SCORE a point for globalisation. In a landmark vote on Wednesday August 27th America’s financial-markets watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), paved the way for its companies to switch from America’s Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to international accounting standards. In a field that is, by reputation, notoriously dull, this looks like something to get genuinely excited about.

这为美国的全球化进程又得了一分。本周三（8月27日），在一项有着里程碑意义的投票中，美国金融市场监管者-证券交易委员会为美国公司由美国的公认会计准（GAAP）则转换到国际会计准则铺平了道路。在这个异常枯燥呆板的领域，这看起来确实值得高兴。

GAAP was the beancounter’s gold standard for decades, but it is now widely seen as cumbersome. Most other countries have embraced the international rules, known as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The regulators’ plan envisages American-based multinationals switching to the standards voluntarily in 2010. The SEC would then vote on whether to require all other companies to do the same, starting in 2014. The commission has already cleared the way for overseas firms to use IFRS when doing business or listing securities in America.

公认会计准则（GAAP）是会计领域数十年来的黄金准则，但是现在却被普遍地认为笨重异常，运转不灵。许多其它的国家都采用了国际标准-国际财务报告准则（IFRS）。美国监管者的计划是使总部位于美国的跨国公司在2010年自愿转换成国际财务报表准则。证券交易委员会到那时投票决定是否要求其它公司也从2014年开始采用国际财务报表准则。证券委员会已经为海外公司在美国做生意或者上市时候使用国际财务报表准则扫清了道路。

Christopher Cox, the SEC’s chairman, hailed the move to an “international language of disclosure, transparency and comparability.” Big companies have long been preparing for it with enthusiasm. It will bring each of them one-off costs in the tens of millions, but the savings over time will dwarf the initial outlay. It could also mean greater profits: one study found that the majority of American firms made more under the foreign rules. Investors, too, have reason to rejoice. It will make it easier to compare, say, a French drug company with an American rival. And the compliance costs of duplicate accounting, the bulk of which investors ultimately bear, will disappear.

证券交易委员会主席Christopher Cox为这个举动使得财务报表更加接近”披露，透明和可比性的国际语言”而大加赞扬。大公司对此期待已久。这可能会使他们一次性消耗数千万美元，但是随着时间的流逝，对于整个成本的节省使得初始的投入不值一提。而且还有更大的收益：一项研究发现大多数美国公司在外国准则下会赚的更多。投资者同样值得高兴。因为国际会计准则更有利于比较，比如说，比较一家法国药品公司与其美国的竞争对手。而且主要由投资者最终来承担的重复做帐的税务执行成本也会消失。

Accountants point to other benefits. IFRS is less complex than GAAP, with fewer exceptions; America’s accounting rules, like its tax code, are creaking under bolted-on guidance. It is also more principles-based, granting auditors greater room to use judgment. This can be good or bad, of course, but most experts say more leeway is needed.

会计师也有其它的好处。国际财务报表准则比公认会计准则要简单些，而且特例也比较少。美国的会计准则，例如其免税代码，于紧锢的GAAP准则下孱弱多疾。国际财务报表准则通常是基于原理的，准许审计员有更多的空间来做判断。当然，这样有好处也有坏处，但是多数熟练高手认为更多的灵活空间是必要的。

For several years, the SEC and the London-based International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), which oversees the international rules, focused on steadily bringing the two sets of standards together. But it has been a struggle, largely thanks to the Byzantine nature of the American system. Mr Cox embraced the more radical approach approved this week in the belief that it would boost the competitiveness of American firms by removing barriers to investment. The “roadmap” is the latest in a string of proposals under his leadership designed to bring American and foreign markets closer together.

多年来，证券交易委员会和总部位于伦敦，负责制定国际会计准则的国际会计准则委员会（IASB）努力使两套标准融为一体。但这难于调和，很大程度上归咎于美国会计系统拜占庭式的本性。Cox先生这周采纳了较为激进的方案，因为他相信移除投资的障碍会提升美国公司的竞争力。最近在其领导下一连串的提议所构成的”发展蓝图”就是为了使得美国和国外市场更紧密地在一起。

Not everyone is happy. Some politicians, including the head of the congressional committee that oversees the SEC, worry about ceding standard-setting power to the IASB. Even though America has seats on its board, there is concern that it will be under-represented. Some want it to have influence commensurate with the size of America’s equity markets, which account for almost half of global market capitalisation. Others worry about the IASB’s finances and its susceptibility to outside influence. One of the SEC’s commissioners said the plan should only be waved through once it is clear that secure, independent funding is in place.

并不是每个人都高兴。包括监督SEC的国会委员会首领在内的一些政客担心这是将标准制定的权力让与国际会计准则委员会。尽管美国在国际会计准则委员会中也有委员席位，但是他们仍担心其代表名额不足。有人想要使得其影响力与占全球市场资本总额半壁江山的美国股票市场的地位相称。其它人担心国际会计准则委员会的财务状况并且怕其易受外界影响。一个证券交易委员的委员说，这个计划除非其稳定独立的资金筹备到位，才能获得通过。

There are worries overseas too, for instance that the SEC will try to interfere with IFRS and interpret it in a narrow, prescriptive way. Standards issued by the IASB are supposed to be endorsed without modification. It remains to be seen whether America will be able to accept this. Its relations with international rulemakers can be thorny: think of the World Trade Organisation.

海外同样也有些担心，例如证券交易委员会是否会干涉国际财务报表准则或者从狭义，惯例的角度来理解它呢。国际会计准则委员会发布的标准应该被无改动的状况下认可。美国是否能够接受尚待分晓。美国与国际规则制定者之间的关系常常很棘手：例如和世界贸易组织。

Plenty of other issues still have to be resolved. Some are technical: IFRS allows fewer securitised assets to be kept off the books than GAAP does, for instance-a matter of import for banks. Others are broader and altogether more difficult. For an accounting framework that rests largely on judgment to flourish in rules-based America, the legal and regulatory environment there will need to “evolve”, says PricewaterhouseCoopers, a big accounting firm. That is putting it gently. Still, this week’s vote was a momentous step-and in the right direction.

还有许多其它的问题有待解决。有些是技术性的：国际财务报表准则要求在账簿之外的证券性资产比公认会计准则的要求要少，例如：

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The big data dump
巨大的数据转储

Aug 28th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

A deluge of electronic information may overwhelm American civil justice
排山倒海的电子信息也许会压倒美国的司法公正

DAWN BEYE’S teenage daughter suffers from anorexia nervosa and had to be treated in hospital at a cost of about $1,000 a day. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the Beyes’ insurance company, covered one month of the bills but then balked, demanding evidence that the affliction was “biologically based” rather than psychological. So Ms Beye got together with parents of other anorexic and bulimic teenagers and sued. Horizon immediately asked to see practically everything the teenagers had said on their Facebook and MySpace profiles, in instant-messaging threads, text messages, e-mails, blog posts and whatever else the girls might have done online.
DAWN BEYE未成年的小女儿患有神经性厌食症，在医院接受治疗时每天的开销接近1000美元。位于新泽西的Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield是Beye的保险公司，在给付了一个月的医疗费用后突然中止了保险责任，并且要求Beye举证说明病痛具有”生物学基础”而不是心理学问题。于是Beye女士联合了其他厌食症和食欲过剩症患儿的家长进行起诉。保险公司则要求审阅这些女孩全部的在线叙述记录，包括在Facebook和 MySpace上的简介，即时信息记录，收集短信，电子邮件以及博克。

The Beyes’ lawyer, David Mazie at Mazie, Slater, Katz & Freeman, objected on the grounds that Horizon’s demands violated the girls’ privacy. He lost. So hard disks and web pages are being scoured in order for the case to proceed. Gathering and then sifting through all the electronic information that a few teenage girls have generated is excessive and daunting, says Mr Mazie.
Beye的律师Mazie则以保险公司的要求侵犯了客户隐私为理由提出了反对，但是没有成功。于是根据案件进程，硬盘以及相关网页都被详细搜索。通过收集和详审，Mazie律师表示由这几个小女孩所引发的相关电子信息多得令人畏惧。

And yet almost all information today is electronic, and there is ever more of it. “Things that we would never have put in writing are now in electronic form,” says Rebecca Love Kourlis, formerly a justice on Colorado’s Supreme Court and now the director of an institute at the University of Denver dedicated to rescuing America’s civil-justice system.
目前几乎所有的信息都已经电子化，而且还有日益增多的趋势。科罗拉多最高法院前法官Rebecca Love Kourlis表示”那些我们从来没有想过写下来的东西现在都有了电子版”，她现在是丹佛大学某学院院长，致力于拯救美国民事司法体系的工作。

This system, she says, was already a “sick patient”-with crowded dockets and understaffed courts-but electronic discovery now threatens a lethal “spike in fever”. She has seen ordinary landlord-tenant disputes take three years, and divorce cases that might have been merely bitter, but are now digital wars of attrition. She sees cases that are settled only because one party cannot afford the costs of e-discovery: whereas in the past 5% of cases went to trial, now only 2% do. She knows plaintiffs who cannot afford to sue at all, for fear of the e-discovery costs.
她表示该体系已经因为案子太多、人手太少而已经变得”病入膏肓”了，但是电子探索却预示着致命一击。她目睹了太多的普通普通房屋租赁官司却耗费了3年时间，离婚案子让人苦不堪言，现在都演变成了数码消耗战。不少案件的了结仅仅是因为一方无法负担电子搜索的费用，所以以前5%的案子会上法庭，现在就只有 2%了；很多的原告因为惧怕高昂的电子搜索费用而选择了根本就不起诉。

For large companies, these costs now run into many millions. Patrick Oot, a lawyer for Verizon, an American telecoms giant that gets sued a lot, says that at the beginning of this decade e-discovery presented “a one-big-case, once-a-year problem”. In most cases information was still on paper, and its volume thus limited. In the rare event that electronic evidence was requested, 100 gigabytes (GB) was considered a large amount. Today, says Mr Oot, almost every case involves e-discovery and spits out “terabytes” of information-the equivalent of millions of pages. In an ordinary case, 200 lawyers can easily review electronic documents for four months, at a cost of millions of dollars, he says.
对大公司来说，该费用现今已经发展到了数百万。Patrick Oot是美国电信巨头Verizon的律师，在他的公司被起诉后他表示，在数码搜索这十年历史的初期，表现出来的是”一年一个大案子的问题”。过去大多数的案子中，信息还是记载在纸介质上，容量非常有限；很少的情况下需要提供电子证据，100G被认为是一个巨大的量。现在几乎每一个案子都需要电子搜索，而且产生了数千G的信息，这需要上百万张纸介质才可以记录下来。一个普通的案子中，200个律师用4个月的时间才可以完成电子文件的审阅，而费用则高达数百万美元。

This has led to a new boom industry of specialised e-discovery service providers which merrily charge $125-600 an hour. George Socha, a consultant, estimates that their annual revenues have grown from $40m in 1999 to about $2 billion in 2006 and may hit $4 billion next year.
这引领了一个新兴繁荣产业的诞生-专业的电子搜索服务供应商，收费差不多是每小时125-600美元不等。George Socha 估计他们的咨询收入从1999年的4000万美元增加到2006的20亿美元，并且有望在明年达到40亿美元。

The process of e-discovery starts when the adversaries in a lawsuit demand to see all sorts of information in their search for relevant nuggets. Each side then has to identify all the laptops, smart-phones, memory sticks, network servers and back-up tapes that might store data created by the people in question. It probably also has to request logs from online-service providers, if those people used web-mail or similar services. The results then have to be indexed and reviewed by humans. This usually falls to the junior staff at law firms, some of whom are so fed up with the drudgery that they have quit the profession altogether.
诉讼案件中的抗辩方需要在所有种类的信息中搜寻相关证据，于是电子搜索的进程便开始了。控辩双方必须甄别所有的笔记本电脑、智能手机、记忆棒、网络服务器以及备份磁带，在所有信息中寻找受质疑人所留下的数据；如果这些人使用了网络邮箱或者类似的服务，也许还需要网络服务商提供相关日志；其结果会被排序并且人工审阅。这些工作通常由律所中的初级员工完成，很多人实在受够了这种简单重复劳动，于是选择了其他的职业。

For firms that find themselves in court a lot, it makes increasing sense to bring this entire process in-house, rather than farming it out. Verizon, for instance, has been using outside firms such as Kroll, but found them “really expensive”, says Mr Oot. So Verizon has established a dedicated internal e-discovery group which Mr Oot oversees and which will gradually take over all e-discovery using its own software and staff. Mr Oot reckons this will save Verizon $11m in costs over three years.
对于经常要上庭的公司来说，他们越来越觉得应该自己完成这项工作，而不是外包出去。Verizon 的 Oot 表示雇佣类似于Kroll这样的外部公司实在是太昂贵了；于是他建立了直接隶属于自己的内部电子搜索团队，它将使用自己的软

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• 奥巴马胜选演说·文言版

ON AUGUST 28th, barring some dark manoeuvre by seething Clintonistas, Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Forty-five years to the day after Martin Luther King spoke of his dream, America will take a giant leap towards the realisation of that great call for justice. Hundreds of millions will watch, and be moved; Mr Obama seems to many, by reason of his race, his calm intelligence, his youthful good looks and his powerful oratorical skills, to be well suited to draw a line beneath the bitter Bush years and to repair America’s torn relationship with the outside world. One prominent pundit was much derided earlier this year for describing the tingle he got from listening to the candidate-but everyone knew exactly what he meant.
除非一些克林顿主义者暗中下绊,巴拉克奥巴马仍然会于8月28日接受民主党内的总统候选人提名。在马丁路德金发表关于梦想的演讲45年后的今天,美国向着他所呼唤的正义的方向又迈进了一大步。数百万人会目睹这一时候, 也一定会深深地受到震动.因为其自身的种族,冷静的智慧,年轻俊朗的外表,强有力的演说技巧,对于很多人来说,奥巴马是与辛酸的布什时代划清界线,修复美国与外部世界裂痕的合适人选。今年早些时候,某位著名专家说他听候选人演讲时的感受到某种刺痛感,他本人因此深受嘲笑–但所有人都知道他到底想说什么。

This moment comes as much through perspiration as through inspiration. Mr Obama’s achievement in defeating the Clinton machine was monumental. Hillary Clinton started out as the overwhelming favourite, with the Democratic Party establishment, not to mention its big-ticket donors, squarely behind her and poll leads that sometimes topped 20 percentage points. But Mr Obama ran a brilliant campaign, using the internet to harness the energy and the donations of an army of volunteers, and deploying them with tactical skill in almost every state. He managed the firestorm touched off by his intemperate pastor, Jeremiah Wright, with dignity and, eventually, ruthlessness.
这一时刻的到来,既是激励的结果,也是辛勤工作的结果.奥巴马击败克林顿体系这一成就具有里程碑意义.竞选一开始时,希拉里让人感觉势不可挡,她有民主党当权者的支持,还有许多站在她身后慷慨解囊的赞助者,民调显示某些时候希拉里甚至领先20多个百分点.但奥巴马的竞选非常成功,他使用互联网来管理大量志愿者的精力和捐赠,指挥他们在每个州都进行具有战略性的竞选活动.此外,他成功的熄灭了由其放纵的的牧师杰拉米怀特所挑起的怒火,优雅而且冷酷.

When it comes to the issues, it is hardly surprising that The Economist is less impressed. Mr Obama’s tilt towards protectionism during the primary campaign was both wrong and dangerous. So was his insistence on denying funds to the “surge” that has worked so well (if belatedly) in Iraq, and his determination to withdraw troops from the conflict according to a rigid timetable. We are nervous about his incentive-destroying willingness to raise taxes sharply on the well-off, and of the cost implications of many of his policies. But we recognise that his positions have evolved as the campaign has moved from the primary stage, where politicians have to outdo each other in their appeal to their party faithful, to the general election. Were he to become president, they would move further to the centre again. And policies are by no means the whole story of an American election: character and leadership matter greatly, too. Mr Obama is an impressive nominee with the potential to be a fine president.
每当提到这些事情时,《经济学人》并没有感觉心潮澎湃,这不难理解.初选时奥巴马的态度向保护主义倾斜,这一点不但错误而且危险.在另外两方面也同样如此:他顽固地拒绝向速增计划拨款,尽管后者在伊拉克运行良好(在很晚的时候他才不得不承认这一点).他决意要按照严格的时间表,从伊拉克冲突中抽身而退.他主张对富裕阶层大量增税,而这会摧毁后者的积极性.他的许多政策都有巨大的成本.对于这些我们同样很担心.但是我们认识到从初选到普选,奥巴马的定位已经改变了许多,毕竟在初选中彼此竞争,其目标只是要吸引党内的忠诚分子.如果奥巴马想成为总统,他们必须进一步地向中间靠拢.况且,美国大选并不是只关心政策:性格和领导力同样很重要.奥巴马是一个令人印象深刻的候选人,有能力成为一个好总统.

Democratic doubts
民主疑虑

But the road to the White House is still a hard one. Even though the Republican brand is as contaminated as a Soviet-era reactor, and 80% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, Mr Obama is barely ahead of his septuagenarian Republican rival. He is less popular than his party as a whole: in “generic” polling, people prefer Democrats to Republicans by around 12 points, but Mr Obama is ahead of John McCain by an average of only around 45% to 43%. One poll this week had Mr McCain five points ahead. The presidential debates, which will start next month, usually sway a lot of voters. Mr Obama is generally held to have lost his only encounter so far with Mr McCain, in back-to-back interviews with Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor, on August 16th. In the battleground states which will determine the result, Mr McCain has steadily been gaining ground; if the polls are borne out, the result, as in 2000 and 2004, will be nerve-janglingly close.
但是通往白宫之路仍然很艰难.虽然共和党这块牌子已经如同苏联核电站一样臭,80%的美国人认为这个国家走在错误的道路上.奥巴马却并没有领先他那年已古稀的竞争对手多少.他并没有像他的党派作为一个整体那么受欢迎:在民调中,民主党的支持率比共和党高12%左右,但奥巴马与麦凯恩的支持率大概为45%和 43%.本周的一次民调认为麦凯恩有5个百分点的领先优势.总统竞选辩论下个月就要开始了,它通常会影响许多选民的最终决定. 8月16日福音教派牧师里克沃伦主持的背靠背采访是迄今为止二人的唯一一次碰撞.舆论普遍认为,奥巴马在采访中略逊一筹.在那些会起最终决定作用,竞争激烈的州,麦凯恩在稳固地向前推进.如果民调准确的话,最终结果将和2000年和2004年一样,两位竞选人的差距会非常小.

Many Americans, including a dangerously large number of Democrats, still have their doubts about Mr Obama. Some see him as too young and inexperienced for a dangerous world; others find him unattractively self-regarding and aloof; still others question his patriotism. Many resent his apparent flip-flopping on important issues, like gun-control and whether or not to talk to Iran and Syria, as well as less important ones, like whether to wear a flag pin. His cynical breaking of a promise to be bound by federal campaign-finance limits was shabby by any standards. Perhaps the most damning criticism of him is that he has never exhibited political courage by daring to take on any of his party’s powerful interests, as his rival, John McCain, has done over many issues, including global warming, campaign-finance reform, immigration and torture.
许多美国人,其中包括许多民主党人(这一点非常危险),仍然但对奥巴马有所疑虑.有些人认为他太年轻,面对一个危险的世界时没有经验.有些人认为他太自恋,太清高.还有些人质疑他是否爱国.许多人讨厌他在某些议题上模糊其词,大至枪支管制和是否会和伊朗叙利亚展开谈判,小至是否会佩戴国旗勋章.他对联邦竞选资金管制的悍然违背,不管按何种标准而言,都显得卑鄙下流.也许对他最激烈的批评是:他从来没有展现出政治勇气来质疑民主党的任何一项既得利益.而他的对手麦凯恩在这一点上却是成绩斐然:比如说在全球变暖,竞选资金改革,移民政策和虐囚等方面.

Yes, he still can
是,他仍然可以

From the moment of his coronation in Denver, Mr Obama will have 68 days to allay these doubts. There is not much he can do about his thin résumé or his lack of foreign-policy and security expertise, though he can mitigate the latter somewhat with an astute choice of running mate. And it is a bit late now for principled stands in the Senate. Mr Obama could certainly tone down the triumphalism: opting to make his acceptance speech not in the convention hall but in a 75,000-seater sports stadium seems like another mistake, akin to his hubristic rock-star’s tour of Europe. He needs to be a lot clearer and firmer about how he will deal with America’s foes and rivals: his first instinct when Russia invaded Georgia was to waffle. Acknowledging that the Iraq surge, which he tried to block, has worked would also be a sign of tough-mindedness.
从他在丹佛接受提名的那一刻起,奥巴马有68天的时间来缓解这些疑虑.对于贫乏的履历和在外交安全事务方面经验的缺乏,恐怕他也做不了什么(虽然说他可以通过精心挑选竞选伙伴来弥补经验问题).在参议院事务中表明立场现在看起来也有点迟.但奥巴马可以做到低调一点:把他发表提名演讲的地点选在有75000 个座位的体育场而不是民主党会议大厅可以说是他的又一个错误,与他那哗众取宠的欧洲之行非常相似.他需要在如何面对美国问题和对手上更加明确,更加坚定:俄罗斯入侵格鲁吉亚时他的第一反应是唠叨.承认他曾经想阻止的伊拉克速增计划卓有成效,能够体现他的坚强品质.

Most of all, he needs to spend those 68 days showing that he understands, and can connect with, ordinary Americans. The economy ought to be the Democrats’ trump card, just as security tends to be the Republicans’. But some of the most surprising recent polls show that Mr Obama is rated lower by voters on how he would handle the economy than is Mr McCain, who has admitted that he doesn’t know much about the subject. That may be because Mr Obama often sounds curiously disconnected from the troubles of anyone except America’s very poorest. Mrs Clinton was much better at empathising with middle America, and Mr Obama needs to show he has learnt from her.
最重要的是,他需要在68天内向民众表明,他理解普通美国人并且能与他们紧密联系在一起.经济问题,理应如同共和党的安全问题一样,是民主党的王牌.但最近的几次民调令人惊讶地显示,就如果解决经济问题上,民众对麦凯恩比对奥巴马有信心,虽然前者曾经承认,他在这一议题上所知不多.这也许就是因为奥巴马总让人觉得除了对最穷的美国人以外,他对其他人的经济问题漠不关心.在与中产阶级的关系上,希拉里要比奥巴马表现好得多,这一点上奥巴马一定要向希拉里学习.

That could also help heal the wounds of the Democratic Party, which, after the bitter contest and Mr Obama’s narrow victory, are still raw. If the Democrats remain divided they will lose the presidency. Were that to happen, after Iraq, Katrina and an economic crisis, they might well want to consider an alternative line of work.
这同样可以治愈民主党的伤痛,它在党内激烈的竞争和奥巴马勉强胜利之后,仍然没有愈合.如果民主党依旧分裂,他们会输掉此次选举.如果真的一语成谶,在经历伊拉克问题,卡特莱娜飓风和经济危机之后,民主党也许真的得考虑改变自身路线了.

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AS FALLING house prices and tightening credit squeeze America’s economy, some worry that the country may suffer a decade of stagnation, as Japan did after its bubble burst in the early 1990s. Japan’s property bubble was also fuelled by cheap money and financial liberalisation and-just as in America-most people assumed that property prices could not fall nationally. When they did, borrowers defaulted and banks cut their lending. The result was a decade with average growth of less than 1%.
随着美国国内房价的下跌和信贷紧缩的持续加强，一些人开始担心美国可能经历像日本上个世纪90年代早期经济泡沫破灭后那样的十年滞胀。低息贷款和金融自由化加速了日本资产泡沫化，就像现在的美国，大部分人都认为房地产价格不会出现全国性下跌。然而当它发生时，借债人逃债，银行断供。结果就是十年平均不到1%的经济增长率。

Most dismiss the idea that America could suffer the same fate as Japan, but some of the differences are overstated. For example, some claim that Japan’s bubble was much bigger than America’s. Yet average house prices nationwide rose by 90% in America between 2000 and 2006, compared with a gain of 51% in Japan between 1985 and early 1991, when Japanese home prices peaked (see left-hand chart). Prices in Japan’s biggest cities rose faster, but nationwide figures matter more when gauging the impact on the economy. Japanese home prices have since fallen by just over 40%. American prices are already down by 20%, and many economists reckon they could fall by another 10% or more.
大部分人都不太在意这样的观点：美国可能经历像日本一样的命运，但是一些区别被夸大了。例如，一些人认为日本的泡沫要比美国的大很多。然而，从2000年到2006年，全美房屋价格上涨了90%，而日本房价从85年开始到91年初达到顶峰，六年间只上涨了51%（如左表）。日本那些大城市的房价上涨要更快，但是对测定房价对经济影响更重要的则是全国的房价数据。日本房价从高点下落以来跌去仅 40%多，而美国房价已经下跌了20%，并且很多经济学家预计房价还会跌去10%或者更多。

What about commercial property? Again, average prices rose by less in Japan (80%) than in America (90%) over those same periods. Thus Japan’s property boom was, if anything, smaller than America’s. Japan also had a stockmarket bubble, which burst a year earlier than that in property. This hurt banks, because they counted part of their equity holdings in other firms as capital. But its impact on households was modest, because only 30% of the population held shares, compared with over half of Americans.
那么商用物业又如何呢？同样如此，在上述时期内，日本的平均价格上涨了80%，要少于美国的90%。因此如果说日本的房地产泡沫与美国相比有什么区别的话，那就是它要比美国的小。日本在股票市场上同样存在泡沫，它是先于房地产泡沫一年破灭。这使得银行业严重受损，因为银行把在其它公司持有的股份算作资本。但是它对普通人的影响是饿不限的，因为只有30%的日本居民持有股票，而在美国却有一半人以上。

Nor were Japanese policymakers any slower than American ones to cut interest rates and loosen fiscal policy after the bubble burst, contrary to popular misconceptions. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) began to lower interest rates in July 1991, soon after property prices began to decline. The discount rate was cut from 6% to 1.75% by the end of 1993. Two years after American house prices started to slide, the Fed funds rate has fallen from 5.25% to 2% (see right-hand chart). A study by America’s Federal Reserve concluded that Japanese interest rates fell more sharply in the early 1990s than required by the “Taylor rule”, which establishes the appropriate rate using the amount of spare capacity and inflation.
与通常的误解相反，在泡沫破灭后，日本的政策制定者迅速地采取降低利率和宽松的财政政策措施，这一点不比美国慢。房地产价格一开始下降，日本银行就于 1991年7月开始降低利率。到1993年末，日本的贴现率从6%下降到1.75%。而美国在房价下跌两年之后，联邦基金利率从5.25%下降到了2% （如右图）。美联储的研究表明，日本的利率水平在上个世纪90年代早期下降的要比泰勒规则所要求的多很多，泰勒规则是通过闲置生产能力的数量和通胀的情况来确定出适当的利率水平。

Japan also gave its economy a big fiscal boost. The cyclically adjusted budget deficit (which excludes the automatic impact of slower growth on tax revenues) increased by an annual average of 1.8% of GDP in 1992 and 1993-similar to America’s budget boost this year. Japan’s monetary and fiscal stimulus did help to lift the economy. After a recession in 1993-94, GDP was growing at an annual rate of around 2.5% by 1995. But deflation also emerged that year, pushing up real interest rates and increasing the real burden of debt. It was from here on that Japan made its biggest policy mistakes. In 1997 the government raised its consumption tax to try to slim its budget deficit. And with interest rates close to zero, the BoJ insisted that there was nothing more it could do. Only much later did it start to print lots of money.
日本也通过积极的财政政策来促进经济的发展。周期调整预算赤字（它排除了经济缓慢增长对税收收入的自发影响）在92年和93年间平均每年增长约为GDP的1.8%，这点与美国今年的预算增加差不多。日本的货币和财政政策刺激确实有助于日本经济走出泥潭。在经历了93到94年度经济的衰退后，日本2005年GDP增长率达到了2.5%。但是通货紧缩也在那年显现，这推高了实际利率，同时也增加了真实的还贷压力。自此日本在通货紧缩问题上犯下它最大政策错误。1997年，日本政府通过提高消费税来试图减少其财政赤字，并且使利率水平接近于0，日本银行坚信除此之外并无其它可做的。在那很久以后，日本银行开始增发了大量钞票。

America’s inflation rate of above 5% is an advantage. Not only are real interest rates negative, but inflation is also helping to bring the housing market back to fair value with a smaller fall in prices than otherwise. But in another way America is more exposed than Japan was. When its bubble burst in 1991, Japan’s households saved 15% of their income. By 2001 saving had fallen to 5%, which helped to prop up consumer spending. America’s saving rate of close to zero leaves no such cushion.
美国高于5%的通胀率是对自身有利的。在美国不仅实际利率是负的，而且通胀有助于把美国的房地产市场带回到一个公平价值水平，而这仅需要使价格小幅下降。但从另方面讲，美国比日本更危险。在91年经济泡沫破灭后，日本居民将其收入的15%用于储蓄。到2001年时，这个比例已经下降到了5%,这有助于支撑日本消费支出。而美国接近0的储蓄率却不能提供这个缓冲。

The perils of procrastination
拖延的危险

John Makin, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, argues that monetary and fiscal relief were necessary but not sufficient to revive Japan’s economy. The missing ingredient was a clean-up of the banking system, on which Japanese firms were more dependent than their American counterparts. Japanese banks hid their bad loans beneath opaque corporate structures, and curtailed new lending to profitable businesses. A vicious circle developed, whereby banks’ bad loans depress
ed growth which then created more bad loans.
一智囊团-美国企业研究所的John Makin认为货币和财政上的调节是必要的，但不足以使日本经济复兴。日本最缺失的要素是银行系统的大清理，这也使日本企业比他们的美国同行更加依赖银行。日本银行把他们的坏账隐藏于不透明的公司治理结构下，并缩减了对那些利润丰厚业务的贷款。一个恶性循环就这样开始了，银行坏账拖累经济增长，而反过来又产生更多坏账。

In another new report Richard Jerram, at Macquarie Securities, concludes that America “will not come close to repeating the experience of Japan”, because its regulatory system, financial markets and political structure will not let it procrastinate for so long. America has a more transparent regulatory structure which presses banks into recognising losses and repairing their balance-sheets-even if regulators were slow to recognise that the banks were shifting risky securitised assets off their balance-sheets in the first place. But Japan’s regulators for a long while were in cahoots with banks over hiding their bad loans.
麦格理证券Richard Jerram的一份新的研究报告表明：美国不会重走日本的老路。因为美国的监管体系、金融市场和政治结构不会像日本拖延的那么久。美国有着更加透明的监管组织，它会迫使银行发现损失并弥补修复资产表-即使监管当局可能会稍晚发现银行将那些有风险的证券资产转移出资产负债表外。而日本的监管者很长一段时间以来则与银行狼狈为奸，共同隐藏坏帐。

Over the past year, American banks have been quicker than those in Japan in the 1990s to disclose and write off losses and raise new capital. In Japan it took a long while before the political will was there to use taxpayers’ money to plug the banking system. A big test for America’s Treasury will be how quickly it recognises the need to nationalise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the teetering mortgage giants.

在过去的几年，相比上个世纪90年代的日本银行业，美国银行已经很快地批露并核销了那些损失，同时补充了资本金。而在日本，政府很长时间以后才动用纳税人的钱来修补银行体系。对于美国财政部来说最大的考验是需要多长时间才能认识到将那两个摇摇欲坠的住房抵押贷款巨头房利美、房地美国有化的必要性。

One advantage over Japan, says Mr Jerram, is that America is spreading the costs of its housing bust across other countries. Foreigners hold a large slice of American mortgage-backed securities. Sovereign-wealth funds have provided new capital for American banks. And America’s booming exports have helped to support its economy, thanks to the cheap dollar. In contrast, the yen’s sharp appreciation after Japan’s bubble burst hurt exports at the same time as domestic demand was being squeezed.

Jerram先生表示，相对于日本，美国的一个优势是他可以把房地产的损失转移到其它国家。外国人持有大量美国的有抵押贷款证券。国家主权基金也已经为美国银行提供了新的资金。同时美元贬值使得出口商迅速发展，这有助于支持美国经济。相比之下，日本泡沫破灭之后，日元的急剧贬值在导致国内需求萎缩的同时，又严重伤害了出口商。

By learning from Japan’s mistakes, America can avoid a dismal decade. However, it would be arrogant for those in Washington, DC, to assume that Japan’s troubles simply reflected its macroeconomic incompetence. Experience in other countries shows that serious asset-price busts often lead to economic downturns lasting several years. Only a wild optimist would believe that the worst is over in America.

通过吸取日本的教训，美国可以避免一个低落的十年。然而，如果认为日本的经济困境只反映了它宏观经济的无力，那么无疑华盛顿特区那帮人是傲慢的。其它一些国家的经历已经告诉我们：严重的资产价格泡沫经常会导致经济长达几年的低迷。也只有那些疯狂的乐观者才会相信美国最坏的时期已经过去。

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你还想看

• Closing the GAAP 结束公认会计准则
• Technology, business and the law
• The hard road ahead 前路漫漫
• Lessons from a “lost decade” 从”失去的十年”中学习
• 奥巴马胜选演说·文言版