经济学人(2013考研超价值).doc

赏析版2012年3月经济学人文章（英汉双语对照）汇集
Contents
[2012.03.31]A muffled big bang 哑了火的大爆炸 1
[2012.03.31]Vietnam: Hero to zero 越南从英雄到狗熊 4
[2012.03.31]Falklands war: Short, victorious war 福克兰战爭30周年祭 6
[2012.03.30]Hong Kong tycoons under arrest 被拘捕的香港富商 10
[2012.03.24]South China Sea: Full unclosure?南中国海地位未定？ 13
[2012.03.24]Revolution in retreat 古巴革命正在退却 15
[2012.03.24]Adagio, OPERA 悠着点，OPERA 19
[2012.03.17]Afghanistan: The lowered bar still looks high 难以逾越的障碍 21
[2012.03.17]Flavoursome research "味儿足"的研究 25
[2012.03.17]A Singapore cemetery: Brown study 一座新加坡坟场 27
[2012.03.10]Bandwagons and busts 从众和灾难 29
[2012.03.10]The death of trust 信任的消亡 37
[2012.03.10]Natural stock selection 自然选择股票 46
[2012.03.10]Poaching：Black ivory 偷猎: 黑色象牙 47
[2012.03.10]Creation story 创造的故事 49
[2012.03.07]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之六－拉丁语 52
[2012.03.06]Auschwitz complex 奥斯威辛情结 54
[2012.03.05]A reliable source on the ground现场有一个可靠线人 57
[2012.03.05]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之五 58
[2012.03.03]Taking the long view 高瞻远瞩 60
[2012.03.03]How to rig an election 如何在选举中作弊 66
[2012.03.02]Can the scientists keep up? 科学家跟得上吗？ 68

[2012.03.31]A muffled big bang 哑了火的大爆炸
America’s capital markets
美国资本市场

A muffled big bang
哑了火的大爆炸

The JOBS Act and the BATS crash
《JOBS法案》和BATS的重创
Mar 31st 2012 | NEW YORK | from the print edition

THE capital market that is commonly thought to be the most developed in the world is, if you are being kind, in flux or, if you are not, in a mess. A stock-exchange blow-up has raised fresh questions about the reliability of America’s equities markets. More significantly, laws that govern how firms can raise money are on the verge of a profound revision.
说得好听点，人们公认的全球最发达的资本市场如今处于变动期；说得不好听，那就是一团糟。BATS证券交易所遭受重创，这令人再次质疑美国股市是否可靠。更重要的是，监管公司集资的法律即将进行一次全面修订。

First, the exchange snafu. A few years ago the temporary collapse of a trading venue in Lenexa, Kansas would not have been much noticed. Back then the Better Alternative Trading System (BATS) exchange was just a set of computer algorithms in the head of a man named Dave Cummings, who first computerised his own wheat-trading business and then expanded to accommodate equities.
首先，BATS交易所状况混乱。若是数年前堪萨斯州的雷内萨斯有股票交易所一时受挫，那是不会引起什么关注的。那时，更佳替代交易系统（BATS）交易所不过是一个叫戴夫?卡明斯（Dave Cummings）的人想出来的一套计算机算法。一开始，他只是通过电脑来打理自己的小麦生意，后来才将这些算法应用至股市。

Now BATS is a big provider of market liquidity. On March 23rd a coding error at the exchange disrupted trading in firms whose ticker symbols ran from A to BFZZZ. That, unfortunately, was enough to capture both the world’s most valuable listed company—Apple’s stock slumped by 9% before circuit-breaker rules caused trading to be suspended—and, more embarrassingly, the shares of BATS itself on their very first day of trading.
如今，BTAS让市场上的资产有了很强的折现能力。3月23日，BATS交易所出现了一个编码错误，导致股票代码为A至BFZZZ的公司的交易陷入混乱状态。很不幸，这个代码段包括了苹果公司和BATS的股票代码，在熔断机制中止所有交易前，全球市值最高的上市公司苹果公司的股价下跌9%；而更尴尬的是，BATS自身的股价在首个交易日就下跌。

Strikingly, the appeal of BATS as a venue for trading appears undamaged. By March 27th the exchange’s market share had recovered to 11%, two-thirds of that commanded by the far-better-known NASDAQ, and, when measured separately, close to that of the venerable New York Stock Exchange and its Archipelago affiliate. The glitch could have a more lasting effect on BATS’s plans to become a place where firms can list shares. The exchange operator quickly decided to pull its own offering, and its credibility as a venue for initial public offerings (IPOs) is hurt. But memories in this business are short and a more salient issue is the attractiveness of any exchange as a venue for raising capital.
而引人注目的是，作为证券交易所BATS的吸引力似乎丝毫未减。到3月27日，交易所的市场分额已恢复至11%，是远比它知名的纳斯达克的三分之二；这个数值与历史悠久的纽约股票交易所及其Archipelago分所的份额（两者分开计算）很接近。这一个小失误可能会对BATS成为企业上市的交易所的计划产生更持久的影响。该交易所的运营者迅速地作出了撤消BTAS上市的决定，而人们则更加质疑BATS是否能成为企业首次上市的交易所。不过，这个行业是很健忘的，而更为突出的一个问题是：一般的证券交易所在筹资方面的吸引力。

Smaller firms in particular list less than they did. According to Jay Ritter of the University of Florida, an average of 165 companies with less than $50m in inflation-adjusted annual sales went public in America each year between 1980 and 2000. In 2001-2011 the average fell by more than 80% (see chart).
尤其是，如今上市的规模较小的企业比过去少了。佛罗里达州大学的杰?里特（Jay Ritter）表示，1980年至2000年间美国平均每年有165家年度业绩低于五千万美元（已考虑通胀因素）的公司上市。而2001年至2011年此项数据下跌超过80%（见图表）。

That has got the lawmakers moving. On March 27th Congress sent a bill titled the JOBS Act to President Barack Obama for signing. In 22 pages—the equivalent of a blog post for a legislative branch with a propensity to expand any idea to Proustian lengths—the JOBS act creates routes for firms to circumvent or modify rules introduced as far back as the 1930s. The idea is to enable companies to raise money in a number of new ways while reducing compliance costs.
这种状况使立法者有所行动。3月27日，国会将《JOBS法案》递交给巴拉克?奥巴马总统签署。长达22页（对一个喜欢像用《Proust》的篇幅来详述所有概念的立法部门而言，这个法案简直和一篇博文一样精简）的《JOBS法案》为企业提供了途径来规避或修改早在二十世纪三十年代就施行的条例。《JOBS法案》旨在让企业能在减少合规成本的同时通过多种新途径筹资。

Congress seems to have been moved in part by the appealing title—at a time of high unemployment, no one wants to vote against an act with “jobs” in the title, even if it is actually short for “Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups Act”. But there is also a growing realisation that piling on regulations—from the Sarbanes-Oxley act after Enron to the more recent monstrosity that is the Dodd-Frank act—does nothing to revive the economy’s animal spirits.
国会似乎多少被法案那吸引人的名字所打动了——在一个失业率高企的时期，不会有人想给名字中有“就业”字眼的法案投反对票，即便那实际上只是《全力加快新兴企业发展法案》的缩写。但越来越多人意识到不断制定法规——从安然公司丑闻后的《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》到更近些时候的那份怪异的《多德弗兰克法案》——并无法振兴经济。

Predictably, many of the people responsible for those earlier rules, notably Eliot Spitzer, a former New York attorney-general (and disgraced governor), have expressed outrage. Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency responsible for securities regulation, wrote a letter full of objections. Mr Obama is ambivalent, but more likely to sign the bill than not, if only because a dynamic market for new firms would provide a whiff of hope and change.
不出所料，这些旧法案的许多制订者也表达了他们的愤怒之情，尤其是前纽约司法部长（同时也是声名狼藉的州长）艾略特?斯皮策（Eliot Spitzer）。证券交易委员会（负责监管证券交易的机构）主席玛丽?夏皮罗（Mary Schapiro）写了一封通篇是反对意见的信。奥巴马总统也很矛盾，但他很可能会签署这个法案，皆因一个有利于新兴企业的生机勃勃的市场能够带来一丝希望和改变。

The act will certainly make markets more friendly to firms. The most publicised components of the bill allow them to “crowdsource” slivers of equity from retail investors online; reduce regulatory requirements for companies with under $1 billion in revenues; and enable firms to stay private even as the number of owners expands to 2,000 (the prior limit was 500).
无疑，这个法案会让市场变得对企业更为有利。法案中的一些条例允许企业在网上“众包筹集”散户的资金；放宽对收益少于10亿美元的公司的监管规定；并让企业在股份持有者少于2000人时仍可不上市（之前的上限是500人）。这部分条例是最广为人知的。

Title IV, the chapter devoted to “small company capital formation” adjusts Regulation A, a component of securities law that dates back to its earliest days, to allow firms to remain nominally private, meaning they face only minimal disclosure standards, and still raise up to $50m annually in shares that are transferable. Restrictions on circulating information on securities issuance will be loosened, as will the freedom of investment-bank analysts to provide reports on (and implicitly tout on behalf of) clients. That will mean more dubious research, but could also create more interest in the stocks of smaller firms and a profitable mechanism to take them public.
法案中专门讲述“小型企业集资方式”的第四章对条例A（很早期的证券法的一部分）作出了修改，让公司名义上不上市，这意味着它们只需遵循最低信息披露标准，而且每年仍然可以用可转让的股份筹资五千万美元。证券发行信息的流通限制会有所放松，投行分析师也能更自由地选择是否提供客户信息，这样他们可以代表客户间接招揽投资业务。这将意味着市场调查的准确性将会下降，但也能让小型企业的股票收益更高，并建立一个对它们上市更有利的机制。

Collectively, all these rules will create a looser environment for raising equity. The law’s precise impact will be felt in two phases, says Reena Aggarwal of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. There will be an initial spike in fundraising activity; and there will be a longer-term effect, determined by whether the grey areas created under the law encourage viable enterprises to grow (in which case the exemptions will expand) or produce a result like London’s AIM market for smaller companies. Its looser listing standards prompted an initial flurry of interest but have since delivered poor returns for investors unable to distinguish between hype and substance.
总体而言，所有的这些条例都会创造一个更为宽松的筹资环境。乔治城大学麦克唐纳商学院的丽娜?阿加沃尔（Reena Aggarwal）说，在两个阶段内就会看到这些条例的确切效果。一开始，将掀起一轮筹资热潮；而且将会有更为长久的效果，但这要看法例产生的灰色地带到底是会促进企业发展（这样一来将会进一步放宽监管条例）还是会让情况变成像伦敦小型公司的另类投资市场（AIM）那样。AIM放宽了企业上市的标准，这在一开始使股票行情有短暂波动，但自此也让那些不能够分辨大肆吹嘘的宣传与实质的投资者收益惨淡。
http://ecocn.org/thread-66036-1-1.html 译者：contrary

[2012.03.31]Vietnam: Hero to zero 越南从英雄到狗熊
Vietnam
越南

Hero to zero
从英雄到狗熊

The Communist Party sticks to its principles and the economy stalls
共产党坚持自己的原则，但经济则停滞不前
Mar 31st 2012 | HANOI | from the print edition

AMID the bustling trade and raucous traffic of the Vietnamese capital, innumerable banners exhort citizens to “Celebrate the Spring, Celebrate the Party.” These days, Hanoians do not have much to celebrate. Not long ago, Vietnam was one of the developing world’s pin-ups. Now it is lagging badly.
在越南首都熙熙攘攘的贸易与刺耳的交通噪声中，数不清的标语横幅提醒市民要“赞美春天，赞美党”。如今的河内人没多少可赞美的。不久前越南还是发展中国家的佼佼者之一，现在它却大大落后了。

The most immediate concern is inflation, which last year rose to above 20% for the second time in three years (see chart). Vietnam now has Asia’s highest inflation rate, a fact that government censors have asked local journalists to stop reporting. Thousands of businesses have gone bankrupt, property prices have collapsed and banks and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are riddled with bad debts.
人们最直接的担心是通胀；去年的物价上涨在三年中第二次超过20%（见图表）。现在越南的通胀率位居亚洲之首，政府审查机构已责令本国记者不再报道这一事实。数以千计的企业破产，楼价崩盘，银行与国有企业（SOE）呆账缠身。

The reversal has been sudden. Vietnam’s GDP increased by more than 8% a year from 2003 to 2007, when the country attracted a surge of foreign investment. Now the World Bank is predicting that growth will average 6% a year in the five-year period up to the end of 2012. McKinsey, a consultancy, argues that unless Vietnam boosts its labour productivity by more than half, growth is likely to dwindle to below 5%. That will be well short of the government’s target of 7-8%. As McKinsey argues, “the difference sounds small, but it isn’t.” By 2020, Vietnam’s economy could be almost a third smaller than it would have been had economy continued to grow at 7% a year.
逆转来得很突然。从2003到2007年，越南的GDP以每年大于8%的速度增长，外国投资大量涌入该国。现据世界银行预计，在截至2012年底的5年中，经济发平均年增长率只有6%。咨询公司麦肯锡（McKinsey）认为，如果越南不能将劳动生产率提高一半以上，则经济增长很可能会萎缩到5%以下。这将远低于政府7-8%的目标。正如麦肯锡所说的，“这一差别听上去不大，但事实并非如此。”到2020年，越南的经济可能会比它以每年7%的速度增长所能达到的水平低三分之一。

Everyone, even communist leaders, agrees on the main reasons for the slowdown. The poorly run, corrupt and wasteful SOEs, which account for about 40% of output, weigh the economy down. The formula of low-wage, low-cost manufacturing no longer works as it once did. Countries such as Cambodia and Bangladesh now undercut Vietnam in cheap manufactures. Yet the country has failed to move up the value-chain into more productive activities and higher-tech goods.
所有的人，甚至共产党领袖们，都对经济放缓的主要原因看法一致。产品大约占总额40%的国有企业经营不善、贪腐普遍、浪费严重，因此拖累了经济。低工资、低成本的制造业模式不再像过去那样有效。柬埔寨和孟加拉国一类国家现在正以低价与越南竞争廉价制造业市场。而国家的价值链又未能攀升以进行更富成效的生产活动，生产更有科技含量的产品。

Frustratingly, however, realising this and doing something about it seem to be two different things in the minds of Vietnam’s communist rulers. A few optimists were hoping for changes at a three-day meeting of senior party cadres last month. Alas, there was a lot of breast-beating and little else. Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party, urged the party to reform if it wanted to avoid an existential threat. But although his speech was made public, the rest of the meeting—in time-honoured fashion—took place behind closed doors.
但令人压抑的是，在越南共产党统治者的心中，认识到这一点和对此采取措施似乎是两码事。有少数乐观主义者寄希望于上月举行的共产党高干会议，盼望这次为期三天的会议能带来改变。唉，与会者只会大发豪言壮语，除此实在没多少东西。共产党总书记阮富仲（Nguyen Phu Trong）告诫全党：想要避免生存危机，就必须进行改革。但尽管官方公开发表了他的讲话，但会议的其他部分则延续了闭门举行的悠久传统。

Calls by the party to reform or die are not new. “They’ve been saying that for 20 years,” says Carl Thayer, an expert on Vietnamese politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. What is missing, now as in the past, is any detailed plan about how to implement reforms such as restructuring the clunky state-owned sector, streamlining public investment and improving transparency. Nine executives from Vinashin, a debt-ridden state-owned shipbuilder, went on trial on March 27th charged with mismanaging state resources. It is the biggest case of its kind for several years, but the politicians who encouraged and financed the company’s grandiose expansion, including the prime minister, are not likely to be held to account.
共产党不是第一次提出不改革就会灭亡的呼吁。“这话他们说了20年了，”设在堪培拉的澳大利亚国防科学研究所（Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra）的越南政治专家卡尔?萨耶尔（Carl Thayer）说。但无论过去或现在都缺少实施改革的详细计划——例如怎样重组笨拙的国有企业、精简政府投资和提高透明度。3月27日，负债累累的国营造船厂越南船舶工业公司（Vinashin）的9名高管因被控对国家资源处置不当而出庭受审。这是几年来这一类案子中最大的一宗，但鼓励这家公司的浮夸扩展并为之提供资金的政治家包括该国总理似乎却不会为此负责。

Even if there were a change of mind at the top, it would still be difficult for leaders to implement change throughout the system. Power in Vietnam is more dispersed than in neighbouring China, and vested interests in business and politics are bigger obstacles to change. Moreover, whereas China’s Communist Party has had some success in reinventing itself as an Ivy League-style networking club for the elite, its comrades in Vietnam appear stuck in the past. The legitimacy won by military victories more than a generation ago is fading into distant memory, and Vietnamese leaders’ claim to economic competence is increasingly difficult to sustain.
即使高层改变了方针，领袖们要在整个体系中实施改革还是十分困难的。越南的权力分散状况要比邻近的中国更为严重，而商界与政界的既得利益群体对改革障碍更大。此外，中国共产党在让自己改造为常青藤联盟式的全国精英人士网络方面已经取得了一定成绩，但它的越南同志们似乎还在坚持旧日的方针。几十年前武装斗争的胜利赢来的正统地位已在遥远的记忆中逐渐淡漠，而越南领袖自诩善理经济的夸耀越来越站不住脚了。
http://ecocn.org/thread-65982-1-1.html 译者：悠悠万事97

[2012.03.31]Falklands war: Short, victorious war 福克兰战爭30周年祭
Thirty years after the Falklands war
福克兰群岛之战30周年祭

Short, victorious war
短暂的战争，胜利的战争

On April 2nd 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. The war Britain fought to recover them still colours domestic politics
1982年4月2日，阿根廷军队入侵福克兰群岛 [注1]。英国收复该群岛的战争至今仍影响着国内政治
Mar 31st 2012 | from the print edition

WHEN Adrian Mole, a fictional teenage diarist of the early 1980s, tells his father that the Falkland Islands have been invaded, Mr Mole shoots out of bed. He “thought the Falklands lay off the coast of Scotland”. That Britain still had sovereignty over a clutch of islands in the South Atlantic did, indeed, seem odd. Sending a naval task force 8,000 miles to fight for a thinly inhabited imperial relic seemed odder still. In some ways the conflict has come to seem even stranger since 1982. Yet for all its eccentricity, the Falklands campaign still shapes the politics of Britain.
上世纪80年代初，虚构的日记主人公，少年安德里安?摩尔（Adrian Mole）告诉他父亲，福克兰群岛遭到入侵，老摩尔当即从床上一跃而起。他“还以为福克兰群岛在苏格兰沿海呢。”英国仍在南大西洋上