最贵房车
2011.12.17.B2 美国经济如履薄冰——真不想迎来这愚蠢的一年
America's fragile recovery
A year of living pigheadedly
Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition
America will be a tad cheerier than Europe in 2012-but it should be so much better still
THE euro zone is probably already back in recession. The emerging markets are starting to show signs of slowing down. Thank heavens, one might say, for America, which is finishing the year with the nearest thing to good economic news to be found on this benighted planet.[/color][/size]
欧元区经济可能已遭遇衰退门，新兴市场发展也有了放缓的迹象。近期，全球经济发展普遍缓慢，美国在年底传来经济利好[/size][size=3]趋势——“谢天谢地！”，有人可能会说，总算
还有美国
Growth in the third quarter clocked in at around 2%, and in the fourth quarter it looks likely to be significantly stronger than that. Unemployment is edging downwards, the Dow is back up at around 12,000, hou sales are rising and spending on consumer durables, most notably cars, is improving at a fairly cheerful clip. Might America, as so often in the past, provide a locomotive for global growth in 2012?
出师表一词多义
本年第三季度经济增长2%，就目前情况推断，第四季度将大大超过这一数字。失业率在降低，道琼斯工业指数也回到12000点，房屋销售额增加，耐用消费品（尤其汽车销售）开支大幅上涨。这一次，是不是又跟以前一样，到了美国领头带动2012年经济增长的时候了？
Sadly not. That is partly becau the economy, on clor inspection, is less speedy than i
土鳖虫多少钱一斤t first appears. But it is also becau America’s politicians look likely to do nothing whatsoever to help growth in 2012. Indeed, the immediate priority is to stop them doing yet more harm to it.
很遗憾，事实并不是这样。一部分原因在于，仔细观察就会发现经济并不像表面上恢复地那么快；另一方面原因是，2012年，美国政客不会做出任何有利于经济发展的动作，事实上，现在的关键是，只要保证他们不阻碍经济增长就好了。三只小熊儿歌
The current rate of growth is actually pretty anaemic, amounting to no better than a return to the long-term trend. After the depths plumbed in the recession (GDP fell by 3.5% in 2009), many hoped for a more impressive bounce-back. But the damage done to individual balance-sheets is still weighing down on the recovery. Nor is that recovery generating new jobs at anything like the rate it needs to if it is to put a rious dent in unemployment and get demand moving again. America’s robust population growth means that employment has to ri by around 100,000 jobs a month merely to keep pace 幼儿礼仪
马蹄肉饼with the expanding labour force. And the main reason that the unemployment rate fell so impressively in November was not that a lot of jobs were created, but that a larger number of people became discouraged and stopped looking for work. If you add tho unhappy people back into the workforce, the true rate of unemployment is nearly a point higher than the official 8.6%; add in all tho in part-time work who want to work full time, and the rate is over 15%. And all of this, of cour, assumes that the euro does not collap; if it does, the conquences for the American banking system would make the bankruptcy of Lehman em like a picnic.
事实证明，目前经济增长缺乏活力——复苏仍仅是个长期趋势。经济探底（2009年GDP负增长3.5%）后，许多人都希望经济能够迅速反弹。但事实是，[color=blue]伤痕累累的个人资产负债仍然在拖累经济增长的步伐；疲软的经济复苏，也没创造出多少工作岗位，失业率没有明显下降，内需也未被再次拉起。[/color]美国人口的迅猛增长也意味着每月需要增加10万工作岗位，这仅是追上逐步膨胀的劳动力的最慢速度。11月份失业率显著下滑的主要原因不是社会提供了很多工作岗位，而是很多人在失望伤心中停下了寻找工作的脚步。
如果把这些人重新纳入失业大军的话，失业率不仅不会降低，反而会比官方数据8.6%再上升一个百分点；如果把想转全职的兼职人员再算进去，数字会上升到15%——这一切的前提还得是欧元区能撑得下去，欧元区一旦垮台，引发的后果将给美国银行系统带来巨大麻烦，雷曼兄弟的破产跟这个比起来简直不值一提。
[b]For God’s sake, stop bickering
我的天啊，别吵了[/b]
The fate of the euro is something over which Congress has no control. But it does have the power to tip the recovery back towards recession if it fails to break a political deadlock that was still unresolved as The Economist went to press.
美国政府掌握不了欧元的命运，但主观上还是能打破自身的政治僵局的。如果它到这期《经济学人》（印刷版）出版时还解决不了这个问题[/color]，人们也不用指望它能促进经济发展了，直接坐等大萧条吧。
Extensions to unemployment benefit and a job-boosting cut to the payroll tax are both t
to expire at the end of this year, unless they are renewed by Congress. Add in the exhaustion of the last funds from Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, and the implied fiscal contraction could be as much as 2.6 percentage points of GDP in the first half of the year. Cynically, given their avowed enthusiasm for cutting taxes, the Republicans in Congress are threatening to sabotage extension of the payroll tax cut by linking it to an entirely unrelated matter—approval for a new pipeline bringing oil from Canada’s tar sands to Texas’s refineries. As has become the norm in America, the negotiation ems t to continue right up until the last moment. Even authorisation of ordinary spending (the government lives hand-to-mouth, as most of this year’s budget has not been yet pasd) is being taken to the brink.
如果年底之前国会没有任何行动，那么失业救济金增额和促进就业的工资减税都将过期失效。巴拉克·奥巴马总统在2009年设立的经济刺激一揽子计划如今也资金告罄，明年上半年的财政紧缩也将预期高达GDP的2.6%。讽刺的是，虽然共和党一直是口头的巨人——声称要减税减税，但这次他们却成了行动上的矮子——他们将工资减税跟一个毫不相关的事情扯到了一起（提议建设一条将加拿大的焦油砂运到德克萨斯州精炼厂的管道）。美国政坛
已经形成这样一种潜规则：不拖到最后一分钟绝对不解决问题。即使是批准正常支出（因为本年度预算方案未通过，所以政府一直入不敷出）也颇受阻。
Even if this do-nothing 112th Congress manages to avoid mutilating the economy, it ems unlikely to do anything to help it. It looks clear that nothing of substance will be pasd till after the presidential election on November 6th. This is both a disgrace and a tragedy: there are plenty of ideas that could boost employment. Schemes to back small business, t up an infrastructure bank or offer assistance for firms that hire the long-term unemployed are all marooned. Federal aid to the states, all of whom are having to pass tough budgets which will further contract demand, won’t be restarted.
猪脑的功效与作用就算第112届国会（毫无作为的一届）能够阻止经济恶化，也无法使它好转。显而易见，在明年11月6号美国总统选举前，国会不会通过任何实质性方案。这是耻辱也是悲剧，因为明明就有那么多方法可以促进就业：支持小型企业，建立基础设施银行或向雇佣长期失业的人员的公司提供奖励，所有这一切都被刻意忽视了。各州为了通过预算方案都不得不紧缩需求，这也使得联邦援助被一再搁置。
That leaves one, rather distant, hope: that, in the lame-duck period between the election and the next Congress, prompted by the imminent expiry of George Bush’s tax cuts at the beginning of 2013, America’s politicians will sit down and finally hammer out the grand bargain the country so desperately needs, with the tax increas delayed in exchange for nsible reforms to spending and the tax code. There is a genuine chance that will happen. But between now and then, a lot of companies and jobs could be lost.对比句子
这就仅留给我们一个渺茫的希望——在明年选举后、下届国会定下来前的跛脚鸭时期，因乔治·布什的减税方案即将在2013年初到期，美国政治家们会坐下来，最终讨论决定出这个国家急切需要的大妥协——延迟增税，并做出关于开支和税法的理性改革。这个确实很有可能会发生，但到那个时候，很多公司和工作机会已经不复存在了。
