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书籍类翻译 (英译中）

    [原稿]
 
    But the choice is not between changing human nature and accepting unregulated free markets. Also, the choice is not between total socialism and unfettered capitalism. Given the vast complexities of our global economic system, we need to make room for more nuanced alternatives. Free enterprise principles can govern most of our markets for goods and services, while we also tightly control finance. We need to square up to reality. The financial sector, when measured by its overall impact on our economic world, produces systemic instability and runs inefficiently when structured as a small set of for-profit enterprises that are too big to fail. At the very least we need some sort of way to protect ourselves from the crises that even Alan Greenspan has “no doubt” will occur again, such as the proposal for financial disaster insurance in Chapter 10. But our children and grandchildren deserve better than the very least we can do.
 
    Let’s hope we won’t throw away much of our children’s inheritance because we did not have the courage to do the obvious: Take over the failing major banks, drastically trim their astronomical salaries, control their hazardous financial engineering, and run the damn things for the good of us all.
 
    Once again, events may be passing me by. Each day we hear more and more references to nationalization. Economists, both from the left and right, are advocating temporary government ownership of failed banks (euphemistically called “pre-privatization”). A consensus is building rapidly, not because of ideology, but out of desperation. Obama’s toxic asset public-private partnership plan released in March 2009 is the last effort to avoid that strategy. If it fails, he might be forced to reach for the only option left on the table. But even among the strident critics, few, if any, seem willing to let the government run key financial institutions for the long haul. It seems that we’d rather gamble yet again on unstable private markets.
 
    If, by the time you read these words, we have avoided a full-scale depression, we should consider ourselves more fortunate than wise. Or as Bob Dylan lamented,
 
    An’ here I sit so patiently Waiting to find out
 
    what price You have to pay to get out of
 
    Going through all these things twice.
 
    [译文]
 
    但我们并不是要在改变人性和接受不受监管的自由市场之间做选择。此外，我们也不是要在全面社会主义和不受约束的资本主义之间做选择。鉴于全球经济系统的复杂性，我们需要为更微妙的替代方案预留空间。自由企业原则可以支配绝大部分商品和服务市场，但同时我们也严格把控金融市场。我们必须正视现实。当我们衡量金融部门对国民经济的整体影响时，我们发现它会造成系统性不稳定；而且在其成为以营利为目的、大到不能倒的企业系统的一部分时，其运行效率低下。至少，我们需要某种方式来防范就连艾伦·格林斯潘都“毫无疑问”地确定会再次出现的危机，比如我们在第十章中提到金融灾难保险建议。而我们的子孙后代值得我们去付出。
 
    让我们祈祷我们不会因为缺乏进行下列改革的勇气而再继续丢弃本应留给孩子的财富，其中包括接管濒临破产的主要银行、大幅削减其天文数字的高管薪酬、控制其危险的金融工程同时做一些有利于大家的实事。
 
    事情可能再一次与我擦身而过。每天，我们都能听到许许多多的国有化建议。来自左翼和右翼的经济学家们都倡导政府临时性接管已破产的银行（美其名曰“预私有化”）。人们迅速达成了共识——并非是因为意识形态，而是出于绝望。奥巴马政府在2009年3月公布资产毒垃圾公私合营计划是为避免国有化战略所做的最后努力。如果再失败，他可能会被迫启动仅剩的唯一选择。但即使是在尖锐的批评家当中，也很少（如果有的话）有人愿意让政府长期经营主要的金融机构。看来，我们宁愿把赌注再次压在不稳定的私营市场上。
 
    如果在您读这篇文章时，我们已经成功避免了全面的经济萧条，我们更多地是在庆幸自己很走运而不是很明智。或者就像鲍勃·迪伦（Bob Dylan）在歌中的感叹，
 
    我耐心地坐在这里
 
    等待一个答案
 
    我必须付出怎样的代价
 
    才不至于再次落入这个怪圈。

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