【英语生活】金融危机改变了什么？

So what's different? As the financial crash fades in the memory, the question most frequently asked, and infrequently answered, is how permanent will be its imprint. To my mind, the answer is obvious. Everything has changed; and, of course, nothing has changed.

Start with the first of these two propositions. I was struck by an observation made by Gao Xiqing, the president of the China Investment Corporation. Surveying the nationalisation of large chunks of the US financial sector, Washington's takeover of the automobile industry, and the soaring federal budget deficit, Mr Gao said he detected “socialism with American characteristics”. Plenty of Barack Obama's Republican opponents would concur.

The US has not been alone in its interventionism. The British government, once as ardent a disciple as any of let-it-rip financial capitalism, now controls two of the country's four largest banks. Tearing up decades of monetarist orthodoxy, it has been printing money to keep the financial system afloat. A hands-off approach to business has been abandoned in favour of what Lord Mandelson, the ever-energetic business secretary, calls a new “industrial activism”.

The market economy, it is true, has defied excitable predictions that the future would belong to the authoritarian capitalism of China and Russia. The Chinese have certainly navigated a skilful route through the crisis, but that country's marriage of communism to the profit motive is sui generis. As for Russia, without the revenue from its energy resources, Vladimir Putin's brand of crony capitalism would have collapsed long ago.

That said, the Washington Consensus, the organising idea behind the global advance of laisser faire economics, has been unceremoniously buried. The crash was the emerging world's revenge. Forced to take the International Monetary Fund's bitter medicine in the late 1990s, Asian governments vowed never again. As irony would have it, the foreign currency reserves they then accumulated inflated the financial bubble that was to burst with such devastating effect last year. The world's rising economies are not about to take any more lectures from the west on the virtues of liberal markets.

The crisis has restored the legitimacy of the state: bankers have been dethroned, Alan Greenspan defrocked and economists exposed. Regulation is no longer a term of abuse. Adam Smith has made way for John Maynard Keynes as fiscal policy has been rehabilitated as a tool of economic management. The banks have been told to rebuild their capital. Sub-prime mortgages and collateralised debt obligations belong to the past.

Wait a minute, though. Most of this is as much about tone and degree as about substance. Where is the decisive rupture with the past? The second of my two propositions has it right: nothing has changed. And why should it have? Remember those hysterical forecasts about a world hurtling towards economic Armageddon. Well, they turned out to be just that – hysterical.

The global economy has taken a serious knock, at huge human cost. But even the ever-cautious IMF thinks it is now on the mend. Capitalism, to adapt one of Winston Churchill's famous aphorisms, has proved again to be the worst possible system of economic management, except for all the alternatives.

Politics carries the same message. A backlash against free markets would have seen the resurgence of the left. Well, I suppose you could say the crisis gave Mr Obama a helping hand into the White House. But look elsewhere and we are scarcely witnessing a resumption of socialism's long march.

The centre-right Angela Merkel has just won the German election. The Conservative David Cameron seems set to emulate her in Britain. France's Nicolas Sarkozy looks impregnable against a divided socialist opposition; even Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, sad to say, looks secure against the left.

As for the bankers, one or two have been packed off with platinum-plated pensions. Most of them are again counting the numerous noughts on their bonuses. To listen, as I have done recently, to executives of institutions such as Goldman Sachs is to realise that history is being rewritten even before the ink is dry on the first draft.

If the crash was the fault of anyone, the revisionist narrative runs, it was certainly not the masters of the universe at places such as Goldman. You and I may think it had something to do with dud mortgages being repackaged as inexplicably exotic financial instruments. Wrong. The fault lay with the inadequacy of the regulators. As for mega bonuses, well, what's the problem?

What is missing is anything resembling a fundamental challenge to the status quo. The market system, of course, is being made a little bit safer; and, for a time at least, governments and regulators will intervene more directly to restrain some of capitalism's animal spirits. The bankers will find that the price of stuffing their pockets is to be about as popular as politicians. I doubt they much care. You would be sorely stretched to describe any of this as a new settlement.

One or two people have offered intelligent suggestions as to how we might re-engineer market capitalism. Lord Turner, the chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, is a rare policymaker with the courage to question the utility of the explosion in financial transactions that do nothing but generate hefty rewards for bankers. The American economist Joseph Stiglitz has urged policymakers not to be slaves to year-on-year rises in gross domestic product. There are other measures of human welfare.

I get the impression that few people are listening. The urge is to get back to business as usual. Among bankers I meet there is a lot more hubris than humility. In this respect, Goldman is merely first among equals. Among politicians, there is a shrug-of-the-shoulders resignation; where are the votes in a strategy that says there is more to life than GDP?

Historians, it is fair to say, will probably look back on the past year or so as an epochal moment. But what will interest them is not a change in the nature of capitalism but the shift in the distribution of global economic power. The market no longer belongs to the west.

世界现在有何不同吗？随着金融危机逐渐被人们淡忘，一个问得最多、却没有多少人回答的问题是，这场危机留下的印记到底有多深刻。在我看来，答案显而易见。一切都已改变；当然，一切也都未改变。

我先从头一点谈起。中国投资公司(CIC)总经理高西庆曾发表过一个令我惊叹的感受。针对美国对本国大量金融企业实施国有化、政府接管汽车业、以及联邦预算赤字激增，高西庆表示，他从中看到了“美国特色的社会主义”。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)的许多共和党反对者会同意这种说法。

美国并非唯一采取干预政策的国家。曾是自由放任金融资本主义忠诚信徒的英国政府，如今也控股本国四大银行中的两家。它抛弃了实施数十年的正统货币主义政策，转而通过印钞来维持金融体系的运转。它还放弃了对企业的不干预做法，转而付诸不甘寂寞的商务大臣曼德尔森勋爵(Lord Mandelson)所称的新“工业行动主义”。

没错，市场经济挫败了有关未来将属于中国和俄罗斯等威权式资本主义的煽动性预言。中国无疑巧妙的度过了危机，但该国共产主义意识形态与利润动机的联姻属于特例。至于俄罗斯，如果没有能源资源带来的收入，弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)招牌式的裙带资本主义早就会破产。

尽管如此，推动自由放任经济在全球取得进展的理念体系——“华盛顿共识”(Washington Consensus)——仍被悄悄埋葬了。本次危机堪称新兴市场国家的报复。亚洲国家政府被迫在上世纪90年代末吞下国际货币基金组织(IMF)开出的苦药，它们发誓决不让这一幕重演。具有讽刺意味的是，正是它们随后累积的外汇储备吹起了金融泡沫，去年泡沫破灭，造成巨大的摧毁性破坏。全球这些正在崛起的经济体，不会再听西方说教自由市场的优点。

这场危机恢复了政府角色的正当性：银行家遭到唾弃，艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)被赶下神坛，经济学家处境难堪。监管不再是个贬义词。随着财政政策重新用作经济管理工具，亚当•斯密(Adam Smith)让位于约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)。银行奉命重建自身资本。次级抵押贷款和债务抵押债券(CDO)也成为过去。

但是，请等一下。上述情况既涉及问题的本质，但也可说是语气和程度上的问题。与过去决然不同之处又在哪里呢？这就到了我要谈的第二点：一切都未改变。而且，为何一切就应该改变呢？记得那些歇斯底里的、号称世界正疾驶向经济末日的预言吗？嗯，结果证明，那就是些歇斯底里的言论。

全球经济遭受了严重的打击，人们为此付出了巨大代价。但就连一贯持谨慎态度的国际货币基金组织也认为，现在形势正在好转。套用温斯顿•丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)的一句名言，事实再次证明，资本主义是可能存在的最糟糕的经济管理制度——除了所有其它可选制度以外。

政治方面的情况也是如此。自由市场所遭遇的反弹，本应令左翼势力重新崛起。好吧，我想你可能会说，这场危机对奥巴马入主白宫助了一臂之力。但看看其它地方吧，我们基本上没看到哪里又在启动社会主义长征。

中右翼的安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)刚刚赢得德国大选。英国保守党的戴维•卡梅伦(David Cameron)似乎将在英国取得同样的胜利。在法国，在信奉社会主义的反对党内部分歧的情况下，尼古拉•萨科齐(Nicolas Sarkozy)的地位看似不可动摇；说来遗憾，就连意大利的西尔维奥•贝卢斯科尼(Silvio Berlusconi)也很难被左翼挫败。

说到银行家，确有一、两位揣着巨额退休金卷铺盖走人。但多数银行家如今再次数起了自己奖金额的位数。听听高盛(Goldman Sachs)等机构的高管的言论吧（就像我最近做的那样），你会意识到，甚至在初稿墨迹未干之时，重写历史的工作就开始了。

重写后的版本叙述到，如果说这场危机是由某些人的过失所致，那么这些人决非高盛等机构的“宇宙主宰者”。你我或许会认为，毫无价值的抵押贷款，被重新打包为难以理解的新奇金融工具，应该难以逃脱牵连。错！监管机构的欠缺才是过失所在。至于巨额奖金，嗯，这算什么问题？

现在缺少的是对现状构成根本性挑战的东西。诚然，市场体系的安全性正得到些许增强；此外，至少在一段时间内，政府和监管机构将进行更直接的干预，以部分约束资本主义的动物精神。但银行家将发现，他们为揣满自己口袋所付出的代价，无非是导致自己的人气与政界人士一样低。我认为他们不会太在意社会的认可与否。你很难把这种局面称为新的解决办法。

我们该如何重新设计市场资本主义？有一、两位人士对此给出了颇有见地的建议。英国金融服务管理局(FSA)主席特纳勋爵(Lord Turner)，是一位罕见的、有勇气质疑金融交易激增之效用的政策制定者。这种激增除了为银行家带来丰厚报酬，再无其它效用。美国经济学家约瑟夫•斯蒂格利茨(Joseph Stiglitz)则力劝政策制定者，不要变成国内生产总值(GDP)年增长的奴隶。其它指标也可衡量人类福利。

我感到，聆听上述建议的人少之又少。人们迫不及待的希望一切恢复如常。在我所遇到的银行家中，自大者比谦逊者多得多。在这点上，高盛只不过表现得更突出些。政界人士存在的情绪是无可奈何；一项宣称人生不止GDP的战略，在哪里能够拉到选票？

诚然，历史学家在回顾过去一年左右的岁月时，很可能会认为它具有划时代的意义。但是，他们感兴趣的，不是资本主义的本质发生了改变，而是全球经济实力在地域分布上的变化。市场已不再属于西方。

译者/汪洋