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Germany and the euro
德国与欧元
The Merkel method
默克尔之道
Two books that take a close look at the woman at the centre of the euro crisis
两本深入观察这位处于欧元危机中心的女人的书
Angela Merkel: A Chancellorship Forged in Crisis. By Alan Crawford and Tony Czuczka.
《安格拉默克尔：危机炼成的总理之位》，Alan Crawford 和 Tony Czuczka著。
Europe's Deadlock: How the Euro Crisis Could Be Solved—And Why it Won't Happen.
《欧洲之僵局：欧元危机能如何解决—以及为什么这不会发生》，David Marsh著。
ANGELA MERKEL, Germany's chancellor since November 2005, is now the longest-serving national leader in the European Union. Her country is more dominant in the EU and the euro zone than ever. She is Germany's most popular politician, at home and abroad. She is unchallenged within her party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). And she is coasting to another election victory in September.
安格拉默克尔，自2005年11月以来一直担任德国总理，是目前欧盟中任职时间最长的国家领导人。她的国家在欧盟和欧元区中比其它任何时候都要处于更加主导的地位。无论是在国内还是国外，她是德国最受欢迎的政治人物。在她所在的政党，保守的基督教民主联盟（CDU），无人能挑战她的地位。而且，她正在全国巡回，准备赢得9月选举的又一场胜利。
Yet she faces a huge and continuing problem: the euro crisis. This is the big test for her political legacy. Making matters worse, many analysts now point fingers of blame at Germany. It is too austere, too insistent on fiscal consolidation even in recession, too prone to put the burden of adjustment on deficit countries, too dominated by lawyers, not economists. These complaints and her political longevity make Mrs Merkel an interesting subject for a book. Several have come out in German, but this work by Alan Crawford and Tony Czuczka, two Bloomberg journalists, is one of the first to appear in English.
然而，她面临着一个巨大且持续的问题：欧元危机。这是对她政治遗产的一场大考。更加糟糕的是许多分析家现在都将矛头指向了德国。它太过于紧缩，甚至在衰退时期仍太过于坚持财政整顿，太过于倾向将调整的重担让赤字国家去承受，太过于听从法律人士而非经济学家。这些抱怨加上她长久的政治生命，使得默克尔女士成为写书的有趣的话题。德国已经有一些该题材的书出来了，但这本由两位彭博社记者Alan Crawford和Tony Czuczka所著的书是英语世界中的第一本。
The two authors tell the euro story well, but their most interesting material is about her past. Such details, which include her upbringing in communist East Germany, her position as a woman in a man's world and her background as a research chemist, help to define her domestic politics and her approach to the euro. They also make her easy to underestimate: in 1998 she unsentimentally helped to push out her political mentor, Helmut Kohl, the man who did most to create the euro. She may be slow-moving, but she has been more effective than many with more obvious flair and charisma.
这两位作者对于欧元的故事讲述得很好，但他们最有趣的材料是关于她的过去。她在共产主义东德的成长教育、她作为一个女人在男人世界中的地位以及她作为一位化学家的背景，这些细节都有助于定义她的国内政治和她处理欧元的手法。他们也使得她容易被低估：1998年，她无情地帮助赶走了她的政治导师赫尔穆特科尔，科尔是为欧元的产生出力最多的人。她也许动作缓慢，但她总是比其它许多人更加有效果、拥有更多明显的才华和领袖魅力。
At home she is cautious, sceptical of government's ability to change things, solicitous of allies and quick to cut down challengers. Despite preaching change to other EU countries, she is no radical reformer. Indeed, she has pulled the CDU leftward, partly out of conviction but also to create more coalition options and steal votes from the Social Democrats. In the euro crisis she has favoured small, slow steps. When she is in doubt or gets conflicting advice, her instinct is often to do nothing. As an easterner, she has often leant as much towards Poland as towards France, Germany's traditional EU partner.
在国内她是谨慎的，怀疑政府改革的能力，热切关心盟友以及对挑战者快速地斩草除根。尽管她游说其它欧盟国家作出变革，但她不是位激进的改革者。的确，她将CDU拉向左倾，部分是处于信念，但也是为了创造更多的结盟选项以及从社会民主党挖选票。在这场欧元危机当中，她偏向于小且慢的步伐。当她不确定时或是听到不一致的建议时，她的直觉常常是什么都不做。身为一个东德人，她常常更偏向于波兰，这个在欧盟中的德国的传统伙伴，而非法国。
All this may be fine at home, since Germany is humming along nicely. But it is problematic in the euro crisis. From its start in Greece in early 2010, Mrs Merkel has been reluctant to lead, careful of committing taxpayers' money and insistent on punishing the profligate. She has been bad at telling her voters how much they gain from the euro and how much they might lose if it falls apart. She has also favoured a simple morality tale of blaming fiscal incontinence for the crisis, when loss of competitiveness and failure to reform matter far more. And she has often found it hard to work with others: she eventually forged a relationship with France's Nicolas Sarkozy, but has not got on with his successor, Franois Hollande.
所有这一切在国内也许是可行的，因为德国一路都过得很愉快。但这对于欧元危机是有问题的。自从欧元危机于2010年初在希腊爆发，默克尔女士总是不大愿意领导，对花纳税人的钱很小心，坚持惩罚挥霍浪费者。她不善于告诉其选民他们从欧元中获益多少以及如果欧元解体他们可能损失多少。当面临竞争力丧失和改革失败这些更加紧要的事情时，她也喜欢以一种简单的道德故事的方式将危机归咎于不一致的财政政策。而且她也常常发现难于他人合作：她最终与法国尼古拉萨科齐打造了关系，但对于他的继任者弗兰西斯奥朗德则没有。
David Marsh's short book is a more sceptical take on the euro crisis. A seasoned Bundesbank-watcher and historian of the euro, he has long argued, as did the Bundesbank, that the single currency cannot work without fiscal and political union. Yet he acknowledges that this is unlikely to happen, not least because it would lack political legitimacy. So his preferred solution is to reduce the number of countries in the euro. But that too would not be easy, he concedes. In Berlin, the fear is that if any country quits, the euro could unravel all the way to the Rhine. Mrs Merkel clearly still has much to do to save the single currency.
David Marsh的短篇书对于欧元危机更加持怀疑态度。这位经验丰富的联邦银行观察者和欧元历史学家，他与联邦银行一样，长期一来一直认为在没有财政同盟和政治同盟的情况下，单一货币是行不通的。然而他承认这不大可能会发生，主要是因为这缺乏政治上的合法性。所以他的首选方案是减少在欧元区中的国家数目。但这也不是容易的，他退了一步。在柏林，人们害怕的是，一旦有国家退出，那么欧元的解体将一路蔓延至莱茵河。很明显，默克尔女士仍有很多事情要做，以拯救这单一货币。
