2018年经济学人 关于投资:利用现有资产孵化其他资产(2)（在线收听）

In Japan, too, borrowers are scarce.

在日本，借钱的人也是几乎没有。

Private non-financial companies, which ought to play the role, have instead been lending to the rest of the economy, acquiring more financial claims each quarter than they incur.

理应充当这一角色的私人非金融公司，反而一直在把钱借给经济体中的其他人，每个季度都收获比它们承担的还要多的债权。

At the end of September 2017 they held ￥259trn ($2.4trn) in currency and deposits.

在2017年9月底，他们持有259万亿日元(合2.4万亿美元)的现金和存款。

Gesell worried that hoarding money in this way perverted the natural economic order.

格塞尔担心，以这种方式囤钱扭曲了自然的经济秩序。

It let savers preserve their purchasing power without any of the care required to prevent resources eroding or any of the ingenuity and entrepreneurialism required to make them grow.

它允许储户在没有防止资源流失所需要的照料或是使其增加所需要的心灵手巧和实干精神的情况下，保存他们的购买力。

“Our goods rot, decay, break, rust," he wrote, and workers lose a portion of their principal asset- -the hours of labour they could sell- "with every beat of the pendulum' .

“我们的商品腐烂、变质、分解、生锈，”他写道。同时，“随着钟摆的每一次摆动”工人也在失去他们的主要资产——他们可以出售的劳动时间——中的一部分。

Only if money depreciated at a similar pace would people be as anxious to spend it as suppliers were to sell their perishable commodities.

只有当钱以同样的速度贬值时，人们才会急于把它花掉，供应商也才会急于把他们容易腐烂变质的商品买出去。

To keep the economy moving, he wanted a money that "rots like potatoes" and "rusts like iron".

为了让经济体保持前行，他想要一种“像士豆那样腐烂”，‘像铁那样生锈” 的钱。

The BoJ shuns such language (and, in the past, has at times seemed determined to to keep the yen as hard as a ship's biscuit).

日本银行有意地回避这种语言 (而且，以前也多次似乎决心要保持日元如船员干粮那样坚挺。)

But in imposing a negative interest rate in 2016 and setting an inflation target three years before, it is in effect pursuing Gesell's dream of a currency that rots and rusts, albeit by only 2% a year.

但是，在2016年实施负利率政策以及在三年前设定通胀目标这方面，它实际上是在追求格塞尔的梦想——一种会腐烂和生锈的钱，虽然每年仅腐烂和生锈2%。