欧洲有救吗？编辑本段回目录
Can Europe Be Saved?
欧洲有救吗？
By PAUL KRUGMAN
保罗·克鲁格曼
THERE’S SOMETHING peculiarly apt about the fact that the current European crisis began in Greece. For Europe’s woes have all the aspects of a classical Greek tragedy, in which a man of noble character is undone by the fatal flaw of hubris.
当前的欧洲危机开始于希腊，尤其贴切。因为，欧洲苦难有着希腊古典悲剧的全部特征。希腊悲剧中品格高尚的人常常毁于致命的傲慢缺陷。
Not long ago Europeans could, with considerable justification, say that the current economic crisis was actually demonstrating the advantages of their economic and social model. Like the United States, Europe suffered a severe slump in the wake of the global financial meltdown; but the human costs of that slump seemed far less in Europe than in America. In much of Europe, rules governing worker firing helped limit job loss, while strong social-welfare programs ensured that even the jobless retained their health care and received a basic income. Europe’s gross domestic product might have fallen as much as ours, but the Europeans weren’t suffering anything like the same amount of misery. And the truth is that they still aren’t.
不久以前，欧洲人认为，当前的经济危机实际上表明欧洲的经济与社会模式具有优势。这种观点是挺有道理的。全球金融危机中，欧洲与美国一样也遇到了严重的经济灾难，然而在欧洲灾难造成的个人代价看来远远没有美国严重。在欧洲许多地方，解雇工人的严格法规对工作岗位的丧失起到了限制作用，健全的社会福利计划确保失业者可以继续享受健康保险并领取基本收入。欧洲的GDP的下降幅度也许与我们不相上下，但欧洲没有遭受我们这样的痛苦。事实上，目前他们还没有受苦。
Yet Europe is in deep crisis — because its proudest achievement, the single currency adopted by most European nations, is now in danger. More than that, it’s looking increasingly like a trap. Ireland, hailed as the Celtic Tiger not so long ago, is now struggling to avoid bankruptcy. Spain, a booming economy until recent years, now has 20 percent unemployment and faces the prospect of years of painful, grinding deflation.
不过，欧洲处在严重的危机之中——原因在于，最令欧洲感到骄傲的成就——即绝大多数国家采用单一货币——现在处于危险之中。不久以前还被赞扬为凯尔特之虎的爱尔兰，正为避免破产而苦苦地挣扎。几年前经济一片繁荣的西班牙，现在失业率高达20%，并且面临着未来数年痛苦而磨人的通货紧缩。
The tragedy of the Euromess is that the creation of the euro was supposed to be the finest moment in a grand and noble undertaking: the generations-long effort to bring peace, democracy and shared prosperity to a once and frequently war-torn continent. But the architects of the euro, caught up in their project’s sweep and romance, chose to ignore the mundane difficulties a shared currency would predictably encounter — to ignore warnings, which were issued right from the beginning, that Europe lacked the institutions needed to make a common currency workable. Instead, they engaged in magical thinking, acting as if the nobility of their mission transcended such concerns.
欧洲乱局的悲剧在于，创立欧元被看作一项宏大而高尚事业中最美好的时刻。为了将和平、民主与共同繁荣带给这个过去常被战争蹂躏的大陆，几代人努力奋斗。但是欧元的设计师们却陷入了其设计项目的巨大胜利与美好想象之中，刻意忽视了估计共同货币可能带来的现实困难- 忽视了人们一开始就发出的有关欧洲缺少共同货币运作需要的机构这种警告。相反，他们陶醉于神奇思维，仿佛自己的神圣使命可以超越这种世俗的关切。
The result is a tragedy not only for Europe but also for the world, for which Europe is a crucial role model. The Europeans have shown us that peace and unity can be brought to a region with a history of violence, and in the process they have created perhaps the most decent societies in human history, combining democracy and human rights with a level of individual economic security that America comes nowhere close to matching. These achievements are now in the process of being tarnished, as the European dream turns into a nightmare for all too many people. How did that happen?
结果是造成一场不但属于欧洲的，而是属于世界的悲剧。因为，欧洲是世界至关重要角色。欧洲已向世人表明，和平与团结可以降临在有着暴力历史的地区，在这一进程中，他们把民主与人权结合在一起，创造了人类历史上最体面的社会，个人的经济安全达到了美国根本无法比拟的水平。现在，在太多太多人民的心中，随着欧洲梦想变为一场噩梦，这些成就正在被玷污。到底是怎么回事情？
THE ROAD TO THE EURO
通往欧元之路
It all began with coal and steel. On May 9, 1950 — a date whose anniversary is now celebrated as Europe Day — Robert Schuman, the French foreign minister, proposed that his nation and West Germany pool their coal and steel production. That may sound prosaic, but Schuman declared that it was much more than just a business deal.
一切始于煤炭和钢铁。1950年5月9日（这个日子现在成为人们庆祝的欧洲日），法国外交部长罗伯特·舒曼提出，法国和西德可以将各自的钢铁和煤炭生产联合在一起。这种想法听上去单调乏味，但舒曼宣称其意义超过了商业交易。
For one thing, the new Coal and Steel Community would make any future war between Germany and France “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.” And it would be a first step on the road to a “federation of Europe,” to be achieved step by step via “concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.” That is, economic measures would both serve mundane ends and promote political unity.
首先, 新的“煤铁共同体”使德国与法国之间未来的任何战争“不但难以想象，而且实际上没有可能。”这是走向“欧洲联邦”的第一步，联邦要靠“具体的成就一步一步实现”，而这些成就首先就是创造一种事实上的团结统一。也就是说，经济措施不但服务于现实目的，而且为了促进政治上的团结。
The Coal and Steel Community eventually evolved into a customs union within which all goods were freely traded. Then, as democracy spread within Europe, so did Europe’s unifying economic institutions. Greece, Spain and Portugal were brought in after the fall of their dictatorships; Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism.
“煤铁共同体”最终进化为关税同盟，所有的货物可以自由贸易。后来，随着民主在欧洲范围内扩展，欧洲联合的经济组织也得到发展。希腊、西班牙和葡萄牙在独裁政权倒台后，加入了欧共体；东欧在共产主义垮台后也加入了。
In the 1980s and ’90s this “widening” was accompanied by “deepening,” as Europe set about removing many of the remaining obstacles to full economic integration. (Eurospeak is a distinctive dialect, sometimes hard to understand without subtitles.) Borders were opened; freedom of personal movement was guaranteed; and product, safety and food regulations were harmonized, a process immortalized by the Eurosausage episode of the TV show “Yes Minister,” in which the minister in question is told that under new European rules, the traditional British sausage no longer qualifies as a sausage and must be renamed the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube. (Just to be clear, this happened only on TV.)
上世纪80、90年代，欧洲决心拆除现有的障碍走向整个经济一体化，“扩大”同时 “深化”进程。（整个经济一体化是欧洲一种独特的语言，有时不加解释很难让人理解。）国界被打开，个人迁徙自由得到保障；产品、安全及食品规定实现了统一，电视“是，首相”中欧洲香肠情景剧将这一进程神化。节目上在有人告诉首相，根据欧洲新的规定，传统的英国香肠失去香肠的资格，必须重新起名为乳化高脂肪下水肠管。（要说清的是，这只是电视上的东西）
The creation of the euro was proclaimed the logical next step in this process. Once again, economic growth would be fostered with actions that also reinforced European unity.
创立欧元被宣称为这一进程中符合逻辑的下一个步骤。加强欧洲统一的行动又一次培育了经济的增长。
The advantages of a single European currency were obvious. No more need to change money when you arrived in another country; no more uncertainty on the part of importers about what a contract would actually end up costing or on the part of exporters about what promised payment would actually be worth. Meanwhile, the shared currency would strengthen the sense of European unity. What could go wrong?
单一货币的优势是明显的。到访另一个国家时不再需要兑换货币。对进口商而言，再也不用担心合同实际结算时合同规定的价值是不是与实际付出的款项相等。与此同时，共同货币也强化了欧洲统一感。到底错在哪里？
The answer, unfortunately, was that currency unions have costs as well as benefits. And the case for a single European currency was much weaker than the case for a single European market — a fact that European leaders chose to ignore.
不幸的是，货币联盟既有效益也有成本。欧洲单一货币比欧洲单一市场影响要弱得多，这是一个欧洲领导人刻意忽视的事实。
THE (UNEASY) CASE FOR MONETARY UNION
（并不简单的）货币联盟
International monetary economics is, not surprisingly, an area of frequent disputes. As it happens, however, these disputes don’t line up across the usual ideological divide. The hard right often favors hard money — preferably a gold standard — but left-leaning European politicians have been enthusiastic proponents of the euro. Liberal American economists, myself included, tend to favor freely floating national currencies that leave more scope for activist economic policies — in particular, cutting interest rates and increasing the money supply to fight recessions. Yet the classic argument for flexible exchange rates was made by none other than Milton Friedman.
国际货币经济学是一个经常引起争议的领域，这一点到不令人感到意外。不过，这些争论碰巧不是按照通常意识形态分歧而排列划分。强硬的右翼常常支持硬通货——最好是金本位——而左倾的欧洲政治家则一直是欧元的热情支持者。包括本人在内的自由主义美国经济学家，倾向于给积极经济政策留有更大空间的国家自由浮动货币——特别是在削减利息增加货币供应以抵御经济衰退方面。不过，浮动汇率的经典论据正是米尔顿·弗里德曼本人提出的。
The case for a transnational currency is, as we’ve already seen, obvious: it makes doing business easier. Before the euro was introduced, it was really anybody’s guess how much this ultimately mattered: there were relatively few examples of countries using other nations’ currencies. For what it was worth, statistical analysis suggested that adopting a common currency had big effects on trade, which suggested in turn large economic gains. Unfortunately, this optimistic assessment hasn’t held up very well since the euro was created: the best estimates now indicate that trade among euro nations is only 10 or 15 percent larger than it would have been otherwise. That’s not a trivial number, but neither is it transformative.
如前所述，跨国货币的情况是显然易见的：可以使做生意更容易。引入欧元之前，谁都说不清楚这个问题最终有多么重要，因为使用别国货币国家的例子相对较少。就单一货币的价值而言，统计分析表明，采用一种共同货币对贸易有很大影响，进而会大大增加经济效益。不幸的是，欧元创立以来，这种乐观的估计效果并不怎么好：目前最佳的估计表明，与没有欧元比较，欧元区国家之间的贸易只增长了10%到15%。这个数字不算小，但并不具有颠覆性的意义。
Still, there are obviously benefits from a currency union. It’s just that there’s a downside, too: by giving up its own currency, a country also gives up economic flexibility.
不过，货币联盟仍然产生了明显的效益。但是，正是在这一点上，也存在负面作用：一个国家放弃了自己的货币，也就等于放弃了经济上的活动性。
Imagine that you’re a country that, like Spain today, recently saw wages and prices driven up by a housing boom, which then went bust. Now you need to get those costs back down. But getting wages and prices to fall is tough: nobody wants to be the first to take a pay cut, especially without some assurance that prices will come down, too. Two years of intense suffering have brought Irish wages down to some extent, although Spain and Greece have barely begun the process. It’s a nasty affair, and as we’ll see later, cutting wages when you’re awash in debt creates new problems.
设想一个像现在西班牙这样的国家，如果最近发现因房地产先繁荣后破裂而使工资和价格升高，现在需要做的事情就是让这些成本下降原先的位置。但是，让工资和价格下降是非常困难的事情：谁也不愿第一个削减工资，特别是对价格同时下降并无把握的情况下。长达两年严重经济困难让爱尔兰的工资得到一定程度的下降，但是西班牙和希腊还没有开始这一进程。这是一件非常糟糕的事情，后面我们会看到，巨额债务情况下削减工资会制造新的麻烦。
If you still have your own currency, however, you wouldn’t have to go through the protracted pain of cutting wages: you could just devalue your currency — reduce its value in terms of other currencies — and you would effect a de facto wage cut.
不过，如果拥有自己的货币，就不用经历削减工资这种迁延性痛苦：只要让货币贬值就可以——降低货币与其它国家货币的比率——就可以实行事实上的工资削减。
Won’t workers reject de facto wage cuts via devaluation just as much as explicit cuts in their paychecks? Historical experience says no. In the current crisis, it took Ireland two years of severe unemployment to achieve about a 5 percent reduction in average wages. But in 1993 a devaluation of the Irish punt brought an instant 10 percent reduction in Irish wages measured in German currency.
对于这种通过货币贬值导致事实上的工资削减，难道工人们不会像反对直接从工资中削减一样予以拒绝吗？历史经验表明是不会的。在当前危机中，经过两年剧烈失业爱尔兰让工资下降大约5%。然而在1993年，爱尔兰货币采取贬值措施，立刻导致爱尔兰工资按德国货币计算下降10%。
Why the difference? Back in 1953, Milton Friedman offered an analogy: daylight saving time. It makes a lot of sense for businesses to open later during the winter months, yet it’s hard for any individual business to change its hours: if you operate from 10 to 6 when everyone else is operating 9 to 5, you’ll be out of sync. By requiring that everyone shift clocks back in the fall and forward in the spring, daylight saving time obviates this coordination problem. Similarly, Friedman argued, adjusting your currency’s value solves the coordination problem when wages and prices are out of line, sidestepping the unwillingness of workers to be the first to take pay cuts.
为什么会有这么大的区别？早在1953年，密尔顿·弗雷德曼就提出一种比拟，即夏季时。对商家来说，冬季上班时间推后具有很大的意义，但是让任何一个人改变上班时间却很困难：如果您从早上10点工作到晚上6点，而别人却是从早上9点都晚上5点，你会感到自己无法与别人赶在一个点上。而日光节约时让所有人春天将时间前调，秋天再调回来，就可以消除这一协调问题。佛雷格曼指出，同理，当工资及价格失去平衡时，调整货币价值就能解决协调问题，绕过工人们不愿首先削减工资的问题。
So while there are benefits of a common currency, there are also important potential advantages to keeping your own currency. And the terms of this trade-off depend on underlying conditions.
因此，共同货币虽然有好处，但是保留自己的货币也有重要的潜在优势。取舍交易取决于基本条件。
On one side, the benefits of a shared currency depend on how much business would be affected.
一方面，共同货币的好处取决于受惠业务量的大小。
I think of this as the Iceland-Brooklyn issue. Iceland, with only 320,000 people, has its own currency — and that fact has given it valuable room for maneuver. So why isn’t Brooklyn, with roughly eight times Iceland’s population, an even better candidate for an independent currency? The answer is that Brooklyn, located as it is in the middle of metro New York rather than in the middle of the Atlantic, has an economy deeply enmeshed with those of neighboring boroughs. And Brooklyn residents would pay a large price if they had to change currencies every time they did business in Manhattan or Queens.
我以为可以按冰岛-布鲁克林比较法探讨这个问题。冰岛人口32万，有自己的货币——这一事实给冰岛珍贵的活动余地。那么，为什么人口是冰岛8倍的布鲁克林拥有自己货币的机会却比较小？答案是布鲁克林位于纽约大都会的中间，而不在大西洋的中间，其经济与周围的市区蜘蛛网般地连在一起。如果布鲁克林居民每次到曼哈顿或皇后区做事都要兑换货币，则要花很大的价格。
So countries that do a lot of business with one another may have a lot to gain from a currency union.
因此，互有大量贸易关系的国家可以从货币联盟中获得大量的受益。
On the other hand, as Friedman pointed out, forming a currency union means sacrificing flexibility. How serious is this loss? That depends. Let’s consider what may at first seem like an odd comparison between two small, troubled economies.
另一方面，正如弗里德曼指出的那样，组成货币联盟就意味着牺牲灵活性。这种损失究竟有多大？要看具体情况。我们考虑两个规模都比较小而又都出现麻烦的经济体作比较。乍眼一看，这两家好像没有什么可以比较的。
Climate, scenery and history aside, the nation of Ireland and the state of Nevada have much in common. Both are small economies of a few million people highly dependent on selling goods and services to their neighbors. (Nevada’s neighbors are other U.S. states, Ireland’s other European nations, but the economic implications are much the same.) Both were boom economies for most of the past decade. Both had huge housing bubbles, which burst painfully. Both are now suffering roughly 14 percent unemployment. And both are members of larger currency unions: Ireland is part of the euro zone, Nevada part of the dollar zone, otherwise known as the United States of America.
撇开气候、风景和历史不说，爱尔兰国与内华达州存在许多共同之处。两地都是人口只有数百万的小型经济体，都严重依赖向邻居提供商品与服务。（内华达的邻居是美国其它州，而爱尔兰邻居是欧洲其它国家，但是在经济意义上却几乎相同。）过去10年的大部分年份里，两地都出现经济繁荣。两地都发生了巨大的住房泡沫，后来都出现痛苦的泡沫破裂。目前，两地都遭受高达约14%失业率的重创。两地均为比较大的货币联盟的成员：爱尔兰是欧元区的一部分，而内华达是美元区或称为美利坚合众国的一部分。
But Nevada’s situation is much less desperate than Ireland’s.
但是，内华达的情况远非爱尔兰那样绝望。
First of all, the fiscal side of the crisis is less serious in Nevada. It’s true that budgets in both Ireland and Nevada have been hit extremely hard by the slump. But much of the spending Nevada residents depend on comes from federal, not state, programs. In particular, retirees who moved to Nevada for the sunshine don’t have to worry that the state’s reduced tax take will endanger their Social Security checks or their Medicare coverage. In Ireland, by contrast, both pensions and health spending are on the cutting block.
首先，在内华达，危机的财政问题没有那么严重。没错，爱尔兰与内华达的预算都受到经济不景气极其严厉的打击。但是，内华达州居民的大部分开支来自联邦政府计划，并不来自州政府计划。尤其是搬到内华达州享受阳光的退休人士，不必担心该州税收下降会危害他们的“社会保障”账单或他们的“医保”待遇。与此形成强烈对比的是爱尔兰，那里的退休金和医疗开支都要削减一块。
Also, Nevada, unlike Ireland, doesn’t have to worry about the cost of bank bailouts, not because the state has avoided large loan losses but because those losses, for the most part, aren’t Nevada’s problem. Thus Nevada accounts for a disproportionate share of the losses incurred by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage companies — losses that, like Social Security and Medicare payments, will be covered by Washington, not Carson City.
此外，与爱尔兰不同，内华达州不必担心银行救助的成本问题，原因并不是该州避免了贷款损失，而是因为这些损失中的大部分并非内华达的问题。因此，内华达只占政府资助的房地产抵押公司房地美和房利美损失中不成比例的一晓部分——跟“社会保障计划”与“医疗保险”支付一样，这部分损失是由华盛顿负责支付的，卡森城并不管此事。
And there’s one more advantage to being a U.S. state: it’s likely that Nevada’s unemployment problem will be greatly alleviated over the next few years by out-migration, so that even if the lost jobs don’t come back, there will be fewer workers chasing the jobs that remain. Ireland will, to some extent, avail itself of the same safety valve, as Irish citizens leave in search of work elsewhere and workers who came to Ireland during the boom years depart. But Americans are extremely mobile; if historical patterns are any guide, emigration will bring Nevada’s unemployment rate back in line with the U.S. average within a few years, even if job growth in Nevada continues to lag behind growth in the nation as a whole.
而且作为美国的一个州还有一个优点: 即使损失的工作岗位无法找回，留在这里寻找工作的工人会减少，因此，未来几年内，通过向外移民，内华达的失业问题有望大大缓解。在一定程度上，爱尔兰本身也存在这种安全阀，爱尔兰公民可在别处寻找工作，而经济繁荣年代来的工人将离开爱尔兰。但是，美国的活动性极高；如果历史模式可以借鉴，未来几年内移民可以让内华达的失业率下降到美国平均水平上，即使内华达的就业增长继续落后于整个国家水平。
Over all, then, even as both Ireland and Nevada have been especially hard-luck cases within their respective currency zones, Nevada’s medium-term prospects look much better.
总的来讲，尽管爱尔兰和内华达州在其各自的货币范围内均为非常倒霉的案例，但看来内华达的中期前景要好得多。
What does this have to do with the case for or against the euro? Well, when the single European currency was first proposed, an obvious question was whether it would work as well as the dollar does here in America. And the answer, clearly, was no — for exactly the reasons the Ireland-Nevada comparison illustrates. Europe isn’t fiscally integrated: German taxpayers don’t automatically pick up part of the tab for Greek pensions or Irish bank bailouts. And while Europeans have the legal right to move freely in search of jobs, in practice imperfect cultural integration — above all, the lack of a common language — makes workers less geographically mobile than their American counterparts.
这个案例与支持或反对欧元有什么关系？是这样的，最初提出欧洲单一货币时，一个明显的问题就是，它会不会起到美元在美国这样的作用。答案明显是否定的——原因与爱尔兰-内华达比较案例中说明的问题一样。欧洲在财政上并没有一体化：德国的纳税人不会自动承担希腊退休金或爱尔兰银行救助帐单的一部分。虽然欧洲人具有为找工作而自由迁徙的法定权利，然而实际上，文化一体化上的缺陷——首先是缺乏共同的语言——让工人们在地理灵活性方面远远低于他们的美国同行。
And now you see why many American (and some British) economists have always been skeptical about the euro project. U.S.-based economists had long emphasized the importance of certain preconditions for currency union — most famously, Robert Mundell of Columbia stressed the importance of labor mobility, while Peter Kenen, my colleague at Princeton, emphasized the importance of fiscal integration. America, we know, has a currency union that works, and we know why it works: because it coincides with a nation — a nation with a big central government, a common language and a shared culture. Europe has none of these things, which from the beginning made the prospects of a single currency dubious.
现在您就明白了为什么许多美国人（还有一些英国人）对欧元计划始终表示怀疑。美国这边的经济学家很早就在强调货币联盟一些先决条件的重要性——最有名的是哥伦比亚大学的罗伯特·芒代尔强调劳工移动性的重要性，而我在普林斯顿大学的同事强调财政一体化的重要性。我们知道美国是一个可行的货币联盟，我们也知道它行得通的原因：因为它恰巧在一个国家里——一个具有强大中央政府、共同语言和共同文化的国家。这些东西欧洲却连一个都没有，因此从开始就使人对单一货币的前景感到怀疑。
These observations aren’t new: everything I’ve just said was well known by 1992, when the Maastricht Treaty set the euro project in motion. So why did the project proceed? Because the idea of the euro had gripped the imagination of European elites. Except in Britain, where Gordon Brown persuaded Tony Blair not to join, political leaders throughout Europe were caught up in the romance of the project, to such an extent that anyone who expressed skepticism was considered outside the mainstream.
这些观察观点并不新鲜： 早在1992年马斯特里赫特条约启动欧元项目之时，我刚才所说的东西就广为人们知。那么，计划为为何继续进行？因为欧元的概念占据了欧洲精英人士的全部想象。除了在英国戈登·布朗劝说托尼·布莱尔不要加入以外，整个欧洲的政治领导人都被该计划的传奇故事吸引住了，任何表达怀疑的人士都被视为不入主流。
Back in the ’90s, people who were present told me that staff members at the European Commission were initially instructed to prepare reports on the costs and benefits of a single currency — but that after their superiors got a look at some preliminary work, those instructions were altered: they were told to prepare reports just on the benefits. To be fair, when I’ve told that story to others who were senior officials at the time, they’ve disputed that — but whoever’s version is right, the fact that some people were making such a claim captures the spirit of the time.
早在上世纪90年代，参与这个项目的人士就告诉我，起初欧洲委员会的工作人员准备的报告里要列出单一货币的成本和效益——但是当他们的主管看到最初的一些工作后，给这些工作人员的指示发生了变化：要求起草的报告中只讲效益。公平地讲，让我将这个故事说给时任高级官员的人士时，他们对此表示异议——但是无论谁说时真的，事实却是宣称这种观点的人抓住了时代精神。
The euro, then, would proceed. And for a while, everything seemed to go well.
这样，欧元计划继续进行。一时间，各方面看上去都一帆风顺。
EUROPHORIA, EUROCRISIS（欧洲幸福，欧洲危机）
The euro officially came into existence on Jan. 1, 1999. At first it was a virtual currency: bank accounts and electronic transfers were denominated in euros, but people still had francs, marks and lira (now considered denominations of the euro) in their wallets. Three years later, the final transition was made, and the euro became Europe’s money.
1999年1月1日，欧元正式诞生。起初，它还是一种虚拟货币：银行账户和电子交易使用欧元，但人们钱包里仍然装着法郎，马克和里拉（现在被视为欧元面值）。三年后，最后过渡结束，欧元成为欧洲货币。
The transition was smooth: A.T.M.’s and cash registers were converted swiftly and with few glitches. The euro quickly became a major international currency: the euro bond market soon came to rival the dollar bond market; euro bank notes began circulating around the world. And the creation of the euro instilled a new sense of confidence, especially in those European countries that had historically been considered investment risks. Only later did it become apparent that this surge of confidence was bait for a dangerous trap.
过渡相当平稳：ATM和收银机迅速地得以更换，几乎没有出现任何麻烦。很快，欧元成为主要国际货币之一：欧元债券市场迅速成为美元债券市场的竞争对手；欧元钞票开始在全世界流通。同时，欧元的创立造就了一种新的信心感，尤其在历史上一直被认为存在投资风险的欧洲国家。 只是到了后来，大增的信心成为一个陷阱诱饵才为人们认识。
Greece, with its long history of debt defaults and bouts of high inflation, was the most striking example. Until the late 1990s, Greece’s fiscal history was reflected in its bond yields: investors would buy bonds issued by the Greek government only if they paid much higher interest than bonds issued by governments perceived as safe bets, like those by Germany. As the euro’s debut approached, however, the risk premium on Greek bonds melted away. After all, the thinking went, Greek debt would soon be immune from the dangers of inflation: the European Central Bank would see to that. And it wasn’t possible to imagine any member of the newly minted monetary union going bankrupt, was it?
历史上长期存在债务违约并经常发生高通胀的希腊就是最明显的例子。上世纪九十年代之前，希腊的财政史主要反映在其债券收益上：希腊政府只有发行利率远高于人们认为安全的德国债券的利率的债券，投资人才愿意购买。然而，随着欧元开启的临近，希腊债券的风险成本立刻消失。大家的都认为，毕竟希腊债务很快将不再受通货膨胀的捆饶：欧洲中央银行可以确保做到这一点，谁会想象新创立的货币联盟的某个成员国会出现破产？
Indeed, by the middle of the 2000s just about all fear of country-specific fiscal woes had vanished from the European scene. Greek bonds, Irish bonds, Spanish bonds, Portuguese bonds — they all traded as if they were as safe as German bonds. The aura of confidence extended even to countries that weren’t on the euro yet but were expected to join in the near future: by 2005, Latvia, which at that point hoped to adopt the euro by 2008, was able to borrow almost as cheaply as Ireland. (Latvia’s switch to the euro has been put off for now, although neighboring Estonia joined on Jan. 1.)
实际上，到了2005年左右，有关具体国家财政困难的担心从整个欧洲范围内全部消失了。在交易中，希腊债券、西班牙债券、爱尔兰债券、葡萄牙债券等等与德国债券一样安全。信心的光环甚至扩展到那些预计很快将加入但还没有使用欧元的国家：到2005年，当时认为有希望2008年采用欧元的拉脱维亚也能够与爱尔兰一样便宜的利率获得贷款。（拉脱维亚迄今还没有转换为欧元，但其邻国爱沙尼亚于今年元月一日加入欧元区。）
As interest rates converged across Europe, the formerly high-interest-rate countries went, predictably, on a borrowing spree. (This borrowing spree was, it’s worth noting, largely financed by banks in Germany and other traditionally low-interest-rate countries; that’s why the current debt problems of the European periphery are also a big problem for the European banking system as a whole.) In Greece it was largely the government that ran up big debts. But elsewhere, private players were the big borrowers. Ireland, as I’ve already noted, had a huge real estate boom: home prices rose 180 percent from 1998, just before the euro was introduced, to 2007. Prices in Spain rose almost as much. There were booms in those not-yet-euro nations, too: money flooded into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania.
由于全欧洲范围内利率出现融合，如所预料，以前高利率的国家出现了疯狂贷款的现象。（值得注意的是，这种贷款风潮中的大部分贷款是由德国及其它传统上低利率国家的银行提供的；这就是为什么当前欧洲周边的债务问题也是整个欧洲金融系统大问题的原因。）希腊主要是政府发生了大量债务，不过，在其它地区，私人机构是成为主要的债务人。正如我已经指出的那样，爱尔兰出现了巨大的房地产热潮：从临近引入欧元的1998年起，到2007年，房子的价格上升了180%。西班牙的价格上涨几乎与爱尔兰一样。那些尚未加入欧元的国家也出现了房地产热：金钱大量涌入爱沙尼亚、拉脱维亚、立陶宛、保加利亚和罗马尼亚。
It was a heady time, and not only for the borrowers. In the late 1990s, Germany’s economy was depressed as a result of low demand from domestic consumers. But it recovered in the decade that followed, thanks to an export boom driven by its European neighbors’ spending sprees.
这是一段让人兴奋的日子，不但对贷款接受国而言。上世纪90年代末，由于国内消费者需求不振，德国经济令人沮丧。但是在紧接着的10年里，在欧洲邻国消费热潮的驱动下，德国出口出现繁荣，经济得到恢复。
Everything, in short, seemed to be going swimmingly: the euro was pronounced a great success.
一句话，一切看上去都很顺利：欧元被宣布为一项巨大的成功。
Then the bubble burst.
就在这时泡沫破灭了。
You still hear people talking about the global economic crisis of 2008 as if it were something made in America. But Europe deserves equal billing. This was, if you like, a North Atlantic crisis, with not much to choose between the messes of the Old World and the New. We had our subprime borrowers, who either chose to take on or were misled into taking on mortgages too big for their incomes; they had their peripheral economies, which similarly borrowed much more than they could really afford to pay back. In both cases, real estate bubbles temporarily masked the underlying unsustainability of the borrowing: as long as housing prices kept rising, borrowers could always pay back previous loans with more money borrowed against their properties. Sooner or later, however, the music would stop. Both sides of the Atlantic were accidents waiting to happen.
您依然会听到人们谈论2008年的全球经济危机，似乎它是美国制造的。但是，欧洲也一样该受到指责。 如果不介意，实际上可将它命名为北大西洋危机，新旧世界的混乱难分伯仲。在美国有次贷债务人，他们要么主动，要么因误导而背上与收入不相称的抵押贷款；欧洲那边有周边经济体，同样贷款超过了实际能够支付的能力。在两种情形下，房地产泡沫都暂时掩盖了潜在的借贷无法持续的问题：只要房价继续上涨，借款人总能以自己的资产作为抵押，用更多的贷款支付以前的贷款。然而，音乐迟早总会停止。大西洋的两岸都在等待发生事变。
In Europe, the first round of damage came from the collapse of those real estate bubbles, which devastated employment in the peripheral economies. In 2007, construction accounted for 13 percent of total employment in both Spain and Ireland, more than twice as much as in the United States. So when the building booms came to a screeching halt, employment crashed. Overall employment fell 10 percent in Spain and 14 percent in Ireland; the Irish situation would be the equivalent of losing almost 20 million jobs here.
在欧洲，第一轮破坏来自房地产泡沫破裂，它摧毁了周边国家的就业市场。2007年建筑业占西班牙和爱尔兰全部就业的13%，比美国高出两倍。因此，当建筑业繁荣嘎然而止时，就业崩溃了。整个就业在西班牙下降了10%，在爱尔兰下降14%；爱尔兰的情况就相当于美国损失了2000万个工作岗位。
But that was only the beginning. In late 2009, as much of the world was emerging from financial crisis, the European crisis entered a new phase. First Greece, then Ireland, then Spain and Portugal suffered drastic losses in investor confidence and hence a significant rise in borrowing costs. Why?
然而，这仅仅是开头。2009年后半年，世界的大部分地区正在从金融危机中走出，欧洲危机却进入新的阶段。先是希腊，然后是爱尔兰、西班牙和葡萄牙，投资人的信心遭到剧烈的下降，使借贷成本大幅度上升。原因究竟在哪儿？
In Greece the story is straightforward: the government behaved irresponsibly, lied about it and got caught. During the years of easy borrowing, Greece’s conservative government ran up a lot of debt — more than it admitted. When the government changed hands in 2009, the accounting fictions came to light; suddenly it was revealed that Greece had both a much bigger deficit and substantially more debt than anyone had realized. Investors, understandably, took flight.
希腊的情况非常直接：政府行为不负责任，在财务问题上撒谎，最后陷入困境。在借贷宽松的年代，希腊保守党控制的政府大量贷款，对外承认的贷款额少，而实际的数额大。2009年政府更迭，会计上的编造曝光；忽然之间，情况显示希腊的债务高出许多，实际上超出所有人的想象。投资人理所应当地拔腿逃跑。
But Greece is actually an unrepresentative case. Just a few years ago Spain, by far the largest of the crisis economies, was a model European citizen, with a balanced budget and public debt only about half as large, as a percentage of G.D.P., as that of Germany. The same was true for Ireland. So what went wrong?
但是，希腊的情况并不具有代表性。仅仅在几年之前，西班牙，这个危机中最大的经济体还是欧洲的模范公民，它预算平衡，公共债务占GDP的比例只有德国的大约一半。爱尔兰也是同样的情况。那么，到底什么地方出了问题？
First, there was a large direct fiscal hit from the slump. Revenue plunged in both Spain and Ireland, in part because tax receipts depended heavily on real estate transactions. Meanwhile, as unemployment soared, so did the cost of unemployment benefits — remember, these are European welfare states, which have much more extensive programs to shield their citizens from misfortune than we do. As a result, both Spain and Ireland went from budget surpluses on the eve of the crisis to huge budget deficits by 2009.
首先，经济不景气造成巨大的直接财政打击。西班牙和爱尔兰的收入大幅下降，部分原因在于税收严重依靠房地产的交易。与此同时，随着失业大幅增加，失业补助的成本也随之大幅增加——不要忘记，这些都是欧洲福利国家，与我们相比具有覆盖范围更大的计划让公民免遭不幸。结果，西班牙和爱尔兰两国都从危机前夕的预算盈余变为2009年的巨额预算赤字。
Then there were the costs of financial clean-up. These have been especially crippling in Ireland, where banks ran wild in the boom years (and were allowed to do so thanks to close personal and financial ties with government officials). When the bubble burst, the solvency of Irish banks was immediately suspect. In an attempt to avert a massive run on the financial system, Ireland’s government guaranteed all bank debts — saddling the government itself with those debts, bringing its own solvency into question. Big Spanish banks were well regulated by comparison, but there was and is a great deal of nervousness about the status of smaller savings banks and concern about how much the Spanish government will have to spend to keep these banks from collapsing.
然后，还有金融清算的成本。这些成本在爱尔兰造成的后果尤其严重，由于经济繁荣时爱尔兰银行已经失控（银行之所以允许这么做，原因在于与政府官员紧密的个人及财务关系）。泡沫破灭时，爱尔兰银行的偿还能力立刻收到怀疑。为了避免金融系统大规模的挤兑发生，爱尔兰政府为所有银行的债务提供了担保——让政府自身背上债务，使政府的偿还能力受到怀疑。相比之下，西班牙的大银行受到良好的监管，但是，当时和现在都存在许多有关小的储蓄银行令人紧张的情况，以及对西班牙政府到底需要花多少钱才能避免这些银行崩溃的担心。
All of this helps explain why lenders have lost faith in peripheral European economies. Still, there are other nations — in particular, both the United States and Britain — that have been running deficits that, as a percentage of G.D.P., are comparable to the deficits in Spain and Ireland. Yet they haven’t suffered a comparable loss of lender confidence. What is different about the euro countries?
所有这些都都成为债权人对周边的欧洲经济体失去信任的理由。不过，世界上还有其它国家——尤其是美国和英国——其财政赤字占GDP的比例与西班牙和爱尔兰的财政赤字不相上下，然而他们并没有发生对应的债权人信心损失问题。那么，欧洲国家在那些方面不同？
One possible answer is “nothing”: maybe one of these days we’ll wake up and find that the markets are shunning America, just as they’re shunning Greece. But the real answer is probably more systemic: it’s the euro itself that makes Spain and Ireland so vulnerable. For membership in the euro means that these countries have to deflate their way back to competitiveness, with all the pain that implies.
一个可能的答案就是“一点区别都没有”：也许有一天我们一觉醒来，发现市场也在躲避美国，与躲避希腊如出一辙。但是，真实的答案也许系统性更强：真是欧元本身增大了西班牙和爱尔兰的风险。作为欧元成员国，这些国家必须通过通货紧缩而重新获得竞争能力，这就意味着要遭受所有的痛苦。
The trouble with deflation isn’t just the coordination problem Milton Friedman highlighted, in which it’s hard to get wages and prices down when everyone wants someone else to move first. Even when countries successfully drive down wages, which is now happening in all the euro-crisis countries, they run into another problem: incomes are falling, but debt is not.
通货紧缩的麻烦并不仅仅米尔顿•弗雷德曼强调的协调问题，如果大家都希望其他人先采取行动，则很难降低工资与价格。即便这些国家成功地使工资下降（这种事情正在所有欧元危机国家发生），他们还会遇到另一个问题：收入下降，但债务却没有下降。
As the American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, the collision between deflating incomes and unchanged debt can greatly worsen economic downturns. Suppose the economy slumps, for whatever reason: spending falls and so do prices and wages. But debts do not, so debtors have to meet the same obligations with a smaller income; to do this, they have to cut spending even more, further depressing the economy. The way to avoid this vicious circle, Fisher said, was monetary expansion that heads off deflation. And in America and Britain, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, respectively, are trying to do just that. But Greece, Spain and Ireland don’t have that option — they don’t even have their own monies, and in any case they need deflation to get their costs in line.
正如美国经济学家欧文•费舍尔近80年前指出的那样，紧缩的收入与不变的债务之间的矛盾会极大恶化经济下行的趋势。假设不管出于什么原因经济出现衰退：消费下降，价格与工资也下降。然而，债务并没有减少，所以债务人必须用更少的收入来偿还同样多的债务；这样，他们就不得不进一步削减开支，从而进一步抑制经济。费舍尔说，避免这种恶性循环的途径就是货币膨胀，这样就能阻止通货紧缩。在美国和英国，美联储和英国银行分别正在做这样的事情。但是希腊、西班牙和爱尔兰却没有这种选择——他们没有自己的货币，在任何情况下都需要通过通货紧缩使成本控制在范围之内。
And so there’s a crisis. Over the course of the past year or so, first Greece, then Ireland, became caught up in a vicious financial circle: as potential lenders lost confidence, the interest rates that they had to pay on the debt rose, undermining future prospects, leading to a further loss of confidence and even higher interest rates. Stronger European nations averted an immediate implosion only by providing Greece and Ireland with emergency credit lines, letting them bypass private markets for the time being. But how is this all going to work out?
这样，危机出现了。在过去的一年里，先是希腊，然后是爱尔兰都陷入金融的恶性循环之中：随着潜在的债权人失去信心，需要为债务支付的利息增大，破坏了未来的前景，导致信心进一步下降和更高的利率。强大的欧洲国家只有通过向希腊和爱尔兰提供紧急信贷，让这些国家暂时绕开私营市场，这样才避免了内爆的立刻发生。但是，整个事情将会是什么的结局？
FOUR EUROPEAN PLOTLINES （欧洲四种主要情节）
Some economists, myself included, look at Europe’s woes and have the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before, a decade ago on another continent — specifically, in Argentina.
包括本人在内的一些经济学家观察欧洲的困境，有一种感觉就是，10年前在另外一个大陆——特别是在阿根廷，也出现过这种情况。
Unlike Spain or Greece, Argentina never gave up its own currency, but in 1991 it did the next best thing: it rigidly pegged its currency to the U.S. dollar, establishing a “currency board” in which each peso in circulation was backed by a dollar in reserves. This was supposed to prevent any return to Argentina’s old habit of covering its deficits by printing money. And for much of the 1990s, Argentina was rewarded with much lower interest rates and large inflows of foreign capital.
跟西班牙或希腊不同，阿根廷从来就没有抛弃自己的货币，但是在1991年，阿根廷做了一件几乎一样的事情：将自己的货币严格与美元挂钩，成立了一个“货币局”，在这个货币局中，流通的每一个比索都必须有一美元的储蓄作为支撑。这种安排旨在防止阿根廷重新回到大量印制钞票支付赤字的老习惯上去。在上世纪90年代的多数年份，阿根廷得到了利率下降和外国资本大量流入的回报。
Eventually, however, Argentina slid into a persistent recession and lost investor confidence. Argentina’s government tried to restore that confidence through rigorous fiscal orthodoxy, slashing spending and raising taxes. To buy time for austerity to have a positive effect, Argentina sought and received large loans from the International Monetary Fund — in much the same way that Greece and Ireland have sought emergency loans from their neighbors. But the persistent decline of the Argentine economy, combined with deflation, frustrated the government’s efforts, even as high unemployment led to growing unrest.
但是，阿根廷最终滑入一张持久的经济衰退之中，失去了投资人的信心。阿根廷政府试图通过严格传统财政政策恢复信心，削减开支，提高税收。为了让这种紧缩政策收到积极效果，阿根廷向国际货币基金求援并得到了大量的贷款-许多方面跟希腊与爱尔兰寻求邻国紧急援助一样。但是阿根廷持续的经济衰退加上通货紧缩挫败了政府的努力，居高不下的失业率甚至造成越来越多的不稳定。
By early 2002, after angry demonstrations and a run on the banks, it had all fallen apart. The link between the peso and the dollar collapsed, with the peso plunging; meanwhile, Argentina defaulted on its debts, eventually paying only about 35 cents on the dollar.
到了2002年年初，在发生愤怒的示威活动和银行挤兑之后，分崩离析。比索与美元联垮台了，比索币值直线下降；与此同时，阿根廷发生债务违约，最终1美元只支付了大约35美分。
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that something similar may be in the cards for one or more of Europe’s problem economies. After all, the policies now being undertaken by the crisis countries are, qualitatively at least, very similar to those Argentina tried in its desperate effort to save the peso-dollar link: harsh fiscal austerity in an effort to regain the market’s confidence, backed in Greece and Ireland by official loans intended to buy time until private lenders regain confidence. And if an Argentine-style outcome is the end of the line, it will be a terrible blow to the euro project. Is that what’s going to happen?
人们不免怀疑，类似的情况在一个或多个欧洲问题国家发生也是完全可能的。毕竟，危机国家现在所采取的政策至少从性质上与当年阿根廷为拼命挽救比索与美元关联机制时采取的政策是十分相似：通过严厉的紧缩政策以恢复市场信心，在希腊和爱尔兰还有政府贷款的支持，企图在私营债权人恢复信心之前赢得时间。如果阿根廷式的结局这条路线的终点，将对欧元计划一致命打击。这种事情会发生吗？
Not necessarily. As I see it, there are four ways the European crisis could play out (and it may play out differently in different countries). Call them toughing it out; debt restructuring; full Argentina; and revived Europeanism.
不一定。在我看来，结束欧洲危机存在四条途径（不同国家途径可能不同）。它们分别是：紧缩到底化解危机；债务重组；完全的阿根廷化；欧洲主义复兴。
Toughing it out: Troubled European economies could, conceivably, reassure creditors by showing sufficient willingness to endure pain and thereby avoid either default or devaluation. The role models here are the Baltic nations: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. These countries are small and poor by European standards; they want very badly to gain the long-term advantages they believe will accrue from joining the euro and becoming part of a greater Europe. And so they have been willing to endure very harsh fiscal austerity while wages gradually come down in the hope of restoring competitiveness — a process known in Eurospeak as “internal devaluation.”
紧缩到底化解危机：可以想象，出现问题的欧洲国家可以通过表达对忍受痛苦的足够的意愿而让债权人恢复信心，从而避免违约或通货紧缩发生。这方面的范例是波罗的海各国：爱沙尼亚、立陶宛和拉脱维亚。依照欧洲标准，这些国家又小又穷；非常希望获得长期的优势，并且相信这种优势可以通过加入欧元，成为大欧洲的一部分而获得。所以，这些国家一直表现出愿意忍受非常严酷的财政紧缩，同时工资逐步下降，期望重新恢复竞争力——欧洲人将这一进程称之为“内部贬值。”
Have these policies been successful? It depends on how you define “success.” The Baltic nations have, to some extent, succeeded in reassuring markets, which now consider them less risky than Ireland, let alone Greece. Meanwhile, wages have come down, declining 15 percent in Latvia and more than 10 percent in Lithuania and Estonia. All of this has, however, come at immense cost: the Baltics have experienced Depression-level declines in output and employment. It’s true that they’re now growing again, but all indications are that it will be many years before they make up the lost ground.
这些政策是否已经取得成功？答案取决于您如何定义“成功”。在某种程度上，波罗的海国家成功地稳定了市场，市场现在认为这些国家风险小于爱尔兰，更不用说希腊。同时，工资也得到了下降，拉脱维亚下降15%，立陶宛和爱沙尼亚下降超过10%。不过，所有这些的取得都付出了巨大的代价：在出口和就业方面，波罗的海国家经受了大萧条一样的经济衰退。没错，这些国家现在经济重新增长，但是所有指数表明，要弥补失去的水平，还需要许多年的时间。
It says something about the current state of Europe that many officials regard the Baltics as a success story. I find myself quoting Tacitus: “They make a desert and call it peace” — or, in this case, adjustment. Still, this is one way the euro zone could survive intact.
许多官员认为波罗的海国家是成功的，这可以说明欧洲当前的一些问题。我觉得应该引用罗马帝国时代最伟大的历史学家塔西佗的语录：“他们将一切变为沙漠，把这种情况叫做和平”——或者，在这种情况下，应替换为“调整”。不过，这仍然是欧元区原封不动地度过难关的一条途径。
Debt restructuring: At the time of writing, Irish 10-year bonds were yielding about 9 percent, while Greek 10-years were yielding 12½ percent. At the same time, German 10-years — which, like Irish and Greek bonds, are denominated in euros — were yielding less than 3 percent. The message from the markets was clear: investors don’t expect Greece and Ireland to pay their debts in full. They are, in other words, expecting some kind of debt restructuring, like the restructuring that reduced Argentina’s debt by two-thirds.
债务重组：在撰写本文的时候，爱尔兰10年期债券的利率约为9%，而希腊10年期债券利率为12.5 %。与此同时，德国的10年债券（与爱尔兰和希腊债券一样，使用欧元）的利率不到3%。市场发出的信号是十分清楚的：投资人并不期望希腊和爱尔兰能够全额偿还债务。换句话说，他们期待某种形式的债务重组，就像阿根廷将债务减去三分之二这样的债务重组一样。
Such a debt restructuring would by no means end a troubled economy’s pain. Take Greece: even if the government were to repudiate all its debt, it would still have to slash spending and raise taxes to balance its budget, and it would still have to suffer the pain of deflation. But a debt restructuring could bring the vicious circle of falling confidence and rising interest costs to an end, potentially making internal devaluation a workable if brutal strategy.
然而，这种债务重组决不会结束问题国家的痛苦。以希腊为例：即使政府拒绝支付其所有债务，仍要大幅削减开支，提高税收以实现预案平衡，仍要遭受通货紧缩的痛苦。但是债务重组会终止信心下降利率上涨的恶性循环，有可能使让内部贬值成为一种可行的但却非常残酷的战略。
Frankly, I find it hard to see how Greece can avoid a debt restructuring, and Ireland isn’t much better. The real question is whether such restructurings will spread to Spain and — the truly frightening prospect — to Belgium and Italy, which are heavily indebted but have so far managed to avoid a serious crisis of confidence.
坦率地讲，我很难看到希腊会成功避免债务重组，爱尔兰的情况也好不再那儿去。真实的问题是这种债务重组会不会扩展到西班牙，还有一种令人感到真正害怕的前景，就是债务重组扩大到比利时和意大利，这两个国家已经深陷债务之中，到目前为止却成功地避免了严重信心危机的发生。
Full Argentina: Argentina didn’t simply default on its foreign debt; it also abandoned its link to the dollar, allowing the peso’s value to fall by more than two-thirds. And this devaluation worked: from 2003 onward, Argentina experienced a rapid export-led economic rebound.
完全阿根廷化：阿根廷不仅仅在其外债上发生违约；它还抛弃了比索与美元的关联，允许比索价值下降超过三分之二。这种贬值是奏效的：从2003年起，阿根廷出现出口引导型经济迅速回升。
The European country that has come closest to doing an Argentina is Iceland, whose bankers had run up foreign debts that were many times its national income. Unlike Ireland, which tried to salvage its banks by guaranteeing their debts, the Icelandic government forced its banks’ foreign creditors to take losses, thereby limiting its debt burden. And by letting its banks default, the country took a lot of foreign debt off its national books.
欧洲国家中与阿根廷最相似的国家是冰岛，该国银行家所欠外国贷款数倍于该国的收入。与通过提供债务担保拯救银行的爱尔兰不同，冰岛政府让该国银行的外国债权人承担损失，从而对债务负担起到限制作用。通过允许银行违约，冰岛的国家预算中删除了大量的外国债务。
At the same time, Iceland took advantage of the fact that it had not joined the euro and still had its own currency. It soon became more competitive by letting its currency drop sharply against other currencies, including the euro. Iceland’s wages and prices quickly fell about 40 percent relative to those of its trading partners, sparking a rise in exports and fall in imports that helped offset the blow from the banking collapse.
与此同时，冰岛利用自己加入欧元，但却保留自己货币的优势，通过让其货币与包括欧元在内的其它货币的汇率大幅下降的方式，迅速提高了竞争力。与其贸易伙伴相比，冰岛的工资及物价大幅下降40%， 导致出口上升，进口下降，补偿了银行业垮台的重大损失。
The combination of default and devaluation has helped Iceland limit the damage from its banking disaster. In fact, in terms of employment and output, Iceland has done somewhat better than Ireland and much better than the Baltic nations.
违约清算加上货币贬值，帮助冰岛限制了银行业带来的损失。事实上，在就业及出口方面，冰岛看来已经超过爱尔兰，比波罗的海国家好的多。
So will one or more troubled European nations go down the same path? To do so, they would have to overcome a big obstacle: the fact that, unlike Iceland, they no longer have their own currencies. As Barry Eichengreen of Berkeley pointed out in an influential 2007 analysis, any euro-zone country that even hinted at leaving the currency would trigger a devastating run on its banks, as depositors rushed to move their funds to safer locales. And Eichengreen concluded that this “procedural” obstacle to exit made the euro irreversible.
会不会还有一个或多个欧洲国家走同样的道路？要这样做，就必须扫清一个大障碍：与冰岛不同，这些国家不再拥有自己的货币。正如加利福尼亚大学巴克利分校的巴厘·艾肯格林在2007年发表的一份具有影响力的分析报告中指出的那样，任何任一欧元区国家脱离欧元的暗示，都会引发该国银行灾难般的挤兑发生，存款人会蜂拥而至，将资金转移到安全地方。艾肯格林得出结论说，这种退出上的“程序”障碍使欧元不可逆转。
But Argentina’s peg to the dollar was also supposed to be irreversible, and for much the same reason. What made devaluation possible, in the end, was the fact that there was a run on the banks despite the government’s insistence that one peso would always be worth one dollar. This run forced the Argentine government to limit withdrawals, and once these limits were in place, it was possible to change the peso’s value without setting off a second run. Nothing like that has happened in Europe — yet. But it’s certainly within the realm of possibility, especially as the pain of austerity and internal devaluation drags on.
不过，出于几乎相同的原因，阿根廷货币与美元的挂钩也曾被认为不可逆转。最后，让贬值成为可能的是，尽管政府坚持1比索任何时间都值1美元，银行仍发生挤兑现象。挤兑迫使阿根廷政府限制提款，而这种限制措施一旦实施，改变比索的价值就不会引发第二次挤兑。在欧洲还没有发生这样的事情，但肯定在可能性范畴之内，尤其是随着财政紧缩与内部贬值痛苦的持续，这种可能会增大。
Revived Europeanism: The preceding three scenarios were grim. Is there any hope of an outcome less grim? To the extent that there is, it would have to involve taking further major steps toward that “European federation” Robert Schuman wanted 60 years ago.
欧洲主义的复兴：前边三种情况都是令人不快的。那么，会不会还存在一种不那么令人不快的结局？在一定程度，这种结局是存在的。不过它事关采取更大的步骤，走向罗伯特·舒曼60年前就期望的“欧洲联邦”。
In early December, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, and Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, created a storm with a proposal to create “E-bonds,” which would be issued by a European debt agency at the behest of individual European countries. Since these bonds would be guaranteed by the European Union as a whole, they would offer a way for troubled economies to avoid vicious circles of falling confidence and rising borrowing costs. On the other hand, they would potentially put governments on the hook for one another’s debts — a point that furious German officials were quick to make. The Germans are adamant that Europe must not become a “transfer union,” in which stronger governments and nations routinely provide aid to weaker.
12月初，卢森堡首相琼-克劳德•席贾克和意大利财政部长朱利奥特•雷蒙蒂提出建立一种由欧洲债务机构按照单个欧洲国家要求发行的“欧洲债券”，引起一场舆论风暴。这种债券由欧盟作为整体提供担保，可以为问题的国家提供一条防止陷入信心下降、借贷成本上升恶性循环的一条途径。另一方面，这种债券有可能欧洲政府在彼此的债务上捆在一起——这是愤怒的德国官员迅速做出的反应。德国人坚持认为，欧洲不应成为一个“资金转移联盟”，让强大的政府和国家经常性地为弱国提供援助。
Yet as the earlier Ireland-Nevada comparison shows, the United States works as a currency union in large part precisely because it is also a transfer union, in which states that haven’t gone bust support those that have. And it’s hard to see how the euro can work unless Europe finds a way to accomplish something similar.
正如本文前面所做的爱尔兰与内华达比较案例显示那样，美国作为一个货币联盟，其主要原因不是别的，而是美国本身就是一个资金转移联盟，没有出现泡沫破裂的州支援已经发生泡沫破裂的州。除非欧洲找到一条道路实现类似的东西，否则很难看到欧元到底真正运作。
Nobody is yet proposing that Europe move to anything resembling U.S. fiscal integration; the Juncker-Tremonti plan would be at best a small step in that direction. But Europe doesn’t seem ready to take even that modest step.
然而，没有任何人建议欧洲走向美国这样的财政一体化；席贾克-雷蒙蒂计划最多是超那个方向走出的一小步。不过，欧洲似乎连这么一小步都不愿意走。
OUT OF MANY, ONE?
诸多出路，难道就选用这一条？
For now, the plan in Europe is to have everyone tough it out — in effect, for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain to emulate Latvia and Estonia. That was the clear verdict of the most recent meeting of the European Council, at which Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, essentially got everything she wanted. Governments that can’t borrow on the private market will receive loans from the rest of Europe — but only on stiff terms: people talk about Ireland getting a “bailout,” but it has to pay almost 6 percent interest on that emergency loan. There will be no E-bonds; there will be no transfer union.
欧洲目前的计划是让所有国家通过紧缩化解危机——实际上就是让希腊、爱尔兰、葡萄牙和西班牙向拉脱维亚和立陶宛学习。这是欧洲议会最近举行的会议上做出的清楚决断，会上德国总理安吉拉•默克尔基本上得到她所希望得到的东西。无法从私人市场获得贷款的政府将从欧洲其它国家获得贷款——但条件非常苛刻：人们说爱尔兰得到“援救”，但她必须为紧急贷款提供近6%的利息。 未来不会有欧洲债券；也不会是一个资金转移联盟。
Even if this eventually works in the sense that internal devaluation has worked in the Baltics — that is, in the narrow sense that Europe’s troubled economies avoid default and devaluation — it will be an ugly process, leaving much of Europe deeply depressed for years to come. There will be political repercussions too, as the European public sees the continent’s institutions as being — depending on where they sit — either in the business of bailing out deadbeats or acting as agents of heartless bill collectors.
即使与波罗的海国家采取内部贬值那样，这种方式最终奏效 – 也就是说，在狭义上的欧洲问题国家避免了违约清算与贬值 — 这种方式也是一种丑陋的进程，欧洲的许多地方未来数年内会维持经济严重不景气的局面。同时，也会产生很大的政治反响，因为欧洲公众会认为这个大陆的机构完全取决于自己所处的位置， 要么援救那些赖账者，要么成为收取没良心账单的代理商。
Nor can the rest of the world look on smugly at Europe’s woes. Taken as a whole, the European Union, not the United States, is the world’s largest economy; the European Union is fully coequal with America in the running of the global trading system; Europe is the world’s most important source of foreign aid; and Europe is, whatever some Americans may think, a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism. A troubled Europe is bad for everyone else.
世界其它国家也不能看着欧洲的灾难而自鸣得意。作为整体，欧洲联盟超过美国，是当今世界最大的经济体；欧洲联盟与美国在全球贸易体系运作方面完全平等；欧洲是世界上最重要的外援来源;不管一些美国人怎么看，欧洲是反恐战争中至关重要的伙伴。欧洲出现麻烦对其他任何人都没有好处。
In any case, the odds are that the current tough-it-out strategy won’t work even in the narrow sense of avoiding default and devaluation — and the fact that it won’t work will become obvious sooner rather than later. At that point, Europe’s stronger nations will have to make a choice.
无论如何，即使从防止违约与贬值这种狭义上讲，当前采取的通过紧缩而化解危机的措施行不通的可能性都是存在的 – 这种措施行不通的事实很快就会显现出来。到时候欧洲强国就必须做出选择。
It has been 60 years since the Schuman declaration started Europe on the road to greater unity. Until now the journey along that road, however slow, has always been in the right direction. But that will no longer be true if the euro project fails. A failed euro wouldn’t send Europe back to the days of minefields and barbed wire — but it would represent a possibly irreversible blow to hopes of true European federation.
从舒曼宣布欧洲开始走向更大的统一到现在，整整60年过去了。不久以前，沿着这条路行进虽然缓慢，但却一直不存在方向问题。如果欧元计划失败，则不能继续说这样的话了。欧元计划失败不会将欧洲送回遍布地雷与铁丝网的年代——但对真正欧洲联邦的梦想来说，则意味着可能无法逆转的打击。
So will Europe’s strong nations let that happen? Or will they accept the responsibility, and possibly the cost, of being their neighbors’ keepers? The whole world is waiting for the answer.
因此，欧洲强国会让这种情况出现吗？抑或他们会承担作为邻国保护者的责任，包括承担可能的代价。全世界正拭目以待。
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