经济学人下载:美国经济面临二次探底?

If that happens, then America’s politicians will bear much of the blame (see article). Their prescription for a weak economy is a large slug of austerity. Thanks to the expiry of a payroll-tax credit and extended jobless benefits in December, the United States is on course for a fiscal contraction of some 2% of GDP next year, the biggest of any large economy—and enough to drag a weak economy into recession.

如果发生二次探底，美国政客要负主要责任。他们应对经济低迷的方法是大幅收缩财政。由于工资税减免政策和延长的失业补贴将于12月份终止，明年美国的财政收缩将达到GDP的约2%，高于任何大型经济体，且足以将低迷的经济拖入衰退的深渊。

The debt deal, which implies only modest new spending cuts in the short term, is not directly responsible for this. But Congress could, and should, have stopped this potentially ruinous trajectory. There was a deal to be had: keep up spending in the short term, with a stress on much-needed infrastructure investment, as well as extending the temporary tax cuts, in exchange for a big medium-term reduction in the deficit, centred on entitlements and tax reform. Congress did precisely the opposite, failing to support the economy now and failing to find enough cuts over the next decade to stabilise America’s debt. Any hard decisions have been given to a commission—a cop-out that condemns workers and firms to more crippling uncertainty about how the country’s fiscal mess will be tackled. Would you build a factory today if you knew that taxes had to rise eventually, but had no idea which ones?

这次债务协议仅暗示出短期内适度的支出削减，并非探底的直接原因。但是国会本能够，也应该制止这一潜在破坏性的苗头。本来的协议是这样的：短期内保持高水平支出，重点是十分必要的基础设施投资，并延长短期的减税政策，这样就能使赤字在中期内大幅下降，中心是应得权益和税收改革。国会的做法恰恰相反，既没能够支持起目前的经济，也没能为稳定债务而制定出未来十年的支出削减计划。所有艰难的决定都交给一个委员会去做，这种做法让工人和企业一片茫然，不知道国家财政问题会怎样得到解决。这种不确定性有害无益—试想，如果你知道税收最终会增长，但不知道具体是哪种税，你现在会建立工厂吗？

Worse, the poisonous politics of the past few weeks have created new sorts of uncertainty. Now that the tea-partiers have used default successfully as a political weapon, it will surely be used again. The refusal to compromise, rapidly becoming a point of honour for both parties, is wreaking damage elsewhere, partially shutting down the Federal Aviation Administration (see article) and postponing trade bills. At best, the politicians will have slowed a sputtering expansion; at worst they will have killed off the recovery and inflicted lasting harm on the world’s most impressive prosperity machine.

更糟的是，过去几周的政治毒瘤引发了新的不确定性。既然茶党能成功地把债务违约当成政治武器，那么当然还会有其他人使用它。拒绝妥协迅速成为两党的自豪，这在其他方面也在造成破坏，例如，联邦航空管理局的关闭和贸易法案的推迟。乐观地看，政客们会减缓乏力的增长；悲观地看，他们将扼杀经济复苏，使这个世界上最繁荣的国家遭受持久的伤害。