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
Travel companies are launching luxurious ships into perilous waters
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”。
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
【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
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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。
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译注
[1] 全文见 http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~depeco/wp/wp042008.pdf
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。
THERE was a time when conservation meant keeping people away from nature. America’s system of national parks, a model for similar set-ups around the world, was based on the idea of limiting human presence to passing visits, rather than permanent habitation.
In recent years this way of doing things has come under suspicion. To fence off large areas of parkland is often impractical and can also be immoral—in that it leads to local people being booted out. These days, the consensus among conservationists is to try to manage nature with humans in situ. But there are still “involuntary parks”, to borrow a phrase from the writer and futurist Bruce Sterling, that serve to illustrate just how spectacularly well nature can do when humans are removed from the equation.
Some such “parks” are accidents of settlement, or its absence. Nature is preserved in those rare places that people just have not got round to overrunning—for example the Foja Mountains in western New Guinea, an area of rainforest that teems with an astonishingly rich variety of plants and animals. Others are accidents of conflict: places from which people have fled and where the fauna and flora have thrived as a result.
The demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is a good example. Over the past six decades this narrow and dangerous strip of land running 248km (155 miles) across the Korean peninsula has become a de facto nature reserve. As agriculture and industrialisation have moved ahead elsewhere, the thousand-square-kilometre DMZ, uninhabited and heavily mined, has been a refuge for two endangered birds: the white-naped and the red-crowned crane. It also contains Asiatic black bears, egrets and, according to some, an extremely rare subspecies of the Siberian tiger. The biggest threat to all this biodiversity is probably peace. There are already calls for the DMZ to be turned into a park in the event of reunification.
The Chagos Islands of the Indian Ocean are a military zone, too. The locals were forcibly removed by the British government, starting in the late 1960s, to make way for an American base on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s main island. The Chagos Islands are thought to be home to some of the world’s healthiest coral reefs and the waters around them rank among the most pristine in the world. The Chagos Conservation Trust, a conservation group, would like to set up a reserve. The displaced islanders, however, plan to return one day, and if they do they will want to start fishing and building hotels and even an airport. Only military dominion keeps such activity at bay.
A little to the west of the Chagos, the Scotsman recently reported, the sea off Kenya’s northern coast currently has a profusion of fish because Somali pirates are keeping out all the big foreign fishing boats. Since the collapse of Somalia’s government in 1991, this part of the world has reportedly been plagued by illegal fishing. Now, goes the story, such boats are too afraid to enter the area because of the pirates.
The illegal dumping in the region of barrels of radioactive waste from European hospitals and factories, which has also been reported, has probably been similarly deterred, if it was taking place. This, though, is unlikely to bother the fish either way. Perhaps the most famous of the Earth’s involuntary parks is the evacuated area around Chernobyl, in Ukraine, where the burgeoning wildlife has been little affected by the risks of radiation.
Military conflict and the preparations that surround it are not, in themselves, good for the environment: far from it. Animals big enough to be eaten, or with body parts that can be sold for a profit, are well advised to stay out of war zones. It is depopulation that matters. Armed conflict and its knock-on effects simply happen to be one of the few forces on the planet that can cause quick and thorough depopulation. These areas struggle to survive when peace arrives. The nasty truth is that the likelihood of random and violent death is the cheapest form of conservation yet invented.
Jerome David Salinger, writer, died on January 28th, aged 91
杰罗姆·大卫·塞林格，作家，于1月28日逝世，享年91岁
PEOPLE kept sneaking year after year to the place on the hill in Cornish, New Hampshire, but the Great American Writer was almost never seen. Ageing rebels, second-year master’s students with lacquered nails, broad-shouldered phonies in Norfolk jackets, snappers from Newsweek, all approached the cringing, little house where he had lived, or battened down, or holed up—you, general reader, can choose the word you please—ever since a great wave of fame had broken over him in 1953, two years after he happened to write a book called “The Catcher in the Rye”.
They caught a glimpse of him sometimes, with his haughty head, angular and bug-eyed, getting groceries in the village; but he gave them the slip almost always. The truth of it was that though his book might be on all the syllabuses, picked over by the academicians, hailed as the authentic voice of every teenager who had ever squeezed a pimple or tried, drawing himself up tall, to order a Scotch and soda, his life was nobody’s godammed business. If his dream was to live in the woods, with a fireplace and a typewriter and sheaves of notes hooked on the wall, almost like a deaf-mute in his dealings with the world, that was his affair.
He was not just away in Cornish, he was also above. (The italics were his own.) From above, Holden Caulfield, the hero of “Catcher”, first entered his story to look down on the distant football game between Saxon Hall and Pencey Prep, all those little running figures of whom he was not one, because he was outside and expelled. The writer who truly lived for his art—who made it, as Mr Salinger did, his religion, along with Vedanta and Zen and the Tao—did not descend and did not integrate. He defended until death, or non-publication, the sanctity of his words. A writer asked to discuss his craft ought just to jump up and declaim, de haut en bas, the names of Flaubert, Tolstoy, Blake, Coleridge, Proust, James. And admit that after Melville there had been no really good American writer until—Salinger.
But that—wait—was not necessarily the name he answered to. In his short stories, a scant three dozen of them, rounding off the whole oeuvre, he gradually took the name and voice of Buddy Glass, a fortyish and paunchy short-story writer who had ended up in an English Department. And Glass in turn wrote obsessively, devotedly, as if of some plaster saint, about his elder brother Seymour, his Literary Ideal. Buddy was the working-writer Salinger, the man who had laboured in 1939-43 to get stuff into Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post, while all the time disdaining those slicks and lusting after the New Yorker—which, in 1948, took him into its embrace. But Seymour was “all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our doublelensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience…our one full poet.” He would open the door, blow “three or four or five unquestionably sweet and expert notes on a cornet”—and then disappear.
In time the Glass family thoroughly eclipsed the Salingers in the mind of the man in Cornish. But they were often the same. He too was “of part-Jewish, part-Irish, and conceivably part-Minotaur extraction”, brought up comfortably on the upper West Side with bellhops and cab-rides to Macy’s, and educated in schools like Pencey Prep. There, in Holden Caulfield mode, he failed to apply himself in almost everything except English composition; and so, although icily sardonic in conversation and convinced he would be a “superlative” writer, he never made the Ivy League. That hurt all his life.
Salinger or Glass, he lived on his nerves. After his war service he could feel his mind teeter like insecure luggage and his fingers bump together, his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s not intact. In the opinion of some lofty experts they never quite cohered again. Hence his hatred of photographs, blurbs, potted biographies and all else that might besmirch the plainness of a book-jacket—as well as the increasing weirdness of the work, thousands upon thousands of words about Seymour which both laboured to idolise and failed to describe, culminating in 1965 in “his” letter from summer camp, “Hapworth 16, 1924” in the ever- and over-indulgent New Yorker.
Perhaps, said the hacks to the paparazzi as they climbed the hill again, it had all been hype; apart from a hawk-sharp ear for dialogue, and a keen, tender eye for the tricksiness of children, he had never shown half as much literary talent as talent for publicity-by-intrigue. There were said to be unpublished manuscripts in his safe; most pundits were happy to wait.
What they did not always realise, as their cars left tyre-ruts on his property, was exactly what Mr Salinger had been doing there. He said he wrote just for himself; but he was also “the most terrific liar”. As Holden Caulfield, he had famously seen himself on the edge of “some crazy cliff”, watching thousands of children at play in a big field of rye, and “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.” Eight years later the idea recurred as he wrote “Seymour: An Introduction”. He felt he was “removing, at least for a minute or two, all the detonators from all the bombs in this bloody world.”
Barack Obama is spending more on defence than his predecessors
奥巴马政府的国防支出超过前任
Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
EVEN Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, admits that the $708 billion requested by Barack Obama for defence spending next year is “a massive number”. The Pentagon was exempted from the administration’s spending freeze; the surge in Afghanistan consumes all the savings from the drawdown from Iraq. So America will spend more money on defence than it did during the Korean or Vietnam wars, though as a share of national wealth defence spending is still relatively low in historical terms (see chart).
For Mr Gates the 2011 budget request, and the new quadrennial defence review (QDR) issued on the same day, are meant to consolidate the changes he has been promoting: giving priority to fighting today’s wars over buying equipment for tomorrow’s possible conflicts. The Obama administration’s first QDR is more evolution than revolution. That was to be expected, given that Mr Gates was kept on from the administration of George Bush.
Mr Gates’s tenure at the Pentagon is notable for two features: his willingness to kill off expensive projects, and his ruthlessness in punishing failure. Last year Mr Gates halted projects such as the new presidential helicopter and capped production of the air force’s top-of-the-line F-22 fighter—saving, he says, $330 billion. He has also fired, among others, the secretaries of the army and of the air force.
His latest cull is less dramatic. He wants to cancel the navy’s new cruiser and halt plans to replace its EP-3 intelligence aircraft. He seeks to cap production of the C-17 aircraft and kill off plans for an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—and if Congress attempts to preserve these two projects, Mr Gates said, he will ask Mr Obama to veto the budget.
But is the defence budget on target?
国防预算也会成为攻击的目标吗？
The idea is to free up money for, among other things, more drones (see picture) and helicopters. Electronic warfare and cybersecurity would also be beefed up. With other countries, notably China, finding new ways to sink ships and shoot down planes and satellites, the QDR considers a new generation of long-range weapons such as unmanned bombers launched from aircraft carriers and long-range cruise missiles fired from submarines.
The F-35 is supposed to become the backbone of American air power, but its costs have been rising. So Mr Gates announced he would replace the Pentagon’s manager in charge of the programme, Major-General David Heinz, a two-star general, with a three-star officer. He said he would also dock $614m in performance fees for the contractor, Lockheed Martin.
The review seeks to break with the old requirement that America should be able to fight two major wars at the same time. Mr Gates said America has already been fighting big conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but had to “prepare for a much broader range of security challenges on the horizon”. What practical changes this entails is not yet clear. The 2006 QDR already foresaw that America had to deal with a range of crises, and Mr Gates’s review only tinkers with America’s military structure.
The QDR foresees a world in which political, economic and military power is “more diffuse”. With the rise of China and India, America “will remain the most powerful actor but must increasingly work with key allies and partners”. Yet for now, Mr Gates reckons the most immediate factor affecting America’s future security is whether it wins or loses today’s wars.
Jan 29th 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC | From The Economist online
America's economy grew by 5.7% at the end of 2009. Yet it remains vulnerable
America’s economy grew by 5.7% at the end of 2009. Yet it remains vulnerable
美国经济在2009年年末增长了5.7%。但是她仍需要悉心呵护。
AFTER a tough start to 2010, Barack Obama could not have asked for better news on the economy to distract attention from his political difficulties. In the fourth quarter of last year American GDP grew by an impressive 5.7%, at an annual rate, the best quarterly performance since 2003. Expansion was driven by growth in private inventories and an increase in exports. For all of 2009 output declined by 2.4%, but for Americans weary from two years of declining employment, the fourth-quarter figure offers a clear signal that the worst is over.
新年伊始就遭遇不顺，（美国总统）巴拉克•奥巴马可能不会指望更好的经济表现来分散旁人对他政治困境的关注。按年率计算，去年第四季度，美国国内生产总值增长5.7%，这令人印象深刻，是自2003年以来最优异的季度表现。经济复苏是受私人投资和出口的双升所拉动。在整个2009年，经济产出下降了2.9%，但是，对于经历了两年来就业量下滑的美国人来说，第四季度的数据清晰得表明：经济已经触底回升。
Yet only cautious celebration is in order. There are reasons to doubt that the impressive performance in a single quarter will be repeated in the coming months. Weak fundamentals will prevent the American economy from sustaining that fast pace of growth. Of the 5.7% increase in real output, 3.4 percentage points came from inventory changes, as firms which had operated on a shoestring in the recession built inventories back to normal levels. That brief buying spree brought some workers back to assembly lines, but unless a new source of demand arises the boost from restocking will fade and growth will slow.
然而，仅是小心的庆祝还算合适。（我们）有理由持有这样的疑虑：单季度如此骄人的经济表现是否还会在未来不断出现。脆弱的经济基本面不会使美国经济保持快速增长。经济按实际值计算增长5点7个百分点（减去通货膨胀率——即09年商品和劳务价格变化程度），其中有3点4个百分点来自于私人投资的增加，因为在萧条中，勒紧裤带（裁汰员工，削减支出，降低规模）度日的公司已将生产（产品）拉回正常水平。短暂的抢购风（原译为：需求升温）使部分工人重新站在流水作业线旁边，但是如果新的需求源不能异军突起，那么产品数量的增加之势将一去（暂）不复返而且经济增长会放缓。
There are already signs of a loss of momentum. According to Macroeconomic Advisers, a consultancy, most of the inventory boost came in October, when growth roared ahead at a 16.4% annual rate. By November, growth had already quietened substantially. And throughout the fourth quarter the economy has continued to shed jobs. It is difficult to sustain growth when employment is not rising.
已有迹象表明：经济上行的势头正在消退。根据宏观经济咨询公司（一家咨询公司）的有关数据，绝大多数产品存货的增加始于去年10月份，那时经济以16.4%的年率大踏步回升。截止11月，经济增长已大体消弭。接着（去年）整个第四季度经济未能力挽失业率攀升的狂澜。在就业率下降之时去维持经济的增长，此难于登天矣。
Nor is it clear where new demand might arise. As the GDP report makes plain, personal consumption remains extremely weak; consumption rose by just 2.0% for the quarter, below the 2.8% increase of the previous three months. Spending will probably remain subdued throughout 2010. According to a recent IMF research note, the crisis and recession significantly damaged household wealth, suggesting that savings rates will rise in a recovery. The effect on consumption may be to trim 3% off GDP relative to pre-crisis levels. Indeed, the fourth-quarter savings rate ticked up to 4.6%, from 4.5% during the previous period. New demand growth will have to come elsewhere.
新需求出自哪里，尚不明了。正如GDP报告上写得清清楚楚一般，个人消费仍然相当疲软；第4季度消费仅仅上升了2.0%，低于过去3个月2.8%的上升水平。（家庭）投入在今年很有可能位于低水平。IMF最近的研究报告显示，经济危机和萧条严重缩水了家庭资产，这表明储蓄率会在经济复苏中上升。与危机前的水平相比，消费对GDP的贡献可能减少3个百分点，事实上，第四季度储蓄率从前期的4.5%上升到4.6%。新需求将不得不问路它方。
Investment may also disappoint in 2010, because of overcapacity. Oversupply in both residential and commercial property has discouraged investment in the sectors and meant that construction employment is not rising. Housing starts continue to languish at around a third of normal levels. Industrial-capacity use is similarly well below pre-recession levels. Until most existing capacity is put to productive use, there is little reason for businesses to make new investments.
因为会出现产能过剩，这一年（2010年）的投资可能也会受挫。住宅房和商业房的过度供给（或“过度膨胀”）将会给许多部门的投资泼冷水并且房市的泡沫意味着建筑业行中的就业率难有起色。房市经济开始冷却，大约是正常水平的1/3。产能的使用（或者投入）同样远远低于危机前的水平。除非绝大多数产能投入生产使用，否则经济发展中出现新一轮投资之谈无异于痴人说梦（或者“根本站不住脚”）。
Nor does it help that government economic support will fade during 2010. Mark Zandi, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com, estimates that the federal stimulus contributed about two percentage points of growth in the fourth quarter. That will drop below one percentage point by mid-year and fall to nothing thereafter. State budget cuts will also be a drain on output, as they have been for most of the recession. Drops in state-government spending subtracted 0.1% from output for all of 2009.
2010年政府救市方案的退出后，经济将难有改观。Mark Zandi（一位来自Moody’s Economy.com 的经济学家）估计，联邦政府的刺激政策对第四季度的经济增长贡献了两个百分点。这一贡献率在年中到来之前将降至1个百分点之下并最后彻底消失。{州政府预算的缩减也将拖累经济的发展，正像以前绝大多数经济衰退中所发生的一样。（此处感谢join_soon）}2009年全年，州政府开支的削减使产出降低了0.1%。
And even the fourth quarter’s spirited performance may be overstated. Third-quarter growth was originally reported at 3.5%, only to be revised down later to 2.2%.
接着，甚至是（去年）第四季度振奋人心的经济表现或许也被人为夸大。去年第三季度经济增长在报告中起初是3.5%，结果后来竟然修订为2.2%。
Nonetheless, the performance of the American economy in the fourth quarter is encouraging, suggesting firmly that America has pulled free of recession. Yet caution is in order. If the response is to cut back quickly on fiscal and monetary support for the economy, this flash of growth could disappear as quickly as it emerged.
但是，美国经济第4季度的表现还是鼓舞人心的，这清楚地说明美国已经走出经济衰退的泥潭。然而保持谨慎的态度是合宜的。如果马上撤出支撑经济的财政和货币（的扩张性）政策，那么经济增长的闪光可能会来也匆匆，去也匆匆。
China reacted angrily to America’s plan to sell $6 billion-worth of weapons to Taiwan. It suspended military contacts, threatened sanctions against American companies involved in the arms sales and said it would review co-operation on international issues.
As talks in Beijing between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama ended with little sign of progress, Chinese officials warned Barack Obama against proceeding with a planned meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Mr Obama insisted that it would go ahead, probably later this month.
Anwar Ibrahim, leader of Malaysia’s opposition, went on trial charged with sodomy. Mr Anwar has denied the allegations and accused the prime minister, Najib Razak, of a conspiracy against him. Previously convicted and jailed on a similar charge, Mr Anwar was later exonerated.
In Sri Lanka several dozen supporters of Sarath Fonseka, the defeated candidate in last month’s election, were detained, accused of involvement in a plot to ssassinate Mahinda Rajapaksa, the victorious president. Journalists’ unions and foreign human-rights groups condemned a deterioration in press freedom.
Three American soldiers were killed, along with three children and a Pakistani soldier, in a bomb attack outside a girls’ school in the north-west of Pakistan. The Americans were said to be counter-insurgency trainers working with Pakistan’s Frontier Corps.
As the relief effort following Haiti’s huge earthquake continued, members of a Baptist group from Idaho were arrested and accused of trying to smuggle 33 Haitian children out of the country. Haiti said the death toll now exceeded 200,000, the first estimate.
Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, won her battle to remove Martín Redrado as head of the Central Bank for opposing her plan to use some of the country’s dollar reserves to repay debt. His replacement is an economist said to be closer to the president.
阿根廷总统Cristina Fernández de Kirchner如愿将央行行长Martín Redrado革职。Martín Redrado反对她用美元储备支付债务的主张。替任该职位的经济学家据传和总统交往更深。
President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia became the first foreign leader to visit Honduras’s new president, Porfirio Lobo. Meanwhile, the United States restored aid that had been cut off to Honduras after a coup that removed Manuel Zelaya from the presidency in June.
The European Commission accepted Greece’s latest deficit-reduction plan, but vowed to monitor progress closely. In a broadcast to the country the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, made a plea for national unity, but public-sector workers continued with plans to strike.
The two candidates in Ukraine’s presidential election run-off, Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich, traded insults as the country prepared to vote. Tension rose when the Ukrainian secret service announced that it had detained five Russians last month for spying.
Barack Obama announced that he would not attend a summit with the European Union planned for May. Some thought the move signalled the changing foreign-policy priorities of the Obama administration; others suggested the Americans were simply tired of pointless meetings with a proliferation of European leaders.
Tony Blair testified at the Iraq war inquiry in Britain. The former prime minister gave a stout defence of his decision to send British troops into Iraq, said he would do it again, and asked what the situation would be like now if Saddam Hussein had been left in power to develop WMD. One of his former ministers said Mr Blair was being “ludicrous”.
Moon shot
月球被毙
The White House unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, starting in October. Many of its highlights, such as a new tax on banks, had been previously trailed, but the document also outlined spending on jobs. NASA’s $100 billion plan to return men to the moon was scrapped.
Barack Obama gave a speech to congressional Republicans in which he called for bipartisanship in Washington and took questions from his opponents on health care, the deficit and other matters. The rare event was televised, and was an instant hit on YouTube.
America’s defence secretary announced a review of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which bars openly gay soldiers from serving in the armed forces. Admiral Mike Mullen heartily supported the review, the first time a chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has backed the idea of allowing gay troops to serve. Congress will have the ultimate say, but not any time soon. See article
Tony Blair testified at the Iraq war inquiry in Britain. The former prime minister gave a stout defence of his decision to send British troops into Iraq, said he would do it again, and asked what the situation would be like now if Saddam Hussein had been left in power to develop WMD. One of his former ministers said Mr Blair was being “ludicrous”.
Iraq’s electoral commission reversed a ban on more than 500 candidates who had been told they could not run in next month’s election because of past ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party. Prominent Sunni politicians, who had threatened to boycott the poll because they said the original decision discriminated against them, welcomed the move. Meanwhile, suicide-bombs in Baghdad and Karbala, one of Shia Islam’s holiest Iraqi towns, killed more than 60 Shia pilgrims.
An agreement on a truce between Yemen’s government and Shia rebels of the Houthi clan broke down over an extra condition that the Houthis stop attacking Saudi forces across Yemen’s border. Yemeni government forces later said they had killed 16 Houthi rebels, including several leaders, in their stronghold, Saada. See article
Israel’s secret service, Mossad, was widely suspected of the recent assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a military commander of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist move. Mr Mabhouh was said to have been close to Hamas’s political leader, Khaled Meshaal.
The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague won his appeal against a ruling that he could not charge Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide in Darfur. Mr Bashir was indicted in March 2009. A warrant for his arrest will now be reconsidered. Mr Bashir, with the backing of some African governments but not others, still insists he will not appear before the court.
Fire retardants may affect female reproduction
阻燃剂可能会影响女性生育
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
With free birth control? 免费避孕？
Fire retardants may affect female reproduction
IN MANY ways DDT was a miracle chemical when its efficacy against biting insects was discovered at the start of the second world war. Its widespread use against malarial mosquitoes saved countless lives. What was not known at the time, however, was DDT’s propensity to accumulate, persist and damage the environment.
