现代版“罗斯福新政”会是什么样子？
讲到全球金融危机及其余波，一个最为引人注目的事实是，政策反应是多么不起眼。这与此前的经济史存在明显不同。在过去一个多世纪里，最深层的政治和经济危机都带来了变革性的改革。这一次与以往不同。
Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal was the epitome of crisis turned into opportunity. Within months of taking office in 1933, Roosevelt had taken the dollar off gold to reflate the economy, shut down and reopened the banking system after equipping it with deposit insurance, launched large public works programmes, radically regulated Wall Street and introduced a minimum wage. Social security, trade liberalisation, and housing policy reform soon followed.
富兰克林•D•罗斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)的新政(New Deal)是把危机变为机遇的典型例子。1933年上任后短短几个月内，罗斯福把美元与黄金脱钩、实现了通货再膨胀，先是关闭银行系统、在出台存款保险制度后重新启动，推出了大型公共建设项目，对华尔街实施彻底的监管，并引入了最低工资标准。随后他又很快推出了社会保障、贸易自由化、以及住房政策改革。
The New Deal was exceptional in its hyperactivity, but other crises, too, have seen large-scale efforts to recast our economic systems. In the late-19th century, endemic financial instability and increasingly concentrated wealth and market power in the US led to a permanent income tax, a central bank, and an earlier (Theodore) Roosevelt’s trustbusting. After the second world war, a consensus in all western countries created the social democratic mixed economies many now seem to long for.
罗斯福新政异常积极活跃，但在其他危机中，政府也都大刀阔斧地改革经济体系。19世纪末美国常见的金融不稳定以及财富和市场力量的日益集中，催生了常态化的收入所得税、央行，还有老罗斯福——西奥多•罗斯福(Theodore Roosevelt)的反垄断法。在二战后，所有西方国家达成一种共识，由此创建了社会民主主义混合式经济——如今这似乎是很多人所渴望的经济制度。
Compared to any of this, the past decade’s policies have been pusillanimous. The 2008 financial crisis was the most violent economic shock to hit most of the rich world in a lifetime. Yet hardly any policy effort has emerged to match the magnitude of the challenge.
与上述任何一次举措相比，过去十年的政策都可谓软弱无力。2008年金融危机是几十年来最强烈的波及大多数富裕国家的经济冲击。然而，几乎没有任何政策努力的力度能与这种挑战的艰巨程度相提并论。
True, governments have reined in financial markets. True, too, the 2009 co-ordinated fiscal stimulus arrested the downturn. But the financial system has undergone much less change than in the 1930s, and the stimulus was far too quickly withdrawn. Europe’s banking union may in time bring radical change — though fierce resistance makes it too soon to say.
没错，政府控制住了金融市场。2009年的协同财政刺激举措也确实遏制了衰退。但金融系统的改革远远少于上世纪30年代，而且财政刺激措施很快就撤销了。欧洲的银行业联盟或许及时带来了根本性变革——但是鉴于其遭遇的强烈抵制，现在下定论为时尚早。
Monetary policy seems superficially to have stepped up to the plate. But even the “unprecedented” actions of central banks have amounted mostly to using well-tried tools — open-market securities purchases, interest rate cuts — at greater scale than before. There has been no revolution.
货币政策表面上似乎具有主动性。但即便是各央行采取的“前所未有的”举措，基本上也不过是使用旧的工具，比如在公开市场购买证券和降息，只是规模大于以往。没有任何变革性举措。
All in all, our generation of leaders has failed to show the boldness mustered in previous showdowns with history. If a politician with FDR’s mettle had appeared in 2008, or indeed today, what might he or she do? Here are three proposals a committed reformer should contemplate. Like the New Deal, they are radical but realistic.
总而言之，我们这一代的领导人未能展现出以往在历史紧要关头总会激发出的那种勇气。如果2008年、或者今天有一位政治家有着像富兰克林•D•罗斯福那样的魄力，他或她可能会怎么做?以下是坚定的改革者应该考虑的三条建议。正如罗斯福新政一样，这些建议激进但切合实际。
A latter-day Roosevelt must, like the original, look at monetary reform. Now as then, the problem is how to avoid too much liquidity in the boom and too little in the bust. But this may be impossible so long as money creation — and destruction — remains in the hands of private, profitmaking banks. Only a tiny fraction of the money supply consists of physical cash minted by central banks. The bulk is bank deposits, claims on private financial institutions created when those institutions issue loans.
现代版的罗斯福必须像罗斯福本人一样聚焦货币改革。像当时一样，如今的问题是如何避免繁荣时期流动性过高而在泡沫破灭时流动性过少的问题。但是只要以营利为目的的私有银行仍然掌握着创造(和毁灭)货币的大权，这或许就无法避免。只有很小一部分货币供应是由央行创造的实物现金构成的。大部分货币供应是银行存款，在私人金融机构发放贷款时，存款就是对这些机构的债权。
So in exuberant times, the money supply expands too fast, causing resource misallocation and impossible expectations about future incomes. When the mood changes, banks create too little money to keep activity buoyant, credit issued in the boom goes bad, and debt deflation sets in. Central banks’ “unprecedented” money creation has only partially offset this.
因此在经济繁荣期，货币供应扩张速度太快，造成了资源配置不当和对未来收入不切实际的预期。当市场情绪转变，银行创造的货币过少，不足以让经济活动保持活跃，繁荣期发放的信贷变成坏账，债务通缩期开始。央行“史无前例的”印钞规模只能抵消部分影响。
If private management of the money supply is a recipe for instability, the radical alternative is to nationalise the money supply. This is do-able today: central banks can offer accounts to all members of the public (or make central bank reserves available to everyone). Banks could be restricted to allocating existing savings to investments, rather than creating new credit.
如果说货币供应的私人管理是造成经济不稳定的根源，那么根本的替代办法就是货币供应国有化。眼下这是一个可行办法：所有社会成员都可以在央行开设账户(或者央行准备金可以向每一个人开放)。银行只能把现有存款配置给投资，而不是创造新信贷。
Another imperative is that of economic security. Previous radicals created safety nets where none existed. Today we have ample welfare states, but they still leave large groups in precarious conditions. Sometimes they trap them there, as generous benefits for low earners are withdrawn with rising incomes, creating prohibitive effective marginal tax rates for the modestly paid. The radical solution is a universal basic income, the proposal to pay an unconditional benefit to all citizens, financed by tax rises. The idea is rediscovered by every other generation; the time to put it into practice may now have come.
另一项重要建议有关经济安全。之前激进派创建的安全网已不复存在。如今我们有大批福利国家，但它们仍然让大批人处于危险境地。有时他们会落入福利的圈套，比如面向低收入者的慷慨福利会在他们收入增加时被取消，让那些收入不高者面临难以承受的实际边际税率。根本解决办法是发放统一的基本收入，无条件向所有公民提供福利，资金来自增税。每隔一代都会重新提出这一想法;现在或许是时候把该想法付诸实践了。
Finally, revisit the US antitrust policies of the turn of the previous century, when leaders channelled popular resistance to the stranglehold of large oil, industrial and railway companies. Today, internet giants enjoy a similar dominance.
最后一点，回顾美国在20世纪初的反垄断政策——当时的领导人对公众抵制大型石油、工业和铁路公司垄断的情绪加以因势利导。如今，互联网巨头正享受着类似的主导地位。
A brave politician would seek to end internet platforms’ ability to skew our markets — and our politics. Internet services with economic functions similar to public utilities should be regulated as such so as to make them behave in the public interest.
有胆识的政治家会寻求终结互联网平台扭曲市场和政治的能力。有着与公共事业部门类似经济职能的互联网服务应该受到监管，使之为公众利益服务。
Many sensible people will hesitate to embrace these ideas. But what if the alternative is not the status quo, but the nativist authoritarianism now on the rise? The deepest lesson from the Roosevelt era is that liberal centrists should wield their own radicalism lest they have radical illiberalism thrust upon them.
很多明智之人会有所迟疑，不敢立即接受这些想法。但如果情况不是像现在这样，而是本土威权主义正在崛起呢?罗斯福时代留下的最深刻的教训是，奉行自由主义的中间派应该高举自己的激进主义旗帜，以免激进的非自由主义大行其道。
martin.sandbu@ft.com 译者/马柯斯
