赏析版2011年7-12月经济学人文章(英汉双语对照)汇(4)

1935, he remembers the tail-end of the Depression and the shortages during the second world war. At five, he and his brothers were put to work helping their father run a small dairy from their basement. His job was to check that the bottles were clean. For each dirty one he spotted, he received a penny. Thus, he says in ―Ending the Fed‖, the book he wrote after the financial collapse of 2008, was born a fascination with numismatics. This flowered into a preoccupation with the money supply and a lifelong conviction that governments must be prevented from debasing the currency.

不过这些政见和赋予保罗政治理念活力的核心信念相比就小巫见大巫了。出生于1935年，他有对于大萧条时代最后几年的记忆，并经历了第二次世界大战期间的物资短缺。5岁时，他和他的兄弟们开始在家中的地下室工作，帮助他们的父亲经营一家小型奶制品店。他的工作就是检察奶瓶是否干净。他每找到一个脏奶瓶就可以获得1美分的奖励。因此，他在2008年的金融危机之后所著的书《终结美联储》内提到这一经历让他着迷于收集钱币[注1]。这种兴趣后来导致了他对于货币供应非常关注，并且让他产生了一种终生信条－应该阻止政府贬值货币。

Not all of Mr Paul‘s positions are unpopular. Like other conservatives, he defends the God-given right to keep and bear arms, ―the guardian of every other right‖. He is pro-life, which he believes begins at conception. He champions home-schooling. But only he combines a general dislike of the overweening federal government with a particular, obsessive hatred of what he considers the corrupt system of money at its secret heart.

保罗的政见并不是都不受欢迎。和其他保守分子一样，他捍卫上帝赋予的持有及携带枪支权利，称其为―所有其它权利的守护‖。他反对堕胎，相信生命开始于受孕之时。他拥护在家教育[注2]。但是保罗认为在联邦政府那不为人知的中心存在着一个腐败的货币体系，虽然保守分子大多厌恶骄傲自大的联邦政府，只有他把这种厌恶和针对货币系统的特定偏执仇恨结合起来，

Pauline conversion醍醐灌顶[注3]

In 1972, though hard at work as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, he travelled 50 miles to Houston to hear the elderly Ludwig von Mises offer an ―inspiring‖ denunciation of socialism. Several years later he dined with Friedrich Hayek. The good doctor‘s conversion to the Austrian school of economics turned him into a crusader who has come to see the operations of the Fed—indeed the entire banking system, with its reliance on paper money no longer backed by gold—as a dangerous confidence trick. The Fed has ―ominous powers that Congress barely understands,‖ he says. ―Trillions of dollars can be created and injected into the economy with no obligation by the Fed to reveal who benefits.‖ Though ending the Fed would take time, this is his panacea: it would end dollar depreciation, remove America‘s ability to fund endless wars and stop the growth of government.

1972年，即使身为妇产科医生工作繁忙，他还是抽空赶了50英里的路前往休斯敦，专程来倾听年老的路德维希·冯·米塞斯[注4]的一场讲话。这场讲话围绕在对社会主义的批判上，内容―很有启发‖。几年之后他曾和弗里德里希·哈耶克[注5]一起共同就餐过。这位和蔼的医生在皈依奥地利经济学派之后，摇身一变成为了一名理念斗士，将美联储的运作，以至整个依赖不再和黄金挂钩的纸币的银行系统看成是一个危险的骗局。他说，美联储拥有―国会几乎完全不理解的邪恶力量，它可以印制数万亿美元的纸币注入经济，且没有义务透露谁是最终受益者。‖虽然要终结美联储会花时间，他认为这是一贴万能药：这会结束美元贬值，令美国再也不能在无止境的战争上砸钱，也会停止政府的膨胀。

One consequence of Mr Paul‘s rise in the polls has been a flurry of speculation about his true intentions.