西方经济学(宏观经济学)论文中英对照.docVIP

To Spend or to Save? Trick Question It’s your fault. Part of it is, anyway. You, the American consumer, spent too much money. You bought too much house, took on too much debt and generally lived beyond your means. Your free-spending ways helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And now you’re going to have to do your part to end the crisis. How? By spending. Enough already with the saving that many of you have suddenly begun doing. This very moment, Congress and President Obama are preparing to send you a tax rebate, to inspire you to stimulate the economy. So go out and stimulate. Spend as if the future of your country depended on it. John Maynard Keynes, the great 20th-century economist, would have appreciated the apparent absurdity in these mixed messages. He coined a phrase, “the paradox of thrift,” to point out that what was rational for an individual during hard times — saving money — could be ruinous for an entire economy. Eventually, many of the savers may end up out of work because everyone else is saving, too. It’s enough to make you wonder what exactly you’re supposed to do. At his news conference on Monday night, Mr. Obama was asked directly whether people should spend or save their rebate checks. He ducked the question. Fortunately, though, it has an answer. There are a few ways to help both your own finances and the country’s. The first involves figuring out how to spend money now to save money later — which can lift the economy today and help individual households cope with their battered finances in the long run. The second involves realizing that Keynes’s paradox isn’t ironclad. In a financial crisis, when banks may need capital as much as retailers or restaurants need business, many people can save without guilt. What follows is a guide to spending and saving, both sensibly and patriotically. Besides developing the most famous prescription for curing downturns, Keynes can also be considered the godfather of behaviora