2020年商務英語中級翻譯模擬試題（3）

Capital bonanzas

財源滾滾

Sep 25th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Does Wall Street’s meltdown show financial globalisation itself is part of the problem?

這次華爾街的災難意味著金融全球化本身就是問題的一部分嗎?

“THANK God,” said one Latin American finance minister earlier this year. “At least this time it isn’t our fault.”

“謝天謝地，”一位拉丁美洲的財政部長在今年早些時候說，”至少這次不是我們的錯。”考生如果怕自己錯過考試報名時間和考試時間的話，可以 免費預約短信提醒，屆時會以短信的方式提醒大家報名和考試時間。

The meltdown of America’s financial system may look very different from the emerging-market crises that overwhelmed Thailand in 1997 or Russia in 1998. This time there has been no currency collapse, no government default. Then, there were no collateralised-debt obligations or credit-default swaps.

美國金融體系的災難跟在1997，98年橫掃泰國和俄羅斯的新興市場危機有所不同。這次沒有貨幣崩潰，沒有政府失職。而上次卻沒有擔保抵押債務，或者信用違約互換。

Yet the minister was justified in seeing parallels between America’s crisis and the emerging-market episodes. In all of them vast current-account deficits were financed by huge capital inflows. The afflicted countries saw housing speculation, asset bubbles and cheap loans followed by a credit crunch and the seizing up of the financial system. And Wall Street’s meltdown raises the same questions as the crises of a decade ago: what will the direct effects on emerging markets be? If the world’s richest economies are vulnerable to global financial turmoil, should developing countries not seek to insulate themselves from it?

然而上面那位財政部長將美國的金融危機和新興市場的金融危機看作一致也是恰如其分的。所有這些國家都以大量的資本流入為經常賬戶赤字融資。于是這些國家便首先出現(xiàn)房地產投機，資產泡沫和低廉的貸款，隨之而來的是信貸緊縮和金融體系的停滯。這讓上述國家深受折磨、痛苦不堪。而華爾街的災難提出了與十年前金融危機相同的問題：這場災難將會給新興市場帶來什么直接影響?如果世界最富裕的經濟體還在全球金融動蕩面前還脆弱不堪，為何新興市場不尋求與之隔絕呢?

Beware markets bearing gifts

當心市場帶來的木馬

Most emerging markets see their ability to attract foreign money as proof of good management. From this point of view, it should be a blessing that private capital flows to developing countries rose, according to the World Bank, to $1 trillion in 2007, the highest ever. Yet if the study by Carmen and Vincent Reinhart is anything to go by, this should be little cause for celebration.

絕大多數(shù)新興市場將他們吸引外資的能力看作其良好管理的證明?；谶@樣的觀點，根據(jù)世界銀行數(shù)據(jù)，2007年流入發(fā)展中國家的資金達到有史以來最高的1萬億美元，這應該看作一件非常幸運的事了。然而如果依據(jù)Carmen和Vincent Reinhart的研究結論的話，這沒什么值得慶賀的。

Taking the experience of 181 countries since 1980, the authors reckon that middle- and low-income countries had a roughly 20% chance of suffering a banking crisis and a 30% chance of a currency crisis, external-debt default or inflation spike (to more than 20% a year) if they experienced what the authors call a “capital-flow bonanza” in the three years beforehand. (They define such a bonanza as an unusual shift of the current account into the red, using that as a proxy for capital inflows since the capital and current accounts mirror each other.) These seem unenviable odds.

So why would countries seek out foreign money at all, if its impact is so malign? The answer is that it is not so much the amount of investment that is the trouble; it is its volatility, and especially its tendency to dry up. That makes today’s climate worrying. Mansoor Dailami, the World Bank’s manager of international finance, says private inflows to emerging markets may fall from $1 trillion to only $800 billion-850 billion this year. That may be particularly troublesome because of another difference between this crisis and the Asian one: in 1997-98, more debt was sovereign. Now, much of it is corporate, taken out by Indian, Chinese and other emerging-market companies. That implies a global credit tightening could have as big an impact on emerging markets as slowing import demand in the rich world.

那么即使這么有害，為何這些國家還想積極獲取外資呢?因為并不是大量投資是麻煩，而是其波動性，特別是其即將耗盡的趨勢。這造成了今天憂慮的氣氛。世界銀行國際金融經理Mansoor Dailami說，私人資本涌入新興市場會從1萬億美元下降到今年的8千億到8千5百億美元。這是非常糟糕的。因為這場金融危機與上次亞洲金融危機另一個不同之處在于，在1997到98年，更多的債務是政府所有的。而現(xiàn)在，這些大部分是公司所有的，會被印度，中國和其它新興市場的公司獲得。這意味著，全球信貸緊縮對新興市場的影響與發(fā)達國家和地區(qū)進口需求放緩對新興市場的影響一樣大。

Critics of financial globalisation argue that these problems are so great that emerging markets ought to be insulating themselves through capital controls. Many have been doing so. Yet even setting aside doubts about how far this is desirable (it is hard to believe growth in India or Brazil would have reached today’s levels without foreign capital), the studies raise questions about whether capital controls are really the right response.

金融全球化的批評者認為，這些問題太大，因此新興市場國家必須采取資本監(jiān)管從而使其免遭其害。許多新興市場國家也就是這么做的。然而即使拋開對資本監(jiān)管到何種程度合適的質疑(印度和巴西如果沒有外資投入的話，其增長率很難能夠達到今天的水平)，這兩篇論文也提出了這個問題：資本監(jiān)管是否是個正確的應對方法?

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