2021年经济学人 通胀“恶魔降临”,美国企业发出警报(1)（在线收听）

Business

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Inflation in America Inc

美国企业的通胀

Businesses contend with a long-forgotten problem

企业面临着一个被遗忘已久的问题

Property insurers price policies today but face payouts a year from now. That makes their profits hostage to inflation. As swathes of America’s economy have begun rapidly reopening for business in recent weeks, thanks to falling rates of covid19 infections and rising ones of vaccination, William Berkley has been paying close attention to prices of building materials and anything found inside homes, from lamps to laptops. The replacement value of a home in America may have leapt by 20%, year on year, Mr Berkley thinks. Since the founder of WR Berkley launched his insurance firm over half a century ago, he has never witnessed a time like the past year— not even in the inflationary 1970s.

财产保险公司今天为保单定价，但一年后将面临赔付。这使得他们的利润受制于通货膨胀。得益于新冠感染率的下降和疫苗接种率的上升，美国经济的大部分领域近几周来已经开始迅速恢复营业，威廉·伯克利一直在密切关注建筑材料以及灯具和笔记本电脑等所有家庭用品的价格。伯克利认为，美国房屋的重置价值可能同比增长了20%。自WR Berkley的创始人在半个多世纪前创立了保险公司以来，他从未经历过像去年那样的时刻，即使是在通货膨胀的20世纪70年代也没有过。

Economists debate whether the rapid climb in consumer prices, which rose at an annual rate of 4.2% in April, the fastest since September 2008, will prove as enduring as 50 years ago. Input prices for producers shot up by 6.2%.

美国消费价格4月份的年增长率为4.2%，这是自2008年9月以来攀升最快的一次，但经济学家们为消费价格的快速攀升是否会像50年前一样持久而争论不休。生产商的投入品价格飙升了6.2%。

The Federal Reserve insists that higher inflation will be “transitory”. Partly for that reason, chief executives of many big American companies are wary of discussing inflation in public. When Darius Adamczyk, who heads Honeywell, a huge industrial conglomerate, mentioned during an earnings call in May that inflation “is here and it is probably a lot more pronounced that people think”, his comment went viral among financial types on the internet.

美联储坚持认为，更高的通胀将是“暂时的”。部分原因是，许多美国大公司的首席执行官对在公开讨论通货膨胀持谨慎态度。大型工业集团霍尼韦尔Honeywell的掌门人达吕斯·阿达姆奇克在五月的一次财报电话会议上提到，通货膨胀“已经到来，而且可能比人们想到的要更加明显”，他的此番评论在金融业网民中迅速传开。