经济学人下载:美国陷经济寒冬,春天还有多远?(2)

Other real-time measures capture economic activity more broadly. The share of small firms which have temporarily closed is probably rising. Consumer spending in the week ending November 22nd was down by 5% compared with the one before, according to Cardify, a data provider. Using mobility data from Google, The Economist has constructed an economic-activity index measuring visits to workplaces, transport hubs and places of retail and recreation. After rising steadily during the autumn, the index has fallen back—though America still looks better than Europe, where the economic-activity index has crashed as governments have imposed another round of lockdowns. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, produces an estimate of monthly American GDP growth from a range of real-time data. In a report published on December 2nd, it suggests that output stopped growing in November. 

其他实时指标能够更广泛地捕捉经济活动。暂时关闭的小公司所占比例可能正在上升。数据提供方Cardify称，截至11月22日的一周内，消费者支出较前一周下降了5%。《经济学人》利用谷歌提供的移动数据，构建了一个经济活动指数，该指数可用来衡量对工作场所、交通枢纽以及零售和娱乐场所的访问量。该指数在秋季稳步上升之后已经回落。不过美国的情况看起来仍然比欧洲好，由于欧洲各国政府实施了新一轮的封锁，欧洲的经济活动指数已经崩溃。摩根大通银行根据一系列实时数据对美国月度国内生产总值增长进行了估算。12月2日发表的一份报告显示美国11月份的产出已经停止增长。

Three factors explain the slowdown. To some extent it was inevitable. Loosening lockdowns had allowed millions of people to return to work and start spending again. But there was no comparable loosening of coronavirus restrictions after that. So it was never realistic for America to repeat the 7.4% quarter-on-quarter GDP growth that it saw in July to September. 

三个因素解释了美国经济放缓的原因。在某种程度上，这是不可避免的。放松封锁使数百万人重返工作岗位，重新开始消费。但是在那之后再没有出现类似放松冠状病毒限制的情况。因此，对美国来说，GDP季度环比增长重新达到7月至9月的7.4%是不现实的。

Fiscal policy is the second factor. Another reason the economy bounced back so quickly in the summer was the enormous generosity of the stimulus packages agreed by Congress in the spring, worth some $3trn (or 14% of GDP). Yet Congress has so far failed to agree to another one, even though the most bullish forecasters still reckon a package worth over $500bn is required to help the economy back to some semblance of normality. A programme set up by President Donald Trump to raise unemployment- insurance (UI) payments by $300 a week, which had boosted aggregate household incomes by 1.5%, wound down in October. States and local governments, facing a severe budget crunch, cut over 1m jobs in the first six months of the pandemic, more than they lost even during the financial crisis of 2007 to 09. 

财政政策是第二个因素。美国经济在夏季如此迅速反弹的另一个原因是国会在春季通过的慷慨的一揽子经济刺激方案，价值约30万亿美元（相当于GDP的14%）。然而国会迄今仍未通过另一项经济刺激方案，尽管最乐观的预测人士仍认为，要帮助美国经济恢复正常状态，需要一个价值5000多亿美元的一揽子经济刺激方案。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普设立了一项每周提供额外300美元失业救济金的计划，该计划曾使美国家庭总收入增加了1.5%，但在10月份结束。美国各州和地方政府面临严重的预算紧缩危机，他们在大流行的前六个月削减了100多万个工作岗位，甚至超过了2007-09年金融危机期间的职位损失。

The third and most important reason for the slowdown is the virus itself. Until recently many Americans, especially in Republican- leaning areas, seemed oddly happy to go about their business as normal. In South Dakota in September and October, for instance, visitors to sites of retail and recreation were 1.5% higher than usual for that time of year, even as coronavirus infections surged. Analysis by The Economist, drawing on Google data and work by Mark Muro and colleagues at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, found that in the summer and autumn people in pro-Trump areas were half as likely to avoid public places as people living in areas that had voted for Joe Biden. 

美国经济放缓的第三个也是最重要的原因就是病毒本身。直到最近，奇怪的是，许多美国人似乎乐于像往常一样忙活自己的事情，特别是在倾向于共和党的地区。例如，在南达科他州的9月和10月，尽管冠状病毒感染激增，但零售和娱乐场所的游客比往年同一时间段增加了1.5%。《经济学人》利用谷歌数据和智库布鲁金斯学会的马克·穆罗及其同事的研究成果分析发现，在夏季和秋季，支持特朗普的地区的民众避开公共场所的可能性是投票支持乔·拜登的地区的民众的一半。