经济学人:重温过去的经验教训(1)

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the present financial peace is likely to be far shorter than the 75 years that separated the Depression and the Great Recession. 但是，当前的金融和平有可能远远短于间隔了大萧条和大衰退的75年。

That would be less troubling had the world made itself more robust¹ to future crises after the last one. 要是世界各国在上次危机后使自己在面对未来危机时更加强健，这种情况就会不那么令人揪心了。

In the years after the Depression, sweeping² banking³ and financial reforms created new regulatory institutions and placed tight constraints⁴ on financial behaviour,  在大萧条之后的数年间，全面的银行业和金融改革造就了各种全新的监管制度，并对金融行为施加了严格的限制，

which made finance a very boring industry for most of the next half-century. 这一度使得金融在接下来的50年中成为一种非常枯燥的行业。

From the 1980s to the 2000s, those restrictions⁵ were largely undone⁶: banks were given freer rein⁷ over the activities they could engage in and products they could create. 在上世纪80年代到本世纪头十年间，这些限制打都被废除了：银行被赋予了对其可能从事的行为以及可能创造出来的产品的更自由的掌控。

The financial crisis could not have occurred without this liberalisation. 这场金融危机要是没有这种自由化是不可能爆发的。

Yet in its wake, the financial sector⁸ has been treated relatively⁹ gently. 然而，在其爆发之后，金融部分却受到了相对温柔的对待。

Oversight¹⁰ and disclosure have been improved and capital-adequacy rules toughened. 监督和披露得到了改善，资本充足性规则得到了强化。

But some of these rules are now being relaxed, at least in America, and the financial industry's weight in the world economy has scarcely changed. 但是，其中的一些规则如今，至少是在美国，正在得到松绑。同时，金融行业在世界经济中反而分量几乎没有变。

As a share of American GDP it has actually increased somewhat since 2007. 作为美国GDP的一项占比，自2007年以来，它实际上是增加了。

The stabilisation policies used in the Great Recession were vastly superior to those of the Depression. 较之大萧条期间，用于大衰退中的各种稳定政策高明了许多。

But today's governments have done a worse job of learning from experience than did their forebears. 但是，较之他们的前辈，今天的各国政府在从经验中吸取教训这个方面就做得差的远了。

Franklin Roosevelt did not simply seek to restore growth. 富兰克林·罗斯福没有简单地寻求恢复增长。

Rather he promised reflation in order to make up the ground lost during the downturn. 相反，他承诺了通胀，以便收回衰退中的失地。

 

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