经济学人 财经系列 2013-3-15

Finance and Economics; Free exchange; Body of evidence;
财经；自由交流专栏；关于金融危机的大量证据；

Is a concentration of wealth at the top to blame for financial crises?
金融危机是否应归咎于财富向上层的集中？

In the search for the villain behind the global financial crisis, some have pointed to inequality as a culprit. In his 2010 book “Fault Lines”, Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago argued that inequality was a cause of the crisis, and that the American government served as a willing accomplice. From the early 1980s the wages of working Americans with little or no university education fell ever farther behind those with university qualifications, he pointed out. Under pressure to respond to the problem of stagnating incomes, successive presidents and Congresses opened a flood of mortgage credit.

全球金融危机的幕后黑手究竟是谁。各方对此问题的调查从未停止过，其中就有一种观点认为，收入不平等是造成危机的罪魁祸首。芝加哥大学的拉古拉迈·拉詹教授在他2010年出版的《断层线》一书中说，引发危机的主犯是收入不平等，而政府则充当了心甘情愿的帮凶角色。他指出，自1980年代初起，美国劳动者的收入出现了两极分化，未受过高等教育的人的工资远低于拥有大学学历者，而且二者的差距还在扩大。民众收入停滞不前成了历任政府和国会都头痛不已的老大难问题，迫于现实压力，他们作出了放开抵押贷款限制的决定。