THESPIAN friends perform “The Seagull” in their garden. Only minutes into the first act, a lovely young woman named Masha, sick of hearing the lovesick schoolteacher Medvedenko whine about his penury, blurts out, “All you ever do is talk and talk about money.” That’s when it dawns on me: I’m sick of the subject, too. For the rest of Act I, I find myself ruminating about the glut of financial data that daily clogs the news: Libor and MF Global Holdings; HSBC’s money-laundering of Mexican drug-cartel money; “the London Whale” whose huge trades cost J.P. Morgan Chase billions; leveraged buyouts and mortgage-backed securities and derivatives and stimulus packages, Bain Capital and the tottering euro and the Greek bailout. Saul Bellow referred to this quotidian fretting about world affairs as “crisis chatter.” Today’s crises are all about what is euphemistically called “the financial services industry” — that is to say, they’re all about money.
戏剧演员朋友在他们的花园里表演《海鸥》(The Seagull)。在第一幕开始仅几分钟后，年轻可爱的玛莎(Masha)女士对爱慕她的教师梅德威丹科(Medvedenko)不停抱怨自己的贫穷厌烦至极，于是脱口而出，“你所做的从来都只是对金钱喋喋不休。”在那一瞬间，我明白了：我也很讨厌这个主题。在第一幕剩下的时间里，我发现自己陷入了对大量金融数据的沉思当中，它们充斥着每天的新闻报道：伦敦银行间同业拆借利率(Libor)和全球曼氏金融(MF Global Holdings)；汇丰银行(HSBC)为墨西哥贩毒团伙洗钱；“伦敦鲸”(London Whale)的巨额违规交易致使摩根大通(JP Morgan Chase)损失数十亿美元；杠杆收购、抵押贷款担保证券、衍生品、刺激方案、贝恩资本(Bain Capital)、举步维艰的欧元以及希腊救援。索尔·贝娄(Saul Bellow)把人们对这些世界事务的日常焦虑称作“危机唠叨”。当今的危机都涉及所谓的“金融服务业”——也就是说，都是和金钱有关的。
Call it Wall Street porn. Not only do we know more than most of us wish to know about how the rich live — we even know, thanks to the deep-digging efforts of the business reporters over at Bloomberg, how much they have. But there is such a thing as knowing too much: Did Larry Ellison buy a Hawaiian island for $600 million? And did that include the hotels? Is George Soros’s net worth $18 billion? $20 billion? (Anyway, why begrudge him? He’s probably given half of it away.) And when we talk about the 99 percent who aren’t rich, shouldn’t that leave just 1 percent who are? Then why are we always hearing about the 0.1 percent and the .01 percent? Valiant fact-checkers are off the hook on this one: my point is that the exact numbers don’t matter.
就把它叫做华尔街色情吧。关于富人是怎么生活的，我们知道的比大多数人愿意知道的更多，而且，多亏了彭博通讯社(Bloomberg)的商业记者深度挖掘的努力，我们甚至还知道他们身价几何。然而，知道太多也是问题：拉里·埃里森(Larry Ellison)真的花6亿美元在夏威夷买了一座岛吗？酒店包括在内吗？乔治·索罗斯(George Soros)的净资产是180亿美元还是200亿美元？（不管怎样，为什么要嫉妒他呢？他十有八九已经把一半都捐出去了。）当我们谈论占人口99%的穷人时，难道这不是意味着剩余的1%是富人吗？既然如此，我们为什么一直听到0.1%甚至0.01%的说法呢？对事实较真的勇士们在这一点上不用太纠结：我想说的是，精确的数字并不重要。
We’re all aware of the vast and still growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, we all know the global economy is a mess. But do we have to hear about it every waking minute of every day? We’re in trouble when the earnestly liberal NPR begins its morning broadcast with a program called “Planet Money.”
我们都很清楚，极富人群和普罗大众之间存在巨大的差距，而且这种差距还在扩大。我们也都知道，全球经济一片混乱。但我们因此就得在醒着的每时每刻听到这一切吗？当认真崇尚自由主义的全国公共广播电台(NPR)以《金钱星球》(Planet Money)节目开始早间播报时，我们显然有麻烦。
I can’t even go for a bike ride without being reminded that we all share it now. My admirable neighbor Nathan, who makes a living doing odd jobs and is a militant nonparticipant in the global economy, has staked a cardboard poster on his lawn that reads, in blue letters, We are the 99 percent.
就连骑车出门时，我都会得到大家都在关心财经事务的提醒。可敬的纳森(Nathan)是我的邻居，以打零工为生。他是个坚决不参与全球经济的人。他在自己的草坪上用木桩支起了一块纸板做的海报，上面写着蓝色的字：我们属于那99%。
Why is it that the richer the rich get, the more their doings preoccupy the rest of us? What happened to the tacit social prohibition against talking about money? In part, it’s the fault of the media (as usual). “Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out”: King Lear’s shrewd assessment of the human tendency to keep score is especially suited to our own historical moment, when everything is done in public. I didn’t ask for a peek at Warren Buffett’s portfolio: in order not to know how much preferred stock he acquired in Goldman Sachs I would have to confine my periodical reading to National Geographic.
为什么富人越是有钱，他们的举动就越是让我们这些人念念不忘？不讨论金钱的社会潜规则到哪里去了？这部分是媒体的错（一般都是这样）。“谁输了谁赢了；谁进了圈内，谁出局了”，李尔王(King Lear)对人类倾向于计分的精辟评估，尤其适合我们所处的所有事情都在公开场合进行的时代。我没有要求窥视沃伦·巴菲特(Warren Buffett)的资产组合；要避免知道他购进了多少高盛(Goldman Sachs)优先股，我只能把定期阅读的对象限制在《国家地理》(National Geographic)杂志上。
The problem is: I need to know about money. Like most everyone else in the middle class, I’m scared. Reverberations from the largely bank-induced financial debacle of 2008 still ripple outward, lapping at our retirement plans and hard-earned savings. It never occurred to me that I would have to learn about I-bonds and TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities) at an age when I would have thought I was finally safe from the tortures of high school math — worse, would have to learn higher math just to avoid getting swallowed by the London Whale and his pod. I would love to catch up on the first four seasons of “Breaking Bad”; instead I sit up late at night with a calculator trying to figure out if I have enough for retirement.
问题是：我需要了解金钱。像中产阶级的大多数其他人一样，我很恐惧。主要由银行引发的2008年金融危机的冲击波仍在产生涟漪效应，打击着我们的退休计划和辛苦赚来的积蓄。在我这个年纪，我本以为自己终于摆脱了高中数学的折磨，没想到我还是要搞清楚通胀挂钩债券（Inflation-linked bonds，简称I-bonds)和通胀保值债券（Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities，简称TIPS）是怎么回事。更糟糕的是，为了避免被“伦敦鲸”及其同伙吞噬，我还得学习高等数学。我很想追着看完《绝命毒师》(Breaking Bad)的前四季，但到头来不得不在计算器的陪伴下，熬夜试图计算出我是不是攒够了钱，可以退休了。
In his ominously titled book, “Are We Rome?” Cullen Murphy noted that the senatorial aristocracy of the ancient world — “by one estimate two thousandths of one percent of the population” — was fine with a lopsided household income. “The very tiny Roman elite accepted the chasm between themselves and everyone else as the divinely ordained natural order and an affirmation of their own virtue.” I suspect that few in our own tiny elite feel that way. “Most Americans don’t want our society to be like this, and we remain at heart a middle-class nation, ” Mr. Murphy suggests.
卡伦·墨菲(Cullen Murphy)在书名有点不祥的《我们是罗马吗？》(Are We Rome?)一书中提出，古罗马的参议院贵族——“据估计约占总人口十万分之二”——不介意家庭收入不均衡。“人数甚少的罗马精英阶层接受他们同其他所有人之间的鸿沟，认为那是神授的自然秩序，是对他们的美德的肯定。”我猜，我们的少数精英几乎没人这么想吧。“大多数美国人不希望我们的社会成为那样，在内心里我们仍然是一个中产阶级国家，”墨菲提出。
So why don’t we do something about it — close a few tax loopholes, regulate the banks — instead of gazing at the glossy real estate brochures that come in the mail? Is it possible that our fascination with the rich reflects some flaw in the nation’s value structure that cuts across class lines? Does subscribing to Architectural Digest make us unwittingly collusive in the perpetuation of wealth inequity? Is the middle class enabling the upper class?
那么我们为什么不做点什么，比如，堵上些个税收漏洞，对银行实行监管，而不是盯着邮寄过来的精美的房地产宣传册呢？我们对富人的迷恋，有没有可能反映美国的价值结构存在某种跨越阶级界线的缺陷？订阅《建筑文摘》(Architectural Digest)会让我们在不经意间成为加剧财富不平等的同谋吗？是中产阶级造就了上层阶级吗？
None of this has been lost on the great Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky, whose new book, “How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life, ” co-written with his son Edward, identifies an “ethic of acquisitiveness” in the air. To explain this trend, the Skidelskys invoke the phenomenon of what sociologists refer to as “bandwagon goods” — “goods that are desired because others already have them.” This insatiable, competition-fueled appetite for stuff we don’t need shackles us to “continuous, objectless wealth-creation — something that did not exist in earlier times, and that remains, in some sense, peculiar to capitalism.”
这些都没有被伟大的凯恩斯(Keynes)传记作者罗伯特·斯基德尔斯基(Robert Skidelsky)错过。他与其子爱德华(Edward)合著的新书《多少才算够？：金钱与美好生活》(How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life)称，当下存在一种“占有欲伦理”。为了解释这种趋势，斯基德尔斯基父子提到被社会学家称为“潮流商品”的现象——“某些商品被人渴求，因为其他人已经拥有它们了”。这种永无满足的、攀比导致的对我们不需要的物品的渴求，让我们背上“持续、没有目标地创造财富”的枷锁，“这在先前的时代是不存在的，而且在某种意义上来说，仍是资本主义所特有的”。
As I read their book, I was reminded of “The Gift, ” Lewis Hyde’s classic study of exchange systems in so-called “primitive” cultures. Published in 1983, this haunting anthropological elegy to lost civilizations was prescient. Mr. Hyde made the case that advanced capitalist nations, blinded by “market triumphalism, ” had lost any sense of the rituals and beliefs that once defined us as a society, the institutions that bound us together: “We’ve witnessed the steady conversion into private property of the art and ideas that earlier generations thought belonged to their cultural commons, and we’ve seen the commodification of things that a few years ago would have seemed beyond the reach of any market.” We now inhabited a world in which everything was for sale.
我在读他们这本书时，想起了刘易斯·海德(Lewis Hyde)的《礼物》(The Gift)。那是他对所谓的“原始”文化中的交换制度的经典研究。该书出版于1983年，是对逝去的文明的挽歌，令人难以忘怀，同时也颇有预见性。海德解释说，在“市场必胜论”的蒙蔽下，先进的资本主义国家丧失了对曾经界定人类社会的仪式和信仰（把人类组织起来的制度）的任何感知，“我们已经见证了，被前几代人视为文化上共有的艺术和创意，被逐渐转换成了私有财产，我们也看到了，那些在几年前似乎在任何市场上都买不到的东西变成了大宗商品。”如今，我们生活在一个任何东西都可以买到的世界。
Nearly three decades later, Michael Sandel, a professor of government at Harvard, has confirmed Mr. Hyde’s premonitions in his new book, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.” Mr. Sandel’s argument is that in our zeal for growth we have “monetized” goods and services — education, medical care, access to national parks, clean air, even the right to immigrate — once available free. We’ve made the country itself a corporation. (In a recent speech, Mitt Romney, apparently referring to the United States, promised “to make sure this company deals with its challenges.”)
近30年后，哈佛大学(Harvard University)政府系教授迈克尔·桑德尔(Michael Sandel)在他的新书《千金难买——市场的道德限度》(What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets)中证实了海德的预感。桑德尔的论据是，痴迷于增长的我们，已经把一度可以免费得到的商品和服务，比如教育、医疗、访问国家公园的权利、清洁空气乃至移民的权利，都“货币化”了。我们让这个国家本身变成了一个企业。（在最近的一次演讲中，米特·罗姆尼[Mitt Romney]在明显谈论美国的时候承诺“要确保这家企业应对各项挑战。”）
“The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed, ” Mr. Sandel observes. “It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.” Gone is the time when art was appreciated as art, not as an investment; when a nest egg was for security, not to be shown off like a Fabergé; when politics was about issues, not war chests. The idea of producing something for fun or pleasure or the creation of beauty has become obsolete.
“过去30年呈现的最重大变化不是贪婪的增加，”桑德尔观察到。“而是市场和市场价值向它们原本不应插足的人生领域扩张。”曾经，艺术只是被作为艺术来欣赏，而非一种投资；储蓄是为了确保安全，而不是被拿去当做 Fabergé复活节彩蛋珠宝来炫耀；政治是关于议题，而非竞选资金的比拼；但这样的时代已经过去了。为了好玩、快乐或只是为了创造美而制作什么东西的想法已经过时了。
In a society in which money is the measure of all things, it becomes hard to assess your achievements in other terms. The breakdown of community — of church and neighborhood and work that provides a firm identify — has forced us to find alternative ways of determining our place in the social order. It makes no more sense to ask the derivatives salesman to monitor himself, to pull back from the pursuit of maximum profit, than to ask A-Rod to go easy on the home runs. It’s their job; it’s what they do.
在一个金钱是一切事物衡量指标的社会，用其他尺度来评估你的成就变得很难。社区（教堂、街坊以及带来稳定身份认同的工作）的解体，迫使我们去寻找其他方式来界定我们在社会秩序中的位置。让衍生品销售员自我监督、放弃追求最大利益，就和让亚历山大·罗德里奎兹（Alex Rodriguez，简称A-Rod）在全垒打的时候放松些一样不切实际。这是他们的工作，他们就是做这个的。
The same week that I saw “The Seagull, ” I attended a performance of “The Magic Flute” in a small, 19th-century town hall that seated 90 (and, I’m glad to say, was filled to capacity). Tickets were $30. I’ve seen Mozart’s joyous opera many times, and this was the best by far. The singers were superb; the mini-orchestra played with gusto; the makeshift costumes were touchingly inventive. How did the cast members get paid? Or did they? The production was instructive: there was a soprano from a local conservatory, an itinerant freelance tenor, a baritone working toward his M.A. in musicology. Some of the staff worked pro bono (as did the actors in our local production of “The Seagull, ” who donated two weeks of their summer vacation in return for free meals and a sojourn in the country). It was an exhilarating event. You couldn’t monetize it; you couldn’t commodify it; you couldn’t load it up on your bandwagon of goods. You could only experience it.
就在我观看《海鸥》的同一周，我还在一个可以容纳90名观众的19世纪小型市政厅（而且，我很乐意告诉大家，里面座无虚席）里观看了《魔笛》(The Magic Flute)的演出。演出票价是30美元。我看过这部充满欢快的莫扎特(Mozart)歌剧很多遍，但这场演出绝对是最棒的。歌手非常出色；小交响乐团的演奏充满热情；临时的服装也独出心裁，令人印象深刻。那么，这些演员会获得什么样的报酬呢？他们有报酬吗？实际上这场演出的制作非常具有启发意义：这个团队里有一位来自当地音乐学校的女高音、一位流动的自由职业男高音，以及一位正在攻读音乐学硕士学位的男中音。工作人员中，有一部分人是无偿工作的（就和在当地演出《海鸥》的那些演员一样，他们奉献了两周暑假时间，换取免费餐饮和乡间的短暂停留）。这是一件令人振奋的事情，你无法将它货币化、商品化，你也无法把它变成潮流商品。你只能体验它。
Money is a kind of poetry, declared Wallace Stevens, who worked for a Hartford insurance company and knew what he was talking about. But isn’t it also true that poetry is a kind of money?
曾供职于哈特福德一家保险公司的华莱士·史蒂文斯(Wallace Stevens)宣称货币是一种诗歌。作为一名诗人，他知道自己说的是什么。然而，诗歌难道不也是一种货币吗？
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