经济学人下载:高飞的承诺 The big promise

Books and Arts; America and the politics of recovery;
文艺；美国与复苏政治学;

The big promise;What did Barack Obama's stimulus package really achieve?
高飞的承诺;巴拉克·奥巴马的刺激计划究竟有何成就？

The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. By Michael Grunwald.
《新“新政”：奥巴马时代隐藏的变革史》，迈克尔·格伦沃尔德着。

The word “boondoggle”, Michael Grunwald points out, was coined back in the days of the original New Deal, to describe “make-work” bits of arts and craft paid for by the government at a price that was out of all proportion to their actual value.

迈克尔·格伦沃尔德指出：政府常常以与实际价值完全不成比例的价格来为一些无用的奢侈品买单，其中就包括“为扩大就业而安排的工作岗位”——早在罗斯福新政时代，人们就创造了“无效投资”一词来描述这一概念。

This is not necessarily a bad thing. In times of economic woe, when normal patterns of consumption and investment are frozen, prodigal government spending can sometimes be the only way to break the vicious circle of declining demand and shrinking employment. Value for money, paradoxically, can sometimes be an unaffordable luxury. To sum up John Maynard Keynes, it can even make sense to bury money in bottles, so that miners, and the suppliers of their pickaxes and overalls, and those who sell food and materials to those suppliers can, in turn, benefit from the circulation of money that they dig up. Mr Grunwald's newbook is the story of what was arguably the greatest boondoggle in history and the politics that surrounded it, both before and since.

这并不一定是什么坏事。在经济困难时期，常规的消费和投资模式会陷入僵局，慷慨的政府开支有时候可能是打破需求下滑、失业率上升这个恶性循环的唯一途径。很矛盾的是，现金价值有时候奢侈得难以承受。将凯恩斯的观点简单概括一下：甚至连把钱放在瓶子里埋起来都是有意义的——这样矿工就能把这笔钱挖出来，从而用于流通；于是矿工本人、矿工的鹤嘴镐和工装裤的供应商、以及向这些供应商销售食物和材料的人都可以依次从这种流通中获益。格伦沃尔德这本新书介绍的可能是史上最大的一笔无效投资，以及这笔投资前后的政治背景。

Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package, enacted within a month of his taking office in January 2009, amounted to about 4% of America's GDP. In the Depression of the 1930s, the biggest stimulus in any year of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal amounted to only about 1.5% of GDP. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as Mr Obama's bill was formally named, was a tale that grew in the telling. In the months running up to the election in November 2008, the economy entered virtual free-fall. The severity of the downturn surprised the participants, but long before he was elected, Mr Obama knew that he faced a crisis of 1930s proportions.

巴拉克·奥巴马于2009年1月上任后的一个月内通过了7870亿美元的刺激计划，这笔资金约占美国 GDP 的4%。而20世纪30年代的大萧条时期，在富兰克林·罗斯福的“新政”年间，最大的一笔刺激方案也只占当时 GDP 的约1.5%。奥巴马法案的正式名称为《美国复苏与再投资法案》，它的规模越来越大了。在2008年11月大选前的几个月，美国经济几乎直线下滑。衰退的严重性让各位候选人感到吃惊。但奥巴马在当选以前很早就意识到了他将面临像20世纪30年代那样严重的危机。

Mr Grunwald's book does a meticulous job, casting much new light on the advance thinking of Mr Obama's team, both before the election and, especially, during the long transition. In the last quarter of 2008, the final three months of the Bush era, the American economy contracted by an astonishing 8.9%. By early 2009 job losses hit 800,000 a month. The size of the policy response grew too. An early plan, calculated at $300 billion, grew, long before inauguration day, to around $800 billion. And that, as Mr Grunwald makes clear, was very much at the low end of what Mr Obama's economists thought was required.

格伦沃尔德的这本书做了细致入微的研究，让人们对当年选举前、特别是在漫长的过渡时期中的奥巴马团队先进思想有了更多的了解。在2008年最后一个季度，布什时代最后的三个月里，美国经济萎缩了8.9%，令人惊讶。截至2009年早期，失业人数达到每月80万人。政府也加大了应对政策的力度。早在奥巴马就职日之前，预估价值为3000亿美元的早期计划就提高到了约8000亿美元。格伦沃尔德表明，甚至连这个数目都大大低于奥巴马经济学家的预期。

One thing that may surprise readers not fully acquainted with the grisly nature of political sausage-making is the degree of cynicism that surrounded the passing of the Recovery Act. It was naive of Mr Obama to expect the Republicans to play ball. But because he needed to win at least a couple of their votes in the Senate to break the threat of a filibuster, he tried hard to court them. Mr Grunwald lays out in shocking detail how the Republican leadership decided early and wholeheartedly not to co-operate with the new president. So deep was their opposition that they even opposed things that they supposedly supported, such as the Recovery Act's deep tax cuts and its emphasis on infrastructure.

有些读者对于政治“裹香肠”那可憎的特性并不完全了解。他们可能会感到惊奇——针对《复苏法案》的通过，政界存在严重的犬儒主义。如果奥巴马期待能与共和党合作，他就太天真了。但他需要在参议院赢得至少部分共和党的选票，以避免自己的议案遭到阻挠。因此，他极力取悦共和党人。格伦沃尔德清楚地提及了共和党领导层是如何早早决定完全不与新总统合作的，细节所到令人震惊。共和党的反对情绪极为强烈，以至于本应支持的观点，他们都加以反对——如《复苏法案》所主张的深度减税、强调基础设施等等。

As cynical as this may have been, it made political sense. If the stimulus succeeded, Mr Obama would get all the credit. If it failed, the Republicans could portray themselves as having been on the side of fiscal prudence. Since then, the economy has stubbornly refused to grow at anything beyond an an . Many Republican economists, such as the respected Mark Zandi, who advised John McCain in his contest with Mr Obama, agree that without it, things would have been even worse. But the problem is that it did not work well enough. As a result, the Republicans triumphed at the mid-term vote and Mr Obama's ratings are now uncomfortably low as he struggles for re-election.

尽管共和党的这种态度可能有些愤世嫉俗了，但它在政治上是说得通的。如果刺激成功了，奥巴马将得到各方的赞扬；如果刺激失败了，共和党人会表示他们可是一直都支持稳健的财政方针的。自从那时起，美国经济一直衰弱无力，顽固地拒绝增长。许多共和党经济学家（比如受人尊敬的马克·赞迪，他是约翰·麦凯恩同奥巴马争夺总统宝座时的谋士）同意，如果没有奥巴马的刺激计划，情况将变得更糟。但问题在于该计划的成效并不是十分显著。于是，共和党在中期选举投票中获胜了；而奥巴马力争连任，得票率却低的可怜。

Mr Grunwald's heart plainly beats on the left, and it is clear that he admires Mr Obama, with his “hyper-rational side”. At the same time, the author does make some effort to explain the Republican point of view. The whole point of an economic stimulus is that it is supposed to stimulate. It needs to move money out of the door fast, get it quickly to where it can do most good and not carry with it a tail of long-term spending commitments. But Mr Obama's agenda was always much bigger than that, and it is in explaining this that Mr Grunwald's book is at its best.

可以看出，格伦沃尔德倾向于左派；他有“过于理性的一面”，显然比较赞赏奥巴马。然而，他的确也做了一些努力来阐述共和党的观点。经济刺激的全部意义就在于它应当去进行刺激。它需要让资金涌出闸门，迅速把这笔钱送到能带来最多效益的地方，而不是拖着长期开支投入的尾巴。但奥巴马的胃口总是远不止如此，而格伦沃尔德这本书最擅长的就是解释这一点。

Much of the meat involves parsing the issues that riled the Republicans: how the stimulus bill was to be used as a tool to transform American society. Right from the start, Mr Obama wanted his Recovery Act to spend money on a low-carbon future, on radical school reform, on health reform and on creating jobs. All of these, Mr Grunwald thinks, are laudable aims. Many readers would agree. But Republicans in Washington have other views. New energy projects, like job creation, should be left to the market, not picked by bureaucrats; school and health reform should be a matter for individual states. What they saw was an attempt to use the crisis to push the political economy of America in a more statist and Washington-centric direction. Mr Grunwald does not attempt to deny that; it is simply that he has no problem with it.

本书的主要部分大多都在剖析共和党感到恼怒的几个问题：如何将刺激法案用作转化美国社会的工具。从一开始，奥巴马就要求《复苏法案》在以下几个方面进行投资：向低碳社会的转变、彻底的学校改革、卫生改革以及创造就业岗位。格伦沃尔德认为所有这些目标都是值得赞赏的。许多读者也会认同这一点。但华盛顿的共和党并不这么想。他们认为新能源项目和创造就业岗位应当交给市场去引导，而不是由当局来推动；学校改革和卫生改革应当根据各个州的具体情况进行。他们认为奥巴马在试图利用危机把美国的政治经济推向一个以华盛顿为中心、中央集权度更高的方向。格伦沃尔德并未试图否认这一点；他对此完全没有异议。

The most interesting part of the book is the part that leaves most questions open. What will be the legacy of all Mr Obama's greening and rebuilding? Mr Grunwald waxes on about the cleverness of Steven Chu, the president's energy secretary,and all the amazing things that his scientists think they can do with their oodles of new cash. But there have also, as he admits, been many failures. Mr Grunwald's instinct is to praise the splashing around of government money for untested new technologies which, when exposed to life without the government teat, may quickly wither. Governments make bad venture capitalists, as the book quotes Larry Summers, a key member of the president's original team, as saying.

本书最有趣的部分在于它将大多数问题留给了读者思考。奥巴马的众多环保和重建措施将给美国留下什么样的遗产？格伦沃尔德描述了奥巴马的能源部长——朱棣文的机智，也描述了这位总统手下的科学家——他们认为利用大笔新有资金可以做一些惊人的事情。但格伦沃尔德承认，奥巴马政府也存在不少失败之处。有些政府资金经过种种周转，用于未经检验的新技术，格伦沃尔德本能地对此加以赞扬。但当这些新技术离开政府的怀抱以后，可能很快就夭折了。本书引述了奥巴马早期团队重要成员劳伦斯·萨默斯的言论：政府并不是好的风险投资家。

The truth is that no one really knows yet how well spent the longer-term parts of the immense Recovery and Reinvestment Act will turn out to have been. But no writer has yet gone this far, at least in unravelling where the money has gone. “The New New Deal” is the most interesting book that has been published about the Obama administration. Even Republicans should read it.

事实上，《复苏与再投资法案》篇幅很长，其中的长期部分最终能否妥善付诸实施，还没有人真正清楚。但还没有任何作家进行过如此深入的探究，至少还没有人阐明这笔资金的去向。在关于奥巴马政府的出版物中，《新“新政”》是最有趣的一本书。即使是共和党人都应该拿来读一读。