Blame greedy bankers. Blame Alan Greenspan’s careless stewardship of the US Federal Reserve. Blame feckless homeowners who took out loans they could never expect to repay. Blame politicians and regulators everywhere for closing their eyes to the approaching tempest. 怪贪婪的银行家。怪葛林斯班没管好联准会。怪不负责任的屋主，借根本还不出来的贷款 买房子。怪政治人物和管制人员对逼近的风暴睁一只眼闭一只眼。 All of the above are culpable. I am sure there are even more villains lurking out there. Sometimes, though, it is worth looking through the other end of the telescope. The wreckage of the financial system holds up a mirror to the changing geopolitical balance. It offers advice, and a warning, as to what the west should make of the emerging global order. 以上皆可怪。我相信还有很多坏蛋四处趴趴走。但有时候从望远镜另一头看看也是挺好 的。金融系统仅存的断壁残垣反而是一面明镜，照出了正在改变中的地缘政治平衡， 对必须面对新兴全球秩序的西方来说，既是建议，也是警讯。 Until quite recently, the talk was about the humbling of America’s laisser faire capitalism. The US government’s $700bn bail-out was the price to be paid for past hubris. For reasons that still elude me, one or two European politicians seemed to delight in the troubles of an ally that still guarantees their security. 最近正夯的话题是美国自由放任资本主义的崩解。美国政府的七千亿抒困方案是过去 潇洒的代价。一两个欧洲政治人物似乎看讲义气愿意担保欧洲证券的美国陷入危机 看得很爽。至於为何，我不太清楚。 Schadenfreude comes before a fall. Solid, conservative Germany has been among the European nations forced to shore up its banks. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, has been driven to assure German voters publicly that their savings are safe. 幸灾乐祸总先於堕落。稳定保守的德国是被迫担保自己银行系统的欧洲列国之一。 总理梅克尔被迫出面安抚德国选民，让他们觉得他们的存款无虞。 Belgium and the Netherlands have rescued Fortis. Ireland and Greece have issued blanket guarantees to bank depositors. Others have done something similar. Most dramatically, Gordon Brown’s British government has part-nationalised all of its leading banks in a desperate bid to crack the ice of the credit freeze. 比利时与荷兰则救了FORTIS。爱尔兰与希腊则提供银行存款户全面担保。其他国家 也有类似行动。最夸张的是英国政府，首相布朗把把几间最大的银行部分国有化， 拼了命要把信贷冰封给敲碎。 If the toxic mortgage securities and opaque credit swaps that infected the world’s financial system came with a made-in-the-US stamp, European banks were eager buyers. For the humbling of America, we should substitute the humbling of the west. 虽说拖垮世界金融体系的毒债跟暗盘信贷交易是美制的，但欧洲银行可是积极买家。 说弱掉的美国，不如说弱掉的西方。 Asia, as we have seen in the markets this week, is not immune from the shocks and stresses. Japan, which has only quite recently emerged from the long twilight of its 1990s banking collapse, has now been hit anew by the global storm. China felt compelled this week to follow western central banks in cutting interest rates. So did a host of smaller Asian countries. Recession in the US and Europe will slow the growth of Asia’s rising economies. 这周市场显示，亚洲并非免疫。日本最近才从90年代银行系统瘫痪的过去站起，却又 被全球级的风暴给打了下去。中国这周觉得必须要跟西方一样调降利率。许多更小 的亚洲国家也如法炮制。欧美衰退的确会拖累亚洲窜升的经济体。 Standing back, though, two things mark out this crisis as unique. First, is its sheer ferocity. I am not sure how useful it is to make comparisons with the 1930s. History never travels in a straight line. What is evident is that governments and central banks have had no previous experience of coping with shocks and stresses of the intensity and ubiquity we have seen during the past year. 若後退几步看，这次危机有两个特点。第一，强度。我不确定拿1930年代来比到底多 有用。历史一向不是直线前进。可知的是，众多政府和中央银行对於过去一年风暴的 震撼和压力所带来的紧绷度和广度毫无应变经验可言。 The second difference is one of geography. For the first time, the epicentre has been in the west. Viewed from Washington, London or Paris, financial crises used to be things that happened to someone else – to Latin America, to Asia, to Russia. 第二，地域。这可是西方做震央的第一次。华盛顿、伦敦、巴黎角度总是看到别人 的系统垮掉，如拉丁美洲、亚洲、和俄国。 The shock waves would sometimes lap at western shores, usually in the form of demands that the rich nations rescue their own imprudent banks. But these crises drew a line between north and south, between the industrialised and developing world. Emerging nations got into a mess; the west told them sternly what they must do to get out of it. 偶尔震波会轻拍西方的沙岸，通常是一些希望有钱政府救救自己不明智的银行的要求。 但这些危机是南北分野的，是工业化和开发中国家分野的。崛起中的国家搞得乱七八糟， 西方很严肃的告诉他们要如何做才能脱困。 The instructions came in the form of the aptly-named Washington consensus: the painful prescriptions, including market liberalisation and fiscal consolidation, imposed as the price of financial support from the International Monetary Fund. 这些只是来自所谓的华盛顿共识：痛苦的药方（包括市场自由化和会计制度健全化） 必须落实，才能获得IMF的金援抒困。 This time the crisis started on Wall Street, triggered by the steep decline in US house prices. The emerging nations have been the victims rather than the culprit. And the reason for this reversal of roles? They had supped enough of the west’s medicine. 这次华尔街是爆点，房价直直落则是雷管引信。崛起国家反而从祸首成为受害者。 角色翻转的理由？这些国家把西方开的药给吃够够了。 A decade ago, after the crisis of 1997-98 wrought devastation on some of its most vibrant economies, Asia said never again. There would be no more going cap in hand when the going got rough. To avoid the IMF’s ruinous rules, governments would build their own defences against adversity by accumulating reserves of foreign currency. 十年前，97-98的危机把几个最蓬勃的经济体给搅烂了，而亚洲矢言绝不能再发生。 势头不好时，没有再拿帽子要钱的了。为了避免IMF超痛的规矩，各政府会自己架起 防御网，用不断累积的外汇存底来抵抗不测。 Those reserves – more than $4,000bn-worth at the present count – financed credit in the US and Europe. There were other sources of liquidity, of course, notably the Fed and the reserves accumulated by energy producers. It also took financial chicanery to turn reckless mortgage lending in to triple A rated securities. But as a Chinese official told my FT colleague David Pilling the other day: “America drowned itself in Asian liquidity.” 这些外汇存底（现在估计超过四兆）供给了欧美信贷庞大的资金。当然，市场上还有 其他流通资产的来源，如联准会以及能源生产单位的储备物资。靠些金融骗术把疯狂 房贷借贷变成评等3A的债券也是一招。但如一个中国官员对我在FT的同事 David Pilling所说的，「美国把自己给淹死在亚洲流动资产里了。」 Owning up to the geopolitical implications will be as painful for the rich nations as paying the domestic price for the profligacy. The erosion of the west’s moral authority that began with the Iraq war has been greatly accelerated. The west’s debtors cannot any longer expect their creditors to listen to their lectures. Here lies the broader lesson. The shift eastwards in global economic power has become a commonplace of political discourse. Almost everyone in the west now speaks with awe of the pace of China’s rise, of India’s emergence as a geopolitical player, of the growing roles in international relations of Brazil and South Africa. 对富国来说，承认地缘政治因素跟负担挥霍积累的国内帐单一样难受。西方道德权威 的融蚀自伊拉克战争开始就已经加快速度了。西方债权人不再能够期待他们的借贷人 听得进他们的劝说。同时，大道理就是：全球经济权力东移的过程已经成为政治语言 寻常的词汇。几乎所有的西方人现在都以感叹的语气议论中国崛起的步伐，印度在地缘 政治玩家中崭露头角，以及巴西和南非在国际关系中逐增份量。 Yet the rich nations have yet to face up properly to the implications. They can imagine sharing power, but they assume the bargain will be struck on their terms: that the emerging nations will be absorbed – at a pace, mind you, of the west’s choosing – into familiar international forums and institutions. 但富国还没有正视这些影响。他们能想像分享权力，但他们假设情势会对他们自己有利： 崛起国家会被吸纳进入西方熟悉的国际会议和机构之内，并且是采取西方订定的步伐。 When American and European diplomats talk about the rising powers becoming responsible stakeholders in the global system, what they really mean is that China, India and the rest must not be allowed to challenge existing standards and norms. 当欧美外交人员讨论崛起势力应该成为负责任的全球系统玩家时，他们其实是在说 中国、印度、和所有其他国家必须不挑战现存的标准和常规。 This is the frame of mind that sees the Benelux countries still holding a bigger share than China of the votes at the IMF; and the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations presuming this weekend that it remains the right forum to redesign the global financial system. 这种观点就是看到荷比卢关税同盟国家仍比中国在IMF里头多几票的观点；以及G7领先 工业国这礼拜自以为自己仍是重新设计全球金融系统的正统机构。 I have no inhibitions about promoting the values of the west – of preaching the virtues of the rule of law, pluralist politics and fundamental human rights. Nor of asserting that, for all the financial storms, a liberal market system is the worst option except for all the others. The case for global rules – that open markets need multilateral governance – could not have been made more forcefully than by the present crisis. 我不反对推销西方价值─称颂法治的优点、多元政治主义和基本人权等等。我也不会假设 自由经济市场系统是所有其他选择中最坏的一个，即便有这麽多的金融风暴。全球规范 的概念─即开放市场需要多边控管─就是在现在风暴中才最能体现其重要性。 Yet the big lesson is that the west can no longer assume the global order will be remade in its own image. For more than two centuries, the US and Europe have exercised an effortless economic, political and cultural hegemony. That era is ending. 但大道理是西方不在能够假设全球秩序会依自己的形象塑成。过去两世纪以来，欧美 行使了几乎不费力的经济、政治和文化霸权。那个时代正在终结。 More columns atwww.ft.com.philipstephens http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ed4a750-961e-11dd-9dce-000077b07658.html [email protected] Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008 烦请注意附上原稿来源 -- --

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