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Finance and economics
财经版块
Brace for impact
准备迎接冲击
The Euro-zone economy increasingly looks to be heading for trouble.
欧元区经济看起来越来越有可能陷入困境。
Europe’s summer was a strange mixture of heavy rainfall and wildfires.
欧洲的夏天是暴雨和野火的奇异混合。
The continent’s economy was also plagued by extremes.
欧洲大陆的经济也受到极端情况的困扰。
Inflation remained hot: prices rose by 5.3% in August compared with a year earlier.
通胀依然火热：与去年同期相比，8月份的物价上涨了5.3%。
And officials are increasingly worried by the cloudy growth outlook.
阴云密布的增长前景让官员们日益感到担忧。
A recent drop in the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) suggests the bloc is facing recession.
最近采购经理指数下降，表明欧盟正面临经济衰退。
Ahead of the next meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB) on September 14th, policymakers will be worried by the possible emergence of stagflation (a situation in which low growth is paired with entrenched inflation).
在欧洲央行9月14日召开下一次会议之前，政策制定者担心可能出现滞胀(低增长伴随着顽固的通胀)。
Christine Lagarde, the central bank’s president, recently reiterated her commitment to bringing down inflation and setting interest rates at “sufficiently restrictive levels for as long as necessary to achieve a timely return of inflation to our 2% medium-term target”.
欧洲央行行长克里斯蒂娜·拉加德最近重申，将致力于降低通胀，并将利率设定在“有足够限制性的水平，保持足够长的时间，以实现通胀及时回到2%的中期目标”。
In plain English: the ECB would much prefer a “hard landing”, featuring economic pain, than failing to reduce price rises.
简单地说：欧洲央行宁愿出现“硬着陆”，即经济痛苦，也不愿遏制物价上涨失败。
The problem is that the ECB risks crashing the plane.
问题是这样的话欧洲央行面临着让飞机坠毁的风险。
Euro-zone inflation is proving as stubborn as the American variety.
事实证明，欧元区的通货膨胀和美国的通货膨胀一样顽固。
In Europe, price rises were sparked by increasing energy costs; in America, they were more demand-driven.
在欧洲，价格上涨是由能源成本上涨引发的，在美国，价格上涨更多地是由需求驱动。
But in both places inflation has followed a similar path, with Europe slightly behind.
但这两个地方的通胀都走上了相似的道路，欧洲略有落后。
Now the question is whether core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, will come in to land.
现在的问题是，剔除波动较大的能源和食品价格后，核心通胀能否回落。
So far, it is staying stubbornly high.
到目前为止，核心通胀仍然居高不下。
This is in part because Europe has, like America, so far managed to dodge recession.
这在一定程度上是因为，欧洲和美国一样，到目前为止设法躲过了经济衰退。
At the end of last year, when many expected a European downturn, monetary tightening had yet to hit the economy and national governments offered generous handouts in order to counteract the energy shock.
去年年底，当许多人预计欧洲经济将陷入低迷时，货币紧缩政策尚未打击到经济，各国政府提供了慷慨的救济，以抵消能源方面的冲击。
The service sector showed decent growth, and industrial order books remained full from the post-covid boom.
服务业显示出可观的增长，工业订单簿因后疫情繁荣而满满当当。
Gloom is now spreading across the continent.
现在，悲观情绪正在整个欧洲大陆蔓延。
The global economy is weakening, and order books have plenty of blank pages.
全球经济正在走弱，订单簿上有大量的空白页。
State support for households is also running out.
国家对家庭的支持也正在耗尽。
Retail energy prices remain higher than before last year’s crisis; real incomes have yet to recover.
能源零售价格仍高于去年危机前的水平，实际收入尚未恢复。
Activity in the service industry contracted in August, according to the PMI survey.
采购经理指数调查显示，8月份服务业活动收缩。
The sector is at its weakest in two and a half years.
该行业正处于两年半以来的最低水平。
Higher interest rates have also started to affect the European economy, as intended by the ECB’s policymakers.
正如欧洲央行政策制定者所希望的那样，更高的利率也开始影响欧洲经济。
Construction, which is traditionally sensitive to interest rates, is feeling the pain.
一直以来对利率敏感的建筑业正感受到痛苦。
Stingier bank lending is leading to a 0.4 percentage-point reduction in GDP growth each quarter, according to Goldman Sachs, a bank.
根据高盛银行的数据，紧缩的银行贷款导致每个季度GDP增长减少0.4个百分点。
Corporate insolvencies rose by more than 8% in the year’s second quarter, compared with the first, and have reached their highest since 2015.
与第一季度相比，今年第二季度企业破产数量增加了8%以上，达到了自2015年以来的最高水平。
The impact of tighter monetary policy will peak in the second half of this year, predicts Oliver Rakau of Oxford Economics, a consultancy.
牛津经济咨询公司的奥利弗·拉考预测，货币紧缩政策的影响将在今年下半年达到顶峰。
A hard landing is thus almost guaranteed.
因此，硬着陆几乎是无可置疑的。
But the return of inflation to the ECB’s 2% target remains some way off.
但要想通胀率重返欧洲央行制定的2%的目标，仍有一段路要走。
Two forces are pulling prices in different directions.
两股力量正将价格推向不同的方向。
One is the situation in the labour market.
其一是劳动力市场的情况。
Unemployment remains at a record low.
失业率保持在创纪录的低位。
Although firms are hiring fewer workers, there is no imminent danger of mass lay-offs—in part because bosses want to hold on to workers that are increasingly scarce in an ageing continent.
尽管公司雇佣的人越来越少，但并不会立刻出现大规模裁员，部分原因是随着人口老龄化，老板们希望留住日益稀缺的劳动者。
As a result, wages across the bloc are rising, even if not by enough to make up for earlier inflation.
其结果是，整个欧元区的工资都在上涨，尽管涨幅不足以弥补早先的通胀。
The other force, which is pulling down inflation, is weakening demand for goods and services.
另一股力量正拉低通胀，即对商品和服务日益减弱的需求。
During the covid pandemic, price growth took off in advance of wage growth, causing companies’ profits to rise strongly alongside inflation.
在新冠疫情期间，价格增长先于工资增长，导致企业利润与通胀一起强劲增长。
If companies now find that demand is drying up, it is possible that inflation will fall at the same time as wage growth stays high, bringing profits back down.
如果企业现在发现需求正在枯竭，那么通胀可能会在工资保持增长的同时下降，从而使利润减少。
Indeed, prices on wholesale markets for goods are already falling fast, and import prices are also declining.
事实上，批发市场的商品价格已经在快速下降，进口价格也在下降。
At some point, these lower prices will be passed on to consumers.
到某个时刻，这些较低的价格将传递给消费者。
Which of these two forces will win out?
这两种力量中哪一种会取胜？
At the moment, it looks like the answer will be weak demand, since it has spread to the service sector, too.
目前看来，答案似乎是需求疲软，因为需求疲软也已蔓延至服务业。
This suggests that euro-zone inflation might fall in relatively short order.
这表明欧元区的通胀可能会在相对较短的时间内回落。
But the ECB appears unconvinced, and seems ready to lift its main rate to 4.5% from 4.25%.
但欧洲央行似乎并不相信，而且准备将主要利率从4.25%上调至4.5%。
Policymakers would be better off holding rates steady, so that they can assess the danger of a crash.
政策制定者最好保持利率稳定，这样才能评估经济崩溃的危险。
