Kan he do it? 菅直人，兼职人？
And the next contestant, please 有请下一位
Jun 3rd 2010 | TOKYO | From The Economist print edition
IN A country where only one prime minister has lasted more than three years in the past 20 (the uncharacteristically charismatic Junichiro Koizumi), people are understandably blasé about who will be the next man in the top job. This time could be different. If the leader can step out from under the shadow of Japan’s last old-fashioned factional boss, the Democratic Party of Japan’s Ichiro Ozawa, he could usher in a new sort of coalition politics, with the potential to be either disastrously messy or refreshingly clean.
过去的20年内,日本的几任首相中只有一人（万人迷小泉纯一郎）的任期超过了三年。在这样的一个国家里，国民对首相一职花落谁家的问题心生厌烦也是可以理解的。不过这一次可能会与众不同。新任领导人如果能够摆脱受制于日本最后一位老派党首——民主党的小泽一郎的阴影，就可以迎来一个全新的联合政府。而摆在这一联合政府面前的有两条路:要么是不堪入目的混乱，要么是清风拂面的廉政。
The most likely successor has long been Naoto Kan, the 63-year-old finance minister and deputy prime minister. His pedigree would mark a change to the top in itself. Since Mr Koizumi resigned in 2006, Japan has had five prime ministers, all of whom have been either the son or grandson of a former prime minister. Of unflashy origin, the dogged Mr Kan made his own way up the political ladder, gaining prestige in the mid-1990s when, as health minister, he exposed bureaucrats who allowed the transfusion of HIV-tainted blood to haemophiliacs.
63岁的副首相兼财政大臣菅直人一直是继任首相人选里呼声最高的。首先他的出身就将改写日本高层政局。继2006年小泉纯一郎辞职之后，日本先后更换了五位首相，无一不顶着前首相子孙的光环。菅直人虽然出身卑微，但却能坚韧不拔地一路独闯政坛，节节高升。20世纪90年代中期，时任厚生大臣的菅直人将纵容给血友病患者输入带有艾滋病病毒的血液制品一事的官僚移送法办，此举使他声名鹊起。
He had little macroeconomic experience before being appointed finance minister in January, but gained a reputation among the ministry’s bureaucrats as a quick learner. They were thrilled that he actually listened to them. In that job, he has stood out for two reasons: his willingness to begin discussing—albeit gingerly—a rise in the consumption tax as part of a fiscal overhaul to reduce Japan’s crushing debt burden; and justifiable criticism of the Bank of Japan for not doing enough to end deflation.
菅直人在一月担任财政大臣之前，几乎没有过掌管过宏观经济，但在财政部的官员中，他却
享有“一学就会”的美誉。财政部的官员对菅直人果真采取他们的意见感到兴奋不已。任财臣期间，菅直人凭借两点大放异彩：一是在如何将提高消费税作为整顿财政收入的一个环节，以达到减轻日本泰山压顶般的债务的问题上，他愿意展开讨论（纵然是谨小慎微）；二是直面日本银行在解决通货紧缩的问题上因力度不够遭受的正面批评。
But he has one big flaw. While in the cabinet, he made no attempt to distance himself from the prime minister or from Mr Ozawa when they were both caught up in debilitating campaign-funding scandals that clobbered the government’s popular standing. “If Mr Kan is chosen, he may have the same problem that Mr Hatoyama faced. The public might consider him to be another puppet of Mr Ozawa,” says Akihiko Tanaka, a professor of international politics at the University of Tokyo. He would need to show that he represents a clean break from the LDP-style ancien régime if disillusioned voters are to be persuaded that the DPJ represents a real change from the past.
但菅直人有一大弱点。在内阁时，在任首相与小泽一郎曾深陷政治献金的丑闻中，该丑闻大大降低了政府的支持率，但尽管如此，菅直人依然无意与首相或小泽一郎划清界限。“如果菅直人当选首相，他可能会面临与鸠山一样的问题。公众可能会将他视为小泽一郎的又一个傀儡。” 东京大学国际政治教授Akihiko Tanaka如是说道。如果要让心灰意冷的选民相信日本民主党将带来翻天覆地的变化，菅直人就必须向人们展示：他代表着与自民党式的腐朽政权的决绝。
Global economic policy 全球经济政策
Monetary illusions 货币政策的错觉
Central bankers are not magicians. Don’t count on them to conjure up remedies if the rich economies flag
央行银行家并不是魔法师。如果富裕经济体衰退，不要指望他们能够变出弥补措施。
Sep 2nd 2010
OVER the past few years the reputations of the rich world’s central bankers have fluctuated wildly. When the financial crisis struck, they were blamed for allowing the housing and credit bubbles to build, and for failing to foresee the bust. Later they were lionised for preventing a new Depression with bold actions to support the financial system. Now a third stage is at hand, one of dangerously outsized expectations.
在过去几年，富裕世界央行银行家的名声浮动很大。金融危机来临时，人们指责他们任由住房和信贷泡沫滋长，没有预测到破产。后来他们采取大胆行动支持金融体系，防止了新的大萧条，因而受到重视。如今第三阶段就在眼前，一项危险的过高期望。
With most governments unable, or unwilling, to offer more fiscal stimulus, central banks are left solely responsible for propping up the flagging recovery. The phenomenon is most obvious in America. Its economy has weakened, yet the default path for fiscal policy is a hefty tightening as
the Obama stimulus wanes, the states slash spending to balance their budgets and the Bush tax cuts expire. With any discussion of remedies by politicians drowned out by partisan positioning before the mid-term elections in November, disproportionate hope is pinned on Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve. Hence the attention paid to his recent speech at Jackson Hole, which laid out, with great confidence, what further steps the Fed could take. 由于大多数政府不能或者不愿意提供更多的财政刺激，只剩下央行银行家为扶持乏力的复苏负责了。这种现象在美国最显著。美国经济已经疲软，但是随着刺激计划的消失，各州削减开支以平衡其预算和布什减税政策的到期，财政政策的违约路线是一项巨大的紧缩。由于政治家们对于弥补政策的任何讨论都被11月份中期选举之前的党派立场淹没，巨大的希望落在了本?伯南克的美联储上。因此，他最近在杰克逊荷尔发表的演说受到了关注，他的演说充满自信，详细地阐述了美联储可以采取的进一步行动。
America is in the vanguard, but excessive faith in central bankers is unlikely to stop there. Some rich economies, notably Germany, have done well of late. But if America’s slowdown persists, they too will flag, particularly as fiscal austerity kicks in (see article). In 2011, on current plans, the rich world is set for its biggest collective budget cuts in at least 40 years. Already there is talk of the Bank of England offsetting the pain by printing more money to buy more government bonds (a policy known as quantitative easing). The European Central Bank seems ready to maintain its special liquidity facilities for longer, and may be pushed to do more when the recovery slows. Currency movements will add to the pressure. The Bank of Japan this week said it would extend the availability of cheap loans to banks, in a bid to push down the yen.
美国走在了前沿，但是对央行银行家过度的的信任不太可能到此为止。一些富裕经济体，尤其是德国，最近表现出众。但是如果美国的经济持续放缓，它们也将放缓，尤其是在财政紧缩开始实施的时候。按照目前的计划，2011年，富裕世界将集体削减至少40年来最大的预算。据说，英格兰银行将印刷更多的钱来购买更多的政府债券（即所谓的定量宽松政策），从而消除痛苦。欧洲央行似乎准备更长时间地保持其特殊的流动手段，复苏放缓时，可能被迫发挥更加有所作为。货币移动将增加压力。本周，日本银行表示将延长对各银行的廉价贷款期限，以便使日元贬值。
In ordinary times it makes sense to leave the central banks to stabilise the economy while governments repair their finances. Cheaper money is an obvious offset to tighter budgets and, historically, many of the most successful fiscal adjustments have been matched by looser monetary policy. But these are not ordinary times. Central banks cannot cut short-term rates any further. And in many places the recovery is sluggish for a reason that also renders central banks less effective: economies are deleveraging as households, in particular, rebuild their savings and pay down debt. If people do not want to borrow, monetary policy, although not impotent, gives a smaller lift to the economy than it normally would.
在普通时期，央行负责稳定经济，而各政府修复财政具有一定的意义。廉价的货币显然是紧缩预算的一种补偿，从历史的经验来看，众多最成功的财政调整都有较宽松的货币政策配合。但是现在不是普通时期。央行无法进一步降低短期利率。此外，在很多地方，复苏缓慢的原因也是导致央行不那么有效的一个原因：尤其是随着家庭开始攒钱，偿还债务，各经济体开始去杠杆化。如果人们不想贷款，尽管货币政策会起到一定的作用，但是对经济的提振作用比正常情况下还要小。
Central bankers are also flying blind. With short-term policy rates at or near zero, getting more of a monetary boost means expanding a set of instruments whose efficacy, and side-effects, are ill-understood (see article). Mr Bernanke and his colleagues have no shortage of proposals, from buying more government bonds to promising to keep interest rates low. But some ideas are untested. And those that have already been used, such as printing money to buy government bonds, are likely to suffer from diminishing returns. To make a further meaningful dent in bond yields, for instance, the Fed might need to buy another $1 trillion-2 trillion of government debt. 央行银行家也是乱投医。由于短期政策利率接近或已经达到零，因此获得更多的货币提振意味着扩展一系列手段，而这些手段的效果和副作用却并不知道。伯南克先生及其同事并不缺少提议，从购买更多的政府债券到承诺保持低利率。但是一些想法并没有经过考验。那些已经使用过的手段如印刷更多的钱来购买政府债券，可能遭受日益减少的回报。比如，为了进一步减少有意义的债券收益率，美联储可能需要再购买1-2万亿美元的政府债务。
Not by the Fed alone 美联储无法独立完成
None of this means central bankers should not do what they can. They do have tools to try to ward off deflation, and should use them. However, they may not be able to live up to expectations. They can’t transform a sluggish recovery from a financial crisis into a vibrant one. Nor, if the expansion stumbles, can they prop it up alone. 然而，所有这些并不意味着央行银行家不应该尽自己的责任。他们确实拥有努力消除通货紧缩的手段，必须利用它们。然而，他们可能无法不负所望。他们无法将金融危机的缓慢复苏转变为强劲复苏。如果扩展受阻，他们也不能单独扶持它。
Responsibility for boosting growth must be more evenly split with politicians. Only politicians can address the structural problems that are also holding back the rich world’s economies, such as the housing debt in America and the barriers to hiring in parts of Europe. Only politicians in countries, notably including America, that still have room for fiscal stimulus can ensure that it is used to complement monetary policy. And only politicians can couple stimulus with longer-term pension and tax reform, so that investors do not lose faith in sovereigns’ future solvency. Such a combination (however difficult given the electoral cycle in America) would avoid damaging the economy with ill-timed austerity now, and increase the effectiveness of bigger central-bank purchases of government bonds.
政治家必须承担促进经济增长的更加均匀的责任。只有政治家们才能解决对富裕经济体发展也有阻碍作用的结构性问题，比如美国的住房债务和欧洲部分国家的雇佣障碍。有些国家（显然包括美国）仍然还有财政刺激空间，只有这些国家的政治家才能保证财政刺激被用于补充货币政策。此外，只有政治家们才能同时实施刺激计划和进行较长期的养老金和税收改革，这样投资者才不会对未来主权债务偿还能力失去信任。在如今实施不合时宜的紧缩政策的情况下，这种结合（考虑到美国的选举周期，这种结合非常困难）可以避免损害到经济，并且可以增强央行增加购买政府债券所取得的效果。
It is heady stuff for central bankers to be seen, once again, as saviours. But they cannot do it alone. 央行银行家再次被视为救星令人激动。但是他们无法独立完成这项任务。
The problem of space pollution 太空污染问题
Junk science 除脏科学
Scientists are increasingly worried about the amount of debris orbiting the Earth 科学家们越来越担忧环地轨道上的那些太空垃圾
Aug 19th 2010
FEBRUARY 10th 2009 began like every other day in Iridium 33’s 11-year life.One of a constellation of 66 small satellites in orbit around the Earth, it spent its time whizzing through space, diligently shuttling signals to and from satellite phones. At 3pm a report suggested it might see some excitement: two hours later it would pass less than 600 metres from a defunct communications satellite called Cosmos 2251. It did. A lot less. The two craft collided and the result was hundreds of pieces of shrapnel more than 10cm across, and thus large enough to track by radar—and goodness knows how many that were not. This accident came two years after the deliberate destruction by the Chinese of their Fengyun-1C spacecraft in the test of an anti-satellite weapon. That created over 2,000 pieces of junk bigger than 10cm, and an estimated 35,000 pieces more than 1cm across. Together, these incidents increased the number of objects in orbit at an altitude of 700-1,000km by a third (see chart).
2009 年2月10日，这天的开始，就像“铱星33号”11岁生涯中的任何一天一样，毫无异兆。由66颗小铱星组成的铱星群在绕地轨道上的太空高速运行，孜孜不倦地在铱星和卫星电话间来回发送信号，铱星33号是其中的一颗，今天是它生命的终结时刻。下午三时，一份报道提示，铱星33号可能会出现某种令人激动的景象：两小时后，它将以少于 600 米的距离从一颗已报废的叫作“宇宙 2251号”的通信卫星旁掠过。它确实掠过了，距离却少了很多。结果是两星相撞，