pbs高端访谈:保罗·克鲁格曼:“经济学不是唱德育戏”

 　　JEFFREY BROWN:And now to the continuing debate over the government's role in the economy and the decisions taken in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

　　Earlier this week, we aired a conversation with David Stockman, a businessman and former White House budget director whose book focused on the dangers of too much intervention¹.

　　Tonight, economics correspondent Paul Solman gets a different perspective, part of his ongoing² reporting, “Making Sen$e of Financial News.”

　　PAUL SOLMAN:We recently interviewed former Reagan budget chief and private equity³ deal-maker David Stockman about his provocative⁴ bestseller "The Great Deformation," in which he argues that America's economic system is busted⁵, corrupted⁶ by debt, crony capitalism⁷, and government meddling⁸, case in point, the bailouts during the crash of 2008.

　　DAVID STOCKMAN, Former Reagan Administration Budget Director: We basically made a mockery out of free markets and financial discipline and we will never come back.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:But, of course, Stockman's verdict has its share of critics, including the prodigiously¹⁰ well-read Nobel Prize-winning economist¹¹ Paul Krugman. A New York Times opinion piece by Stockman drew several written retorts from Times columnist¹² Krugman.

　　In one, he called Stockman a cranky old man.

　　We asked Krugman to respond to Stockman at greater length, first to the idea that we should have let foundering¹³ financial firms simply fail in '08. But that risked doomsday, Krugman said.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN, Columnist, The New York Times: Destroying the world is not something you want to do by mistake.

　　Unfortunately, what we have learn from 150-plus years of history is that financial crises, left unmanaged, unfought, can produce mass suffering. I mean, it's been pretty bad, but it could have been much, much worse than it was.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Is there, in David Stockman's phrase, no economic basis for contagion¹⁴, that is, the dominoes, where one institution goes and all the rest go?

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:You see contagion everywhere.

　　I mean, the great banking¹⁵ crisis of 1930-'31 began with the failure of a quite small bank in New York, that these—these domino effects are very, very real. They partly run through the fact that people see a bank run down the street. Then they—so they run the bank at this end of the street. They partly take place because, in a banking panic, everybody's trying to sell the same assets, and all those assets collapse¹⁶ in price, so that companies that were not in financial trouble all of a sudden are in financial trouble.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Stockman's argument, for example, with respect to the auto¹⁷ industry is, yes, we saved 40,000 jobs, but those are 40,000 jobs that would have been added in the South by automakers who were already there, foreign automakers, many of them, Nissan, Hyundai.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:It's not clear that allowing GM to go under would actually have opened up space for its competitors.

　　It's all very easy now, now that it turned out that we didn't have a collapse in the auto industry, to say, oh, well, everything would have been fine if we did nothing, but that's certainly not the way it looked at the time, and I think it wasn't in fact true, that we did need to act, and it's a good thing we did.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:But, surely, you're sympathetic to Stockman's charge that crony capitalism is a major problem in this country?

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:Yes, of course.

　　No question that there are a lot of companies, a lot of people who make their way not by having the best product or the best idea, but by having the right connections. The question is whether the solution to crony capitalism is to say, let's have a depression that destroys everything, so that we don't bail⁹ out those fat-cat bankers on Wall Street.

　　And I think that's not the answer. The answer is to regulate the bankers, but at the same time save the workers.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Stockman, like many others, blames the Federal Reserve for inflating¹⁸ the housing bubble that caused the crisis in the first place by keeping interest rates too low too long. He says low interest rates are again fueling a speculative¹⁹ frenzy²⁰ on Wall Street, enabling traders to bet with cheap borrowed money. But Krugman doesn't buy it.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:We had very low interest rates in the 1950s. Did we have wild speculative bubbles? Did we have crazy stuff? Was all this happening? Did we have wildly overpaid bankers? The answer is, no, we didn't.

　　The difference between now and then is not that the Fed has cut interest rates when the economy is depressed²¹. It's supposed to do that. That's the Fed's job. The problem is that we took away the safeguards that prevented financial abuse. And the truth is that financial abuse has been pretty widespread even when interest rates are not near zero.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:One of Stockman's main points is that we have become addicted²² to debt, and he says, acknowledges that he himself knows, because, as a leveraged²³ buyout guy, he too was addicted.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:I don't think it's an addiction²⁴.

　　Financial sector²⁵ has a lot of debt, but I think you need to be a little careful, because it's—a lot of that is just complexity²⁶. You have multiple layers, and so the money gets lent several times. But we actually don't have a problem with government debt, not yet, but, you know, people are worried about the rise. And, of course, you can throw around big numbers.

　　But the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is a $16 trillion dollar-a-year economy, and the numbers are not as overwhelming as they sound if you just give the raw number.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:But there's got to be a point at which we simply are taking on too much debt, no?

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:It's a long ways off.

　　To say that debt is a problem is not to say that renouncing²⁷ all debt is the way you solve it. And government debt, yes, I mean, I think that's—I will turn deficit²⁸ and debt hawk²⁹ once we're out of this depression, but not now.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:I asked David Stockman, so what happens next? And he says, not Armageddon quite, but more than even cruising for a bruising³⁰ right, I mean, that the stock market cannot sustain itself, that interest rates cannot stay this low.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:The argument is supposed to be that the Fed is printing all this money to keep interest rates low. But then isn't the price of printing too much money supposed to be inflation? And the Fed is actually worried right now that inflation is running too low. So where's the inflation? Where is the limit? What's unsustainable here?

　　PAUL SOLMAN:So what do you think happens next?

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:I think, eventually, the economy spontaneously recovers, unless we screw it up with more and more government austerity, and unless we have a really major crisis.

　　It's a dangerous world always, but my sort of central forecast is of a slow, grudging³¹, much-too-late recovery, but eventually a recovery.

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Now, Krugman does agree with Stockman about crony capitalism, but not much else.

　　So, at the end of the interview, I asked Krugman why he thinks Stockman's overall indictment³² has made such a splash.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:Everybody wants economics to be a morality play. Everybody wants it to be a tale of sin and excess, and then the punishment for sin.

　　And this notion that we had a bubble, we had runaway³³ stuff, we had bankers run wild, therefore, the economy must suffer a sustained slump³⁴, and anything you do to mitigate³⁵ that is somehow enabling the sin and we will pay for it, that's ...

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Even though there were sins?

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:Even though there were sins. But economics is not a morality play. There is nothing about the fact that bankers made bad loans in 2005 that says that ordinary workers should be out of work in the year 2013.

　　People love to write about the—or talk about the lurid³⁶ details of everything that went crazy in the bubble years, and they don't really much like to talk about the kind of prosaic³⁷, OK, but how do we get people back to work right now?

　　So, I think that's—you know, the sermon aspect—people love to treat economics as a sermon, when it's actually—it's actually just a job. You know, here's this economy. How do we fix it?

　　PAUL SOLMAN:Paul Krugman, thank you very much.

　　PAUL KRUGMAN:Well, thank you for having me on.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:And the debate continues online. You can find much more from both Paul Krugman and David Stockman on Paul's Making Sen$e page.

1 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

2 ongoing   

adj.进行中的，前进的

参考例句：

• The problem is ongoing.这个问题尚未解决。
• The issues raised in the report relate directly to Age Concern's ongoing work in this area.报告中提出的问题与“关心老人”组织在这方面正在做的工作有直接的关系。

3 equity   

n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票

参考例句：

• They shared the work of the house with equity.他们公平地分担家务。
• To capture his equity,Murphy must either sell or refinance.要获得资产净值，墨菲必须出售或者重新融资。

4 provocative   

adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的

参考例句：

• She wore a very provocative dress.她穿了一件非常性感的裙子。
• His provocative words only fueled the argument further.他的挑衅性讲话只能使争论进一步激化。

5 busted   

adj. 破产了的，失败了的，被降级的，被逮捕的，被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• You are so busted! 你被当场逮住了！
• It was money troubles that busted up their marriage. 是金钱纠纷使他们的婚姻破裂了。

6 corrupted   

（使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏

参考例句：

• The body corrupted quite quickly. 尸体很快腐烂了。
• The text was corrupted by careless copyists. 原文因抄写员粗心而有讹误。

7 capitalism   

n.资本主义

参考例句：

• The essence of his argument is that capitalism cannot succeed.他的论点的核心是资本主义不能成功。
• Capitalism began to develop in Russia in the 19th century.十九世纪资本主义在俄国开始发展。

8 meddling   

v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He denounced all "meddling" attempts to promote a negotiation. 他斥责了一切“干预”促成谈判的企图。 来自辞典例句
• They liked this field because it was never visited by meddling strangers. 她们喜欢这块田野，因为好事的陌生人从来不到那里去。 来自辞典例句

9 bail   

v.舀（水），保释；n.保证金，保释，保释人

参考例句：

• One of the prisoner's friends offered to bail him out.犯人的一个朋友答应保释他出来。
• She has been granted conditional bail.她被准予有条件保释。

10 prodigiously   

adv.异常地，惊人地，巨大地

参考例句：

• Such remarks, though, hardly begin to explain that prodigiously gifted author Henry James. 然而这样的说法，一点也不能解释这个得天独厚的作家亨利·詹姆斯的情况。 来自辞典例句
• The prices of farms rose prodigiously. 农场的价格飞快上涨。 来自互联网

11 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

12 columnist   

n.专栏作家

参考例句：

• The host was interviewing a local columnist.节目主持人正在同一位当地的专栏作家交谈。
• She's a columnist for USA Today.她是《今日美国报》的专栏作家。

13 foundering   

v.创始人( founder的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The lifeboat soon got abreast of the foundering ship. 救生艇很快就赶到了那艘正在下沉的船旁。 来自互联网
• With global climate-change negotiations foundering, the prospects of raising cash for REDD that way look poor. 由于就全球气候变化的谈判破裂，通过这种方式来为REDD集资前景堪忧。 来自互联网

14 contagion   

n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延

参考例句：

• A contagion of fear swept through the crowd.一种恐惧感在人群中迅速蔓延开。
• The product contagion effect has numerous implications for marketing managers and retailers.产品传染效应对市场营销管理者和零售商都有很多的启示。

15 banking   

n.银行业，银行学，金融业

参考例句：

• John is launching his son on a career in banking.约翰打算让儿子在银行界谋一个新职位。
• He possesses an extensive knowledge of banking.他具有广博的银行业务知识。

16 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

17 auto   

n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车

参考例句：

• Don't park your auto here.别把你的汽车停在这儿。
• The auto industry has brought many people to Detroit.汽车工业把许多人吸引到了底特律。

18 inflating   

v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的现在分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨

参考例句：

• I felt myself inflating slowly with rage, like a tyre. 我感到自己体内的怒气正慢慢膨胀，像一只轮胎那样。 来自互联网
• Many are already overheating, with prices rising and asset bubbles inflating. 随着物价日益上涨、资产泡沫膨胀，很多新兴国家经济已经过热。 来自互联网

19 speculative   

adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的

参考例句：

• Much of our information is speculative.我们的许多信息是带推测性的。
• The report is highly speculative and should be ignored.那个报道推测的成分很大，不应理会。

20 frenzy   

n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动

参考例句：

• He was able to work the young students up into a frenzy.他能激起青年学生的狂热。
• They were singing in a frenzy of joy.他们欣喜若狂地高声歌唱。

21 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

22 addicted   

adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的

参考例句：

• He was addicted to heroin at the age of 17.他17岁的时候对海洛因上了瘾。
• She's become addicted to love stories.她迷上了爱情小说。

23 leveraged   

促使…改变( leverage的过去式和过去分词 )； [美国英语]杠杆式投机，（使）举债经营，（使）利用贷款进行投机

参考例句：

• Chrysler has traditionally been a highly leveraged company. 克莱斯勒一向是一家周转十分灵活的公司。
• Leveraged recaps have become popular for a number of reasons. 杠杆资本重组的大行其道有好几个原因。

24 addiction   

n.上瘾入迷，嗜好

参考例句：

• He stole money from his parents to feed his addiction.他从父母那儿偷钱以满足自己的嗜好。
• Areas of drug dealing are hellholes of addiction,poverty and murder.贩卖毒品的地区往往是吸毒上瘾、贫困和发生谋杀的地方。

25 sector   

n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形

参考例句：

• The export sector will aid the economic recovery. 出口产业将促进经济复苏。
• The enemy have attacked the British sector.敌人已进攻英国防区。

26 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

27 renouncing   

v.声明放弃( renounce的现在分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃

参考例句：

• He enraged the government by renouncing the agreement. 他否认那项协议，从而激怒了政府。 来自辞典例句
• What do you get for renouncing Taiwan and embracing Beijing instead? 抛弃台湾，并转而拥抱北京之后，你会得到什么？ 来自互联网

28 deficit   

n.亏空，亏损；赤字，逆差

参考例句：

• The directors have reported a deficit of 2.5 million dollars.董事们报告赤字为250万美元。
• We have a great deficit this year.我们今年有很大亏损。

29 hawk   

n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员

参考例句：

• The hawk swooped down on the rabbit and killed it.鹰猛地朝兔子扑下来,并把它杀死。
• The hawk snatched the chicken and flew away.老鹰叼了小鸡就飞走了。

30 bruising   

adj.殊死的；十分激烈的v.擦伤(bruise的现在分词形式)

参考例句：

• He suffered cracked ribs and bruising. 他断了肋骨还有挫伤。
• He slipped and fell, badly bruising an elbow. 他滑倒了，一只胳膊肘严重擦伤。 来自辞典例句

31 grudging   

adj.勉强的，吝啬的

参考例句：

• He felt a grudging respect for her talents as an organizer.他勉强地对她的组织才能表示尊重。
• After a pause he added"sir."in a dilatory,grudging way.停了一会他才慢吞吞地、勉勉强强地加了一声“先生”。

32 indictment   

n.起诉；诉状

参考例句：

• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。
• They issued an indictment against them.他们起诉了他们。

33 runaway   

n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的

参考例句：

• The police have not found the runaway to date.警察迄今没抓到逃犯。
• He was praised for bringing up the runaway horse.他勒住了脱缰之马受到了表扬。

34 slump   

n.暴跌，意气消沉，（土地）下沉；vi.猛然掉落，坍塌，大幅度下跌

参考例句：

• She is in a slump in her career.她处在事业的低谷。
• Economists are forecasting a slump.经济学家们预言将发生经济衰退。

35 mitigate   

vt.（使）减轻，（使）缓和

参考例句：

• The government is trying to mitigate the effects of inflation.政府正试图缓和通货膨胀的影响。
• Governments should endeavour to mitigate distress.政府应努力缓解贫困问题。

36 lurid   

adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的

参考例句：

• The paper gave all the lurid details of the murder.这份报纸对这起凶杀案耸人听闻的细节描写得淋漓尽致。
• The lurid sunset puts a red light on their faces.血红一般的夕阳映红了他们的脸。

37 prosaic   

adj.单调的，无趣的

参考例句：

• The truth is more prosaic.真相更加乏味。
• It was a prosaic description of the scene.这是对场景没有想象力的一个描述。