Suddenly, nothing seems to be working.
The stock market, where millions of Americans were assured their nest-eggs would assure a secure retirement, is in free-fall. Some of the most venerable names on Wall Street have collapsed or are near death. A $700 billion “rescue” seems to have done little good. General Motors is running out of cash. Oil prices ran up to historic highs before dropping, but only because of a worldwide recession. Home ownership — “the American dream” — has toppled into foreclosures and falling values. And even during the most recent boom most Americans actually saw their wages stagnate or lose ground.
Experts for more than a year have struggled to give all these crises a name. A pullback? A recession? Another Great Depression? Thanks to Americans’ relative affluence and the legacy of government programs beginning with the New Deal, another Great Depression is unlikely. But we will be tested by an unprecedented convergence of forces, and most of them not in America’s favor.
I call it the Great Disruption.
Today’s financial meltdown has been more than 25 years in the making. The big drivers: deregulation, debt, and a hollowed out American economy. Somehow we persuaded ourselves that financial swindles and house building could substitute for a real economy that produced real things. That we could keep consuming beyond our means, increasingly borrowing from foreign creditors, including nations that do not mean us well. All of this was encouraged by some of the top economists and business thinkers, who constructed elaborate computer models and fetching philosophical arguments to make it all seem inevitable and good. No wonder they have been as baffled by the crisis and incoherent in addressing it as Herbert Hoover and his advisers in 1929. (And of course, like their historical soul-mates, they spent years denying the crisis even existed, denouncing critics as alarmists).
The Great Disruption is, at its heart, about unsustainability made real. The bad news is that more than financial unsustainability will collapse in the coming years. Global warming is already moving faster and more destructively than scientists had predicted. It will bring huge economic and social costs, and cause vast unrest, migrations and potential conflict. Oil worldwide is at or near peak; much oil will remain, but it will be costlier to find and refine, and is located in hostile places. Worldwide demand for oil is unsustainable. A similar scenario is in play for water.
At the same time, America is overstretched militarily and environmentally as well as financially. Not only that: As it turns out middling performance in science and math education, pulls back on funding for research and puts off investing in 21st century infrastructure, other nations are rising to challenge American pre-eminence. They, too, however, will be challenged by the Great Disruption. With hundreds of millions of poor, rural residents, a downturn in China could bring destabilization with global implications. China, too, is locked in the loop of the unsustainable: from its debt-for-stuff relationship with America to its planetary pollution footprint.
The generations now living will be challenged by the Great Disruption and its consequences no less than our forebears in the 1930s. One thing is clear: the worst mistake we could make is to spend trillions trying to maintain the unsustainable, to operate as if the next 30 years will be a repeat of the past 30. Our worst enemy may be unsustainable thinking.
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Jon Talton is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times. His latest book is the mystery novel Cactus Heart.
译文:
经济大震荡
突然间，一切事物似乎都停止了运行。
证券市场，那个曾经向数百万美国人许下能够全然而退的承诺之地，如今却深陷泥潭，不可自拔。一些昔日声名叱诧华尔街的巨头们，现却土崩瓦解，抑或堕入深渊。七千亿美元的“营救计划”看来也难以力挽狂澜了。通用汽车几近破产，油价之前还飙升至顶，却仅仅因为全球经济衰退而一落千丈。美国本土企业——“自由的美国梦”——也都自身难保，市价一跌再跌。就算是在最近一次的经济回潮中，多数美国人还是发现自己的腰带紧紧，腰包瘪瘪。
一年多的时间里，专家们试图给这次的经济危机冠名——经济下挫？经济萎缩？又一次经济大萧条？多亏美国人民相对的富足和“新政”后的政府措施，使得又一次经济大萧条得以避免。然而， 我们仍将面临一次前所未有的经济影响的挑战，这些影响中的多数是美国人民不愿看到的。
我称它为“经济大震荡”。
今天的经济衰退实际上从25年前就开始逐渐形成了。其主要驱动力是：贸易控制的解除、贷借外债、以及美国经济的挖空。然而，我们却极力说服自己，经济诈骗和建造大楼可以取代真实的经济效益。以至于我们不断消耗着自己无法承受的财富：持续增加的外债累积，有些外债甚至借于根本对我们不利的国家。所有的这些都是由顶尖的经济学家和商务人士教唆导致的，这些家伙建立起复杂的计算机模型，用哲学理论把它们吹得天花乱坠、无懈可击。毫无疑问，这些人已经像1929年的胡夫总统和他的倡议一样被经济危机质问得语无伦次了。（当然，这些家伙也和他们历史的心灵伴侣（胡夫总统）一样，历经多年仍否认经济危机的存在，认为危机只不过是危言耸听罢了。）
经济大震荡，从实质上来看，无疑是真实存在的。坏消息是，不止经济将在未来几年中毫无疑问地衰退。全球变暖也已经以超出科学家预测的速度蔓延、加剧。它将造成巨大的经济和社会耗费，同时也会引发大面积的动乱、移民以及潜在冲突。另外，全球油价已经接近或已达到了顶峰；许多原油还有待处理，用于勘探、提炼它们的经费会更大，而且原油还产自我们的敌对国家。全球对原油的需求及消耗是不可持续的，水资源也同样如此。
与此同时，美国的军事、环境以及经济都在超负荷运转。不仅如此：美国在科学和数学教育上的表现也平淡无奇，并开始抽回科研资金，21世纪国家基础建设的投入也在减少，这使得其他国家得以挑战美国的领先低位。当然，这些国家也要应对经济大震荡所带来的影响。由于数亿贫民和农村居民的存在，中国的经济衰退可能会随着全球的影响而带来起伏不定的变化。实际上，中国也身处一个不可持续的圆圈中：从它与美国的债务关系到其自身的环境污染证据都是如此。
这一代人的生活将受到经济大震荡的威胁，它所带来的结果也不会亚于1930年的经济大萧条给先人们带来的影响。有一件事是毋庸置疑的：我们能够犯的最糟糕的错误就是花费数兆美元去试图使这个不可持续的状态继续运作，这就好像今后的30年会成为过去30年翻版一样，令人沮丧。我们最残酷的敌人可能就是那不可持续发展的想法。
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Jon Talton 是《西雅图时报》的经济专栏作家。他最近的著作是一本神秘的小说《仙人掌之心》（Cactus Heart）。