ministers from the European Union gathered in Brussels for a two-day “informal” summit on February 11th, there was only one topic on the agenda: how best to help Greece avoid defaulting on its debts while, at the same time, reassuring bond markets that other euro-area countries with big budget deficits, such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain, were still safe bets.

2月11日，来自欧盟区各国的财长们齐聚布鲁塞尔进行了为期两天“非正式”的高峰会议，这次会议的议程只有一个：如何更好地帮助希腊，使之避免出现拖欠债务的危局；与此同时，给债券市场打气，证实其它欧元区国家如爱尔兰，葡萄牙和西班牙等，虽然预算的赤字高企，仍然是可以放心的投资对象。

As The Economist went to press, only the basic elements of a possible backstop for Greece had emerged. Pride is at stake, so it will be a “European solution”, with the IMF limited to an advisory role. It will be a joint effort led by France and a somewhat reluctant Germany, the country with the deepest pockets. Berlin frets that a rescue will only encourage further profligacy.

当本期《经济学人》交付印刷时，只出现了一些援助希腊的初步迹象。这次救援行动将是一个“欧洲人自救的项目”，国际货币基金组织在其中仅限于咨询作用，目的就是要保住欧洲人的脸面。这是一个由法国和德国牵头的联合行动，德国虽然家底最厚，但有点不情愿出头。柏林担心对希腊的救援行动只会起到鼓励其它国家大手大脚花钱的效果。

Acting in concert limits the political fallout that comes from rescuing countries. It helps put pressure on Greece for more reforms and cuts in public spending as conditions of the bail-out. But the need for co-ordination makes it hard to act decisively, and leaves bond markets nervous. Funding will be limited, perhaps just enough to help Greece meet its immediate obligations (euro 20 billion of its debts fall due in April and May). Help may take the form of a guarantee on refinancing bonds or an outright purchase of those bonds by Greece’s rescuers.

协调一致的行动限制了救援国施加的政治影响。它使希腊感受到更大的压力，不得不进行更多的改革和削减公共开支措施，这些行动也是此次救援的附带条件。但是，协调行动使得救援措施拖泥带水，这导致了债券市场的不安情绪。此次发行债券的限额或许只够帮助希腊偿还即将到期的债务（4-5月到期的200亿欧元的债务）。此次救援采取的方式可能是对再融资债券进行担保，或者由救援国直接购买这些债券。

There is talk that one reason to keep the IMF out is that its chief, Dominque Strauss-Kahn, may be a rival to President Nicolas Sarkozy in the French elections in 2012 (see article). If Europe snubs the IMF, it may eventually need to set up a clone—a European Monetary Fund—to deal with future funding crises. That idea has little support for now, it seems. The ad hoc response to the Greek crisis may partly reflect a fear that a formal set-up with a staff, budget and the ability to raise funds in capital markets would be too close to a fiscal union for many countries to stomach.

有种说法认为国际货币基金组织没有参加此次救援行动的一个原因是其总裁多米尼克•斯特劳斯-卡恩，他很可能在2012年的法国大选中成为萨科齐总统的竞争对手（见链接的文章）。如果欧洲要冷落国际货币基金组织，它最终可能需要成立一个类似的机构——欧洲货币基金组织，以应付将来可能出现的债务危机。但似乎现在没有人支持这种设想。应付此次希腊危机的临时性措施也许部分反映了某种戒备心理，他们担心会出现一个有经费和人员，能够在资本市场上筹集资金的机构，这太像是一个财政同盟了，而这一同盟是许多国家所不愿见到的。

For some, the rescue of Greece marks a new wave of the global financial crisis. The first was about the solvency of banks; this one is about the solvency of sovereign countries. Yet Greece’s public-finance problems were brewing long before the rich world’s banks started to falter. When it joined the euro in 2001, its public debt was already more than 100% of GDP. Despite a long boom spurred by low interest rates inside the euro, Greece did little to tackle its persistent deficits.

对于一些人来说，此次希腊救援行动标志着又一波全球金融危机的到来。第一波金融危机涉及到银行的偿付能力，而此次危机关系到主权国家的偿付能力。然而，希腊的公共财政问题远在富裕国家的银行危机开始之前就已经积累。当它在2001年加入欧元区时，其公共债务已经超过GDP的100％。尽管在欧元区低利率政策的推动下获得了长期的经济繁荣，但希腊政府对于其持续的赤字预算采取了完全放任的态度。

After its new government admitted, last October, that its budget shortfall would be 13% of GDP, more than twice previous forecasts, Greece’s cost of borrowing started to pick up. Bond investors were further unnerved by the revelation that Greece’s debt had been understated by keeping unpaid bills off the books. With the country’s credibility shot, even the tough austerity programme announced earlier this month could not rally confidence.

去年10月希腊新一届政府承认，其预算缺额将达到国内生产总值的13％，是以前预测的两倍多。希腊的借贷成本不断攀升。根据走漏的消息，希腊政府将到期未还的债务不计算在其债务额中，其实际债务要超过公布的数额，这使债券投资者们进一步感到不安。由于该国的信誉度下降，即使本月早些时候公布了严厉的的紧缩开支计划也无法恢复投资者的信心。

Talk of a bail-out brought some calm to financial markets, though there is a risk that the lack of detail may trigger fresh paroxysms. The yield on ten-year Greek bonds fell below 6% the day before the EU gathering: in late January it had risen above 7%. The euro, which had been falling steadily against the dollar, perked up a bit.

欧盟拟议救援的谈论使金融市场产生了些许平静，然而由于缺乏操作细节，存在可能引发新的债务危机的危险。在欧盟财长聚会前一天，10年期希腊债券市场定价已下降到6％以下，而去年1月下旬该债券市场定价超过了7％。欧元对美元的不断贬值对此起到了一些作用。

Some euro-crats (and more than a few people in Greece) feel the euro zone has been picked on by speculators. They point out that its debt burden is no worse than in other parts of the rich world. The OECD reckons public debt in Britain and America will be higher than in the euro zone by 2011, as a proportion of GDP. The problem for the euro area is that it has trouble-spots, like Greece, with worse than average finances, and no means (until now) to tap the credit of their thriftier brethren.

不止是一些希腊人，一些欧共体官员也认为，欧元区的现状是投机商们捣乱的结果。他们指出，希腊的债务负担并不比其它富裕国家和地区更严重。经合组织估计，以债务占GDP的比例计算，到2011年英国和美国的公共债务将超过欧元区国家。欧元区的问题是，它有如希腊这样的问题点，其金融状况要劣于欧元区的平均值，并且到目前为止都没有很好的使用其更节俭的兄弟国家提供的信贷资金。

Even that may be too kind a comparison. Bond investors have worried most about countries with big borrowing needs adding to an already high stock of debt. In future, they may fret more about the longer-term prospects for GDP growth. Sluggish economies cannot sustain a big debt burden for ever; and the euro-zone countries with the most bloated debt burdens also face severe obstacles to growth. Fixing public finances is just the beginning of a much-needed programme of reforms.

这样一种比较也许是过于宽厚了。债券投资者们最担心的是那些债台已经高筑还需要大规模举债的国家。今后，他们可能更多地关注这些国家GDP增长的远景。疲软的经济不可能长期支撑沉重的债务负担，而欧元区债务负担最重国家同时也遇到了经济增长的强大阻力。调整公共财政只是迈出了迫切需要的改革的第一步。

译者：dqzxf
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A special report on financial risk

Cinderella’s moment
灰姑娘的非常时刻

Risk managers to the fore
风头浪尖上的风险经理们

Feb 11th 2010
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Tim Marrs

IN A speech delivered to a banking-industry conference in Geneva in December 2006, Madelyn Antoncic issued a warning and then offered some reassurance. With volatility low, corporate credit spreads growing ever tighter and markets all but ignoring bad news, there was, she said, “a seemingly overwhelming sense of complacency”. Nevertheless, she insisted that the firm she served as chief risk officer, Lehman Brothers, was well placed to ride out any turbulence, thanks to a keen awareness of emerging threats and a rock-solid analytical framework.
2006年在日内瓦举行的金融会议上，Madelyn Antoncic作了一个演讲，其间她发出了警告但随后又给出了一些安慰。随着低波动率，企业的信用利差越来越小（紧），而市场几乎是忽略所有不利信息，正如她所说的：“似乎是一种压倒性的自满”。然而，她坚持她作为首席风险官所效力的雷曼兄弟公司，因着对可能出现的风险有敏锐的体察和坚如磐石的分析框架，是有能力渡过任何动荡。

Behind the scenes, all was not well. Ms Antoncic, a respected risk manager with an economics PhD, had expressed unease at the firm’s heavy exposure to commercial property and was being sidelined, bit by bit, by the firm’s autocratic boss, Dick Fuld. Less than two months after her speech she was pushed aside.
而幕后所有的一切皆不尽如人意。受人尊敬拥有经济学博士学位的Antoncic女士，对公司商业用房地产贷款存在的巨大风险敞口表达了不安但却被公司独裁的老板Dick Fuld逐渐边缘化。在她发言不到两个月后就被排挤冷落了。

Lehman’s story ended particularly badly, but this sort of lapse in risk governance was alarmingly common during the boom. So much for the notion, generally accepted back then, that the quality of banks’ risk regimes had, like car components, converged around a high standard. “The variance turned out to be shocking,” says Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.
雷曼的故事以无比恶劣的结局结束了，但这种风险管理的失误在繁荣期却是惊人地普遍。当年普遍存在一种观念， 认为银行的抗风险机制的质量就象汽车零部件一样达标甚高， 这个观念到此休矣。 因为结果发现， 有的银行距离高标准的差距大的惊人，正如摩根大通的行政长官Jamie Dimon所言。

The banks that fared better, including his own, relied largely on giving their risk-managing roundheads equal status with the risk-taking cavaliers. That was not easy. In happy times, when risk seems low, power shifts from risk managers to traders. Sales-driven cultures are the natural order of things on Wall Street and in the City. Discouraging transactions was frowned upon, especially at firms trying to push their way up capital-markets league tables. Risk managers who said no put themselves on a collision course with the business head and often the chief executive too.
那些经营好的银行，包括他自己的，都有赖于给圆颅党和保皇党以同等地位。那并非易事。在风险看似低的繁荣期时，当权者往往会从风险管理者转为交易商。以销售为主导的文化在华尔街和这座城市是正常运转制序。疲软交易是令人难以接受的，尤其是各公司都在为资本市场排名而角力时。风险经理们说不要把自己置身于与业务主管也常包括行政长官的冲突中。
At some large banks that subsequently suffered big losses, such as HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), credit committees, which vetted requests for big loans, could be formed on an ad hoc basis from a pool of eligible members. If the committee’s chairman, typically a business-line head, encountered resistance from a risk manager or other sceptic, he could adjourn the meeting, then reconstitute the committee a week or two later with a more pliable membership that would approve the loan.
在许多随后遭受巨大损失的银行中，比如苏格兰哈里法克斯银行和皇家苏格兰银行，对大额贷款进行审查的信贷委员会，是从有资格的成员队伍中临时性选拔组成的。如果委员会主席正好是业务线的领导，在遭遇风险经理或其他不信任者的阻挠时，他可以中止会议，然后在一两周后选择那些会同意借贷更圆通的人选重新组建委员会。
Another common trick was for a business line to keep quiet about a proposal on which it had been working for weeks until a couple of hours before the meeting to approve it, so the risk team had no time to lodge convincing objections. Exasperated roundheads would occasionally resort to pleading with regulators for help. In the years before the crash the Basel Committee of bank supervisors reportedly received several requests from risk managers to scrutinise excessive risk-taking at their institutions that they felt powerless to stop.
另一普遍的技俩就是业务线对他们做了几星期的提案始终保持沉默，直到举行审批会议前几小时才出示，这样风险小组就没有时间提出令人信服的反对意见。愤怒的圆颅党偶尔也诉诸管理者以求帮助。在金融崩溃的前几年内，巴塞尔银行监管委员会据说收到了好几起来自风险经理的审查请求，要求审查在他们机构内他们根本无力阻止的过度风险。

Many banks’ failings exposed the triumph of form over substance. In recent years it had become popular to appoint a chief risk officer to signal that the issue was receiving attention. But according to Leo Grepin of McKinsey, “it was sometimes a case of management telling him, ‘you tick the boxes on risk, and we’ll worry about generating revenue’.”
许多银行的倒闭揭示了重形式而不重实质的问题。近几年来，任命首席风险官逐级变得风行起来，但这只不过是对外表示风险问题正在受到重视。但据麦肯锡的Leo Grepin所言：“这种情况只不过是形式，管理层借此通知他（风险官）‘你只要给抗风险注意事项前头的空格通通打钩就行，赚钱的事我们来操心。’”

Since 2007 banks have been scrambling to convince markets and regulators that they will continue to take risk seriously once memories of the crisis fade. Some are involving risk officers in talks about new products and strategic moves. At HSBC, for instance, they have had a bigger role in vetting acquisitions since the bank’s American retail-banking subsidiary, bought in 2003, suffered heavy subprime-mortgage losses. “Everyone should now see that the risk team needs to be just as involved on the returns side as on the risk side,” says Maureen Miskovic, chief risk officer at State Street, an American bank.
自从2007年以来，银行纷纷说服市场和管理者一旦危机记忆淡化他们将继续实行高风险政策。在谈论新产品和战略举措时也提到了风险官。比如，在汇丰银行，自从2003年收购了美国零售子公司并饱受巨大的次级抵押货款损失后，风险官在审批收购时则扮演了重要的角色。“现今每一个人都要明白风险小组既需要利润方也需要风险控制方”，波斯顿金融街一家美国银行的首席风险官Maureen Miskovic如是说。

Glamming up
乱花渐欲迷人眼
Ms Miskovic is one of an emerging breed of more powerful risk officers. They are seen as being on a par with the chief financial officer, get a say in decisions on pay and have the ear of the board, whose agreement is increasingly needed to remove them. Some report directly to a board committee as well as—or occasionally instead of—to the chief executive.
Miskovic女士是这类新型更有权势的风险官之一。他们正被视为与首席财务官相提并论，在薪酬决策上有发言权，董事会听他们的话，要罢风险官的职务越来越多地要经过董事会的同意。风险官的有些报告不但呈递给CEO 也直接呈递给董事会——偶然情况下， 这些报告不呈递给CEO, 但是直接给董事会。
。

For many, the biggest task is to dismantle cumbersome “silos”, says Ken Chalk of America’s Risk Management Association. Risks were often stuffed into convenient but misleading pigeonholes. Banks were slow to refine their approach, even as growing market complexity led some of the risks to become interchangeable.
对许多风险官司而言，他们最大的任务是拆除繁琐的“孤岛”，美国风险管理协会的Ken Chalk如是说。风险常被轻易界定而误导方向。银行在修正方向是很迟钝的，日益增长的市场复杂性导致了一些风险交错产生。

Take the growth of traded credit products, such as asset-backed securities and CDOs made up of them. Credit-risk departments thought of them as market risk, because they sat in the trading book. Market-risk teams saw them as credit instruments, since the underlying assets were loans. This buck-passing proved particularly costly at UBS, which lost SFr36 billion ($34 billion) on CDOs. Many banks are now combining their market- and credit-risk groups, as HSBC did last year.
随着诸如资产保证证券和债务抵押构成的交易信用产品的增长，信用风险部门则把它们当成市场风险，因为它们属于正当交易类型。而市场风险小组认为它们是信用工具，因为标的资产是贷款。这种相互推诿让瑞士联合银行付出高昂的代价，在债务抵押项目上损失了360亿瑞士法朗（340亿美元）。现今许多银行都把市场风险团队和信用风险团队并在一块，就象汇丰银行去年所做的那样。

For all the new-found authority of risk managers, it can still be hard to attract talent to their ranks. The job is said to have the risk profile of a short option position with unlimited downside and limited upside—something every good risk manager should avoid. Moreover, it lacks glamour. Persuading a trader to move to risk can be “like asking a trapeze artist to retrain as an accountant”, says Barrie Wilkinson of Oliver Wyman, a consultancy.
所有新欣的风险经理机构依然难以吸引人才加入其中。这份职业本身的风险特征就像空头期权（头寸）一样，正回报有限， 负回报（即损失）无限，这是每一个优秀的风险经理人都应尽量避免的。此外，它缺乏魅力。说服一个交易员转而关注风险“犹如把一个空中飞人再培训成一个会计师。”，奥纬咨询的咨询师Barrie Wilkinson如是说。

A question of culture
文化建设
Besides, there is more to establishing a solid risk culture than empowering risk officers. Culture is a slippery concept, but it matters. “Whatever causes the next crisis, it will be different, so you need something that can deal with the unexpected. That’s culture,” says Colm Kelleher of Morgan Stanley. One necessary ingredient is a tradition of asking and repeating questions until a clear answer emerges, suggests Clayton Rose, a banker who now teaches at Harvard Business School.
此外，建立牢固的风险文化要比授权给风险官要难得多。文化是个难以把握的概念，但它重要。“无论是什么引起下轮的危机，那将是不同的。因此你需要一些对不可预知事项应变的能力，那就是文化。” 摩根斯坦利Colm Kelleher认为。“其中一个必要的因素就是要有询问和不断怀疑的传统，直到一个清晰答案出现”，Clayton Rose—现在哈佛商学院教书的银行家如此建议道。

The tone is set at the top, for better or worse. At the best-run banks senior figures spend as much time fretting over risks as they do salivating at opportunities (see article). By contrast, Lehman’s Mr Fuld talked of “protecting mother” but was drawn to the glister of leveraged deals. Stan O’Neal, who presided over giant losses at Merrill Lynch, was more empire-builder than risk manager. But imperial bosses and sound risk cultures sometimes go together, as at JPMorgan and Banco Santander.
这种声音出自高层也许更好也许更糟。在经营最好的银行内，高层们在面对令人垂涎欲滴的良好机会时也会花许多时间来考量风险。相反，雷曼的Fuld先生谈到“保护根源”时更多是为杠杆交易的光芒所吸引。对美林的巨大损失负责的Stan O’Neal，相对于风险管理者他更是一个狂热的帝国建造者。但是有时帝国老板也能和健全的风险文化融为一体，比如摩根大通和西班牙的坦桑大通银行。

A soft-touch boss can be more dangerous than a domineering one. Under Chuck Prince, who famously learned only in September 2007 that Citigroup was sitting on $43 billion of toxic assets, the lunatics were able to take over the asylum. Astonishingly, the head of risk reported not to Mr Prince or the board, but to a newly hired executive with a background in corporate-governance law, not cutting-edge finance.
优柔寡断的老板可能比独断专横的老板更为危险。Chuck Prince最为出名的教训源于2007年9月花旗集团涉及430亿美元的不良资产，在此管理下，疯子们都能接管精神病院了。令人惊讶的是，风险部门的领导既没有向Prince先生报告也没有向董事会报告，而向一位毫无高端金融背景仅有公司治理法案背景的新招主管作了报告。

Another lesson is that boards matter too. Directors’ lack of engagement or expertise played a big part in some of the worst slip-ups, including Citi’s. The “sociology” of big banks’ boards also had something to do with it, says Ingo Walter of New York’s Stern School of Business: as the members bonded, dissidents felt pressure to toe the line.
另一教训与董事会有关。主管们缺乏约束或专业素养在那些管理疏漏最为严重的公司占了主要原因，包括花旗集团。大银行董事会的社会关系学与此也有些关联，纽约斯特恩商学院的Ingo Walter认为：因为利益联盟，持不同政见者在那些循规蹈矩者中总要承受更大的压力。

Too few boards defined the parameters of risk oversight. In a survey last year Deloitte found that only seven of 30 large banks had done so in any detail. Everyone agrees that boards have a critical role to play in determining risk appetite, but a recent report by a group of global regulators found that many were reluctant to do this.
太少的董事会对风险监督的因素予以界定。在德勤去年的调查中30家银行仅有7家对此有详细的规定。大家都认为董事会在风险偏好中起决定作用，但在最近的全球临管组的报告中发现他们大都不愿意这么做。

Boards could also make a better job of policing how (or even whether) banks adjust for risk in allocating capital internally. Before the crisis some boards barely thought about this, naively assuming that procedures for it were well honed. A former Lehman board member professes himself “astonished”, in retrospect, at how some of the risks in the company’s property investments were brushed aside when assessing expected returns. The survivors are still struggling to create the sort of joined-up approach to risk adjustment that is common at large hedge funds, admits one Wall Street executive.
董事会还可以在制定政策上做得更好，比如在制定银行内部分配资本时如何调整分险。在危机发生前一些银行几乎没有考虑到这点，天真地认为那些程序已完美无缺。雷曼的一名前董事会成员承认自己事后回想起来深感吃惊，因在公司财产投资时仅对预期回报评估而根本没有考虑到有多少的风险存在。幸存者仍挣扎于是否加入风险调整的路径中，但在大型对冲基金中风险调整是很普遍的，华尔街的一名执行官司承认说。

Board games
董事会的游戏
Robert Pozen, head of MFS Investment Management, an American asset manager, thinks bank boards would be more effective with fewer but more committed members. Cutting their size to 4-8, rather than the 10-18 typical now, would foster more personal responsibility. More financial-services expertise would help too. After the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002 banks hired more independent directors, many of whom lacked relevant experience. The former spymaster on Citi’s board and the theatrical impresario on Lehman’s may have been happy to ask questions, but were they the right ones?
Robert Pozen是MFS投资管理公司的领导人，一个美国资产管理专家，他认为银行董事会需要数量更少但更为忠诚的成员从而能更加高效地运转。把人数减为4-8人，而不是现在的10-18个代表，也能够培养更多的个人职责。也能提供更多的专业金融服务。2002年通过塞班斯法案后，规定银行需要雇佣更多独立董事，他们中许多是缺乏相关经验。前花旗银行董事会的超级间谍和雷曼的戏剧表演家可能会很乐意提问，但又有哪些问题是提得恰当的？

Under regulatory pressure, banks such as Citi and Bank of America have hired more directors with strong financial-services backgrounds. Mr Pozen suggests assembling a small cadre of financially fluent “super-directors” who would meet more often—say, two or three days a month rather than an average of six days a year, as now—and may serve on only one other board to ensure they take the job seriously.
在监管压力下，比如象花旗和美洲银行等雇佣了更多有着强劲金融服务背景的董事。Pozen先生认为聚集这些娴熟的金融精英作为超级董事，相对于以前一年平均六天工作于董事会，现在每月工作二到三天的时间，如此以来他们仅能再多服务一家别的董事会，这样他们就会更加专注于董事会工作。

That sounds sensible, but the case for another suggested reform—creating independent risk committees at board level—is less clear. At some banks risk issues are handled perfectly well by the audit committee or the full board. Nor is there a clear link between the frequency of risk-related meetings and a bank’s performance. At Spain’s Santander the relevant committee met 102 times in 2008. Those of other banks that emerged relatively unscathed, such as JPMorgan and Credit Suisse, convened much less often.
那听起来似乎在理，但对另一项改革建议即在董事会层面上建立独立风险委员会一事却缺乏明晰性。在一些银行风险事项由审计委员会或全职董事完好操控。举行风险会议的频率和银行绩效间是否有关联依然不清晰。西班牙的桑坦德2008年开这种相关的会就达102次。其它那些受损相对较小的银行诸如摩根大通和瑞士信贷，它们就更常开会。

Moreover, some of the most important risk-related decisions of the next few years will come from another corner: the compensation committee. It is not just investment bankers and top executives whose pay structures need to be rethought. In the past, risk managers’ pay was commonly determined or heavily influenced by the managers of the trading desks they oversaw, or their bonus linked to the desks’ performance, says Richard Apostolik, who heads the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Boards need to eliminate such conflicts of interest.
此外，一些未来几年内最为重要的风险决策将取决于另一方向：薪酬委员会。这不光是投行银行家和高管的薪酬结构需要重构。过去，风险经理的薪酬通常是由他们所监管的交易柜台经理来决定或受其重大影响，或者他们的奖金与柜台的业绩挂钩，全球风险专业人士协会的领导Richard Apostolik介绍说。董事会需要剔除这种利益冲突的现状。
Meanwhile risk teams are being beefed up. Morgan Stanley, for instance, is increasing its complement to 450, nearly double the number it had in 2008. The GARP saw a 70% increase in risk-manager certifications last year. Risk is the busiest area for financial recruiters, says Tim Holt of Heidrick & Struggles, a firm of headhunters. When boards are looking for a new chief executive, they increasingly want someone who has been head of risk as well as chief financial officer, which used to be the standard requirement, reckons Mike Woodrow of Risk Talent Associates, another headhunting firm.
同时风险团队需要增强。比如摩根斯坦利，其队伍已增至450人，差不多是2008年的两倍。全球风险专业人士协会去年也看到风险管理认证增加了70%.在金融招募中风险部门是最忙碌的，猎头公司Heidrick & Struggles的Tim Holt说到。现今董事会寻找新的行政总裁，逐渐想要那种曾有风险管理经验的和首席财务官的人选，这已成为挑选标准，另一猎头公司风险人才协会Mike Woodrow认为。
The big question is whether this interest in controlling risk will fizzle out as economies recover. Experience suggests that it will. Bankers say this time is different—but they always do.
现今最大的问题是当经济复苏时对风险控制的兴起终会消逝。经验证明那是可能的。银行家们说这次是不同的，但他们总是这么说的。

译者：Fangsu
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Charity as advertising
慈善之名  广告之实
Give and take
欲取之，先予之
Will Pepsi  profit by enlisting the public in its philanthropic efforts?
争取公众参与其慈善活动，百事能从中获益吗？

Feb 11th 2010 | NEW YORK | From The Economist print edition

THE 107m Americans who tuned in to watch the Super Bowl on February 7th did not see any advertisements for Pepsi. Instead of spending $20m on a handful of 30-second *spots*（注1）, the firm decided to give that amount away. Under the slogan “Refresh Everything”, the Pepsi Refresh campaign asks the public to vote online for charities and community groups to receive grants ranging from $5,000 to $250,000. A few days before the game its arch-rival, Coca-Cola, was also bitten by a charitable *bug*（注2）. It promised to give $1 to the *Boys & Girls Clubs *（注3）of America every time someone watched its Super Bowl ads on its Facebook page, up to a maximum of $250,000.
二月七日，有1.07亿美国人收看了橄榄球超级大赛。但他们没有看到百事可乐的任何广告。百事可乐公司决定与其投资2000万美元用于插播30秒的广告，不如把这笔资金捐赠出去。打着“刷新一切”的口号，百事换新项目鼓励民众在网上投票，以决定哪些慈善机构和社区团体能接收5000美元至250000美元的慈善基金。大赛前几天百事可乐的主要竞争对手，可口可乐也积极进行慈善活动。可口可乐承诺，人们在Facebook网页上每观看一次其橄榄球超级大赛的广告，就捐1美元给美国男孩女孩俱乐部（25万美元封顶）。

Pepsi Refresh is probably the most prominent example so far of “cause marketing”—trying to win customers by ostentatiously doing good. Other recent examples include Chase Community Giving, in which small charities competed to win $5m in donations from JPMorgan Chase, and American Express and *NBC Universal’s*（注4） “Shine A Light” programme, which awarded a grant of $100,000 to a small business chosen through its website.
百事换新活动也许是目前为止最著名的“公益营销”例子——旨在通过行善而争取顾客。最近的另外几个例子还有，大通社区竞捐大赛（小型慈善机构相互竞争以赢取摩根大通捐赠的500万美元资金）和美国运通以及NBC环球联手举行的“亮光”项目（该项目奖励其网站上选出的小型企业10万美元）。

Marketing people say consumers are increasingly trying to do good as they spend. Research in 2008 by Cone, a brand consultancy, found that 79% of consumers would switch to a brand associated with a good cause, up from 66% in 1993, and that 38% have bought a product associated with a cause, compared with 20% in 1993. Rather than try to make products that can be marketed as ethical in their own right, such as “fair trade” goods, firms are increasingly trying to take an ordinary product and boost its moral credentials with what one marketing guru calls “embedded generosity”. The fad for online competitions to award the *handouts*（注5） also appeals to another trend, so-called* “slacktivism”*（注6）, whereby people are turning to the internet to give their consciences a boost without doing anything more onerous than clicking a mouse a few times.
营销人员指出，消费者花钱的同时越来越愿意行善。品牌评估公司，康恩的调查显示，2008年79%的顾客转向消费与公益相关的品牌，1993年只为66%，38%的顾客购买过与公益相关的产品，1993年仅为20%。不象之前的“公平贸易”产品那样——公司以自己的方式把产品标榜成道德之物。这次公司纷纷推出普通的产品，以营销专家称之为“嵌入式慷慨”的方式来增加它们的道德内涵。网上竞争进行慈善的风尚有赖于另外一种潮流”懒惰主义” ，即人们通过互联网不需劳神，只需点几下鼠标，就可以“大发良心”。

The strategy seems to be working, judging by the proliferation of articles (such as this one) noting Pepsi’s campaign. JPMorgan Chase claims its campaign was not marketing, but simply an attempt to manage its existing corporate philanthropy more imaginatively. If so, its marketing staff are missing a trick, given that around 2m people signed up to vote on Facebook, many of whom were not existing Chase customers. Moreover, the favourable headlines generated by Chase’s $5m outlay contrasted strikingly with the grudging reaction to Goldman Sachs’s launch around the same time of a $500m campaign to support small businesses.
针对百事可乐此项活动的大量报道相继出现（比如这篇），据此可知，这项活动效果不错。摩根大通集团声称公司参加此次活动并不是营销策略，只是开展形式多样的公司慈善事业。如果事实真的如公司所说，那营销部工作人员不免错失良机，因为约有200万人在Facebook上投票，这些人大部分不是公司现有的顾客。另外，旨在帮助小型企业的5亿美元筹集活动中，摩根大通积极响应，捐资500万美元，引来各大头条报道的赞许之声，而高盛集团却迟迟不愿捐资，二者形成鲜明对比。

Although the public likes online popularity contests, they can have unintended consequences. Chase, for example, caused a fuss by excluding a pro-life group and an outfit that wants to legalise cannabis from its competition. Moreover, many firms see virtue in tying themselves to a particular cause. Ten firms, including Gap, Apple and most recently Nike, have deals with (RED), a scheme fronted by Bono, a rock star, to raise money to fight AIDS. It has raised $140m so far, despite fears that, as Susan Smith Ellis, its boss, puts it, “it would be just a big launch on Oprah then never heard of again.” Equally, Pepsi’s efforts to promote healthy lifestyles while selling healthier products and Coca-Cola’s various initiatives to protect water supplies in developing countries are critical to the pair’s future. Refreshing everything, in contrast, is a more nebulous goal.
尽管民众喜欢网上这种投票活动，但却会产生一些意想不到的后果。比如说，大通银行将一家反堕胎团体和一个提倡大麻合法化的团队排除比赛，此事引起轩然大波。另外，许多公司认为从事某项公益活动益处多多。包括Gap，苹果以及新近加入的耐克等十家公司与摇滚歌手波诺发起的（RED）计划联合起来为抗击艾滋病筹集资金。尽管曾有担心，但目前已筹集1.4亿美元。正如RED计划首席执行官Susan Smith Ellis所言，“像是在奥普拉节目上宣扬了一番，然后却不了了之”。百事可乐销售更健康的产品以努力提倡健康的生活方式，可口可乐也采取不同行动保护发展中国家的供水系统，这些对于两大公司的未来发展至关重要。与此相比，刷新一些不过是个朦胧的目标。

注1.Spot: A short presentation or commercial on television or radio between major programs
注2.An enthusiasm or obsession: got bitten by the writing bug.
注3.美国男孩女孩俱乐部，致力于增进会员健康，培养其社交、教育、职业、个性能力的全国性俱乐部组织。俱乐部成员6至18岁不等。各俱乐部都是相互独立的非营利性组织，由义务性质的理事会管理，其中管理人员是拿工资的专业人士。俱乐部的重要项目涉及健康与体质、职业规划、教育发展、少年犯罪预防和禁毒禁酒等领域。俱乐部由联合劝募会（United Way）募捐或靠直接捐赠维持。
俱乐部起初只面向少年，19世纪60年代在新英格兰州出现。1906年，大约50家俱乐部共同组建美国男孩俱乐部。由于很多地方俱乐部后来接受少女入会，于是1990年更名为“美国男孩女孩俱乐部”以便名副其实。该组织现有会员200多万，分属大约1670家地方俱乐部。全国性机构位于佐治亚州的亚特兰大。
注4.NBC环球（NBC Universal）是美国的一家大型媒体集团，于2004年5月成立，由国家广播公司（隶属于通用电气）和维旺迪环球（法国维旺迪集团的娱乐事业部门）合并而成。
注5.handout – giving money or food or clothing to a needy person
注6.Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) is a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism. It is a pejorative term that describes taking painless “feel-good” measures in support of an issue or social cause that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction. A person that engages in such activity is called a slacktivist.

欲想了解更多关于最后一段的故事，请看http://t.douban.com/view/note/large/public/p59664127-1.jpg
http://www.douban.com/group/topic/9845810/
http://sports.sina.com.cn/c/2009-12-01/18084723568.shtml

译者：dreamslink

如想与译者本人对该文进行切磋，请到如下链接：http://ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=31040&extra=&page=1

Cruise lines in the recession
经济危机下的游轮业
Damn the torpedoes
去你丫的鱼雷
Travel companies are launching luxurious ships into perilous waters
旅游公司相继向危险水域推出豪华游轮
Feb 11th 2010 | NEW YORK | From The Economist print edition

IN LATE January Silversea Cruises christened its newest ship, the Silver Spirit, with champagne and sent it on a 91-day voyage around Latin America. The ship, which can accommodate 540 guests, is the company’s largest and most luxurious. Suites are serviced by butlers. Passengers can choose between eight types of pillows. The spa is vast. If it sounds out of tune with the times, it is: the ship was commissioned in 2007, before the start of the economic crisis. But Amerigo Perasso, the boss of Silversea Cruises, insists he is happy with the investment. “People want to see the state of the art,” he says.
一月下旬银海游轮在香槟四溢中将其最新游轮命名为“银色精灵”，并环绕拉美航行91天。这艘游轮是该公司最大也是最豪华的游轮，能够载客540名。套房有男仆提供服务。8种枕头认旅客选择。休闲健身中心场地开阔。也许这些听起来与经济危机的大环境格格不入，那是因为这艘轮船是在经济危机之前的2007年开始建造的。但是银海游轮的老板 Amerigo Perasso认为此次投资是值得的，因为人们愿意看到最精湛的技术发展水平。

Silversea is not the only cruise line to launch a new ship in troubled economic waters. In December Royal Caribbean International, the world’s second-biggest cruise operator, rolled out Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in history. It can accommodate 5,400 guests and has a park with live plants, a large auditorium and a carousel, as well as other amenities normally found in amusement parks. In 2009 cruise companies invested $4.7 billion to build 14 new ships. They will launch a further 12 vessels this year. Many of these plans were laid before the economy sprang a leak.
在经济不景气的大环境下，银海游轮并不是唯一一家推出新游轮的公司。去年12月份，世界第二大游轮公司，皇家加勒比推出史上最大的游轮“海洋绿洲号”。该游轮可载客5400名，配有植物茂盛的公园，大礼堂，旋转木马，以及其他一些通常在游乐园提供的娱乐设备。2009年该公司投资47亿建造了14艘新邮轮。今年打算再推出12艘。而这些计划大部分都是在经济危机之前作出的。

The “supersizing” of the cruise industry comes as other industries are downsizing and consumers are curbing unnecessary expenses. To entice customers, cruise lines have cut prices dramatically, sometimes by as much as 40%. Because of these discounts, more people are taking cruises: 13.4m in 2009, up from 12.6m in 2007, according to the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry body. But the discounts have eaten into earnings. At Carnival Corporation, the biggest cruise line, revenues were more than 10% lower in 2009 than in 2008. Even if the economy recovers, growing capacity may prevent firms from raising prices much.
其他产业不断减少规模，顾客也在控制不必要的开支，而游轮业却不断发展壮大。游轮公司为了吸引游客，采取大幅降价的措施，有时价格下降40%多。因为有折扣，很多人都愿意消费。据国际游轮业协会数据显示，2007年有1260万游客，2009年增至1340万。但是折扣影响收入。最大的游轮公司——嘉年华游轮公司2009年的收入比2008年降低了10%多。即便经济复苏，不断增长的容客量也会抑制公司上调价格。

Still, the cruise industry is doing better than other bits of the travel business, like hotels and airlines, which have been battered by a fall in business travel. Cruises can appeal to consumers by touting themselves as “all-inclusive” (even though many amenities, like alcohol and *excursions*(注）, cost extra). Cruises also allow some people to go on holiday without paying for a flight. There are around 30 ports of embarkation in America alone.
由于商业旅游数量的减少，其他旅游生意，如旅馆，航空公司都受到严重影响，游轮业与之相比发展甚好。游轮业对于有预算意识的游客来说很有吸引力，因为游轮业声称游客所交费用是包括一切的（即便像酒和登岸观光的费用不包括在内）。对于一些游客来说还可以省下飞机票钱，因为仅在美国就有30处起运港。

The industry’s bosses hope to attract even more customers in the next few years. Only around 20% of Americans have been on a cruise. Most of these are not spring chickens. Firms are trying to draw in younger passengers and families with lower prices, as well as things like ice-skating rinks and cinemas. As a result of these efforts, the median age of cruise passengers in 2008 was 46, down from 53 in 2002. Ross Klein, a cruise-industry analyst, says that cruise lines’ decision to invest in colossal ships may help them diversify their customer base without losing elderly customers. Their sheer size, he says, gives everybody “some place to hide out”.
游轮业的老板们希望该产业在未来几年内能够吸引更多的游客。大约只有20%的美国人坐过游轮。而这20%的人群中大部分不是年轻人。各大公司试图以低价，溜冰场，电影等形式拉拢年轻游客和家庭游客。这些尝试的结果是，2008年旅客的平均年龄是48岁，而2002年是53岁。一位游轮业分析专家 Ross Klein说，游轮公司相继推出大型游轮也许会丰富消费层，同时又不丢掉年老的顾客。他说，大型游轮给每个人“藏身之所”。

注：根据经验，皇家加勒比从美国迈阿密至巴哈马的游轮曾有2次登陆观光，因此此处采取这种译法

译者：dreamslink
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California’s prisons
加州监狱

Jailhouse blues
监狱愁容

California must reduce its prisons’ overcrowding and cost. But how?
加州必须缓解其监狱的拥挤，并削减相关费用。但是怎么才能做到呢？

Feb 11th 2010 | LOS ANGELES | From The Economist print edition
2010年2月11日，洛杉矶，《经济学人》印刷版

ONE never quite knows whether Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s governor, is joking or serious. So it is with his three most recent ideas for solving one of the state’s biggest problems: its prisons. They are overcrowded, to the tune of about 40,000 inmates according to a federal court, and often inhumane. And they are too expensive, exacerbating California’s desperate budget crisis.

没有人真正知道加州州长阿诺•施瓦辛格到底是在开玩笑还是认真的。对他新近提出的解决监狱问题——该州最头疼的问题之一——的三个办法，大家的感受亦然如此。加州监狱人满为患，根据联邦法院的资料，现在关押在此的狱囚总计达4万人。这些监狱的设施常常也不够人性化。而且，监狱费用高昂，加剧恶化了加州本就相当严重的财政赤字。

The governor’s wildest thought experiment has California paying Mexico to build prisons and house California’s inmates in them. This is “totally silly” and probably unconstitutional, says Joan Petersilia of Stanford Law School. Almost as silly is his proposal to amend the state constitution to mandate reversing the current shares of the state budget that go to prisons and universities. The fact that 9.5% of spending now goes to prisons while only 5.7% goes to universities—25 years ago, prisons got 4% and universities 11%—is indeed a harsh indicator of California’s fall from grace. But there is no logical reason to pit two parts of the state budget against each other constitutionally when legislators are perfectly capable of doing the allocating.

州长设想的大胆实验是由加州付钱给墨西哥，修建监狱，安置加州的狱囚。斯坦福大学法学院的琼•皮特尔斯连（Joan Petersilia）说，这简直“蠢到家了”，而且很可能违宪。他的另一建议也同样愚蠢。他建议修改州宪法，要求重新配置州对监狱和大学的现行财政预算份额。而现在的财政预算中有9.5%划给监狱，大学只有5.7%。（25年前，监狱系统有4%，大学有11%。）这一事实清楚说明加州现已名誉扫地。但既然立法委员可以把财政预算的分配做得如此完美，那么比较这两方面的政府财政预算从宪法角度讲也就没有多少合理性。

However, Mr Schwarzenegger’s third proposal should be taken seriously. It is to privatise more of California’s prisons. He has already expanded a contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the oldest and largest private prison operator, to house about 8,000 of California’s 167,000 inmates, mostly out of state. California is one of 25 states which, along with the federal government, put some inmates in private prisons. Mr Schwarzenegger wants to do more of it.

但是，施瓦辛格先生的第三项提议应该给予足够重视。这项提议是让大多数加州监狱私有化。他已经扩展了与美国最大的、历史最悠久的一家私人监狱运营商——美国感化公司（CCA）的合同。该合同准备将加州16.7万狱囚中的八千人转由该公司服刑，其中大多数都将迁出州外。除联邦政府以外，有25个州将一些囚犯送往私人监狱，加州是其中之一。施瓦辛格先生准备加大这方面的工作力度。

He has two reasons. First, private companies can expand capacity faster than government bureaucracies, and adding space is part of the answer to overcrowding. Ms Petersilia estimates that it takes seven years to build a new state prison in California, but only one year to open the equivalent private facility, through leasing, converting or building.

他有两个理由。其一，私人公司比政府机构能更快得扩展其容纳囚犯的能力，而监狱扩容是解决监狱拥挤问题的一个办法。皮特尔斯连女士估计，在加州要花7年时间修建一个新的政府监狱。但是，通过租赁、改造、新设，花上一年时间，即可修好一个同样的私人监狱投入使用。

Second, private prisons sometimes have lower costs, if they can keep prison-guard unions at bay. California’s happens to be the most powerful in the nation. About 70% of a prison’s costs go on personnel, and California’s guards not only have the highest wages but the most generous pension and health-care benefits. The union, which habitually spends lots of money on campaigns for judicial and legislative elections, as well as on ballot measures, will of course fight the proposal.

其次，如果私人监狱能不受狱警工会牵制的话，那么他们所需费用也较低。而加州的狱警工会恰恰是这个国家最强势的。监狱费用的70%都花在了狱警上。加州的狱警不仅有全国最高的工资，而且他们的养老金和医保福利都是全国最好的。常常在司法、立法选举以及投票策略上花费大量资金的工会，这次当然也会抗议这项提议。

But privatisation is not a long-term solution, says John Roman of the Urban Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. For big savings, a state would have to cut services to inmates, from drug treatment to counselling, whether the prison is public or private. Such cuts, however, leave inmates less prepared to re-enter society and more likely to end up behind bars again.

但是监狱私有化并非长久之计，华盛顿特区的智囊团城市研究所的约翰•罗马（John Roman）说。要削减费用的话，州政府就不得不削减对囚犯提供的从药物治疗到心理咨询的一系列服务，不管监狱是政府设立的抑或私营的。但是，这些措施只会让囚犯在重新融入社会时准备更不充分，很可能会再次走上被告席。

This is why Ms Petersilia emphasises another policy, agreed during last year’s budget deal. California has had a high recidivism rate (of 70%) in part because every released inmate used to be placed on parole and many were returned to prison for small violations such as missing appointments or failing alcohol tests. Since January 25th only dangerous ex-convicts are placed on parole, and they only go back to prison if they commit new crimes. Whether this will reduce overcrowding is yet to be seen, but it should help.

这就是为什么皮特尔斯连女士强调另一项政策的原因。这项政策在去年的财政预算中获得了通过。加州颇高的屡犯率（70%）部分是由于每个释放的囚犯过去常常都是有条件的假释，许多人都会因为违反一些小错，比如错过会见期或者未通过酒精测试等，重返监狱。自1月25日起，只有危险的囚犯才会假释，而这些人也只有犯了新罪后才会重新收监。这一措施是否可以减缓监狱拥挤的现状还有待观察，但是这肯定会有所帮助。

【1】Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is a company that manages public prisons and detention centers, and has concessions for many others. The company is the largest private corrections company in the United States and manages more than 60 facilities with a designed capacity of 85,000 beds. CCA was incorporated in 1983 by three businessmen and is based in Nashville, Tennessee.
From: wikipedia

译者：davidship
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Buttonwood
梧桐树专栏

Stimulating debate
经济刺激引激辨

The markets, and developed economies, are too dependent on government action
市场——以及发达经济体——均过分依赖政府行为。

Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Illustration by S. Kambayashi

AS JANUARY goes, so goes the year. That old stockmarket saying does not augur well for 2010, given that the MSCI World index fell by 4.2% in the month, the biggest decline since February 2009, and emerging markets dropped by 5.6%.

一月萧规，全年曹随。考虑到MSCI全球股指在该月失守4.2%——创下去年2月以来的最大跌幅——而新兴市场指数则跌掉5.6%，这句股市格言对2010年可不是什么好兆头。

Although markets rallied a bit in early February on better-than-expected economic data, the poor start to the year reflected an inherent contradiction to the rebound of 2009. That rally seemed to be dependent both on extraordinary stimulus measures by governments and central banks, and on a vigorous economic recovery. But both cannot co-exist for long: either the recovery will not last or, if it does, the stimulus will be taken away.

尽管市场由于经济数据好过期望而于2月初微幅上扬，年初的糟糕表现反映的却是对去年反弹的一次内在调整。此次上扬所倚赖的似乎是政府与央行超常的刺激举措，以及整体经济的强力复苏。然而，二者无法并行持久——要么是复苏难以为继，倘若真的挺住了，刺激措施也将被撤掉。

In addition, governments’ ability to provide that stimulus is dependent on the markets’ own willingness to fund huge deficits at very low yields. But why would investors accept meagre yields if they expected a vigorous recovery? In a sense, the market seemed to be hauling itself up by its own bootstraps.

此外，政府提供刺激措施的能力取决于市场自身在低收益水平为其赤字融资的意愿。只是如果投资者期望复苏强劲，为什么还要接受这样微薄的收益呢？某种意义上，市场的努力终将是徒劳的。

Sure enough, the bullish story has started to unravel, if only at the edges. In the developing world China has attempted to tighten monetary policy. That has caused some alarm because China was acting as the engine of global growth.

果不其然。这片牛市图景的瓦解已然开始——但愿无甚大碍。在发展中国家，中国已试图收紧其货币政策。这导致了些许惊慌，因为中国近来一直扮演着全球增长引擎的角色。

And in the developed world investors have started to question the ability of governments to keep financing their deficits. The obvious example is in Greece, where ten-year bond yields reached 7% late last month. At that level, which is well above likely Greek GDP growth, the country’s indebtedness would grow very rapidly. However unpopular it may prove to be, an austerity package is needed to prevent Greece from falling into this debt trap.

发达世界中的投资者同样开始怀疑政府赤字融资的能力。最明显的例子要属希腊，其十年期债券收益于上月末达到7%，远高于其GDP可能的增长速度。而在这样的高水平上，该国负债的增长将非常迅速。无论怎样的不受欢迎，事实或将证明，希腊需要一个节俭方案以免掉进债务陷阱。

So even in places where governments may wish to maintain fiscal stimulus, the markets may force them into corrective action. Britain, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and others have all indicated their determination to keep deficits under control, with varying degrees of conviction.

因此，即便是那些政府希望维持财政刺激的地方，市场依旧可能强迫他们改变行为。英国、法国、爱尔兰、西班牙、葡萄牙以及其他一些国家均表明了其控制赤字的决心，只是信念的程度有所不同。

But withdrawal of even small parts of the stimulus packages can send an economy back into the doldrums. As an example, American new-home sales slowed sharply after an initial end-of-November deadline for the expiry of a buyers’ tax credit. Although the credit has since been extended until April, December’s sales were just 342,000, compared with 329,000 in January 2009, at the height of the crisis.

然而，即便是从刺激方案中抽走一小部分，也可能将经济重新送进衰退。例如，在购房者税收抵免的原计截止日于11月末到来之后，美国新屋销售剧烈放缓。尽管该抵免措施已被延至4月，12月的新屋销售量也只有342,000，比危机顶点时的一月售房量（329,000）强不了多少。

The stimulus may have prevented the global economy from slipping into depression. In the medium term, however, academic studies suggest that higher government spending leads to slower economic growth. A 2008 paper by Antonio Afonso of the European Central Bank and Davide Furceri of the University of Palermo calculates that for every one-percentage-point rise in government spending as a proportion of GDP, the growth rate falls by 0.12-0.13 percentage points.

刺激措施或已阻止世界经济陷入萧条。然而从中期来讲，学术研究表明政府支出的上升会导致经济增长的放慢。据欧洲中央银行（European Central Bank ）的Antonio Afonso与巴勒莫大学（University of Palermo）的Davide Furceri在2008年的一篇论文中计算[1]，政府支出的GDP占比每增加一个百分点，整个经济增长率便会下降0.12到0.13个百分点。

What’s more, the packages have not really dealt with the problem of excessive debt, but merely transferred it from the private to the public sector. This buys time, but is akin to those debt-consolidation plans that are sold to consumers on TV. The pain is spread out over a longer period. But pain there will be, in the form of higher taxes, higher bond yields, slower growth or a combination of all three.

更糟糕的是，这些刺激方案并未真正解决超额债务的问题，而只是把它们从私人部门转移到了公共部门。此举赢得了时间，却无异于那些在电视上兜售的债务整合方案。短痛变成了长痛，但痛苦终究要来——要么是赋税高调，要么是债券收益率上涨，要么是增长放缓，要么是三者同来，祸不单行。

The authorities face a dilemma. Reduce the stimulus now and they risk plunging the economy back into recession, as happened in America in 1937 and Japan in 1997. But leave the stimulus in place for too long, and they risk damaging long-term growth prospects.

政府当局可谓左右为难。立马减少刺激，意味着冒险把经济重新送进衰退，正如1937年的美国以及1997年的日本。时间过长的留着刺激不动，又意味着冒险损害长期的增长前景。

The bulls hope that the economy can escape from this trap by the simple expedient of private-sector growth. That is why they welcomed the rise in manufacturing activity signalled in this week’s latest purchasing managers’ indices. If the private sector rebounds of its own accord, unemployment will fall and budget deficits will decline.

乐观派希望经济可以通过私人部门增长这样的简单出路来摆脱此类困境。本周最新采购经理指数所反映的制造业活动上升受到他们的欢迎正是出于这个原因。倘若私人部门凭借自身力量反弹，失业便会下降，预算赤字也会减少。

But hopes for a strong private-sector recovery are undermined by the data on credit growth. In the year to December, the broad measure of money supply fell by 0.2% in the euro zone and grew by just 3.4% in America. In Britain the annual growth rate is higher (6.4% in December), but David Owen, an economist at Jefferies International, estimates that quantitative easing (QE), whereby central banks create money to buy assets, has been boosting the figure by an annualised rate of 10%. If the Bank of England stops QE entirely, the credit-growth rate could collapse. For the stockmarket rally to resume properly in 2010, economies in the developed world need to show they can stand on their own two feet.

然而，对私人部门强劲反弹的希望却受到信贷增长数据的侵蚀。去年12月，广义货币供给在欧元区同比下降了0.2%，在美国也不过增长了3.4%。英国该项数据虽然略高（6.4%），但根据Jeferies International的经济学家大卫•欧文（David Owen）计算，按年记，定量宽松把该数据推高了10%。如果英格兰银行（Bank of England）完全退出定量宽松，信贷增长或可彻底崩解。由于股市上扬在2010年将适当恢复，发达经济体需要表明它们可以完全不靠政府刺激。
———————————————————
译注
[1] 全文见 http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~depeco/wp/wp042008.pdf

译者：弓长贝恩
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The oil industry
石油工业
Beyond the black stuff
远不止石油本身

Big Oil is being forced rethink its future
大石油公司被迫重新考虑它的未来Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist online

ON THE face of it the world’s big and publicly quoted oil companies should be celebrating some pleasing results this week. Royal Dutch Shell unveiled its results on Thursday February 4th, reporting that it had made $9.8 billion in 2009. Two days earlier BP boasted profits of $14 billion for the same year. Yet these billions are a disappointment compared with the bonanza of previous years (Shell, for example, raked in $31.4 billion in 2008 alone) when soaring oil prices pulled profits ever higher.
表面上看，世界上那些大型上市石油企业理应为本周一些喜人的消息好好庆祝一番。荷兰皇家壳牌公司于2月4号星期4披露了自己的财务报表，那就是它在2009年获利98亿美元。就在2天之前，英国石油公司还吹嘘了他们同年度盈利140亿美元的消息。然而，在之前几年中，猛增的油价带动了利润大幅增长(例如：壳牌公司单单在2008年一年中就迅速赚得了314亿美元），比起之前的大走鸿运，这区区的几十亿美元就显得微不足道了。

In the long term, however, the firms’ success depends on sustaining reserves. The big western oil companies are trying to expand through acquisitions and investment, but the opportunities do so are becoming scarcer. The firms are spending where they can. Exxon Mobil, the biggest listed oil company, says that exploration and capital spending hit $27.1 billion in 2009, 4% higher than in 2008. The company expects to spend $25 billion to $30 billion annually to the same end over the next five years. BP intends to spend some $20 billion this year on investment in new projects and drilling, roughly the same level as last year.
可是，从长远看来，这些企业的成功之道都取决于持续的储量。大型的西部石油公司想通过收购或者投资来扩大规模，但是可以这么做的机会变的越来越小。这些公司现在在任何他们可以做到的地方出资。埃克森美孚，作为世界上最大的上市炼油公司，公布了在2009年，其考察与资金花费达到了271亿美元，比2008年高出4个百分点。美孚公司希望在未来的5年中，通过每年花费250-300亿美元来达到同样的效果。英国石油公司打算今年出资200亿美元用于新项目投资和钻井上，这基本和去年保持一致。

But there are limits to what money can buy. State-controlled rivals—in the Middle East, Russia and beyond—jealously guard oil reserves on their home patches. Few new big fields of oil, at least those that are easy to reach and cheap to exploit, have been discovered in recent years. And where new opportunities emerge, such as in Iraq, Western oil giants are scrambling to pay big sums at auctions for drilling rights in territory where the local government tightly limits their returns. Even then, competition from Chinese, Russian and other state-run oil firms can be severe. National oil companies will often pay prices that would alarm shareholders in the big listed oil companies
但是，单单有钱并不能买到一切。在中东存在着一些国家控制型对手，俄罗斯及其更远地方的国家也警觉的保护起他们自己领土上的石油储量。现在鲜有大型油田被发现，至少那些容易获得并可以廉价开采的地方已在近几年被挖掘一空。新的机遇出现了，例如在伊拉克，那些西部石油巨鳄们争抢着去付巨资以买到领土上的钻井权，尽管当地政府严格的限制了他们的回报。即使这样，他们同中国，俄罗斯以及其他一些国有石油公司之间的竞争也很激烈。国有石油公司将常常付出令大型上市石油公司的股东们错愕的巨资。

Thus Western firms are increasingly looking for different sorts of growth. One option is to deploy their expertise in the hunt for oil that is harder to reach, for example deep offshore, or to go for reserves such as tar sands that are trickier, and so much pricier, to refine.
事实上，西部（石油）公司正日益寻找可以增加效益的不同方法，一个选择就是施展他们在寻找石油发面的专业知识，找到那些更难开采到的石油。比如：去深海的大陆架海寻找储量。例如说焦油砂。但是其过程很棘手，精炼时需要的费用也更高。

Another route is to speed up the quest for other energy reserves. France’s Total has branched out into nuclear-power generation. This week Shell announced a $12 billion joint-venture with Cosan, a Brazilian producer of ethanol from sugar cane. This is something of a change of tack. Exxon and Shell are both spending money on “second generation” biofuels made from algae or waste materials, but these could take years to develop. Now Shell can sell Cosan’s “first generation” wares through it global distribution network.
另一个方法就是加快探索其他能源的储量，来自法国的total公司已经将业务拓展到核能发电上。这周，壳牌公司宣布了一个与科桑公司高达120亿的合资企业，后者是一个从甘蔗出提取乙醇的制造商。这具有改弦易辙的意义。美孚同壳牌同时出资购买“第二代”生物燃料，这些燃料是从水藻和废物中获得，但是它仍然需要很多年继续发展。如今：壳牌公司可以通过全球分销网络来出售科桑公司的“第一代”产品。

By far the biggest bet laid, however, has been on natural gas. Around 40% of Shell’s daily production is now in the form of gas. Total and BP are not far behind. Gas is increasingly important for power generation and heating and the global market is expected to grow by half by 2030. Big oil companies are keen to expand, calculating that their skills at managing huge capital projects will be useful when building gas-liquefaction plants that make the stuff readily transportable. Late last year Chevron, Shell and Exxon agreed to spend $37 billion to develop the Gorgon field off Australia, another potentially huge source of gas.
可是这却是一场关于天然气的巨赌。每天约有40%的壳牌产品是由天然气的形式供能。Total和英国石油公司也紧随其后。天然气对于发电和热能的地位都变得日益突出，到2030年，全世界天然气市场预计会上升50%。大型石油公司渴望扩大规模，估算好自己对控制大量资金项目的能力将对他们建设气体液化工厂有积极作用，工厂的存在使得天然气运输也更加容易。去年年末，雪弗龙，壳牌以及美孚公司同意出资370亿美元来发展在澳州大陆沿海的Gorgon油田，这也是天然气的另一个巨大潜在资源。

Nonetheless investors remain cautious because prices are volatile. Exxon’s shares fell in December when the firm bid $30 billion for XTO Energy, which gets its gas from “unconventional” shale beds. Gas prices have tumbled in the past couple of years as new projects, especially shale, came on stream just as the global recession lessened demand. And technological improvements have made the huge reserves of gas in America, from shale beds and the like, a commercial prospect. BP believes that these factors will keep gas prices weak for three or four years, but it could be longer. Though national oil companies have forced the Western oil giants to look farther afield for new reserves, the oil prices, unlike gas prices, are supported by the state-owned firms that make up OPEC.
尽管如此，由于价格波动的原因，投资者仍非常谨慎。由于12月美孚公司出价300亿美元收购克洛斯提柏能源公司，导致股价下跌，克洛斯提柏公司是从“非常规”的页岩床获取天然气。在过去的几年，作为新项目的天然气价格已经下跌，特别是在页岩开始有发展趋势之时，正好赶上了全球经济萧条，以至于天然气需求减少。技术改善使得美国从页岩床取得的庞大的天然气储备，有了一个商业性的前景。英国石油公司相信这些因素将导致接下来的3-4年或许更长的时间内，天然气的价格仍将维持很低的水准。虽然国有石油公司已迫使西方石油巨头寻找更新，更远的储备，石油不像天然气，油价被构成欧佩克组织的国有公司所支撑。

译者：nick_ren
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