前面小编通过一篇文章为大家分享了3月2号的几篇文章，因为篇幅有限，所以分享的内容也比较少，今天接着为大家分享一下3月7号和号的文章，小编陆续会为大家将3月的文章分享完整。
一、目录
[2013.03.02] The workshop heroes 美国与二战：车里的英雄
[2013.03.02] Special report: Emerging Africa 崛起的非洲
[2013.03.02]Lexington: The view from Maine streets
[2013.03.02] The penny drops 一美分硬币终将退出市场
[2013.03.02] Obsessions 那些痴狂
[2013.03.02] Cuba’s leaders: The new man 古巴政坛新星
[2013.03.02] A hard pounding, this 军工行业遭受重击
[2013.03.07] Timed out 是时候和《时代》说分手了
[2013.03.09]Net benefits 网络净收益
[2013.03.09] Now for the reckoning 下面，让咱们来算算总账吧
[2013.03.09] Fixing the fat cats 修理肥猫
[2013.03.09] Flights of fancy 从幻想到空中翱翔
[2013.03.13] To a war footing 朝鲜半岛正在走向战争
[2013.03.16] Silicon Spring break 硅谷狂欢
[2013.03.16] Looking for India’s Zuckerberg 寻找印度的扎克伯格
[2013.03.16] Russia after Stalin 斯大林离去后的俄罗斯
[2013.03.16] High, wide or handsome
[2013.03.16]Credit watch 信贷观察
[2013-03-16] The economy 美国竞争力报道 - 经济
[2013.03.16] Immigration: Own goal 移民问题：美国自摆乌龙
[2013.03.23]The Alibaba phenomenon 阿里巴巴现象
[2013.03.23] Vape ’em if you got ’em 拿到手，吸两口
[2013.03.23] The joy of stats 玩转统计学
[2013.03.23] Here comes the cavalry 救兵来也
[2013.03.30]Can India become a great power? 印度能成为大国吗?
[2013.03.23] The price of detachment 退居二线的代价
[2013.03.30]Bottoms up 经济转型：基本面分析
二、文章内容
[2013.03.07] Timed out 是时候和《时代》说分手了
Time Warner's spin out plans
时代华纳的资产剥离方案
Timed out
挥别一个“时代”
Mar 7th 2013, 8:33 by A.E.S.
JEFF BEWKES, the boss of Time Warner, a large media conglomerate, rarely utters the word “magazine”. Before becoming boss of Time Warner, he oversaw its highly profitable premium television channel, HBO. His passion is TV, not text. Therefore few who know Mr Bewkes were surprised when he announced on March 7th that Time Warner would spin off Time Inc, its magazine unit, by the end of 2013.
传媒巨头时代华纳的掌门杰夫•比克斯很少会提到“杂志”这个词。在接掌时代华纳之前，他负责的是该集团的利润大户——付费电视频道HBO。他热衷的是电视，而不是文字。所以当他在3月7日宣布，时代华纳将在年底之前剥离杂志部门时代公司时，了解他的人并没有几个感到意外。
Magazines are not where money in media is today. Time Inc, which publishes magazines such as Time, People and Entertainment Weekly, is one of America’s oldest and most iconic magazine companies, but it has become a drag on Time Warner’s bottom line. Last year revenue for Time Inc was $3.4 billion, down 7% from a year earlier and down more than 26% from 2008.
杂志并非当今媒体行业的“金矿”。作为《时代周刊》、《人物》和《娱乐周刊》等杂志的出版商，时代公司是美国杂志行业中历史最悠久、最具标志性的企业。但在时代华纳的账簿上，它却成了一种累赘。去年，其收入为34亿美元，较之2011年下跌了7%，而较之2008年则下跌超过26%。
Time Inc has been hit by a difficult economy, ailing advertising and uninspired leadership. Laura Lang, Time Inc’s boss who formerly ran Digitas, a digital advertising agency, took over after Jack Griffin was fired. Few felt Ms Lang ever had a real vision for what Time Inc should become. She will step down when Time Inc becomes its own public company.
时代公司的苦难来自举步维艰的经济形势、每况愈下的广告业务和缺乏创见的领导层。劳拉·朗是在杰克·格里芬被解雇之后接任掌门一职的，此前她管理的是数字广告公司迪吉特斯。绝大多数人都认为，对于时代公司的未来道路，她从来就没有真正的愿景。时代公司单独上市之后，她就将卸任。
The decision to spin off Time Inc came after negotiations with Meredith, another magazine publisher, which specialises in women’s magazines, collapsed. Time Warner originally wanted to keep control of titles that had synergies with its cable properties, such as Time and Sports Illustrated, but later rethought that strategy.
剥离时代公司这一决定，是在与梅瑞狄斯公司的谈判破裂后做出的(后者是专注于女性杂志的出版商)。时代华纳原本打算继续掌控与一些与有线电视资产“珠联璧合”的刊物，比如《时代周刊》和《体育画报》等，但后来对这一策略有了新的想法。
A deal with Meredith would have been “an elegant solution”, says Peter Kreisky, a media consultant and former advisor to Time Inc. Meredith had synergies with many of Time Inc’s titles. The combined companies could have consolidated some of their magazines, editorial staffs and advertising sales teams. Earlier this year Time Inc already announced it would lay off 6% of its work force.
时代公司前顾问、媒体咨询师皮特·克莱斯基认为，与梅瑞狄斯公司的交易原本会是“一个很好的解决办法”。因为它与时代公司的许多刊物都相得益彰。两家公司合并后，还可以整合旗下部分杂志、编辑部门和销售团队。今年早些时候，时代公司已经宣布将会裁员6%。
Now Time Inc must face the world, and shareholders, alone. Time Inc has been buttressed by Time Warner’s flush TV divisions. That is not unlike what has happened at News Corporation, a rival media conglomerate that is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. In June News Corp will split into two companies and separate its publishing assets from its film and TV business. Other media companies are also looking to offload print. The Tribune Company is trying to sell its newspapers to focus on its TV assets. Divorce is hard, especially when it is spelled out in print.
现在，时代公司必须独自面对这个世界和公司股东。此前一直支持它的是时代华纳财力雄厚的电视部门。这一点很像竞争对手新闻集团的情况(后者是由鲁伯特·默多克掌控的大型传媒集团)。今年6月，新闻集团将把旗下的出版业务和影视业务分拆为两家公司。而其他的传媒企业也正打算剥离纸媒业务。比如，论坛报业集团就正试图出售旗下几家报纸，以便专注于电视业务。分手总是痛苦的，尤其是白纸黑字的分手。
[2013.03.09]Net benefits 网络净收益
Free exchange
自由交流 Net benefits
网络净收益
How to quantify the gains that the internet has brought to consumers
如何量化互联网给用户带来的收益?
Mar 9th 2013 |From the print edition
WHEN her two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, Judy Mollica spent hours in a nearby medical library in south Florida, combing through journals for information about her child’s condition. Upon seeing an unfamiliar term she would stop and hunt down its meaning elsewhere in the library. It was, she says, like “walking in the dark”. Her daughter recovered but in 2005 was diagnosed with a different form of cancer. This time, Ms Mollica was able to stay by her side. She could read articles online, instantly look up medical and scientific terms on Wikipedia, and then follow footnotes to new sources. She could converse with her daughter’s specialists like a fellow doctor. Wikipedia, she says, not only saved her time but gave her a greater sense of control. “You can’t put a price on that.”
1992年茱迪•莫莉卡(Judy Mollica)两岁大的女儿被诊断出患上了癌症，她在南佛罗里达州一家离医院不远的医学图书馆中花费了大量的时间细致地查阅医学期刊了解女儿的病情。碰到一个陌生的术语时她便会停下来，接着在图书馆中四处搜寻术语的含义。她说那段时间 “就像是在黑暗中摸索，毫无头绪。”她女儿后来康复了，但在2005年再次被诊断出患有另一种癌症。这次，莫莉卡不用再两头奔波寻找信息，而是能够陪在她的身边。她可以在线阅读文章，能立刻在维基百科(Wikipedia)上查出医学和科学术语，而且还能根据脚注找到新的信息。她可以和主治医生交流女儿的病情，就像是医生的一位同事。莫莉卡说维基百科不仅仅为她节省了时间，还带给她一种更大的主动权。“这是无法明码标价的。”
Measuring the economic impact of all the ways the internet has changed people’s lives is devilishly difficult because so much of it has no price. It is easier to quantify the losses Wikipedia has inflicted on encyclopedia publishers than the benefits it has generated for users like Ms Mollica. This problem is an old one in economics. GDP measures monetary transactions, not welfare. Consider someone who would pay $50 for the latest Harry Potter novel but only has to pay $20. The $30 difference represents a non-monetary benefit called “consumer surplus”. The amount of internet activity that actually shows up in GDP—Google’s ad sales, for example—significantly understates its contribution to welfare by excluding the consumer surplus that accrues to Google’s users. The hard question to answer is by how much.
要想测算互联网给人们生活方方面面带来的改变所产生的经济影响难于上青天，因为这些影响没有价格。相比量化维基百科给莫莉卡这样的用户带来的益处而言，它给百科全书出版商造成的损失却要更容易计算一些。在经济学领域这是一个老生常谈的问题。国民生产总值(Gross Domestic Product，简称GDP)以货币交易量为衡量标准，而非经济福利。有人愿意花50美元购买最新的哈利•波特(Harry•Potter)系列小说，但他只需付20美元就能买到。那这30美元的差额就可以算作非货币收益，经济学上称之为“消费者剩余(也称“消费者盈余”，译者注) ”。GDP中由互联网活动产生的那部分经济总量——例如，谷歌的广告销售额——严重低估了互联网对经济福利做出的贡献，谷歌用户不断累积的消费者剩余就未计算在内。可难题在于：这部分被低估了的贡献量究竟有多大呢?
Shane Greenstein of Northwestern University and Ryan McDevitt of the University of Rochester calculated the consumer surplus generated by the spread of broadband access (which ought to include the surplus generated by internet services, since that is why consumers pay for broadband). They did so by constructing a demand curve. Say that in 1999 a person pays $20 a month for internet access. By 2006 the spread of broadband has lowered the real price to $17. That subscriber now enjoys consumer surplus of $3 per year, even as the lower price lures more subscribers. The authors reckon that by 2006 broadband was generating $39 billion in revenue and $5 billion-$7 billion in consumer surplus a year. Based on its share of online viewing, Mr Greenstein thinks Wikipedia accounted for up to $50m of that surplus.
美国西北大学(Northwestern University)教授肖恩•格林斯坦(Shane Greenstein)和罗切斯特大学(University of Rochester)教授瑞恩•麦克德维克(Ryan McDevitt)计算了网络宽带连接的普及所带来的消费者剩余总值(这部分也应当算如互联网服务所带来的剩余，因为消费者必须先能联网才会购买宽带服务)。他们通过构建需求曲线来计算。1999年每人每月为互联网连接服务花费20美元。到了2006年，宽带的普及将网络连接费用的实际价格降到17美元。正如价格的降低吸引了更多的用户，该用户现在享有的消费者剩余为每年3美元。 他们计算出到2006年宽带每年产生390亿美元的收入和50亿至70亿美元的消费者剩余。以维基百科所占在线浏览量的份额为基础，格林斯坦教授认为维基百科在上述的消费者盈余中的份额高达5,000万美元。
Such numbers probably understate things. The authors’ calculations assume internet access meant the same thing in 2006 as it did in 1999. But the advent of new services such as Google and Facebook meant internet access in 2006 was worth much more than in 1999. So the surplus would have been bigger, too.
这些数字或许只代表了冰山的一角。他们的计算是以2006年的网络连接与1999年完全相同这一假设为前提。但是新兴网络服务的出现，比如说谷歌和脸谱，意味着2006年的网络连接比1999的具有更高的价值。因此，消费者剩余实际值同样应该会更大。
More important, consumers may not incorporate the value of free internet services when deciding what to pay for internet access. Another approach is simply to ask consumers what they would pay if they had to. In a study commissioned by IAB Europe, a web-advertising industry group, McKinsey, a consultancy, asked 3,360 consumers in six countries what they would pay for 16 internet services that are now largely financed by ads. On average, households would pay €38 ($50) a month each for services they now get free. After subtracting the costs associated with intrusive ads and forgone privacy, McKinsey reckoned free ad-supported internet services generated €32 billion of consumer surplus in America and €69 billion in Europe. E-mail accounted for 16% of the total surplus across America and Europe, search 15% and social networks 11%.
更为重要的是，在决定购买何种网络连接服务时，消费者也许没有将免费的网络内容服务计算在内。还有一个简易的办法就是问问消费者他们愿意承担多高的费用来购买网络服务。在线广告集团欧洲IAB(Interactive Advertising Bureau)委托麦卡锡(McKinsey)咨询公司开展了一项研究，来自6个国家共3,360位消费者被问道：在目前由广告收入来维系运营的16项互联网服务中，消费者愿意出多少钱来购买。家庭用户愿意为每一项他们现在免费享有的互联网服务支付月平均38欧元(合50美元)的费用。除去与侵入式广告和忽略消费者隐私所带来的成本，麦卡锡算出免费向消费者提供而且是由广告收入支持运营的互联网服务在美国创造出320亿美元的消费者剩余，而在欧洲是690亿欧元。电子邮件服务大约占美国和欧洲总消费者剩余的16%，搜索服务占15%，而社交网络服务占11%。
Another way to infer consumer surplus is from the time saved using the internet. In a paper partly funded by Google, Yan Chen, Grace YoungJoo Jeon and Yong-Mi Kim, all of the University of Michigan, asked a team of researchers to answer questions culled from web searches. The questions included teasers like: “In making cookies, does the use of butter or margarine affect the size of the cookie?” On average, it took participants seven minutes to answer the questions using a search engine, and 22 minutes using the University of Michigan’s library. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, then calculated that those savings worked out to 3.75 minutes per day for the typical user. Assigning that time a value of $22 per hour (the average wage in America), he reckons search generates $500 of consumer surplus per user annually, or $65 billion-$150 billion nationally.
另一个方法是通过计算使用互联网所节省的时间来推算消费者剩余。在一篇在部分由谷歌出资赞助发表的论文中，密歇根大学研究员陈燕(Yan Chen)，郑英珠(Grace YoungJoo Jeon)和金永美(Yong-Mi Kim)让一组研究员回答了一些从互联网上搜集来的问题。问题中包括一些棘手的问题，比如：“烘制饼干时，加入黄油或奶油会影响饼干的大小吗?”参与者用搜索引擎花费了平均7分钟的时间来回答这些问题，而在密歇根大学图书馆寻找答案则花费了他们平均22分钟的时间。谷歌首席经济学家哈尔•瓦里安(Hal Varian)接着计算出搜索服务每天能够为一般用户节省3.75分钟。如果这些节省下来的时间的价值为每小时22美元(美国平均时薪)，他推算搜索服务每年为每个用户创造的消费者剩余为500美元，或者说全国范围内总计650亿-1500亿美元。
Twitter: the defence
推特：逆道而行
Yet another technique is to assign a value to the leisure time spent on the web. Erik Brynjolfsson and Joo Hee Oh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology note that between 2002 and 2011, the amount of leisure time Americans spent on the internet rose from 3 to 5.8 hours per week. The authors conclude that in so far as consumers must have valued their time on the internet more than the alternatives, this increase must reflect a growing consumer surplus from the internet, which they value at $564 billion in 2011, or $2,600 per user. Had this growth in surplus been included in GDP, it would have raised economic growth since 2002 by 0.39 percentage points on average.
另一种估算方法是赋予人们花费在网络上的闲暇时间以价值。麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology，简称MIT)埃里克•布林约尔松(Erik Brynjolfsson)教授和何珠熙(Joo Hee Oh)教授指出2002年至2011年间，美国人每周花费在网络上的闲暇时间从3小时上升到了5.8小时。研究者据此得出结论：目前看来，消费者一定更加珍惜他们花费在互联网上的时间而非其他活动，时间的增加必定反映出由互联网带来不断增长的消费者剩余，2011年价值约5,640亿美元，即每位用户2,600美元。如果消费者剩余的增长率也算入GDP，那么自2002以来经济增长率还要再增加平均0.39个百分点。
These are impressive figures, but they also merit scepticism. Would consumers really pay $2,600 for the internet? Shouldn’t other free leisure activities, such as watching television or—heaven forbid—playing with your children, have just as much value? And in other ways the internet subtracts value: the productivity destroyed by incessant checking of Twitter, the human interactions replaced by e-mail. Ms Mollica says people in hospital waiting rooms used to develop a camaraderie rooted in their shared experiences. “But now everyone stares into their phone because they’re texting or e-mailing.”
数字虽令人惊叹的，却也值得人们去质疑。消费者是否真的愿意为互联网服务支付2,600美元是个问题。难道其他免费的休闲活动，比如说看电视或者——但愿是——和孩子们嬉戏不值这个价格吗?而互联网亦有减损价值的一面：无休止刷推特(Twitter)降低了工作效率，电子邮件取代了人与人之间的交流。莫莉卡说过去候诊室里的人们会在他们共同的经历中找到一种战友般的情谊。 “可是现在，每个人都盯着自己手机的屏幕，因为他们在发短信或是电子邮件。”
Sources
资料来源
Publications by Shane Greenstein and Ryan McDevitt: "The Global Broadband Bonus: Broadband Internet’s Impact on Seven Countries," in The Linked World: How ICT Is Transforming Societies, Cultures and Economies, published by the Conference Board, 2011. "The Broadband Bonus: Accounting for Broadband Internet's Impact on U.S. GDP," NBER Working Paper #14758, 2009. “Measuring the Broadband Bonus in 20 OECD Countries,” OECD Digital Economy Papers, No. 197, 2012.
Household Demand for Broadband Internet Service: Final report to the Broadband.gov Task Force Federal Communications Commission. Gregory Rosston, Scott J. Savage, Donald M. Waldman, February, 2010.
"Consumers driving the digital uptake: The economic value of online advertising-based services for consumers," study conducted by McKinsey & Co., commissioned and published by IAB Europe, September 2010.
"A Day without a Search Engine: An Experimental Study of Online and Offline Searches," Yan Chen, Grace YoungJoo Jeon, Yong-Mi Kim, 2012.
“Valuing Consumer Goods by the Time Spent Using Them: An Application to the Internet,” Austan Goolsbee and Peter Klenow, American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), May 2006.
"The Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Goods on the Internet," Erik Brynjolfsson, and JooHee Oh, July, 2012 (draft).
"Economic Value of Google," Presentation by Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google
Economist.com/blogs/freeexchange
http://ecocn.org/thread-181247-1-1.html 译者：坏娃娃
[2013.03.09] Now for the reckoning 下面，让咱们来算算总账吧
Venezuela after Chávez
查韦斯死后的委内瑞拉
Now for the reckoning
下面，让咱们来算算总账吧
After 14 years of oil-fuelled autocracy, Hugo Chávez’s successors will struggle to keep the Bolivarian revolution on the road
在委内瑞拉经受了十四年石油支持下的独裁统治之后，乌戈•查韦斯的继任者需要颇费一番周折才能继续推进玻利瓦尔革命
Mar 9th 2013 | CARACAS |From the print edition
IN THE flesh he seemed indestructible. Hugo Chávez was not especially tall, but he was built like one of the tanks he once commanded. He was possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy. He travelled incessantly, both around his vast country and abroad. Each Sunday he would host a live television show lasting up to 12 hours. He would ring up ministers in the early hours of the morning to harangue them. For 14 years, everything that happened in Venezuela passed through his hands, or so he liked to think.
想当年，乌戈•查韦斯本人看起来似乎坚不可摧【注1】。他的个子并不是很高，但身材壮硕——就像他曾经指挥的坦克那样。他好像有着用不完的精力。他不断地旅行，不但多次出访国外，广阔的委内瑞拉也到处都留下了他的足迹。每个星期天，他都会主持长达12小时的电视直播节目。每天早晨，天还蒙蒙亮的时候他就会打电话把手下的那些部长叫醒，大声训话。十四年来，委内瑞拉发生的每一件事都是由查韦斯亲手操办——或者说，他自以为如此。
Yet Mr Chávez turned out to have been as reckless with his health as with his country’s economy and its democracy. Those late nights were fuelled by dozens of cups of sweet Venezuelan coffee. When in mid-2011 he revealed that he had been operated on for cancer, the lack of detail (“a baseball-sized tumour in the pelvic region”) suggested that the diagnosis had come late. He turned down an offer of care from a Brazilian hospital that had recently cured three Latin American presidents of cancer, preferring treatment in Cuba, where his precise condition could be kept secret. After a further two operations and chemotherapy, he declared himself cured.
然而，最终看来查韦斯还是过于鲁莽了：他没有注意到委内瑞拉的经济和民主，同样也没有注意到自己的健康。他一杯接一杯地喝着甜甜的委内瑞拉咖啡，熬过了一个又一个深夜。2011年年中，查韦斯披露自己已经因癌症而动过手术。细节方面，他并未多说——这表示确诊时为时已晚(“骨盆处发现了一个棒球大小的肿瘤”)。一家此前曾为三位拉美总统治愈癌症的巴西医院主动提出可为查韦斯治疗，不过他谢绝了，希望在古巴接受治疗——因为在那里他的具体情况可以得到保密。又接受了两次手术和一次化疗之后，他宣布自己已经康复。
Addicted to the drugs of power and popular acclaim, he campaigned for and won yet another six-year term in an election last October. During the campaign it was clear to those not blinded by loyalty that Mr Chávez was still a sick man. After the election he dropped out of sight, before making the sombre announcement on December 8th that he was going back to Cuba for yet another operation. If the worst happened, he said, Venezuelans should vote for Nicolás Maduro, his foreign minister and appointed vice-president, as his successor. The six-hour operation did not go well: after weeks in which his family kept a bedside vigil, joined by senior officials, Mr Chávez returned home last month, to die on March 5th at the age of 58.
去年十月，沉迷于权力和民众拥戴而不能自拔的查韦斯再次参加总统竞选，又赢得了六年任期。在那次选举当中，没有被忠诚所蒙蔽的人都能看得出他仍未痊愈。选举结束之后，查韦斯就从公众视野中消失了，直到12月8日才发布了一份令人不安的公告，称自己将返回古巴再次接受手术。他表示，如果发生了最糟糕的状况，委内瑞拉人应当拥戴时任外交部长、被任命为副总统的尼古拉斯•马杜罗为继任总统。为时六小时的手术进展得并不顺利：几周以来，查韦斯的家人和一些委内瑞拉高级官员一直守护在这位总统的床头。此后查韦斯在上个月回到了故乡，并于3月5日病逝，享年58岁。
It's all over for the poster boy
“代表人物”就此谢幕【注2】
To the end, Mr Chávez’s rule was narcissistic, with country and constitution subordinated to his whim. In the tradition of the Latin American caudillo, he wanted to die with his boots on. When he was too ill to be sworn in for his new term on January 10th, his officials resolved to disregard the constitution that he himself had pushed through in 1999 and declared that the inauguration could happen at a later date.
直到最后，查韦斯的统治都充满了孤芳自赏的色彩;无论是国家还是宪法，都唯其马首是瞻。按照拉美元首的传统，他要求在工作岗位上坚守到生命的最后一刻【注3】。今年1月10日，查韦斯的健康状况不允许他为新的总统任期宣誓就职。当时，委内瑞拉官员决定无视总统本人于1999年促成的宪法，宣布将于晚些时候举行就职典礼。
Hours before announcing his leader’s death, Mr Maduro made an aggressive speech, flanked by army commanders, in which he accused the opposition of conspiring to reverse the “revolution” and “historical enemies” (ie, the United States) of poisoning Mr Chávez. He expelled two American military attachés. That looked like an effort to rally the faithful for the election that will now be called.
在宣布查韦斯死讯的几个小时以前，马杜罗在几名军官的簇拥之下发表了一份措辞激进的演讲，控诉反对派密谋推翻“革命”、谴责“有些宿敌”(即美国)对查韦斯下毒。他还将两名美国大使馆的武官逐出了委内瑞拉。新的选举在即，马杜罗似乎想要借此收买人心。
Mr Chávez is mourned by millions of Venezuelans, for whom he was a kind of Robin Hood, shouting defiance at “the empire” (the United States once again) and the “oligarchy” (ie, the rich) while handing out windfall oil revenues. His opponents, many of whom saw him as a corrupt dictator, will sense deliverance. That may be premature.
成千上万的委内瑞拉人对查韦斯表示哀悼。对这些人来说，查韦斯有几分罗宾汉的风采，他曾经高呼反对“帝国”(还是指美国)、反对“政治寡头”(即富人群体)，同时将石油收入带来的意外之财分发给民众。在查韦斯的对手当中，有很多人曾视其为腐败的独裁者;现在他既已身死，这些人想必会感到解脱。但这种感觉可能为时过早了。
A swift election may favour Mr Maduro, a former bus drivers’ leader who has been the de facto president since December. He will benefit from a sympathy vote. The sooner he has his own mandate, the less the risk that he will face rebellion, or at least passive resistance, from within the chavista camp. The opposition candidate will probably be Henrique Capriles. A moderate centrist and dogged campaigner, in last October’s vote he cut Mr Chávez’s margin of victory, from 26 percentage points in 2006 to 11 points. But demoralised by defeat, the opposition fared poorly in regional elections in December, though Mr Capriles was re-elected as governor of the state of Miranda, covering much of the capital, Caracas.
尽快进行选举将对马杜罗有利。他曾做过司机，当过地铁系统的工会领袖;自从去年十二月以来，事实上是他在代理总统职务。他将从民众的同情票中获益。目前，查氏阵营内部可能会发生针对他的叛乱(或者至少是消极抵抗)。马杜罗正式的总统任期开始得越早，这种风险也就越小。反对派候选人有可能是恩里克•卡普利莱斯。他是一位温和的中间派，屡次参加各种竞选。2006年，查韦斯曾以26个百分点赢得总统选举;而在去年十月只领先同时参选的卡普利莱斯11个百分点。然而，反对党失败之后士气受挫，在去年十二月的地区选举中表现不佳。不过卡普利莱斯已重新当选为米兰达州州长，首都加拉加斯大部分地区都在该州境内。
The bigger question in the months ahead will be how much will survive of Mr Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”, named for Simón Bolívar, South America’s Venezuelan-born independence hero. His reluctance to surrender power despite his illness underlined just how personal his regime was. Through a mixture of unusual political talent and extraordinary good fortune, Mr Chávez managed to make himself into a world figure, perhaps the best-known Latin American after his friend and idol, Fidel Castro. His death means he will not be around to face the reckoning after 14 years of a corrupt, oil-fuelled autocracy.
在接下来的几个月里，更重要的问题在于查韦斯的“玻利瓦尔革命”有多少能够存留下来(这场革命以生于委内瑞拉的南美独立英雄西蒙•玻利瓦尔命名)。此前，查韦斯尽管病重却仍然不愿让权，充分说明了他的政权是以个人为中心的。查韦斯有一些与众不同的政治才能，又颇受上天眷顾，从而成功地把自己塑造成了一个世界人物。在他的朋友兼偶像菲德尔•卡斯特罗之后，他或许是最为著名的拉美人。委内瑞拉在经受了十四年腐败的、石油支持下的独裁统治之后，即将受到清算;而查韦斯的去世意味着他将会缺席这场最后的审判【注4】。
Swapping baseball for revolution
放下棒球，投身革命
Had things turned out differently, Hugo Chávez might have been a professional baseball player. That was his childhood dream. A typical Venezuelan mestizo, of African, indigenous and European descent, he was born in poverty (though not in the “mud hut” of the title of a hagiography) in Barinas, a remote state in the llanos, the tropical lowlands of the Orinoco basin. His father was a teacher, and his mother a teaching assistant. One of six brothers, he was largely brought up by his grandmother. He topped up the family income by selling home-made sweets in the street.
倘若命运并非如此安排，乌戈•查韦斯可能会成为一名职业棒球运动员。这是他儿时的梦想。在奥里诺科盆地的热带低地草原上，有一个地处偏远的州——巴里纳斯州，查韦斯就生于这里的一个贫困家庭(不过并不像某一本偶像化传记标题写的那样出生在“土屋”里)。他是一个典型的委内瑞拉混血儿，同时具有非洲人、委内瑞拉本土人以及欧洲人的血统。他的父亲是一名教师，母亲则是助教。查韦斯有五个兄弟，他自己主要是由祖母抚养长大。他曾经在街头贩卖自制甜品来补贴家用。
By Mr Chávez’s own account, he entered Venezuela’s military academy because it had a good baseball team. As a young officer, he had a role in mopping up Cuban-supported guerrilla groups in the 1970s—a task that left him sympathetic to their aims. At the age of 23, he was already conspiring against the government.
根据查韦斯自己的记述，他之所以会进委内瑞拉军事学院就读，是因为该校有一支出色的棒球队。上世纪七十年代，他曾经以年轻军官的身份参与清剿古巴支持的游击队群体——不过却因此而认同了他们的理念。到了23岁的时候，查韦斯已经在密谋反抗政府了。
In the 1980s Venezuela, previously seen as a model democracy, struggled as the price of oil, its main export, plunged and foreign debt mounted. Discontent at rising poverty, austerity and corruption exploded in three days of rioting in Caracas in 1989, and repression by the army left 400 dead. “It was the moment we were waiting for to act,” Mr Chávez said later. In February 1992, a lieutenant-colonel in command of a paratroop battalion, he made his move: he led a bloody but unsuccessful coup against the elected government of Carlos Andrés Pérez. Cashiered and jailed, he was released after just two years. He claimed that Bolívar was his inspiration.
八十年代，由于主要出口产品——石油的价格跳水，外债不断攀升，此前被视作模范民主国家的委内瑞拉苦苦求存。一时之间国家愈加贫困，经济紧缩、腐败横行。1989年，民众的不满终于爆发，加拉加斯发生了为期三天的暴乱，政府军的镇压导致400人死亡。查韦斯后来谈到：“我们等待那个时机已经等了很久了。”1992年2月，身为伞兵营中校的查韦斯采取了行动，策划了一场政变，反对当时执政的卡洛斯•安德烈斯•佩雷斯政府。政变很是血腥，却并未取得成功。查韦斯被革职并锒铛入狱，不过仅仅两年后就被释放了。他声称玻利瓦尔激励了自己【注5】。
Bolívar had long been the object of an official, quasi-religious cult in Venezuela—but a conservative one. Mr Chávez would appropriate the cult for his own ends: he was said to leave an empty chair at meetings, claiming it was occupied by the ghost of the great Liberator. His second source of inspiration was Fidel Castro. In 1994 he visited Cuba where he began a close friendship with Mr Castro, whom he saw “as a father” and who became his most important counsellor. The Cuban leader, who had long viewed Venezuela’s oil wealth as the key to sustaining his own regime in his energy-short island, would find in Mr Chávez what he had been seeking for decades: a powerful, unconditional ally in a large Latin American country.
在委内瑞拉，玻利瓦尔长期以来都受到了公开的、近乎宗教似的崇拜——但这种崇拜有些保守。而查韦斯会利用这种崇拜来达到自己的目的：据说他在开会时都要放一张空椅子，声称伟大的解放者玻利瓦尔的英灵坐在这张椅子上。查韦斯还受到了菲德尔•卡斯特罗的鼓舞。1994年，他访问古巴，与卡斯特罗建立起了一种亲密的友谊。查韦斯看待卡斯特罗“如同父亲一般”，卡斯特罗也成了他最为重要的导师。古巴是一个资源匮乏的岛国，这位领导人一直把委内瑞拉丰富的石油当作维持本国政权的关键。他认为查韦斯就是自己几十年来一直在寻找的人：一位来自拉美大国并且手握重权的绝对盟友。
Mr Chávez’s world view had a third strand, too. He was an army man through and through: his early heroes had been nationalist military dictators of the 1970s, such as Peru’s Juan Velasco Alvarado and Panama’s Omar Torrijos. As Enrique Krauze, a Mexican writer, has pointed out, from eclectic reading Mr Chávez acquired the conviction that history is made by great men. He was influenced, too, by Norberto Ceresole, an obscure Argentine fascist who advised him when he was first in government. His regime had an anti-semitic undertone. The notion, peddled by some of his foreign supporters, that Mr Chávez was a moderate radicalised only by implacable opposition both at home and in Washington, does not square with the evidence.
查韦斯的世界观还有第三个方面。他是一名彻头彻尾的军人：他早期崇拜的是七十年代的民族主义军事独裁者，比如秘鲁的胡安•贝拉斯科•阿尔瓦拉多以及巴拿马的奥马尔•托里霍斯。墨西哥作家恩里克•克劳泽曾经指出，查韦斯博览群书，树立了“历史由伟人造就”的信念。他还受到了诺伯托•塞里索尔的影响(这位名不见经传的阿根廷法西斯主义者在查韦斯首次执政时曾经担任过他的顾问)。查韦斯的政权有一种反犹太意味。一些国外支持者宣扬他是一位温和派;只有在面对委内瑞拉国内或是美国的顽固反对派时才会变得激进。这种说法是没有根据的。
Mr Chávez was reluctantly persuaded—probably by Mr Castro—that elections were better than force as a route to power. His promises of a clean sweep of the old order and an end to poverty and corruption won him the presidency in December 1998 with 56% of the vote. His first act was to call a Constituent Assembly, which wrote a new constitution, approved by referendum. It enshrined respect for private property, human rights and an independent judiciary. But it also expanded the powers of the presidency and the armed forces. It gave Mr Chávez a chance to appoint loyalists to the supreme court and other nominally independent institutions.
或许是卡斯特罗说服了查韦斯，让他勉强接受了这样一种观点：若想取得政权，选举比武力更为有效。1998年12月总统选举时，查韦斯承诺要彻底清除旧秩序、消灭贫困、根除腐败，这让他以56%的得票率胜选。就任总统后查韦斯做的第一件事就是召开立宪会议。会上起草了新宪法，而后由全民公投批准生效。新宪法要求尊重私有财产、尊重人权、尊重独立的司法系统。但这部宪法同样给了总统和武装部队更多权力，并让查韦斯有机会把自己的忠诚拥护者安插到最高法院和其他一些名义上的独立机构当中。
Unlike Mr Castro, Mr Chávez derived his legitimacy from the ballot box. He would win three further presidential elections. But he ruled by confrontation and decree, rather than consensus. That triggered severe political unrest. The tensions came to a head on April 11th 2002, when hundreds of thousands marched on the presidential palace to demand Mr Chávez’s resignation: 19 people died, many killed by snipers who were never identified. When the army refused his order to use force to suppress the protests, the president surrendered his office; his most senior general told the nation he had resigned. But after a conservative business leader proclaimed himself president on April 12th and declared the constitution abolished, the army switched sides again and restored Mr Chávez to power.
和卡斯特罗不同，查韦斯是通过投票箱来确立合法领导权的。他之后还赢得了三次总统选举。但他统治的方式是对抗和专制，并没有和人民达成共识。这引发了严重的政治动荡。2002年4月11日，委内瑞拉的紧张局势达到了顶点。成千上万的民众在总统官邸游行，要求查韦斯辞职。这次冲突中有19人丧生，大多是被身份不明的狙击手射杀。查韦斯命令军队用武力镇压抗议，却遭到了拒绝。之后这位总统交出了政权。委内瑞拉军队最高司令官通告全国，称查韦斯已经辞职。4月12日，一名保守派商界领袖自封为总统并宣布废除旧宪法。但此后不久军队再次易帜，查韦斯得以复位【注6】。
The elected autocracy
选举出来的独裁政府
That was a turning point. An opposition strike later that year paralysed PDVSA, the state oil monopoly, but it failed. Through the medium of these conflicts, Mr Chávez neutralised all potential rival sources of power. He turned PDVSA and the Central Bank into vehicles for opaque, off-budget spending. He staffed the government, the bureaucracy and the armed forces according to loyalty rather than merit. He packed the courts, and gained full control of the legislature, thanks to an ill-advised opposition boycott in 2005. When a revived opposition later did well in regional and legislative elections, he stripped local government and the National Assembly of much of their powers.
此时，委内瑞拉迎来了转折点。当年晚些时候，一次反对派罢工曾经让国家石油垄断机构 PDVSA 陷入瘫痪，但罢工最后并未取得成效。查韦斯借助这种冲突阻断了所有潜在的权力竞争源头。他把 PDVSA 和中央银行变成了获取不透明的预算外开支的工具。在政府、官僚机构和武装部队中，查韦斯任人唯亲。他在各级法院安插了不少心腹，并在2005年完全控制了立法机关(这还多亏了反对派，他们当时组织了一次计划不周的抵制活动)。后来，尽管反对派卷土重来并且在地区和立法机构选举中表现出色，但地方政府和国民大会的大部分权力已经被查韦斯尽数剥夺。
Three other things had come to Mr Chávez’s rescue. The first was the spectacular rise in the world price of oil, which provided nearly all Venezuela’s export earnings. In real terms, between 2000 and 2012 Venezuela’s total oil revenues were more than two and a half times as great as those of the preceding 13 years—even though output declined after 2000 (see chart 1). The second was the advice of Mr Castro. Cuban officials drew up new social programmes, known as “missions”, starting with primary health care and adult education. In return for virtually free oil, Cuba provided Venezuela with thousands of doctors and sports trainers. Cuban intelligence and security agents surrounded Mr Chávez: he would never again be caught off-guard by street protests.
查韦斯之所以能够东山再起，原因有三。其一是当时全球油价飙升，委内瑞拉几乎所有出口收入都来自石油贸易。扣除物价因素之后，尽管2000年以后出口有所下降，但2000到2012年间委内瑞拉的石油总收入是此前十三年总和的2.5倍以上(见图表1)。其二就是卡斯特罗提出的建议。古巴官员为委内瑞拉起草了以初级卫生保健和成人教育为起点的新型社会方案(称为各项“计划”)。为了换取几乎是免费的石油，古巴为委内瑞拉提供了数千名医生和体育教练员。查韦斯身边都是古巴的情报和安全人员，他再也不会被民众的街头抗议打个措手不及了。
The missions and the flood of oil money helped the president defeat a referendum in 2004 that would have removed him from office. He cowed the opposition. He harassed its media outlets: today, most free-to-air television channels spout government propaganda. The names of the 3.6m who signed the petition calling for the recall referendum were published; some were sacked from state jobs or denied passports or other official services.
2004年，委内瑞拉就查韦斯是否应当留任总统举行了一次全民公投。查韦斯本应迫于公投压力而辞职，但国家实行的各项计划和滚滚而来的石油收入帮他保住了总统位子。他对反对派进行了恐吓，控制了他们的媒体渠道：如今，大部分免费电视频道都在为政府大唱赞歌。当时有360万人签署请愿书要求举行全民公投，后来这份名单被曝光了。其中有些担任公职的人员被解雇了;有些人在办理护照时遭到拒签，或是无法使用其他公开服务。
The third godsend for Mr Chávez was George W. Bush. Thanks to the worldwide unpopularity of the American president, he could use his address to the UN to mock Mr Bush as “the devil”. He deployed his talents as a propagandist to weave a fiction to the effect that the coup attempt against him in April 2002 had been backed by the United States.
乔治•W•布什就是查韦斯的第三场及时雨。由于这位美国总统在全球都不得人心，查韦斯在联合国演讲时嘲讽他为“魔鬼”。查韦斯运用自己的鼓吹才能编造谎言，称2002年4月反对他的政变实际上是有美国在背后支持。
In 2006 Mr Chávez won a landslide victory. At the height of his power, he declared that he was implanting “21st-century socialism”, though he never defined exactly what this was. He nationalised swathes of the economy, including telecommunications, electricity, cement and parts of the oil industry still in private hands.
在2006年的总统选举中，查韦斯以压倒性优势取得了胜利。在他权力的鼎盛时期，他宣称自己在灌输“21世纪社会主义”，不过他从未对此作出明确界定。他将大批经济部门收归国有，其中包括电信、电气、水泥等行业，以及仍在私人手中的石油业的一部分。
Mr Chávez’s domination of Venezuela was never absolute. The two-party democracy of 1958-98 bequeathed a popular belief in democratic values. In 2007 he lost a referendum on constitutional changes aimed at making his revolution irreversible (though many of these measures were later brought into law by decree).
查韦斯对委内瑞拉的统治一直受到某种约束。1958到1998年间的两党民主政治让一种信仰民主价值的公众理念流传了下来。2007年，查韦斯针对修宪举行了一场全民公投，想要巩固自己的革命成果;但并未取得成功(不过此后他通过专制将很多相关措施写进了法律)。
Everything Mr Chávez did was calculated to shore up his support among a majority of Venezuelans, while ignoring or harassing the rest. His original base was those people who laboured in the informal economy, which had blossomed in the 1980s after the end of the previous oil boom. To this he added a growing army of public-sector workers: under him, the public payroll more than doubled, to 2.4m.
查韦斯所做的每一件事都是为了确保自己能获得大多数委内瑞拉人的支持，同时对反抗者却置之不理、或者加以压迫。上世纪八十年代，在石油繁荣消退之后，委内瑞拉的非正式经济得到了发展，而查韦斯最初依靠的就是非正式经济行业的劳动者。后来，他又把公有部门劳动者这支不断增长的大军纳入自己麾下。在他担任总统期间，公有部门劳动者的数量翻了一番以上，达到了240万人。
Sent by God
天赐之君
Most of the motley collection of parties that backed the Bolivarian revolution were merged into the Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV). Mr Chávez also created two other instruments of control: a militia of around 125,000, answerable directly to him rather than the army command; and a network of community councils which took over many of the functions (and revenues) of local government. Foreign leftist academics claimed that all this added up to an empowering “direct democracy”, superior to the incipient welfare state set up by Latin America’s social-democratic governments. But to others, it looked like a top-down charade of participation, in which all power lay with the president.
支持玻利瓦尔革命的政党五花八门，它们大多数被合并成了委内瑞拉联合社会党(PSUV)。查韦斯还发明了另外两种控制手段：一支约有十二万五千人的民兵队伍，他们直接听命于查韦斯，而不受军队管束。另外还有一系列的社区议会，它们接手了地方政府的大部分功能(以及收入)。外国左派学者称，所有这些体制构成了一种授权式的“直接民主”，比拉美社会民主政府建立的早期福利制度更胜一筹。但在其他人看来，这就像一种自上而下的伪装型民主，所有的权力都掌握在总统手中。
Behind the propaganda, the Bolivarian revolution was a corrupt, mismanaged affair. The economy became ever more dependent on oil and imports. State takeovers of farms cut agricultural output. Controls of prices and foreign exchange could not prevent persistent inflation and engendered shortages of staple goods. Infrastructure crumbled: most of the country has suffered frequent power cuts for years. Hospitals rotted: even many of the “missions” languished. Crime soared: Caracas is one of the world’s most violent capitals. Venezuela has become a conduit for the drug trade, with the involvement of segments of the security forces.
在种种宣传鼓吹背后，玻利瓦尔革命其实是一场腐败而且管理不当的运动。经济越来越依赖石油和进口。国家接管了农场，农产品产量因此下跌。对物价和外汇的控制无法抑制顽固的通货膨胀和由此产生的支柱产品短缺。基础设施条件日益恶化：多年以来，全国大部分地区都饱受频繁断电之苦。医院也是虚有其表：即使是很多医疗“计划”都停滞不前。犯罪行为猖獗：加拉加斯是全球暴力活动最严重的首都之一。委内瑞拉成了毒品交易的管道，甚至有些保安部队成员都参与贩毒。
Mr Chávez’s supreme political achievement was that many ordinary Venezuelans credited him with the handouts and did not blame him for the bungling. They saw him as one of them, as being on their side. His supporters, especially women, would say: “This man was sent by God to help the poor.” He had llanero wit and charm, and an instinctive sense of political opportunity. He deployed these talents each Sunday on “Aló, Presidente”, his interminable talk show. He had the skills of a televangelist, as Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera, two Venezuelan writers, put it in a revealing biography.
查韦斯有一项最大的政治成就，那就是很多委内瑞拉平民都因为他所派发的救济品而感恩戴德，却并不指责他的无能。他们把查韦斯当作自己人。查韦斯的支持者(特别是妇女)常说：“他是上天赐给委内瑞拉来帮助穷人的”。查韦斯有一种草原式的智慧和魅力，可以本能地察觉到政治机遇。每个周日，委内瑞拉都会播出一档冗长的谈话节目《你好，总统》，查韦斯常常在节目里运用自己的这些天赋。两位委内瑞拉作家克里斯蒂娜•马卡诺和阿尔贝托•巴雷拉在一本发人深省的传记中写道，查韦斯拥有电视布道者的才能。
Abroad, Mr Chávez deployed Venezuela’s oil wealth to build an anti-American block he called the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (Alba). As well as Cuba, this included Bolivia and Ecuador, where far-left leaders were elected in the mid-2000s and several small client states in Central America and the Caribbean. For years he maintained a barely veiled alliance with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, allowing them to use Venezuela as a base.
在海外，查韦斯利用委内瑞拉丰富的石油资源建立了一个反美组织，他称之为美洲玻利瓦尔联盟(简称 Alba)。古巴、玻利维亚和厄瓜多尔(2005年前后这两个国家的极右领导集体当选)、以及中美洲和加勒比海地区的几个小附庸国都加入了这个联盟。多年以来，查韦斯还和哥伦比亚的 FARC 游击队维持着一种几乎不为人知的同盟关系，允许他们把委内瑞拉作为基地之一。
Argentina’s Cristina Fernández and her husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, were semi-detached friends and clients. Venezuela bought Argentine bonds. In 2007 an alert customs official in Buenos Aires opened a suitcase stuffed with $800,000 in cash that was, its Venezuelan owner later confessed, a donation to Ms Fernández’s election campaign.
阿根廷总统克里斯蒂娜•费尔南德斯和她的丈夫、前任总统内斯托尔•基什内尔既是委内瑞拉的盟友，又是该国的贸易伙伴。委内瑞拉曾购买阿根廷国债。2007年，在布宜诺斯艾利斯，有一位警惕的海关官员打开了一只塞有80万美元现金的手提箱。这只手提箱的委内瑞拉主人后来坦白，说这笔钱是送给费尔南德斯用作竞选经费的。
Alba was inimical to Brazil’s ambitions to lead South America. But Brazil’s left-wing presidents, while governing as moderate social-democrats, found it useful to indulge Mr Chávez. They appeared to see him as a means to blunt American influence in the region, while his economic mismanagement gave Brazilian business the chance to supply the goods and services that Venezuela ceased to produce.
Alba 对图谋领导南美洲的巴西曾经抱有敌意。但尽管巴西的几位左翼总统采取的是温和的社会民主党执政方式，他们却发现对查韦斯睁一只眼闭一只眼有好处。他们似乎认为查韦斯可以在南美洲抵消美国的影响。同时，查韦斯在经济方面管理不善，导致委内瑞拉国内有些产品和服务无以为继，这也给了巴西商界可乘之机。
Further afield, Mr Chávez delighted in embracing the world’s autocrats and dictators. He forged an alliance with Iran, which offered opaque “technical co-operation”. He agreed to buy arms worth some $15 billion, mainly from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He made friends with Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Muammar Qaddafi and Bashar Assad.
在更远的地方，查韦斯也乐于和世界各国的独裁者打成一片。他和伊朗结成了联盟，得到了对方提供的一种不透明的“技术合作”。他同意购买价值约150亿美元的军火，主要来自弗拉基米尔•普京当权的俄罗斯。他还和萨达姆•侯赛因、罗伯特•穆加贝、穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲以及巴沙尔•阿萨德交过朋友。
In Latin America Mr Chávez’s influence declined after 2006. Economic growth made the region’s voters less angry; and many Latin American left-wingers came to realise that chavismo was a blind alley. Though poverty fell fast in Venezuela, so it did elsewhere, as the commodity boom lifted the region (see chart 2). Some on the left had always been critical. Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican writer, dubbed Mr Chávez a “tropical Mussolini”. The 2008-09 world economic slowdown exposed the weaknesses of chavismo. While much of the rest of Latin America recovered quickly, Venezuela remained in recession for two years.
2006年以后，查韦斯在拉丁美洲的影响力有所减弱。经济增长相对地安抚了该地区的选民;许多拉美左翼人士认识到查韦斯主义是一条死胡同。随着商品繁荣振兴了这片地区，不仅仅是委内瑞拉，其他国家的贫穷现象也得到了很大的改善(见图表2)。有些左翼人士一直持批判态度。墨西哥作家卡洛斯•富恩特斯将查韦斯冠名为“热带地区的墨索里尼”。2008到2009年间的全球经济衰退暴露了查韦斯主义的弱点。拉丁美洲其他大部分地区都很快得到了复苏，而委内瑞拉的经济萧条却持续了两年之久。
Subordinates without a chief
群龙无首
The Bolivarian revolution now faces its greatest test. Without doubt, chavismo will outlive its founder. Many ordinary Venezuelans will look back on his rule with fondness. But his heirs will have to grapple with some intractable problems.
玻利瓦尔革命如今面临着最大的一次考验。毫无疑问，查韦斯主义的寿命要比查韦斯本人长一些。很多委内瑞拉平民都会深挚地怀念他的统治。但查韦斯的继任将不得不努力解决一些很棘手的问题。
After a pre-election spending binge last year, the economy is slowing again. Faced with shortages of many goods, including hard currency, Mr Maduro devalued the bolívar by 32% in February. Venezuela comes towards the bottom of just about every league table for good governance or economic competitiveness. For 14 years Venezuelans have been told that their problems were caused by somebody else—the United States or “the oligarchy”. Getting ahead has depended on political loyalty rather than merit. The mass enrolment of millions in “universities” that mainly impart propaganda have raised expectations that are almost bound to be dashed.
去年，委内瑞拉选举前花掉了大笔经费。如今，经济再次陷入衰退。面对包括硬通货在内的多种商品短缺，马杜罗在二月份宣布玻利瓦尔【注：委内瑞拉货币也称为“玻利瓦尔”】贬值32个百分点。在政府治理和经济竞争力的各项排名表中，委内瑞拉几乎都是倒数。十四年来，委内瑞拉政府一直对人民说他们的问题是由外人引起的——美国，或者说“政治寡头”。想要出人头地，靠的不是能力和品德，而是政治上的忠诚。数百万人纷纷涌入“大学”就读，而“大学”主要是为政府唱赞歌——个人的前程几乎必定会化为泡影。
Assuming the PSUV wins the election, it will be ill-equipped to grapple with these problems. None of its leaders has the authority of Mr Chávez, nor his skill at communicating with the masses. While affable, Mr Maduro is a yes-man lacking political weight, according to a former Latin American foreign minister who dealt with him. Diosdado Cabello, the Speaker of the National Assembly and an army colleague of Mr Chávez, has declared his support for Mr Maduro, but has ambitions of his own. Perhaps only the Cuban leadership can preserve unity among the chavistas. The stakes are high. Cuba’s president, Raúl Castro, knows that the loss of Venezuelan oil would plunge his country’s economy deeper into penury.
假如 PSUV 赢得选举，它将没有能力去应付这些问题。PSUV 所有的领导人都没有查韦斯那样的权威，也没有查韦斯那种和大众沟通的技巧。一位曾经和马杜罗打过交道的前拉美外长表示，虽然他平易近人，却唯唯诺诺，缺少政治分量。国民大会议长、查韦斯昔日战友迪奥斯达多•卡维略宣布支持马杜罗，但他也有自己的小算盘要打。或许只有古巴的领导阶层才能维护查氏阵营的团结。这份赌注很高。古巴总统劳尔•卡斯特罗明白，失去委内瑞拉的石油将让本国经济进一步陷入贫困。
A majority of Venezuelans may eventually come to see that Mr Chávez squandered an extraordinary opportunity for his country, to use an unprecedented oil boom to equip it with world-class infrastructure and to provide the best education and health services money can buy. But this lesson will come the hard way, and there is no guarantee that it will be learned.
查韦斯原本可以利用空前的石油繁荣为国家带来世界一流的基础设施，为人民提供最优质的教育和医疗服务，而他却白白浪费掉了这个绝佳的机会。大多数委内瑞拉人最终或许会意识到这一点。但这个教训来得太过苦涩了，而且也没有人能够保证委内瑞拉究竟会不会吸取这个教训。
http://ecocn.org/thread-181254-1-1.html 译者：剑刃
[2013.03.09] Fixing the fat cats 修理肥猫
Executive pay
高管薪酬
Fixing the fat cats
修理肥猫
Switzerland votes to curb executive pay
瑞士投票通过高管薪酬限制案
Mar 9th 2013 | BERLIN |From the print edition
THE question facing Swiss voters on March 3rd was called the “people’s initiative against fat-cat pay”. With a billing like that, who wouldn’t vote yes? As it happened, 68% of the electorate did, passing a measure that requires listed companies to offer shareholders a binding vote on senior managers’ pay and appointments at each annual general meeting. The penalty for bosses who fail to comply is up to three years in jail or the forfeit of up to six years’ salary. Switzerland’s penchant for direct democracy has trumped its tolerance for tycoons.
3月3日，瑞士选民面临的问题是“控制高管薪酬的公民表决提案”。打着这样的旗号，谁会投反对票?果不其然，68%的选民投了赞成票，通过了一项提案，提案规定上市公司要让股东在每年的股东大会上针对高管薪酬和任命拥有具有法律效力的表决权。违反规定的公司老板最高可面临3年的牢狱或相当于6年薪水的罚金。瑞士对直接民主制的追求超越了对企业大亨的宽容放任。
Swiss business is shaken. It had backed a “counter-initiative” giving shareholders more voting powers without threatening criminal sanction. That was rejected by voters. The new law, which will be written into the constitution, endangers Switzerland as an investment destination, the business lobby claims. Economiesuisse, the Swiss Business Federation, now accepts the popular verdict but warns that such complex and highly charged changes must be implemented carefully. The laws needed to put the vote into practice will take ten years to write, some cynics suggest.
瑞士商业界因此备受震动
