It is the policy that dare not speak its name: the printing press. The time has come to employ this nuclear option on a grand scale. The alternative is likely to be a lost decade. The waste is more than unnecessary; it is cruel. Sadists seem to revel in that cruelty. Sane people should reject it. It is wrong, intellectually and morally.
这是一种不敢声张的政策：印钞。是时候大规模动用这种“核武器”了。不然结果可能会是“失去的十年”。浪费十年时光不仅没有必要，也十分残忍。虐待狂似乎乐在其中。神志清醒的人则应抵制这种做法。无论是从理性、还是从道德上讲，这样做都是错误的。
A recession looms close in the UK and other high-income countries, less than four years after the start of the last one. This would be a disaster for those who would lose their jobs or the young, who would find their hopes of work further postponed.
在英国和其它高收入国家，一场衰退正在眼前迫近，此时距上一轮衰退的发生还不到4年。对那些将要失业的人、以及那些就业希望变得更加渺茫的青年人来说，这将是一场灾难。
A big danger for the UK is a sharp fall in house prices, which would threaten the finances of households and banks. A new recession would also shatter fragile business confidence, which would reduce real business investment, still 20 per cent lower in early 2011 than before the crisis. That would further delay the structural shifts on which sustained recovery depend. With UK gross domestic product still 4 per cent below its pre-crisis peak, this depression would be longer and costlier, in terms of lost output, than the Great Depression of the 1930s, as I noted four weeks ago.
英国面临的一大危险是房价急剧下滑，这将威胁家庭和银行的财务状况。一场新的衰退也将击碎脆弱的企业信心，那将导致企业实际投资下降（2011年初，企业实际投资仍比危机前的水平低20%）。这种状况，将导致经济持续复苏所依赖的结构性改革进一步被拖延。当前，英国GDP仍比危机前的峰值水平低4%，因而，这场衰退将比上世纪30年代的“大萧条”更加漫长，代价也将更加高昂（从产出减少的角度而言）。我在一个月前就阐明了这一观点。