在准备发布上世纪30年代以来最大规模的金融监管改革方案之时，奥巴马总统却感到比较烦。之所以如此，是因为想让人们──尤其是他那些保守的反对者──知道他并不是一些人所怀疑的那种严厉的干涉者。

　　
'I think the irony is that I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government,' he said Tuesday in a White House interview.

奥巴马周二在白宫接受采访时说，我认为具有讽刺意味的是，我实际上希望看到政府能够放松监管。

It is a counterintuitive argument to make when his government is a majority shareholder of General Motors, and when he will propose Wednesday new oversight of big financial institutions, new capital requirements for banks and a new consumer-protection agency for small investors.

在他的政府成为通用汽车(General Motors)的大股东，以及周三即将提出新的大型金融机构监管方案、新的银行资本金要求和为小投资者设立新的消费者保护机构之际，这无疑是一种违反直觉的论点。

Which is precisely why Mr. Obama went to great pains to explain that there is a philosophy behind the changes he is about to propose to the nation's financial plumbing. Indeed, he says, it is the same philosophy that applies to his broader view of the government's role in the economy:

这正是奥巴马极力解释他对美国金融系统提出的改革方案背后存在一种理念的原因。事实上，他说，同样的理念也适用于他对政府在经济中所起的作用的整体看法：

'You set up some rules of the road, ensure transparency and openness, guard against huge systemic risk that will lead . . . government potentially having to step in to avoid a depression, and then let entrepreneurs and individual businesses compete and do what they do.

你制定了一些交通规则，确保透明度和公开性，防止可能面临的巨大系统性风险……为了避免萧条，政府可能不得不介入，然后再让企业家和个体企业进行竞争，做他们想做的事情。

'And so it's puzzling to me sometimes to hear the standard conservative critique of what we're doing, when essentially every step we're taking involves cleaning up the mess that we found when we arrived here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.'
　
因此，当我听到保守派对我们所做所为的惯有的批评意见时，我有时感到困惑，基本上我们采取的的每一个步骤都为了清理在我们入主白宫之后所发现的问题。

The president and his aides know they have reached a politically perilous point, where the massive interventions they have made to deal with the recession and virtual collapse of Detroit -- to be followed soon by an attempt to overhaul the U.S. health system -- can be seen as the opening stages of a reordering of the American economy.

总统和他的助手们知道，他们已经达到了政治上的高危点，他们为应对衰退和底特律的几近崩溃所采取的大规模干预措施──以及很快将采取的对美国医疗卫生系统的改革──可被视为拉开了重塑美国经济秩序的序幕。