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Meanwhile, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa—whose embrace of the world economy has been late or limited—fared much less well. In Africa, for example, the World Bank reckons that 46 percent of the population lived on less than $1 a day in 1998, exactly what the percentage was in 1987.
与此同时，由于拉丁美洲和非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南的国家参与世界经济的时间较晚或范围有限，因此它们与亚洲国家相比，形势要严峻得多。例如，据世界银行估计，1998年非洲总人口的46%每天的生活费低于1美元，这个比例与1987年的完全相同。
Well, if globalization is so good, why is it also so risky? The answer is that two problems could neutralize its potential benefits.
那么，既然全球化有那么多的好处，为什么它也有巨大的风险呢？答案是：来自两方面的问题有可能中和全球化潜在的益处。
The first is economic instability. The global economy may be prone to harsher boom-bust cycles than national economies individually. The theory that international trade and investment raise living standards works only if investment funds are well used and if trade flows do not become too lopsided.
首先是经济的不稳定性。和独立的各国经济相比，全球性经济更容易受到经济高涨萧条周期的严峻影响。只有在投资资金得到很好运用、贸易流通平衡发展的情况下，国际贸易与投资能有效提高生活水平这一理论才能成立。
The Asian financial crisis raised questions on both counts. In the early 1990s, most of Asia thrived because it received vast flows of foreign capital as bank loans, direct investment in factories or stock-market investment in local companies.
亚洲金融危机对这两个问题提出了质疑。在20世纪90年代初期，大部分亚洲国家经济一派欣欣向荣，是因为它们获得了大量外国资金，如它们以银行贷款、对工厂的直接投资、或对地方公司的股票市场投资等方式流入本国。
The ensuing spending boom in turn aided Europe, Japan and the United States by increasing imports from them. Then the boom abruptly halted in mid-1997 when, it became apparent that as a result of "crony capitalism," inept government investment policies and excess optimism, much of the investment had been wasted on unneeded factories, office buildings and apartments.
随之而来的消费狂潮带动了进口量的增长，这促使了欧洲、日本和美国的经济发展。接着这股消费潮在1997年中期突然停止。很显然，由于“裙带资本主义”、不当的政府投资政策以及过度的乐观情绪，大量投资被浪费在不必要的工厂、写字楼和公寓的建设上了。
