沪江

五分钟之内看懂“美国国债危机“(双语视频)

沪江英语 2011-10-26 10:00
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Meet Uncle Sam. He has a lot of bills to pay, almost $4 trillion worth every year. Uncle Sam’s income is a little over $2 trillion per year. To make up the difference, the deficit, he does what most Americans do, he borrows money. When Uncle Sam takes out a loan, he calls it a bond. Bonds can be held by banks, investors or even foreign governments. Uncle Sam has to promise to pay interest on these bonds just you do on any loan you take out. Ever think about paying your mortgage with your credit card? That’s exactly what Uncle Sam does. He takes out new loans, new bonds, so that he can make payments on the old ones. All those loans, and especially all that interest, add up. Right now, Uncle Sam owes about $14 trillion. To put that in perspective,$14 trillion is about the same as the national GDP, the total value of all the goods and service produced by the American economy in an entire year.
说说山姆大叔,他有一堆债要还,每年大概有4万亿美元,而山姆大叔每年的收入大概刚刚2万亿美元多一点,为了弥补差额,也就是赤字,他跟其他美国人一样,借钱。山姆大叔获得的贷款被称为债券,这些债券可以卖给银行、投资者、甚至其他国家政府。山姆大叔承诺会给债券付利息,跟你贷款的时候一样。想过用信用卡套现来还按揭吗?山姆大叔就这么干的,他借来新的贷款,才能还上旧的债务。所有的债务和利息加到一起,山姆大叔已经欠下了14万亿美元债务,换个说法,14万亿相当于美国一年的GDP.就是整个美国经济一年所生产的商品和服务的总价。

It’s such a huge amount of money that Uncle Sam is starting to run out of people to borrow from. And he is having trouble just paying the interest on his loans. The obvious solution would be to either cut spending or increase taxes. But if cuts spending, the people that he’s spending money on would complain that they don’t have money to spend and that he was hurting the economy. If he tried to raise taxes enough to close this gap, not only would people definitely have less money to spend, he‘d probably have riots on his hands. So Uncle Sam chooses the easy way to make money, just make it. He calls up the Federal Reserve, which is our central bank and like magic, dollars are created and deposited in banks all around America. The problem is if there are more of something there is, the less it’s worth. Same goes for the US dollar. The more dollars there are, the less each one will buy. That’s why commodities like gasoline, food and gold become more expensive when Uncle Sam does his money-making magic. The commodities aren’t really worth more, your money is just worth less. That’s called inflation.
这么多钱,山姆大叔快要找不到债主了,连付利息都成困难了。要解决这个问题只能节省开支或者增税。但如果减少开支,国民用于消费的钱就会减少,那样会伤害到经济。但如果要大幅增税的话,不仅国民用于消费的钱少了,甚至可能会发生骚乱。所以山姆大叔选择用最简单的方法来赚钱,就是印钞票。他给美联储,美国的央行打个电话,银行就奇迹般的堆满了新造的美元。问题是一种东西的数量越多,就越不值钱。美元也一样,市面上的美元越多,购买力就越低,所以山姆大叔在印钞票的时候市面上的汽油、食品和黄金都变贵了。不是商品更贵了而是钱不值钱了。这就是通货膨胀。

Remember the foreign government that lent money to Uncle Sam? When they lent money to the American government, something interesting happened. It made the US look richer, and their countries looked poorer. When a country looks poorer compared to America, one dollar of our money buys a lot of their money so they can pay their workers only a few pennies a day. With such low labor costs, they can sell their products in America for lower prices than any American manufacturer can. The easiest way for American companies to compete is to move their factories overseas and pay their workers a few pennies a day too. This contributes to a recession. American lose their jobs, stop paying taxes, and start collecting government benefits like Medicaid and unemployment. This means the Uncle Sam has even less income and even more expenses. At the same time, the people who still have jobs are desperate to keep them. So they tend to do more work but not to get paid any more. When your dollars are worth less, and you’re not earning more of them. That’s called stagflation.
还记得借钱给山姆大叔的外国政府吗?当他们借钱给美国政府时,有趣的事情发生了。这会让美国看上去更有钱而放债的国家更贫穷。债主国看上去比美国更穷,拿美元就可以买到更多的外币。所以在债主国,每天付给工人几便士工资就行了。劳动力成本这么低,所以卖给美国人的产品价格就更低了。竞争压力使得美国公司把工厂搬到了这些国家,也给工人每天只发几便士的工资,这就导致了经济衰退。美国人丢了工作,不交税了,还需要领取政府发的事业和医疗救助。这意味着山姆大叔的收入减少,而开销更大了。而没失业的人需要拼命保住工作,所以他们不涨工资也要干更多活。美元贬值的时候,到手的钱事实上更少了。这就是滞涨。

And this is why Uncle Sam is in a Catch 22. He can’t raise taxes or cut spending without making the recession worse. And he can’t have the Federal Reserve create more money without making inflation worse. For now, he can keep borrowing more money but since he can’t even pay the interest on the loans he already has , it just makes his inevitable bankruptcy even worse. Whether it’s in two months or two years, the day will come when Uncle Sam can no longer pay his bills. When that happens, the banks, and foreign governments who are counting on that money won’t be able to pay their bills. You see, just like Uncle Sam, governments, banks, and corporations don’t actually have much money. Mostly, all they have is debt to each other. If one link in a debt chain stops paying, defaults, the whole thing falls apart. If investors can’t pay their bills, corporations won’t be able to pay their employees. If banks can’t pay their bills, you won’t be able to take out a loan, use a credit card or even withdraw your savings. If foreign governments can’t pay their bills, their own banks and corporations will have the same problem. That’s called a global economic collapse. It’s never happened before, so nobody really knows how bad it will be, how long it will last, or even how well eventually get out of it.
所以山姆大叔现在进退两难,他无法在加税和减赤的同时避免衰退加深,他也不能多发货币又不加剧通胀。现在,他还能借的到钱,但他现在已经连利息都还不清了。这只会使必然到来的破产更加糟糕。不管是两个月还是两年,山姆大叔总有付不起钱的那天,那时候还指望着山姆大叔还钱的银行,投资者,外国政府也就没有钱了。是吧,和山姆大叔一样,政府、银行和公司事实上都没什么钱,大多数他们手上是一堆三角债,只要债务链条的一方违约,全盘都会崩溃。投资者拿不出钱,公司就没钱发工资。银行拿不出钱,你就贷不了款,用不了信用卡,甚至连存款都拿不出来,外国政府拿不出钱的话,他们自己国家的银行和公司也会面临同样的问题,这就是全球经济崩溃。还没有发生过,也没人知道会有多可怕,会持续多久,怎么走出也不知道。

The house of cards has already been built,there’s no painless way to dismantle it now. All we can do is to educate each other what is actually going on and to prepare what may be very extraordinary circumstances.
房子已经用纸牌搭好了。现在拆除也没那么简单。我们只能把这件事告诉身边的人.并且做最坏的打算。

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