克鲁曼批总统就职演讲

诺贝尔经济奖得主克鲁曼在《纽约时报》专栏中批评OBAMA总统就职演讲没有为美国经济政策带来指引，只是老调重弹。

Op-Ed Columnist
Stuck in the Muddle
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Like anyone who pays attention to business and financial news, I am in a state of high economic anxiety. Like everyone of good will, I hoped that President Obama’s Inaugural Address would offer some reassurance, that it would suggest that the new administration has this thing covered.

But it was not to be. I ended Tuesday less confident about the direction of economic policy than I was in the morning.

Just to be clear, there wasn’t anything glaringly wrong with the address — although for those still hoping that Mr. Obama will lead the way to universal health care, it was disappointing that he spoke only of health care’s excessive cost, never once mentioning the plight of the uninsured and underinsured.

Also, one wishes that the speechwriters had come up with something more inspiring than a call for an “era of responsibility” — which, not to put too fine a point on it, was the same thing former President George W. Bush called for eight years ago.

But my real problem with the speech, on matters economic, was its conventionality. In response to an unprecedented economic crisis — or, more accurately, a crisis whose only real precedent is the Great Depression — Mr. Obama did what people in Washington do when they want to sound serious: he spoke, more or less in the abstract, of the need to make hard choices and stand up to special interests.

That’s not enough. In fact, it’s not even right.

Thus, in his speech Mr. Obama attributed the economic crisis in part to “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age” — but I have no idea what he meant. This is, first and foremost, a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry. And if we failed to rein in that industry, it wasn’t because Americans “collectively” refused to make hard choices; the American public had no idea what was going on, and the people who did know what was going on mostly thought deregulation was a great idea.

Or consider this statement from Mr. Obama: “Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed.”

The first part of this passage was almost surely intended as a paraphrase of words that John Maynard Keynes wrote as the world was plunging into the Great Depression — and it was a great relief, after decades of knee-jerk denunciations of government, to hear a new president giving a shout-out to Keynes. “The resources of nature and men’s devices,” Keynes wrote, “are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life. ... But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.”

But something was lost in translation. Mr. Obama and Keynes both assert that we’re failing to make use of our economic capacity. But Keynes’s insight — that we’re in a “muddle” that needs to be fixed — somehow was replaced with standard we’re-all-at-fault, let’s-get-tough-on-ourselves boilerplate.

Remember, Herbert Hoover didn’t have a problem making unpleasant decisions: he had the courage and toughness to slash spending and raise taxes in the face of the Great Depression. Unfortunately, that just made things worse.

Still, a speech is just a speech. The members of Mr. Obama’s economic team certainly understand the extraordinary nature of the mess we’re in. So the tone of Tuesday’s address may signify nothing about the Obama administration’s future policy.

On the other hand, Mr. Obama is, as his predecessor put it, the decider. And he’s going to have to make some big decisions very soon. In particular, he’s going to have to decide how bold to be in his moves to sustain the financial system, where the outlook has deteriorated so drastically that a surprising number of economists, not all of them especially liberal, now argue that resolving the crisis will require the temporary nationalization of some major banks.

So is Mr. Obama ready for that? Or were the platitudes in his Inaugural Address a sign that he’ll wait for the conventional wisdom to catch up with events? If so, his administration will find itself dangerously behind the curve.

And that’s not a place that we want the new team to be. The economic crisis grows worse, and harder to resolve, with each passing week. If we don’t get drastic action soon, we may find ourselves stuck in the muddle for a very long time.

就像所有關心商業和金融新聞的人一樣，我對經濟局勢非常焦躁不安。不幸的是，歐巴馬總統周二的就職演說，未能帶給我信心。

先要聲明，這場演說沒有任何糟糕的錯誤。儘管對希望歐巴馬能推出全民健保的人來說，他只提到健康保險的超高費用，卻隻字未提毫無保險者的苦難，令人失望。

抽象一席話 和政客一般

但就經濟層面而言，我認為這場演說的真正問題是陳腔濫調。面對這場只有大蕭條可堪比擬的經濟危機，歐巴馬的反應與其他華府政客一樣：他抽象地談到做出艱難抉擇，反對特殊利益。
這麼說還不夠。事實上，這甚至根本不對。

歐巴馬說，這場經濟危機部分要歸咎於「我們全體未能做出艱難抉擇，迎接新的時代」。我不知道這是什麼意思。這場危機根本起於失控的金融產業，而我們未能駕馭金融產業，並不是因為我們不敢做出「艱難抉擇」。美國大眾不知道發生什麼問題，而知道問題所在的人，絕大多數卻認為自由放任是最棒的主意。

機器凸了槌 八股的官話

或者想一下歐巴馬的這段話：「我們的工人生產力並不比危機發生前差，我們創造發明的能力並未減弱，我們的商品和服務仍像上周、上個月乃至一年前那樣受到青睞。我們的能力並未削弱。但是墨守成規、著眼小利、不做艱難抉擇的時代已經過去了。」

前半段幾可確定是在引用凱因斯的名言，經過幾十年來無腦反對政府的時代，聽到新總統願意大聲呼應凱因斯，令人欣慰。凱因斯在大蕭條降臨之際時寫道：「自然資源及人類的智巧與先前同樣豐富，同樣有生產力。我們解決物質生活問題的進展也沒有變慢。我們就像之前一樣，有能力為所有人提供高品質的生活。…可是現在，由於對一架精巧機器的運作缺乏瞭解，對其掌握失去控制，我們正陷入一團渾沌爛帳之中。」

但是歐巴馬沒有掌握凱因斯的後半段—我們正陷入一團需要解決的混沌爛帳。相反地，歐巴馬代之以「讓我們重新開始，讓我們堅忍迎擊」這種八股官話。

做決定的人 準備好了嗎

請記住，胡佛對做出不受歡迎的決策毫無問題。面對經濟大蕭條，他有十足的勇氣與堅毅削減開支，加收稅款。不幸的是，這只讓狀況更糟。

不過演說也就只是說說。歐巴馬的經濟團隊絕對知道我們正處於空前亂局，周二的演說可能與未來的政策毫無關聯。

但是歐巴馬正如他的前任所言，是要「做決定的人」。他很快就要面臨許多重大決策，尤其是對於維持金融體系永續，作法要多大膽。局勢已如此惡化，認為該把一些大銀行暫時收歸國有才能解決問題的經濟學家，多得另人意外。

所以歐巴馬準備好了嗎？或者他就職演說裡的陳腔濫調，意味他會等著問題自行解決？這可不是我們想看到的新執政團隊。如果不儘快採取大膽行動，我們可能會陷在這團渾沌爛賬—很久，很久。