油价上升，房价下降，好消息

The price of oil is soaring worldwide, a “crisis” that has dominated the past week’s front pages. Meanwhile, the price of housing is plummeting, a crisis that dominated the previous week’s front pages and in terms no less apocalyptic. Prices rising, prices falling, all bad news ... I wonder what good news would look like.
石油价格在全球范围内的飙升，这个“危机”主导了过去一周各大报纸的头版。同时，房价大跌，这个危机占据了前一周的头条，并且其措词不亚于启示录（意为末日降临，译者注）。价格上升，价格下降，全都是坏消息......我想知道好消息在那儿。

The government has been pressed for years to increase the cost of petrol and other fuels to cut consumption and help to save life on Earth. That is precisely what the market is now doing. Yet rather than applaud, ministers feel they must do the opposite and make petrol cheaper. The AA and others demand that the autumn increase in petrol duty should be postponed and millions of bank holiday motorists are told that Gordon Brown “feels your hurt”.
过去的一年中，政府不断提高成品油和其他燃料的价格，以此减少消耗，并帮助地球上的生灵（可能指削减污染气体排放的措施，译者注）。这恰好是现在的市场正在做的。但这次他们（政府）没有欢呼，部长感觉他们必须反其道而行之，让成品油降价。美国航空公司（AA？不知道是什么缩写，译者）和其他公司要求推迟原计划于秋季增加的汽油税，并且，数以百万计的假日自驾旅行者告诉戈登·布朗（英国现任首相，译者注）他们“很受伤”。

At the same time Brown is promising to do something about the converse “housing crisis”. Here there is only one thing he can do and that is to make houses more expensive by stoking demand. Having behaved for years as if rising houses prices were a disaster, he now does a U-turn and behaves as if falling ones were the very devil. He wants to “ease young people onto the housing ladder”, thus increasing demand and making houses more expensive.
与此同时，布朗还希望为解决“住房危机”出一把力。在这方面他只有一件事情可以做，那就是通过煽动需求让房子变的昂贵。在过去的许多年中，房价上涨被当成洪水猛兽，但他现在来了个一百八十度大转弯，又把房价下跌当成了大魔头。他想要“年轻人更容易走上楼梯”（指刺激年轻人买房），以此增加需求，并造成房价回升。

Amazing things are happening to prices round the world, largely as a result of a long period of sustained growth produced by ever freer trade. The price of wheat, corn and other food has been rising fast. The price of travel has been plummeting. Live entertainment and domestic labour have become more expensive while electronic gadgets are astonishingly cheap. Gold is more costly than ever.
全世界都正在发生这样的怪事，主要原因是过去的自由贸易造成产品长期持续的增长。小麦、玉米和其他食品的价格快速增长，旅行成本骤降；生活娱乐以及服务业劳工价格越来越昂贵，电子消费品却便宜得令人吃惊，此外，黄金的价格比起以往任何时期都贵。

The truth is that 99% of the population has no clue what these phenomena mean. It treats prices like earthquakes or tsunamis, nature acting beyond the power of mankind. Last year we were cruising along. Good old Brown, we said, good old Bank of England and Alan Greenspan and the world economy and western democracy. We can’t put a foot wrong.
事实上，百分之九十九的人对所发生的一切一头雾水。价格就像是地震或海啸，这些自然现象是超乎人力的。去年，大家曾经同舟共济。好人老布朗，英格兰老好人银行（英格兰银行，译者注）和格林斯潘和世界经济和西方的民主政府，大家都在说，我们不能走错路。

Then, bang, stuff happens. The screen is covered in static and none of the knobs work. A British public that can do algebraic equations, draw an amoeba and recite On Westminster Bridge is illiterate when it comes to economics. The conceptual basis on which modern democracy is constructed remains unknown territory, barely taught in any school. This ignorance extends to the top. We let ministers take economic decisions off the tops of their heads with no idea of consequence or impact. Imagine our letting them fly jumbo jets or perform heart surgery.
然后砰的一声——事情发生了。但是屏幕却被盖着，而且没有开关（怀疑这里用电视机来指代价格危机，译者注）。一名英国的公众人物，他可能会解方程，会画变形虫，还会把十四行诗《威斯敏斯特桥上》倒背如流，但当他谈到经济的时候却是一个白痴（这位白痴应该暗指热衷于给夫人写情诗的布朗首相，译者注）。在所有的学校里，现代民主的理念被广泛传播，巨细无遗，这也让蒙昧无知感染了上层社会。我们的部长大人们拍拍脑袋就可以作出某项经济决策，却对它的后果和影响一无所知。正如让他们开喷气飞机或做外科手术一样。

The boom/bust in oil and house prices is, quite simply, good news, whatever the tangential pain. It shows that the good ship Gaia, planet Earth, is traumatising its passengers into husbanding its scarce resources. Above all they must ration living space, for which the West has been appallingly greedy, and carbon fuel, of which the same is true.
非常简单，也许有点阵痛，但石油的繁荣和房价的萧条都是好消息。这表明我们的行星——地球，这艘盖亚之舟，正在遭受那些持有它的稀缺资源的乘客的伤害。首先，必须为所有的乘客分配生存空间，西方国家的贪婪已经骇人听闻，对于碳燃料来说也是如此。

The fall in house prices follows a classic inflationary bubble induced by cheap borrowing. Prices soared not (as the government claimed) because of an excess of “need”. Need is not an economic concept, only demand. Prices soared because the lowest interest rates in a generation made houses, however expensive on paper, cheap to buy. Millions who could not realistically afford to borrow did so and prices soared in consequence of their unsustainable debts. The bubble duly burst. House sales in Britain are down on a year ago by some 35%, prices by almost 4%.
伴随房价下跌，引发了一场典型的由廉价借贷造成的通货膨胀。价格飞涨（正如政府所声称）并不是因为过多的“需要（need）”，need并不是一个经济学概念，而是需求（demand）。价格飞涨的真正原因是拥有住房的那一代享受了最低的利率，然而他们滥用金钱，廉价的购买商品。数百万人实际上并没有借贷能力，最终由于价格飞涨使他们无法继续承担债务，泡沫适时的破裂了。一年前，英国的房屋销量就已经下降了约百分之三十五，而价格下跌了差不多百分之四。

The market has delivered in a matter of months what the Treasury and its pundit, Kate Barker, claimed that only flooding the market with “new land” could achieve, a surplus of housing supply for both sale and rent, signified by a fall in price. With no loss of green belt and no “eco-towns”, house-buying has been brought within the range of millions of new buyers, albeit under a more disciplined mortgage regime. Only builders and estate agents get hurt.
这个月，财政部和他们的专家都在围着市场转，凯特巴克（英国央行货币委员会成员）声称，只要让“新大陆”在市场上泛滥，为销售和出租提供足够的住房，凭借这个牛皮完全可以把价格吹下来。这样不会损坏绿化带，也没有“生态城镇”，房产交易已经带来了数以百万计的新购房者，尽管接下来会出台更加严厉的按揭制度，但受害的不过是建筑商和房产经济而已。

This would be good news all round were it not for the consequent crash in banking confidence. The banking system, inflated by British homeowning fetishism and dodgy American loans, has experienced a trauma. This is because a secondary failure of regulation impeded inter-bank lending and caused the bizarre collapse and extravagant rescue of Northern Rock.
这对所有人来说都是一个好消息，但对于信心业已崩溃的银行业来说并非如此。由于英国人对房屋产权的盲目追捧，以及狡猾的美国贷款，英国的银行系统已经受到了一次伤害。这是失败的跨行贷款规定带来的副产品，也导致了北石公司（Northern Rock）莫名其妙的崩溃，以及过分奢侈的营救。

The worship of central bankers over the past decade has been shown for what it was, a mere shift of blind faith from one group of fallible tunnel-visionaries to another. They have proved no better defenders of the public interest than their forebears during the great crash of 1929. The sickening spectacle of those responsible walking off with millions of pounds of other people’s money in bonuses has rightly put bankers akin to mafia racketeers in public esteem.
央行行长在过去十年中的祷告表演结束了，但这不过是把迷信的对象从一群来历不明的幻想家转移到其他人身上而已。比起一九二九年大萧条时期他们的先祖来，他们已经被证明没有资格捍卫公众利益。最令人作呕的一幕是那些人把别人银行里的红利大把大把地拿出来，在公众面前送给那些黑社会小混混。

The same laws of economics apply to the price of oil – and, for that matter, wheat. These are scarce resources. The fact that more people want them is why they are more expensive. When a Labour MP last week cried that petrol should be made cheaper by the government “because it is a necessity”, he might as well have said two plus two equals five. When will these fools be sent for compulsory re-education before they do more damage?
经济学法则对于石油和小麦的价格同样适用，它们都是稀缺资源。事实是，它们之所以昂贵是因为更多的人需要他们。上周，一位工党议员哀求政府下调成品油价格，“因为它是必需品”，其实他还不如说二加二等于五。在这些傻瓜闯更多的娄子之前，是不是要把他们送到小学里回回锅？

Average family spending on petrol is expected to increase by £250 this year and energy bills by another £400. That should concentrate minds. With oil being consumed in most of Asia still at America’s 1905 level per head, the market has cried halt to see where the world is really going. Crude oil traded at $10 a barrel 10 years ago. It is $135 today, with predictions (albeit by speculators) that it may go as high as $200 – or down to $60.
今年英国家庭平均在汽油上的支出大约上升了二百五十磅，此外其他的能源支出上升大约四百磅。值得注意的是，大多数亚洲国家的人均石油消费仅相当于美国1905年的水平，世界将走向何方，市场已经不忍心去看了。十年前，原油交易价格大约是十美元每桶，现在这个价格是一百三十五美元，有人预言（尽管语言来自投机者）未来可能最高达到两百美元每桶，最低也有六十美元每桶。

At this point in any trade cycle, economics tells us that market imperfection leads to speculative overshoot. Crude oil sits idle in Asian ports and outside refineries, waiting to benefit from further price hikes, in much the same way as dodgy mortgages are traded at the fringes of a bank’s balance sheet. Prices eventually fall for no other reason than that speculation has driven them too far up. Oil withheld from sale is released and price brings demand and supply back towards equilibrium.
经济学告诉我们，在这个时候，任何贸易周期里不完善的市场都会导致过度投机。原油在亚洲的许多港口和提炼工厂闲置着，等待从价格上涨中进一步受益，这与狡猾的按揭贷款交易打银行资产负债表擦边球的行为殊途同归。除非价格被投机者炒上天，否则石油价格没有下跌的理由。只有解除石油惜售，价格才会促使供需恢复平衡。

As with houses, these wild gyrations in price are partly the result of government intervention. Britain’s political encouragement of cheap housing and cheap travel in the 1990s and 2000s stimulated demand, flooded the market with buyers and duly drove up price.
房屋也是如此，价格的摇摆部分是因为政府干预的结果。英国的政客们在1990和2000年代大力鼓吹廉价的房屋和旅行以刺激需求，大批买家和政府对价格的干预充斥市场。

The Major and Blair governments promoted sprawling car-reliant estates on the land-lavish pattern of Milton Keynes. A network of distribution warehouses and fleets of lightly taxed (half-empty) lorries promoted a carbon-rich retail sector. Cheap air fares induced families to take two or three foreign holidays a year, holidays that BAA and BA sold to gullible ministers as an “urgent need”.
梅杰和布莱尔两届政府利用滥用土地的米尔顿凯恩斯模式大力推动汽车依赖产业的发展，物流网络和对运输的低廉税收促进了富碳零售部门的繁荣。廉价的机票引诱普通家庭每年进行两到三次海外度假，每逢假日英国航空公司（BAA）和英国机场管理局（BA）都向头脑发昏的部长们兜售“需求强劲”（urgent need）。

This was all stupid, yet it continues. Hazel Blears’s latest capitulation to the construction lobby has her building another generation of gas-guzzling rural new towns rather than insist on the “densification” of existing settlements. Ruth Kelly wants to continue the explosion in leisure travel by indulging it with new airports and untaxed fuel. She dare not admit that travel must one day revert to being a luxury.
尽管还在延续，但这一切非常愚蠢。黑斯尔·布莱尔斯（英国社区与地方事务大臣）最近表示要建造新一代高耗能的农业新城镇，而不是坚持“巩固”已经存在的定居点。鲁斯·凯利（英国交通大臣）打算用新机场和免税的燃料持续引爆休闲旅游的需求。她不敢承认，旅行最终有一天必须恢复成为一种奢侈品。

A lesson here is offered by the recent experience of wheat prices, caused by a price hysteria in March. The French demanded that the European Union throw more subsidy at their farmers – confirming my view that a French economist is a contradiction in terms. As it is, the market has proved self-correcting. Stocks have been released, marginal land has entered use and price has fallen (by as much as a third in two months). We will doubtless soon hear of another “crisis” as plummeting wheat prices impoverish African farmers.
最近带给我们经验的一个教训是在三月份，小麦歇斯底里的价格。法国要求欧盟给予他们的农民更多补贴——一位法国经济学家的反驳证实了我的观点。如他所说，市场被证明是可以自调节的。股票已经发行，边缘的土地已经被开垦，并且价格也已下跌（差不多在两个月里跌去三分之一）。无疑，我们很快可以听说另外一个由于小麦价格骤降导致非洲农夫破产的危机。

It is idiotic to wail crisis whenever a boom is inflating or whenever it is bursting. Price always tends to bring supply and demand into equilibrium, if left free to do so within an intelligent regulatory framework. Subtleties and complications surround this principle but, for starters, “That is all you know, and all ye need to know,” said the poet.
无论什么时候，繁荣无限膨胀，最终泡沫都会爆裂，白痴才会为这样的“危机”嚎啕大哭。如果留有一定的空间，在内部做出明智的调整，那么价格总会倾向于造成供求之间的平衡。这一原则自有其复杂微妙之处，但是首先，就像诗人说的那样，“这就是所有你知道的，以及你必须知道的”。

You can abuse the market, distort it, subsidise it or tax it, but it is rooted in human nature and will prove your master in the end. Far better to add economics to the core curriculum in every school and make it a qualification for any who would dare to embark on the profession of government.
你可以糟蹋市场，歪曲它，给它发津贴或对它课税，但它根源于人类的天性，并最终证明你有多大能耐。更好的方法是把经济学作为每所学校的核心课程来教授，并且对于任何胆敢从政的人来说，这应该作为一个基本的资格。

simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk
作者的信箱：simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk