经济学人下载:违约杯具已避,跛脚政治风险犹存

Small comforts 仅存的小安慰

Mr Obama did secure his priorities: the debt ceiling will not be an issue again until after the next election, and programmes for the poor were largely protected. He did not fully shield the recovery, though. Michael Feroli of JPMorgan Chase reckons the spending caps will subtract 0.3 percentage points from growth in 2012 (see chart 3). Fiscal policy was already on course to knock 1.4 points off growth, as last year’s payroll-tax cut and extension to unemployment benefits reach their expiry date. Administration officials hope to persuade Congress to keep both for one more year. But if they fail, then fiscal tightening poses a serious obstacle for an economy already growing at “stall speed”: that is, slowly enough to fall back into recession.

奥巴马妥妥地确保了他的优先权利：下界总统竞选期间，债务上限将不再成为一个绊脚石，而其面向穷人捞选票的福利项目也大多得到了保护。虽然，他也没有完全要回避恢复经济的问题。摩根大通的迈克尔．费罗利预计，因为开支上限，2012的GDP增长将受损0.3个百分点（见图表3）。由于去年的工资减税和增加失业救济金政策截止日期将至，财政政策对GDP增长的影响，此前预计已达1.4个百分点。政府官员希望能够劝服国会，再延迟这两项优惠政策一年。但是如果劝说无果，那么紧缩的财政政策将会给原本就陷入停滞的经济增长带来严重的阻碍。也就是说，足以让我们重新掉入衰退期。

The president counts as perhaps his biggest victory the reprieve from debt-ceiling blackmail for two more years. To be sure, the Republicans holding out against an increase assumed, probably correctly, that the Treasury would have found a way to pay interest on the debt. But it would have had to default on many other obligations. That the Republicans deployed such a threat so successfully will encourage both parties to try it again. Indeed, Mr McConnell proudly declared the strategy “a new template”. “In the future”, he added, “any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean any more…we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve.”

总统大人，可能将共和党在债务上限问题上的敲诈勒索延后两年，视为最大的胜利。另外可以肯定的是，共和党必然会反对财政部另辟蹊径来支付债务利息，（即使财政部这样做了）那就意味着它将不能履行其他义务。此次共和党人布设了一出如此成功的“挟债务以令国会”的好戏，肯定会刺激两党再做尝试。也正如所料，麦克康奈尔就不无自豪地宣称这个策略是一个“崭新的模板”。他还说：“以后如果有总统，不管是这个还是另外一个，当他们要求我们提高债务上限时，再明了不过了，我们可以通过这个过程，来看看我们能捞到什么。”

The two parties’ disagreements on economic policy are likely to surface time and again between now and the election. Besides the various votes on whatever the joint committee comes up with, a budget is due by October 1st; part of the petrol (gasoline) tax is up for renewal next month; unemployment benefits will become much less generous at the end of the year; and the tax cuts enacted under George Bush and extended last year will expire again at the end of 2012. Each of these events will provide an excuse to repeat all the partisan posturing of the past few months.

两党在经济政策上的争论，很可能再一次占据选举前的这一段时间。此外，除了联合委员会整出的各种投票，一项预算将于10月1日到期；下月部分汽油税又将面临续期；失业救济金年底也将变得越来越少；小布什在任时通过的减税方案（去年曾延长过一次）年底又将截止。毫无疑问，这些事情又将成为两党在未来数月上演各种闹剧的借口。