8522 H11 悼词

In his spells of leisure time, when he had any, Paul Volcker liked to go fishing. Towering above a river in his jerkin and waders, fly cast, cigar firmly in mouth, was a good way to ruminate on big decisions. And he believed in rumination. “Procrastinate and flourish” was a favorite motto. Another, from George Washington, which his father had kept above his desk when he was city manager of Teaneck, New Jersey, was: “Do not suffer your good nature...to say yes when you ought to say no.” So when he was asked in 1974 to be president of the New York Fed, he went off on a fishing trip to chew it over. And in meetings and congressional-committee hearings later, as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987, he hid his bald head in smoke-clouds     , as if he was slowly weighing up what answers he could possibly give.

 

（但凡有闲暇时间）在少有的空闲时间里[YZ1]，保罗·沃尔克喜欢钓鱼。他会穿着复古皮马甲和高筒防水靴，叼着雪茄，站在[YZ2] 河边飞钓，对他来说，这是思考重大决策的好时机[ZYF(3] 。他喜欢深思熟虑（他相信沉思？相信沉思的力量/习惯深思熟虑），“越拖延越成功[YZ4] ” 事缓则圆 是他的座右铭。他的另一句座右铭是乔治·华盛顿的格言，“不要被你的善良本性摆布[YZ5] ......不要在应该拒绝的时候答应”（要有自己的原则），他父亲担任新泽西州蒂内克市市长时，曾把这句话挂在办公室里。因此，当他[6] 在1974年被邀请担任纽约联储主席时，他选择跑去钓鱼，好仔细斟酌是否答应。在1979年至1987年担任美联储主席期间，他在各种会议和国会委员会听证会上用吐出的烟圈[YZ7] 遮住自己的秃顶（隐藏在烟雾当中），似乎在慢慢权衡（掂量）自己可能给出的答案。

 

His salvo against America’s inflation in 1979, which slew the dragon for decades, therefore seemed unusually abrupt. The times certainly required it, with annual inflation then at 12%. And his measures, announced at an extraordinary press conference in the boardroom of the Federal Reserve building in Washington, were drastic. From then on the Fed would control not the price of money, by adjusting the interest rate, but its supply, leaving interest rates to be set by the market. He would force America into recession to cure people of their expectations that since prices would keep on rising, they must keep on spending. The downturn that followed—double-dip, because he briefly took his foot off the brake—brought soaring unemployment, reaching 10.8% in 1982, and a federal funds rate of over 20%, the highest in history, before both rates and prices eased. By 1983 inflation was less than 4%.

 

正是这样的性格使得他在1979年对美国通货膨胀发起的攻击显得异常突然(龙的对应表达：洪水猛兽/屠龙要加引号，指明是西方文化语境)，[8] [9] [YZ10] 此举抑制了美国接下来几十年的通胀。这无疑是时代的要求（不是简单的需求，而是迫在眉睫的问题），当时的年通胀率已然高达12%。他在美联储总部的会议室里举行了一次非同寻常的新闻发布会，宣布了激进的改革措施。从此之后，美联储将[YZ11] 不再通过调整利率来控制货币价格，而是控制货币供应量，让市场决定利率。这一调整[ZYF(12] 将[ZYF(13] 迫使美国陷入经济衰退，以修正（打破）人们以往“物价持续上涨，就必须继续消费”的预期。随后他短暂地放松了政策，经济有所回升[YZ14] ，但随后陷入二次萧条[YZ15] ，(接下来的第二次衰退)这次经济下滑导致失业率飙升，在1982年达到10.8%，联邦基金利率创下历史新高，超过20%。之后利率和物价都有所缓和，到 1983 年，通胀率已经低于 4%。

Yet he had been ruminating about the beast, and how to subdue it, since his Princeton student days. He was struck by Friedrich Hayek’s observation that the only way inflation cured unemployment was by disguising cuts in real wages. This linked inflation and deception indelibly in his head. Price instability destroyed trust, not only in the dollar but in government; and trust that officials would work for the common good, as his father had selflessly worked in Teaneck, was basic to the social contract. These feelings, more than (不仅仅来自他对货币的笃行)any strong commitment to monetarism, convinced him that gentle rate-raising would not be enough. And with inflation running at well over 5% for most of the 1970s, he arrived at the Fed ready to tighten until interest rates went through the roof.

然而，他从在普林斯顿求学时起，便一直在思索如何制服(如何驯服)通货膨胀这只猛兽。他被弗里德里希·哈耶克的观察深深震撼，哈耶克认为通胀解决失业问题的唯一方法在于掩盖实际工资的削减[YZ16] 。（通胀具有很强的欺骗性）这把通胀与欺骗之间的联系深深刻在了他的[17] 脑海中。价格波动破坏了人们对美元甚至对政府的信任。然而人们对政府官员为共同利益而工作的信任[18] ，正如他父亲在蒂内克市无私地工作一样[YZ19] ，是社会契约的基础（他的父亲就是一个很典型的例子）。这些情绪比任何对货币主义的信念都更能让他相信，温和的加息是不够的。20世纪70年代的大部分时间，通胀率都远高于5%，他来到美联储，准备收紧货币政策，哪怕[YZ20] 直到利率会一路飙升。

 

This caused fury and despair. As consumers stopped spending, home-building tanked and businesses closed down. Angry crowds and farmers on tractors besieged the Fed; the keys to cars that dealers could not sell were sent to him in the mail. Though he had doubts, and wore out his office carpet with anxious pacing, he kept at it: not just because expectations would leap back up if he relented, but because persistence was a virtue in itself. And he stayed on guard, so much so that during Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign he was ordered by Reagan himself not to dare raise interest rates before the election, even though, by then, he was not intending to.

这激起了大众的怒火和绝望。消费者停止消费，住房建设陷入困境，企业纷纷破产。愤怒的人群和开着拖拉机的农民包围了美联储；经销商把滞销汽车的钥匙寄到他的信箱里。他也有过疑虑，因为焦虑而常常在办公室里来回踱步，几乎快把地毯踱穿，但他仍然坚持了下来。不仅因为如果他退让了，人们的预期就会再次飙升，更因为坚持不懈本身便是一大美德。他昼警夕惕，连罗纳德·里根在1984年大选期间都亲自命令他不准在竞选前提高利率，虽然那时他也并未打算这么做。

 

Reagan’s men thought he wanted to hold the economy back, and tried to dislodge him. He opposed the president’s tax cut in 1981 unless it was matched by cuts in spending, but this was not political; deficits led to inflation. Besides, to a man who believed in frugality and discipline, they were also offensive. He was happy, even at the Fed, to wear crumpled suits, live in a students’ apartment block and fly coach back to New York and the family at weekends. (His salary had fallen by half when he went from the New York Fed to Washington, and even when he returned to Wall Street in 1987, making $1m a year, he kept his old pinchpenny ways.) As for discipline, he smoked ac Grenadier cigars not only because they were cheap, at a quarter each, but also because he had trained himself to like only what he could afford.

 

1981年，沃尔克反对里根提出的减税政策，除非同步削减政府开支。里根的总统顾问们认为他想要拖经济增长的后腿，因而试图把他从美联储主席的位置上拉下马。但他反对减税政策并非出于政治原因，而是因为财政赤字会导致通货膨胀。另外沃尔克本人节俭自律，很难接受财政赤字。即便在美联储主席的位置上，他对自己简朴的生活方式也感到满意：穿皱的西装、住学生公寓、周末飞经济舱回纽约与家人团聚。他从纽约联邦储备银行调到华盛顿的美联储总部，工资少了一半。即便在1987年回到华尔街后拿着100万美元的年薪，他仍然保持着节俭的习惯。提到自律，他抽的Grenadier雪茄每支只要25美分。但他这样做不仅因为便宜，而是训练自己只去喜欢那些买得起的东西。

 

Discipline was something he wanted banks to show, too. He battled to get them better regulated, though the weight of lobbying from the Washington swamp and, under Reagan, the pressure of the president’s advisers, made this hard. He mightily defended the Glass-Steagall Act which, since the 1930s, had prevented banks from trading in securities, but lost. His failure to clamp down on reckless lending, either at home or to foreign countries, showed up in a string of debt crises during and after his tenure, culminating in the Great Recession of 2008-09. At that low point he was called in again, the ever-reliable disciplinarian, to chair Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Although he much disliked having his name on things, it was pinned to the Volcker Rule of 2010, which barred banks from playing fast and loose with customer deposits just to boost their bottom lines.

 

沃尔克希望银行机构也能像他一样自律。他在任期内努力加强银行监管，而华盛顿政治游说集团的强烈反对，以及里根总统顾问团队的压力，让他的目标难以实现。他坚定地捍卫格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法案（Glass-Steagall Act），该法案自上世纪30年代以来阻止银行从事证券交易，但最终还是未能阻止该法案被废除。他没能阻止国内外的无节制借贷，在他任期内及卸任后，这些贷款演变为一系列债务危机，最终导致了2008年至2009年的金融危机。可靠、自律的沃尔克在这段经济低迷时期被召回担任奥巴马的经济复苏顾问委员会主席。2010年，以他的名字命名的“沃尔克规则”明令禁止银行为增加利润而随意使用客户的存款进行高风险投资，尽管他不喜欢以自己的名字命名事物。

 

Behind almost everything he did lay concern about trust in the dollar, which also meant trust in America as the leader of the free world. In his time as a Treasury official in the 1960s he had labored to maintain the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, which had built an international monetary system round pegging the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. When this began to founder he went along with a temporary suspension and then, in 1973, with decisive decoupling, but longed for some system of fixed exchange rates. Instead, the dollar was allowed to float. To him floating exchange rates were fundamentally dangerous, an open invitation to countries to manipulate their currencies—and so inherently unstable that they undermined the stability of governments, too.

 

他所做的几乎每件事情，都是担忧人们会对美元失去信心，而这意味着人们不再相信美国是自由世界的领导者。在20世纪60年代担任财政部官员期间，他一直努力维护1944年的布雷顿森林协议，该协议建立了一个将美元与黄金挂钩（每盎司黄金等同于35美元）的国际货币体系。当这一体系开始崩塌时，他同意暂时中止该体系，然后在1973年果断脱钩，但同时他也渴望建立某种固定汇率体系。事与愿违的是，美元汇率开始浮动。他认为浮动汇率从根本上是危险的，因为这会任由国家操纵其货币。而且浮动汇率本质上是不稳定的，会破坏政府的稳定。

 

 

It was probably his wartime adolescence that made him yearn for such a rules-based world. But in so far as he managed to impose rules himself, they were a success. After 1983 the economy mostly grew without inflation and political leaders, by and large, learned to defer to the central bank on monetary policy. What worried him more as the years passed was a growing lack of trust in and respect for institutions in general, from the Supreme Court to Congress to the presidency. America sometimes seemed to be in a mess in every direction. Every direction, that was, except the coast of Florida, where he might get a big plump tarpon on his line, or the sparkling, ever-beckoning salmon rivers of Maine.

 

或许因为他的青少年时期是在战争年代度过的，他渴望一个有章可循的世界。不过至少他推行的那些规则是成功的。1983年以后，经济增长，且基本上没有出现通货膨胀。大多政治领导人也学会了在货币政策上听从中央银行的意见。随着时间的推移，他更担忧的是人们对从最高法院、国会和总统等各种机构都越来越缺乏信任和尊重。在他看来，美国有时似乎在各个方面都是一团糟，但是这不包括佛罗里达州可以钓到肥美大鲢鱼的海岸或是缅因州波光粼粼、鲑鱼成群的河流。

 

 

Obituary: Paul Volcker died on December 8th

讣告：保罗·沃尔克于12月8日逝世

 

 [YZ1]意思是对的，但如果强调他很忙，可以单独成句：但凡有时间。

 [YZ2]如何体现towering?

 [ZYF(3]方法

 [YZ4]三思后行/事缓则圆

 [YZ5]不能按字面意思翻，很别扭。

指代不是很清楚 在这里不知道是保罗本人还是父亲

 [YZ7]Semantic fallacy

或许可以让句式更自然，不用使动句，说：“正是因为这样的性格，1979年他应对美国通货膨胀的大动作显得异常突然”

把”因此“增译为”因为他的性格“，我们组非常赞同！觉得这样逻辑更清楚了！

 [YZ10]很好的思考！这句话主要要和上一段衔接好。

 [YZ11]将来时？这里的would是什么意思？

 [ZYF(12]主语是什么？

 [ZYF(13]Again, would表示过去将来？

 [YZ14]原文有吗？理解有误。

 [YZ15]探底

 [YZ16]如何表述更清楚？

保罗的

或许可以说，"然而，人们需要相信政府官员为共同利益而工作..."

 [YZ19]如何处理插入语？

 [YZ20]Until?