Schumpeter，Suspicious minds,The economic consequences of Americans’ distrust

　　AMERICA is a grumpy and confused place. For an overarching explanation of what has gone wrong, a decline in trust is a good place to start. Trust can be defined as the expectation that other people, or organizations, will act in ways that are fair to you. In the White House and beyond there is precious little of it about. People increasingly view institutions as corrupt, strangers as suspicious, rivals as illegitimate and facts as negotiable.

　　美國是一個暴躁而又迷茫的地方。要整體把握到底什么地方出了問題，我們不妨從信任度的下降入手。信任可以定義為“預(yù)期其他人或組織將公平地對待自己”。在白宮內(nèi)外，這一點彌足珍貴。人們越來越認(rèn)為機構(gòu)腐敗，陌生人可疑，對手非法，而事實也可以商量。

　　The share of Americans who say “most people can be trusted” fell from 44% in 1976 to 32% in 2016, according to a survey from the University of Chicago. In a new book, “The Retreat of Western Liberalism”, Edward Luce, a commentator for the Financial Times in Washington, argues that distrust will contribute to America’s decline and eventually, even, to autocracy. Lack of faith is chewed over in boardrooms, too. In his latest letter to shareholders, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s boss, describes trust as America’s “secret sauce” and worries that the bottle is running dry.

　　根據(jù)芝加哥大學(xué)的一項調(diào)查，認(rèn)為“大多數(shù)人可以信任”的美國人比例從1976年的44%下降到2016年的32%�！督鹑跁r報》駐華盛頓評論員愛德華·盧斯(Edward Luce)在新書《西方自由主義的退卻》(The Retreat of Western Liberalism)中指出，不信任將加速美國的衰落，甚至最終導(dǎo)致獨裁。公司董事會也在琢磨缺乏信任的問題。摩根大通的老板杰米·戴蒙(Jamie Dimon)在最近給股東的信中將信任稱為美國的“秘方”，并擔(dān)心裝秘方的瓶子快要空了。

　　The tricky bit is reconciling this distrust with the rosy business outlook. The S&P 500 index is near an all-time high, even though many economists say that distrust is toxic for prosperity because transactions become dearer and riskier. An OECD study of 30 economies shows that those with low levels of trust, such as Turkey and Mexico, are far poorer. Three scholars, Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales, have shown that pairs of countries (such as Britain and France) whose populations say they distrust each other, have less bilateral trade and investment.

　　這種不信任與美妙的商業(yè)前景放在一起似乎很不協(xié)調(diào)。標(biāo)準(zhǔn)普爾500指數(shù)目前接近歷史高點——盡管許多經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家認(rèn)為不信任會扼殺繁榮，因為交易的成本會更高，風(fēng)險會更大。經(jīng)合組織對30個經(jīng)濟(jì)體的研究表明，信任水平較低的國家，比如土耳其和墨西哥等，要比美國貧窮得多。路易吉·圭索(Luigi Guiso)、佩奧拉·薩皮恩扎(Paola Sapienza)和路易吉·津加雷斯(Luigi Zingales)等三位學(xué)者證明，如果兩個國家的民眾對彼此都表示不信任，它們之間的雙邊貿(mào)易和投資也較少，比如英國和法國。

　　America’s mistrust outbreak can be split into two parts: what consumers think, and what firms think. The share of folk who have “l(fā)ittle or no confidence” in big business has risen from 26% in 1976 to 39% in June, according to Gallup. For banks it has risen from 10% in 1979 to 28% today. Over decades big firms have broken implicit promises to their employees, such as providing a job for life and paying generous pensions. That has probably soured the public’s view. And the financial crisis of 2007-08 blew a giant hole in the reputation of big business and finance.

　　不信任在美國的爆發(fā)可以分為兩部分：消費者的想法和企業(yè)的想法。根據(jù)蓋洛普的數(shù)據(jù)，對大企業(yè)“幾乎或完全不信任”者的比例從1976年的26%上升到了今年6月份的39%。對于銀行，這一比例則從1979年的10%上升到今天的28%。幾十年來，大公司已經(jīng)打破了對員工的隱性承諾，如提供終身職位和慷慨的養(yǎng)老金。這可能已令公眾心懷怨恨。2007至2008年的金融危機則讓大企業(yè)和金融業(yè)名譽掃地。

　　Yet despite their customers’ distaste, big firms mint huge profits. One explanation is declining competition over the past 20 years. If markets are working, firms that are perceived to behave badly lose market share. In concentrated industries this discipline is lacking. Two recent scandals in oligopolistic bits of the economy illustrate the point. Wells Fargo, a bank, created millions of fake accounts, yet in the three months to June its year-on-year profits rose by 5%. In April a United Airlines passenger was assaulted, causing an outcry. Its underlying profits later rose by 5%, too. In such industries Americans are inured to mistreatment.

　　然而，盡管不受消費者認(rèn)同，大公司還是創(chuàng)造了巨大的利潤。一個解釋是過去20年來競爭越來越少。如果市場正常發(fā)揮作用，公眾眼中行為不良的公司將失去市場份額。這個規(guī)律不適用于集中的行業(yè)。最近在寡頭壟斷行業(yè)中發(fā)生的兩樁丑聞就說明了這一點。富國銀行虛開了數(shù)百萬個賬戶，但在截至6月份的三個月中，其利潤同比增長了5%。4月一名美聯(lián)航乘客遭到毆打，引發(fā)強烈抗議。然而自此之后公司的潛在利潤上漲了5%。在這樣的行業(yè)里，美國人已經(jīng)逆來順受慣了。

　　Trust between firms, and between firms and investors, is more resilient, but there is evidence of greater wariness. Banks charge corporate borrowers a spread of 2.6 percentage points above the federal-funds rate, compared with 2.0 points in the 20 years before the crisis. The equity-risk premium, or the annual excess return that investors demand to hold shares rather than bonds, is 5.03 points, against a pre-crisis average of 3.45 points, notes Aswath Damodaran of the Stern School of Business at NYU.

　　公司之間以及公司與投資者之間的信任更為堅挺，但證據(jù)表明它們也變得更加謹(jǐn)慎了。銀行向貸款企業(yè)收取高于聯(lián)邦基金利率2.6個百分點的差價，而危機前20年這個差價只有2.0個百分點。紐約大學(xué)斯特恩商學(xué)院的阿斯沃斯·達(dá)摩達(dá)蘭(Aswath Damodaran)指出，股票風(fēng)險溢價(投資者持有股票而非債券時要求的年度超額收益)為5.03個百分點，而危機前的平均水平為3.45個百分點。

　　The median firm in the S&P 500 holds 62 cents of cash on its balance-sheet per dollar of gross operating profit, up from 45 cents in 2006 (this yardstick excludes America’s giant technology companies, which hoard money). In a sign that more corporate deals end in tears, litigation costs are rising. The revenues of legal firms rose by 103% in 1997-2012, according to the Census Bureau, more quickly than nominal GDP growth, of 85%. And spending on corporate lobbying, a signal that firms think politicians are corruptible, has risen faster than GDP, too.

　　標(biāo)準(zhǔn)普爾500指數(shù)的中位數(shù)公司每產(chǎn)生1美元毛營業(yè)利潤，就會在資產(chǎn)負(fù)債表上持有62美分的現(xiàn)金，高于2006年的45美分(這個標(biāo)準(zhǔn)不包括囤積現(xiàn)金的美國技術(shù)巨頭)。面對越來越多的企業(yè)交易慘淡收場的跡象，訴訟費用正在上升。根據(jù)美國人口調(diào)查局的統(tǒng)計，1997至2012年律所收入增長了103%，高于85%的名義GDP增長率。企業(yè)游說支出(體現(xiàn)企業(yè)認(rèn)為政客可收買的程度)也比GDP增長更快。

　　In the long term it is possible that firms could become as mistrustful as consumers. Though individual companies can gain from cronyism, overall confidence will fall if there is sustained political meddling in the courts and regulatory system. And companies as well as people can be trapped into doing business with monopolies that are inept or shifty. In 2016 Facebook said that for the past two years it had overstated how long its users watched videos for, but advertisers have little choice but to stick with the social-media firm. Its profits rose by 71% in the latest quarter.

　　長此以往，企業(yè)有可能變得和消費者一樣多疑。雖然個別公司可以從裙帶主義中獲益，但如果法院和監(jiān)管體系中持續(xù)存在政治干預(yù)，整體信心會下降。公司以及人們都可能不得不和無能或是詭詐的壟斷公司打交道。2016年，F(xiàn)acebook稱它在過去兩年中夸大了用戶觀看視頻的時間，但廣告客戶別無選擇，只能繼續(xù)使用這家社交媒體公司。最近一季度它的利潤增長了71%。

　　If the bleak predictions of observers such as Mr Luce come true, how might America Inc adjust? One guide is the work of Ronald Coase, an economist who theorized that the boundary of a firm is set according to whether an activity is best done in-house or can be outsourced to the market. If counterparties are less reliable, and contracts expensive to enforce, firms will become “vertically integrated”, bringing their supply chain in-house.

　　如果盧斯等觀察家的晦暗預(yù)測成真，美國公司可能如何做出調(diào)整呢?一個指導(dǎo)方針是經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家羅納德·科斯(Ronald Coase)的研究成果，他提出了一個理論，稱企業(yè)的邊界取決于某項活動是該內(nèi)部完成還是外包給市場。如果交易對手不再可靠，執(zhí)行合同的費用高昂，企業(yè)將“垂直一體化”，將供應(yīng)鏈?zhǔn)者M(jìn)內(nèi)部。

　　If there is deeper decay of America’s legal system and greater political corruption, then firms would go further and spread “horizontally” too, expanding into new industries where their political contacts, and access to favors and capital can be used. This is how business works in much of the emerging world.

　　如果美國的法律體系腐爛更深，政治腐敗更甚，企業(yè)也會進(jìn)一步“橫向拓展”，進(jìn)入新的行業(yè)以利用其政治聯(lián)系和可以獲得的照顧和資本。這正是大部分新興市場的經(jīng)營方式。

　　Gotta have faith 須有信心

　　America is nowhere near such an outcome, at least not yet. Still, a concerted effort to shore up trust between consumers and firms, and between firms, would be healthy. If you subscribe to Silicon Valley’s Utopianism, technology can fill the gap, manufacturing mutual faith where none existed before. Uber’s system of scoring drivers and passengers allows strangers to have confidence in each other. E-commerce sites such as eBay and Alibaba work by creating networks of trust between merchants and customers.

　　美國還遠(yuǎn)沒到這一步，至少現(xiàn)在還沒有。然而，通過共同的努力來增強消費者與企業(yè)之間以及企業(yè)和企業(yè)之間的信任會大有好處。如果您認(rèn)同硅谷的烏托邦主義，那么技術(shù)可以彌補缺失，制造出以前不存在的相互信任。優(yōu)步的司機和乘客打分系統(tǒng)讓陌生人相互信任。電子商務(wù)網(wǎng)站，如eBay和阿里巴巴，都靠建立商家和客戶之間的信任網(wǎng)絡(luò)而存在。

　　In the end, however, government has a vital role. By enforcing competition rules, it can ensure that poor conduct is punished. And by observing the independence of courts and regulators, it can demonstrate that contracts are sacred and that firms operate on a level playing-field. Suspicion is not about to bring American capitalism to its knees. But the country’s vast stock of trust, built up over a century or more, is being depleted quickly.

　　然而歸根結(jié)底，政府起著至關(guān)重要的作用。通過執(zhí)行競爭規(guī)則，它可以確保惡劣行為受到懲罰。通過確保法院和監(jiān)管機構(gòu)的獨立性，它可以證明合同是神圣的，公司的競爭環(huán)境是公平的。懷疑的影響還沒到讓美國資本主義癱瘓的程度。但是，這個國家用一個多世紀(jì)建立起來的龐大信任庫存如今消耗得十分迅速。

　　雅思閱讀高頻詞匯

　　vertically integrated 垂直整合

　　transaction 事務(wù)

　　toxic 有毒

　　supply chain 供應(yīng)鏈

　　shareholders 股東

　　reputation 聲譽

　　overarching 包羅萬象的

　　outsourced 外包

　　outbreak 爆發(fā)

　　negotiable 可轉(zhuǎn)讓

　　implicit 隱式的

　　illegitimate 不合法的

　　financial crisis 金融危機

　　corrupt 腐敗的

　　chewed over 嚼了