Suffering from persistently weak economies, governments and central banks are experimenting with ever more aggressive – some say dangerous – monetary treatments. Countries are being enrolled, like it or not, in the economic equivalent of clinical trials.
由于患上了长期经济萎靡之症,各国政府和央行都在以前所未有的力度试验激进的货币疗法(有人会称之为危险的疗法)。无论愿意与否,各国纷纷开始了经济“临床试验”。
Before embarking on a new course of treatment, the doctors ought to inspect the patients in the wards next door. I found myself last month visiting two countries following diametrically opposite courses of treatment: Portugal, perhaps the least demonstrative sufferer on the eurozone periphery; and Argentina, which has long injected economic drugs not registered elsewhere. Both are instructive – and discouraging.
医生们在采取新疗法之前,不妨看一下隔壁病房患者的病情。上个月,我去了两个所用疗法截然相反的国家:一个是葡萄牙,这可能是受困的欧元区外围最死气沉沉的国家;另一个是阿根廷,该国长期以来都在注射其他地区不敢用的经济“药物”。这两个例子都有启示意义,也都令人沮丧。
Portugal belongs to a strong currency bloc – its money functions as a real store of value, and convertibility is not in question. But the place is stony broke, and these advantages, so dear in the abstract to business people, have little appeal to residents with no money at all. The new roads built with EU funds are deserted, since they carry a toll; traffic has been displaced on to the roads they were designed to relieve. People prefer double-parking their ageing cars in the narrow streets to paying a euro or two at the shiny new car park. The receptionist in the empty hotel arrives, after a long wait, to serve you a drink in the bar; he later turns up as a waiter in the restaurant. Though they have the gentlest manners in Europe, the Portuguese have begun to express their frustration in a frank and vivid style of graffiti. Everything is on sale and no one is buying.
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