Editorial: American recession
Editorial: American recession
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社论：美国经济衰退
DOI：
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发表时间：
2002
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Jamie Peck
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Jamie Peck
在很多方面，衰退都是普通的经济事件。当然，在1973年后经济增长缓慢、劳动力市场持续不稳定的“黄金时代”，这些问题似乎变得更加平常了。在这段时间里，美国出现了至少五次经济衰退。那么，在当前经济放缓的情况下，没什么不寻常的了？也许吧，只不过这一次我们被引导去相信事情会有所不同。在有记录以来持续时间最长的经济扩张过程中，新自由主义的通货膨胀敌人似乎终于被消灭了，美国创造了一种著名的新增长模式——“新经济”。在原始计算能力的推动下，在无所不知的美联储（fed）的指导下，新的增长正是市场所要求的：它带来了稳定的价格、飙升的利润和不变的工资。在这个新经济时代，飙升的股市与强劲的经济增长、人们期待已久的生产率数据的改善和前所未有的就业增长相结合，在美国创造了一种政治和经济上不可战胜的感觉。Thomas Petzinger Jr在《华尔街日报》上发表的声明是经济繁荣高峰期的典型情绪：“商业周期——工业时代的产物——很可能成为一种时代错误”（1999,R31）。与此同时，即使像Alan Blinder和Janet Yellen（2001, 81）这样清醒的分析师也被感动地得出结论：20世纪90年代的“神话般的十年”代表了“美国经济史上最伟大的光辉时刻之一”。大谈上世纪90年代的经济成就，并不仅仅是那些从不断上涨的股价中获得物质利益的人的消遣。它代表了一个由经济政策制定者、管理大师、财经记者、商业分析师和顾问组成的有影响力的网络的共同愿景，他们中的许多人大声宣称，在这个智能技术、涡轮资本主义和知识驱动型增长的新时代，经济“规则”已经永久改变。至关重要的是，这种美国形式的增长是在坚定的新自由主义政策框架下实现的，即使随便与欧洲（大陆）或日本经济进行比较，也可以证明其明显的优越性。
Recessions are, in many ways, ordinary economic events. And certainly they seem to have become so much more ordinary in the post-1973 ‘leaden age’ of slow economic growth and persistent labourmarket instability, a period that has been punctuated by no less than five recessions in the United States. Nothing unusual in the present economic slowdown, then? Perhaps, except this time we had been led to believe that things would be different. In the course of the longest economic expansion on record, during which the neoliberal foe of inflation seemed finally to have been laid to rest, America famously had forged a new mode of growth – the ‘new economy’. Driven by raw computing power and steered by an all-knowing Federal Reserve, the new growth was just what the markets had ordered: it delivered stable prices, soaring profits and flat wages. In these new-economy times, a surging stock market had combined with strong economic growth, a long-awaited improvement in the productivity figures and an unprecedented expansion in jobs to create a sense of politicaleconomic invincibility in the United States. Typical of the mood at the peak of the boom was the declaration by Thomas Petzinger Jr in the Wall Street Journal that, ‘the business cycle – a creation of the Industrial Age – may well become an anachronism’ (1999, R31). Meanwhile, even sober analysts like Alan Blinder and Janet Yellen (2001, 81) were moved to conclude that the ‘fabulous decade’ of the 1990s represented ‘one of the great shining moments of American economic history’. Talking up the economic success of the 1990s was not just a pastime of those with material interests in continually rising stock prices. It represented a shared vision of an influential network of economic policy-makers, management gurus, financial journalists, business analysts and consultants, many of whom were proclaiming loudly that the economic ‘rules’ had changed permanently in this new age of smart technology, turbo capitalism and knowledge-driven growth. Crucially, this American form of growth had been delivered in the context of a resolutely neoliberal policy framework, the apparent superiority of which could be demonstrated even by casual comparisons with the (continental) European or Japanese economies.