Democracy. In the West, we make a colossal mistake taking it for granted. We see democracy not as the most fragile of flowers that it really is, but we see it as part of our society's furniture. We tend to think of it as an intransigent given. We mistakenly believe that capitalism begets inevitably democracy. It doesn't.
民主。 在西方, 我们犯了巨大的错误, 认为民主是理所应当的。 我们没有把民主 视为它本应该是的最脆弱的花朵, 而是把它视为社会家具的一部分。 我们倾向于认为它是 无需妥协的赋予。 我们错误地相信 资本主义必然导致民主。 然而并不是的。
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and his great imitators in Beijing have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that it is perfectly possible to have a flourishing capitalism, spectacular growth, while politics remains democracy-free. Indeed, democracy is receding in our neck of the woods, here in Europe.
新加坡总理李光耀, 和他在北京的伟大模仿者们, 在超出合理的怀疑声中证明了, 在没有民主的政治情况下, 资本主义可以以惊人的速度 繁荣起来。 确实,民主在我们所在的区域 正在退步。 就在欧洲,
Earlier this year, while I was representing Greece -- the newly elected Greek government -- in the Eurogroup as its Finance Minister, I was told in no uncertain terms that our nation's democratic process -- our elections -- could not be allowed to interfere with economic policies that were being implemented in Greece. At that moment, I felt that there could be no greater vindication of Lee Kuan Yew, or the Chinese Communist Party, indeed of some recalcitrant friends of mine who kept telling me that democracy would be banned if it ever threatened to change anything.
今年的早些时候, 当我作为财政部长带领希腊 -- 新选举产生的希腊政府 -- 在欧元集团参加会议。 我被明确地告知 我们国家的民主过程 -- 我们的选举 -- 不被允许介入 将要在希腊实施的经济政策。 在那一刻, 我感到这是对李光耀总理, 或者是中国共产党来说 是绝佳的辩护, 事实上一些反对我的朋友 不断地告诉我, 民主会被禁止, 当它威胁要改变些什么的时候。
Tonight, here, I want to present to you an economic case for an authentic democracy. I want to ask you to join me in believing again that Lee Kuan Yew, the Chinese Communist Party and indeed the Eurogroup are wrong in believing that we can dispense with democracy -- that we need an authentic, boisterous democracy. And without democracy, our societies will be nastier, our future bleak and our great, new technologies wasted.
今天,在这里,我想要向你们展示, 一个关于真实民主的经济案例。 我想要邀请你们加入我 来一起重新相信, 李光耀、 中国共产党、 和欧元集团 错误地相信 我们可以不需要民主 -- 我们需要真正的和 强有力的民主。 没有民主的话, 我们的社会就会是污秽龌龊的, 我们的未来会是惨淡的 我们伟大的新科技会被浪费。
Speaking of waste, allow me to point out an interesting paradox that is threatening our economies as we speak. I call it the twin peaks paradox. One peak you understand -- you know it, you recognize it -- is the mountain of debts that has been casting a long shadow over the United States, Europe, the whole world. We all recognize the mountain of debts. But few people discern its twin. A mountain of idle cash belonging to rich savers and to corporations, too terrified to invest it into the productive activities that can generate the incomes from which you can extinguish the mountain of debts and which can produce all those things that humanity desperately needs, like green energy.
提到浪费, 请允许我来指出 一个正在威胁着我们的经济的 有意思的悖论。 我称之为双峰悖论。 第一个高峰你们理解 -- 你们知道,你们认识它 -- 它是一座债务的高山, 投射着长长的阴影, 遍及美国,欧洲,乃至全球。 我们都认识到这座债务高山。 但很少人意识到它有一个双胞胎。 一座闲置现金堆砌而成的山峰。 它来自于有钱人和大公司的存款。 他们(有钱人和大公司)害怕去投资, 去投资可以产生收入的 生产活动。 这样的生产活动能够 尝清那座债务高山, 还可以制造出 人类急需的物品, 比如绿色能源。
Now let me give you two numbers. Over the last three months, in the United States, in Britain and in the Eurozone, we have invested, collectively, 3.4 trillion dollars on all the wealth-producing goods -- things like industrial plants, machinery, office blocks, schools, roads, railways, machinery, and so on and so forth. $3.4 trillion sounds like a lot of money until you compare it to the $5.1 trillion that has been slushing around in the same countries, in our financial institutions, doing absolutely nothing during the same period except inflating stock exchanges and bidding up house prices.
现在,让我向你们 展示两个数字。 在过去的三个月里, 在美国, 英国和欧元区, 我们投入了总计 3.4 万亿美元 在能够创造财富的物品上-- 例如工业厂房,机械, 办公大楼,学校, 道路,铁路,机器, 等等,等等。 3.4 万亿美元听起来 似乎是一笔巨款 直到你拿去跟在相同国家中、 在我们的金融机构中, 闲置的5.1万亿美元比较。 在同样的时间段内, 什么也没做, 除了让股票市场膨胀, 让房产价格上涨。
So a mountain of debt and a mountain of idle cash form twin peaks, failing to cancel each other out through the normal operation of the markets.
所以一座债务大山, 和一座闲置现金大山, 形成了两座山峰, 没能够让正常的市场运营 来使两者平衡。
The result is stagnant wages, more than a quarter of 25- to 54-year-olds in America, in Japan and in Europe out of work. And consequently, low aggregate demand, which in a never-ending cycle, reinforces the pessimism of the investors, who, fearing low demand, reproduce it by not investing -- exactly like Oedipus' father, who, terrified by the prophecy of the oracle that his son would grow up to kill him, unwittingly engineered the conditions that ensured that Oedipus, his son, would kill him.
结果就是薪酬停滞, 有超过四分之一的25-54岁的 美国人、日本人、 和欧洲人没有工作。 随之而来地,是总需求的降低, 循环往复, 加剧投资者对前景的悲观, 投资者们惧怕着低需求量, 于是就不再投资 -- 就像俄狄浦斯王的父亲, 神预言他的儿子长大之后会杀了他, 而他对此感到害怕, 于是不知不觉中创造了各种条件, 以至于后来俄狄浦斯王, 他的儿子,真的杀了他。
This is my quarrel with capitalism. Its gross wastefulness, all this idle cash, should be energized to improve lives, to develop human talents, and indeed to finance all these technologies, green technologies, which are absolutely essential for saving planet Earth.
这是我对于资本主义的争论。 它的挥霍无度, 所有闲置的现金, 应该用于改善人民的生活, 发展人类的才能, 和真正地去资助所有的科技, 绿色科技, 这对于保护地球来说 绝对是很重要的。
Am I right in believing that democracy might be the answer? I believe so, but before we move on, what do we mean by democracy? Aristotle defined democracy as the constitution in which the free and the poor, being in the majority, control government.
相信民主可能是这一切的 答案的我是对的吗? 我相信是的, 但在我们继续之前, 我们所说的民主是什么? 亚里士多德将民主定义为 是一个体制,在这个体制中, 政府是由占着绝大多数比例的 自由人和穷人来掌控的。
Now, of course Athenian democracy excluded too many. Women, migrants and, of course, the slaves. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the significance of ancient Athenian democracy on the basis of whom it excluded.
当然,雅典时代的民主制度 把很多人排除在外。 女人,移民以及, 当然地,奴隶。 但是,如果仅基于 有多少人被排除在外, 就去否定古老的 雅典民主制度的意义的话, 这么做是错误的。
What was more pertinent, and continues to be so about ancient Athenian democracy, was the inclusion of the working poor, who not only acquired the right to free speech, but more importantly, crucially, they acquired the rights to political judgments that were afforded equal weight in the decision-making concerning matters of state. Now, of course, Athenian democracy didn't last long. Like a candle that burns brightly, it burned out quickly. And indeed, our liberal democracies today do not have their roots in ancient Athens. They have their roots in the Magna Carta, in the 1688 Glorious Revolution, indeed in the American constitution. Whereas Athenian democracy was focusing on the masterless citizen and empowering the working poor, our liberal democracies are founded on the Magna Carta tradition, which was, after all, a charter for masters. And indeed, liberal democracy only surfaced when it was possible to separate fully the political sphere from the economic sphere, so as to confine the democratic process fully in the political sphere, leaving the economic sphere -- the corporate world, if you want -- as a democracy-free zone.
雅典民主中更值得肯定的, 而且时至今日仍值得肯定的, 是它包括了贫穷的劳工们, 授予他们不仅仅言论自由, 更重要的,最重要的是, 给予他们政治批判的权利。 他们在国家事务政策的制定过程中 被赋予同等的权利。 现在,当然, 雅典民主没有延续下去。 就像燃烧得十分明亮的蜡烛, 很快就燃烧殆尽。 确实, 我们当今的自由民主制度 并不是产自于古代雅典。 他们产自于大宪章、 1688年的光荣革命, 还有美国宪法。 雅典民主集中于无主的平民, 和赋予贫穷的劳工们权力, 我们的自由民主制度 是建立在大宪章的传统上, 一个为富人所建立的宪章。 确实,自由民主, 只有在它可以完全 分割政治领域和经济领域, 从而把民主过程 限定在政治领域, 使经济领域 — 商业企业,如果你想的话 -- 成为一个不受民主限制的地带 的时候浮现。
Now, in our democracies today, this separation of the economic from the political sphere, the moment it started happening, it gave rise to an inexorable, epic struggle between the two, with the economic sphere colonizing the political sphere, eating into its power.
现在,在我们当今的民主, 经济领域和政治领域的分离, 当它开始发生的时候, 这种分离引发了两者间 无情的、史诗般的较量, 经济领域侵占统治着政治领域, 把政治领域的权力吞噬掉。
Have you wondered why politicians are not what they used to be? It's not because their DNA has degenerated.
你们有没有想过, 为什么政治人物不是他们原有的样子? 这并不是因为他们DNA退化了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
It is rather because one can be in government today and not in power, because power has migrated from the political to the economic sphere, which is separate.
而是因为,今天在政府里面的人 并没有权力, 因为权力已经从政治领域转移到了 分离的经济领域中。
Indeed, I spoke about my quarrel with capitalism. If you think about it, it is a little bit like a population of predators, that are so successful in decimating the prey that they must feed on, that in the end they starve.
确实, 我说出了我对资本主义的争论。 如果你们仔细想想, 这有点像一群肉食动物, 成功地大批杀害了 它们赖以生存的猎物, 最终自己挨饿。
Similarly, the economic sphere has been colonizing and cannibalizing the political sphere to such an extent that it is undermining itself, causing economic crisis. Corporate power is increasing, political goods are devaluing, inequality is rising, aggregate demand is falling and CEOs of corporations are too scared to invest the cash of their corporations.
同理, 经济领域殖民统治 并蚕食了政治领域, 在这样的一种状况下 逐渐削弱了自己, 造成了经济危机。 企业的力量正在崛起, 而政治产出正在贬值, 不平等正在上升, 总需求正在降低, 大公司的总裁们害怕 用他们公司的资金进行投资。
So the more capitalism succeeds in taking the demos out of democracy, the taller the twin peaks and the greater the waste of human resources and humanity's wealth.
资本主义越是成功地把人民群众 从民主中剔除, 两座山峰就会越来越高, 人力资源和人类的财富 也就更多地被浪费掉了。
Clearly, if this is right, we must reunite the political and economic spheres and better do it with a demos being in control, like in ancient Athens except without the slaves or the exclusion of women and migrants.
无疑的,如果这是正确的, 我们必须重新把 政治和经济领域连结在一起, 并且让人民群众来掌控着 使它变得更好。 就像是古代的雅典民主, 在没有奴隶, 也不把女人和移民排除在外 的前提下。
Now, this is not an original idea. The Marxist left had that idea 100 years ago and it didn't go very well, did it?
现在,这不是一个新颖的想法。 马克思主义左翼分子 在100多年前就有这样的想法, 然而并没有做得很好,不是吗?
The lesson that we learned from the Soviet debacle is that only by a miracle will the working poor be reempowered, as they were in ancient Athens, without creating new forms of brutality and waste.
我们从苏联解体中 吸取到的教训是 只有当贫穷的劳工们被重新授权, 奇迹才会发生。 就像古代雅典时代那样, 没有制造新形式的暴行和浪费。
But there is a solution: eliminate the working poor. Capitalism's doing it by replacing low-wage workers with automata, androids, robots. The problem is that as long as the economic and the political spheres are separate, automation makes the twin peaks taller, the waste loftier and the social conflicts deeper, including -- soon, I believe -- in places like China.
但有现在有一个另外的解决方案: 消灭贫穷的劳工。 资本主义正在这样做, 通过用自动装置,安卓系统,机器人 来取代低薪的劳工。 问题是, 只要经济和政治领域是分离的, 自动化会让两座山峰越来越高, 浪费会更加巨大, 社会矛盾会加剧, 包括 -- 很快,我相信 -- 在像中国这样的地方。
So we need to reconfigure, we need to reunite the economic and the political spheres, but we'd better do it by democratizing the reunified sphere, lest we end up with a surveillance-mad hyperautocracy that makes The Matrix, the movie, look like a documentary.
因此,我们需要重新装配, 我们需要使经济和政治领域 连结在一块, 但我们更应该要做的,是使那块 重新团结在一起的领域民主化, 以免我们最终落入 监视狂般的超级独裁政权, 让电影黑客帝国, 看起来像是纪录片。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So the question is not whether capitalism will survive the technological innovations it is spawning. The more interesting question is whether capitalism will be succeeded by something resembling a Matrix dystopia or something much closer to a Star Trek-like society, where machines serve the humans and the humans expend their energies exploring the universe and indulging in long debates about the meaning of life in some ancient, Athenian-like, high tech agora.
所以,问题并不是资本主义能否在 在它推动的科技创新中存活下来。 更有趣的问题是, 资本主义是否会被 像是黑客帝国这样的反乌托邦社会取代, 或是被更类似于 星际迷航的社会取代, 由机器来服务人类, 人们把精力花费在探索宇宙当中, 和沉迷于冗长的 有关于在某些古代,例如雅典时代的, 和高科技集市当中生命的意义。
I think we can afford to be optimistic. But what would it take, what would it look like to have this Star Trek-like utopia, instead of the Matrix-like dystopia?
我想,我们能够乐观起来。 但是像星际迷航一样的乌托邦, 而不是黑客帝国那样的反乌托邦, 看起来是怎么样的呢? 而创造它需要些什么呢?
In practical terms, allow me to share just briefly, a couple of examples.
实际上, 请允许我简略地 分享一些例子。
At the level of the enterprise, imagine a capital market, where you earn capital as you work, and where your capital follows you from one job to another, from one company to another, and the company -- whichever one you happen to work at at that time -- is solely owned by those who happen to work in it at that moment. Then all income stems from capital, from profits, and the very concept of wage labor becomes obsolete. No more separation between those who own but do not work in the company and those who work but do not own the company; no more tug-of-war between capital and labor; no great gap between investment and saving; indeed, no towering twin peaks.
在企业层面, 试想一个资本市场, 在其中你工作赚取资本, 你的资本跟着你, 从一个工作到下一个工作, 从一个公司到下一个公司, 而这个公司-- 你正巧在那时工作的那间公司-- 被某个正巧在那里工作的人 全权拥有。 所有的收益流,从资本,到收益, 以及雇佣劳动的概念都会被废弃。 消除掉不工作却拥有着公司 和在公司工作 却不曾拥有这间公司之间的人的间距, 消除掉资本和劳动之间的 拔河比赛; 消除掉投资和存款间的 巨大缺口; 最后,两个高耸的山峰 就会消失。
At the level of the global political economy, imagine for a moment that our national currencies have a free-floating exchange rate, with a universal, global, digital currency, one that is issued by the International Monetary Fund, the G-20, on behalf of all humanity. And imagine further that all international trade is denominated in this currency -- let's call it "the cosmos," in units of cosmos -- with every government agreeing to be paying into a common fund a sum of cosmos units proportional to the country's trade deficit, or indeed to a country's trade surplus. And imagine that that fund is utilized to invest in green technologies, especially in parts of the world where investment funding is scarce.
在全球政治经济学层面, 试想某个时刻, 我们的国家货币有一个 自由浮动的兑换汇率, 伴随着一个通用的, 全球的,电子的, 由国际货币基金组织, 二十国集团G20所发行的, 代表全人类的货币。 并且进一步想象一下, 所有的跨国交易 都用这种货币来标价 -- 我们称它为 “宇宙币”, 用宇宙币为单元-- 每个政府都会同意 根据他们国家的贸易逆差, 或是根据他们国家的贸易顺差, 来向一个共同基金 投入成比例的宇宙币。 试想这个基金 是被用于投资绿色科技, 尤其是在世界上 缺乏投资基金的地方。
This is not a new idea. It's what, effectively, John Maynard Keynes proposed in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference. The problem is that back then, they didn't have the technology to implement it. Now we do, especially in the context of a reunified political-economic sphere.
这不是一个新的想法。 实际上,这是约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯 在1944年的布莱顿森林会议上 所提出来的。 但问题是, 在那时,他们没有科技去实现它。 现在我们有了, 尤其是在一个重新连结的 政治和经济领域的背景下。
The world that I am describing to you is simultaneously libertarian, in that it prioritizes empowered individuals, Marxist, since it will have confined to the dustbin of history the division between capital and labor, and Keynesian, global Keynesian. But above all else, it is a world in which we will be able to imagine an authentic democracy.
我向你们描述的这个世界, 同时是自由的, 因为它使被赋予权力的 个体们优先化, 马克思主义, 由于它将局限于历史的垃圾箱, 资本和劳动之间的分割, 还有凯恩斯主义, 全球化的凯恩斯主义。 总的来说, 它是一个我们能够想象的, 一个真正的民主世界。
Will such a world dawn? Or shall we descend into a Matrix-like dystopia? The answer lies in the political choice that we shall be making collectively. It is our choice, and we'd better make it democratically.
这样的世界会出现吗? 或者我们会沦落到变成 一个黑客帝国般的反乌托邦吗? 答案就在我们将要共同做出的 政治选择中。 这是我们的选择, 我们最好用民主的方法 来进行选择。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
Bruno Giussani: Yanis ... It was you who described yourself in your bios as a libertarian Marxist. What is the relevance of Marx's analysis today?
布鲁诺·吉桑尼:亚尼斯 ... 你在自我介绍中称自己为 自由派马克思主义者。 马克思主义与今天的演讲 有怎样的相关性呢?
Yanis Varoufakis: Well, if there was any relevance in what I just said, then Marx is relevant. Because the whole point of reunifying the political and economic is -- if we don't do it, then technological innovation is going to create such a massive fall in aggregate demand,
亚尼斯·瓦鲁法基斯: 如果与我刚刚的演讲内容相关, 马克思主义就是与此相关的。 因为重新连结 政治和经济最主要的意义在于— 如果我们不这么做, 那么科技创新就会促使 总需求呈现大幅下跌,
what Larry Summers refers to as secular stagnation. With this crisis migrating from one part of the world, as it is now, it will destabilize not only our democracies, but even the emerging world that is not that keen on liberal democracy. So if this analysis holds water, then Marx is absolutely relevant. But so is Hayek, that's why I'm a libertarian Marxist, and so is Keynes, so that's why I'm totally confused.
也就是拉瑞·萨默斯所说的 长期性经济停滞。 随着这个危机 从世界某个区域向外扩散, 就像现在这样, 它将使得我们的民主不稳定, 甚至是那些不是特别热衷于自由民主的 新兴国家。 如果这个论述成立的话, 那么马克思主义绝对是相关的。 但同时哈耶克, 这就是为什么 我是一个自由派马克思主义者, 还有凯恩斯, 这也就是为什么 我自己都感到不清醒了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
BG: Indeed, and possibly we are too, now.
BG:确实是,可能 我们现在也很迷惑。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
YV: If you are not confused, you are not thinking, OK?
YV: 如果你没有感到困惑, 说明你没有思考,对吧?
BG: That's a very, very Greek philosopher kind of thing to say --
BG:这是非常,非常 希腊哲学家一样的看法 --
YV: That was Einstein, actually --
YV:实际上那是爱因斯坦 --
BG: During your talk you mentioned Singapore and China, and last night at the speaker dinner, you expressed a pretty strong opinion about how the West looks at China. Would you like to share that?
BG:在你的演讲中, 你提到了新加坡和中国, 还有在昨天晚上的演讲嘉宾晚宴上, 你对西方是如何看待中国的 表达了非常强烈的观点。 你愿意分享一下吗?
YV: Well, there's a great degree of hypocrisy. In our liberal democracies, we have a semblance of democracy. It's because we have confined, as I was saying in my talk, democracy to the political sphere, while leaving the one sphere where all the action is -- the economic sphere -- a completely democracy-free zone.
YV:好吧,这有 很大程度上的虚伪。 在我们的自由民主制度下, 一种民主的假象。 因为我们被限制了, 正如我在演讲中所说的, 民主仅在于政治领域, 然而一切活动发生的那个领域 -- 经济领域 -- 成为了完全不民主的区域。
In a sense, if I am allowed to be provocative, China today is closer to Britain in the 19th century. Because remember, we tend to associate liberalism with democracy -- that's a mistake, historically. Liberalism, liberal, it's like John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill was particularly skeptical about the democratic process. So what you are seeing now in China is a very similar process to the one that we had in Britain during the Industrial Revolution, especially the transition from the first to the second. And to be castigating China for doing that which the West did in the 19th century, smacks of hypocrisy.
在某种意义上, 用比较前瞻的话说就是, 中国今天就像是19世纪的英国。 因为请记得, 我们想要把自由主义和民主 连在一起的意图 -- 是错误的,历史上来说。 自由主义,自由, 就像是约翰·斯图加特·密尔。 约翰·斯图加特·密尔对于民主过程 持非常怀疑的观点。 所以你所看到的现代中国的发展, 就是一个跟英国在工业革命时期 非常相似的发展过程, 尤其是从第一次工业革命 和第二次工业革命的之间的过渡期。 所以对中国在 做西方社会19世纪做过的事 而进行苛责是很虚伪的。
BG: I am sure that many people here are wondering about your experience as the Finance Minister of Greece earlier this year.
BG:我想这里的很多人 都对你今年早期 出任希腊财政部长的经验感到好奇。
YV: I knew this was coming.
YV:我知道这个问题会出现的。
BG: Yes.
BG:是的。
BG: Six months after, how do you look back at the first half of the year?
BG:在六个月之后, 你是怎样看待今年前半年的经历的?
YV: Extremely exciting, from a personal point of view, and very disappointing, because we had an opportunity to reboot the Eurozone. Not just Greece, the Eurozone. To move away from the complacency and the constant denial that there was a massive -- and there is a massive architectural fault line going through the Eurozone, which is threatening, massively, the whole of the European Union process.
YV:就我个人来看,非常兴奋, 也很失望, 因为我们有机会重振欧元区。 不只是希腊,是欧洲。 走出自满 和不断地否认欧洲以前已经出现了巨大的 -- 和现在正在发生的巨大的结构上的裂痕, 它横穿着欧洲, 沉重地威胁着整个欧盟进程。
We had an opportunity on the basis of the Greek program -- which by the way, was the first program to manifest that denial -- to put it right. And, unfortunately, the powers in the Eurozone, in the Eurogroup, chose to maintain denial.
我们有一个基于希腊项目的机会 -- 顺便一提, 是第一个证明那种否定的存在, 并想要解决它的项目。 不幸的是, 因为欧元区的权势, 欧元集团的权势, 他们选择继续否认这个问题。
But you know what happens. This is the experience of the Soviet Union. When you try to keep alive an economic system that architecturally cannot survive, through political will and through authoritarianism, you may succeed in prolonging it, but when change happens it happens very abruptly and catastrophically.
但是你知道这会导致什么。 苏联的经验告诉过我们。 当你想要让已经无法存活的经济系统 得以继续存活, 通过政治意愿和霸权主义这样的方式, 你也许能够成功地将它延迟, 但是当转变发生的时候, 便会是突发的,而且是灾难性的。
BG: What kind of change are you foreseeing?
BG:你预见到怎样的转变呢?
YV: Well, there's no doubt that if we don't change the architecture of the Eurozone, the Eurozone has no future.
YV:嗯,无异议的是 如果我们不改变欧元区的结构, 欧元区是没有未来的。
BG: Did you make any mistakes when you were Finance Minister?
BG:当你在做希腊财长的时候有做过错误的决定吗?
YV: Every day.
YV:每一天。
BG: For example? YV: Anybody who looks back --
BG:比如? YV:任何人回看过往的时候 --
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No, but seriously. If there's any Minister of Finance, or of anything else for that matter, who tells you after six months in a job, especially in such a stressful situation, that they have made no mistake, they're dangerous people. Of course I made mistakes.
不,我是说真的。 如果任何财政部长, 或是任何与此有相关的人, 告诉你在六个月的任期后, 尤其是在这样压力巨大的情况下, 他们没做错过任何事, 说明他们是非常危险的。 当然我做过很多错误的事。
The greatest mistake was to sign the application for the extension of a loan agreement in the end of February. I was imagining that there was a genuine interest on the side of the creditors to find common ground. And there wasn't. They were simply interested in crushing our government, just because they did not want to have to deal with the architectural fault lines that were running through the Eurozone. And because they didn't want to admit that for five years they were implementing a catastrophic program in Greece. We lost one-third of our nominal GDP. This is worse than the Great Depression. And no one has come clean from the troika of lenders that have been imposing this policy to say, "This was a colossal mistake."
最错误的事, 就是在2月底, 签署了申请延长债务协议的申请书。 当时我想象着, 债权方是真的有兴趣来 寻找一致。 可是并没有。 他们的兴趣仅仅是压倒我们的政府, 就因为他们不想要 去处理横贯欧元区的 巨大的裂痕。 他们也不想承认, 在过去的五年里 他们在希腊实施了灾难性的计划。 我们失去了三分之一名义上的GDP。 这比大萧条时期更加惨烈。 没有任何三驾马车里的债权人, 坦白承认实施这样的政策 “是一个巨大的错误。”
BG: Despite all this, and despite the aggressiveness of the discussion, you seem to be remaining quite pro-European.
BG:除了这些, 除了这些激进的讨论, 你似乎还是比较赞成欧洲一体化的。
YV: Absolutely. Look, my criticism of the European Union and the Eurozone comes from a person who lives and breathes Europe. My greatest fear is that the Eurozone will not survive. Because if it doesn't, the centrifugal forces that will be unleashed will be demonic, and they will destroy the European Union. And that will be catastrophic not just for Europe but for the whole global economy.
YV:绝对是的。 我对欧盟和欧元区的批判 来自于生活在欧洲的个人经验。 我最大的恐惧是欧元区无法存活下去。 因为如果欧元区无法存活, 那么离心力就会被释放出来, 是魔鬼般的释放, 最终将会摧毁欧盟。 不仅对欧洲,对全球经济来说 也将会是灾难性的。
We are probably the largest economy in the world. And if we allow ourselves to fall into a route of the postmodern 1930's, which seems to me to be what we are doing, then that will be detrimental to the future of Europeans and non-Europeans alike.
我们可能是世界上最大的经济体。 如果我们允许自己 走上后现代1930年代的老路, 虽然在我看来我们现在就在走着, 那对欧洲的未来,和非欧洲国家的未来, 都会是有害的。
BG: We definitely hope you are wrong on that point. Yanis, thank you for coming to TED.
BG:我们真的希望在这点上你错了。 亚尼斯,谢谢你来到TED。
YV: Thank you.
YV:谢谢
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