评论|美参议员发国难财？

With the COVID-19, the U.S. is clearly facing a period of severe economic strain. Using that for personal enrichment is not just immoral or illegal, it is above all a denial of common feeling and commonality.

疫情之下，美国经济明显面临着巨大压力。此时来浑水摸鱼，借此机会中饱私囊不仅是不道德或违法的，更是彻底缺乏同理心和脱离民众之举。

Editor's note: Mike Cormack is a writer, editor and reviewer mostly focusing on China, where he lived 2007-2014. He edited Agenda Beijing and is a regular book reviewer for South China Morning Post. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

编者按：麦克·考马克是一名作家、编辑和评论家，曾于2007年至2014年在中国生活。他的文章主要关注中国。他是《Agenda Beijing》杂志社编辑，并定期为《南华早报》撰写书刊评论。本文仅为作者本人观点，不一定代表CGTN立场。

In times of crisis, the rallying cry is: "We'll get through this together." With solidarity, mutual sacrifice and a sense of fellow-feeling, difficult times can be weathered. Though, funnily enough, it's usually ordinary people who are the most willing to get behind this. Solidarity tends to ebb away when you have more to lose. The working classes meanwhile know what it is to rely on others and to lend a helping hand.

危机时代常出现这样的口号：“我们将共渡难关。”团结一心、相互奉献、感同身受，在这些精神的指引下，人们能够共克时艰。但有意思的是，普通大众往往是最能体现这些精神的群体。个人面临的风险越大，团结精神就越容易被抛诸脑后。劳动人民却懂得什么是互相依赖、守望相助。

But not everyone cares about solidarity. Some see crises as opportunities to get rich. In ordinary times, financial distress has vulture capitalists looking to pick on the bones of distressed assets. In wartime Britain, small-time black marketers were known as "spivs," profiting off the sums they could charge for proscribed luxuries like nylon tights and wristwatches. 

但并不是所有人都在乎团结，有些人将危机视作发财的良机。在经济困难时期，总有贪婪的资本家想借机对困境中的人们敲骨吸髓。在战时的英国，三流黑市商人被称作“奸商”，靠着高价贩售尼龙紧身袜和手表等违禁奢侈品牟利。

Just recently we've seen people plundering supermarkets for hand wash, toilet paper and disinfectants in the hope of reselling them at a significant mark up. 

就在最近，我们目睹了人们抢购超市里的洗手液、厕纸和消毒产品，想要以远高出原价的价格转卖。

More broadly, disaster capitalism, as Naomi Klein has written, takes advantage of populations still stunned by major crises to impose corporate power in place of the state – from "liberated" Iraq to a New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

更广义上讲，娜奥米·克莱恩笔下的灾难资本主义利用还未从严重危机中缓过神的民众来将公司权力凌驾于国家之上，从“得到解放”的伊拉克到被卡特里娜飓风摧残的新奥尔良，此景处处可见。

While everyday people tend to pull together, most political leaders must of course lead by example. A British sobriety pledge during the First World War, to help cut down on alcohol imports and help improve worker health and efficiency, was followed by King George V. (Prime Minister Lloyd George did not follow suit). 

当普通人想把劲往一处使时，大多数政治领袖当然要做出表率。一战期间，英国人做出少喝酒的承诺以帮助减少酒类进口并改善工人的健康及工作效率。乔治五世国王遵守了这一承诺（首相劳合·乔治并未这样做）。

The White House of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Second World War strictly followed rationing. "The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline," as Sun Tzu says, and he is right.

二战期间，由富兰克林·罗斯福担任总统的美国政府严格遵守定量配给政策。孙子曰：“善用兵者，修道而保法”, 此言为实。

But not everyone got the memo. While U.S. President Donald Trump was calling the battle against the coronavirus "a war" and imploring Americans to pull together to fight it, other politicians seem to have seen the chance for a quick buck. Several senators have been accused of using their advance knowledge of the coronavirus epidemic (following intelligence briefings) and using that to sell shareholdings, in the knowledge that the economy was about to tank, and with it the stock markets.

但并非所有人都得其真谛。美国总统唐纳德·特朗普将抗击新冠疫情称为一场“战争”，并请求美国人民众志成城，共同抗疫。然而与此同时，其他的政客似乎看到了赚快钱的机会。几名参议院被控事先（通过情报部门汇报）得知新冠疫情后抛售股票，因为他们知道经济将受到重挫，股市也会应声大跌。

Republican Senator Richard Burr (chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, no less) was accused of dumping a significant percentage of his stocks, selling off a total valued between 628,000 U.S. dollars and 1.72 million U.S. dollars on February 13 in 33 separate transactions – at a time when he was receiving daily updates on the coronavirus. 

共和党参议员理查德·伯尔（参议院情报委员会主席）被曝于2月13日分33次抛售了自己绝大部分股票，总金额在62.8万至172万美元之间。而与此同时，他每日都在听取关于新冠病毒的最新情况汇报。

A spokesperson initially gave a non-denial saying, "Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak." Well, of course – the point was that he knew that turmoil and sell-offs were coming before the rest of the population did. Perhaps realizing how awful this looked, Burr later said he had asked the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee "to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency".

一位发言人对此未加否认，“伯尔议员已经提交了财务披露表，说明了在美国金融市场因愈发严重的新冠疫情而出现波动迹象之前的几周里其个人交易的情况。”好吧，当然了，问题的关键在于他事先得知了将要出现的动荡，并先于其他美国民众抛售了股票。可能是感到颜面无光，伯尔后来称他已经请参议院道德委员会“完全透明地对此事进行审查”。

Senator Kelly Loefller – also a Republican – was also accused of unloading a seven-figure sum of stocks jointly owned by her and her husband from January 24, the day that the Senate Health Committee on which she serves was briefed by administration officials on the coronavirus, to mid-February. 

同为共和党参议员的凯莉·洛夫勒也被控在1月24日至2月中旬期间抛售了其与丈夫共同所有的价值七位数的股票。而就在1月24日当天，她所供职的参议院卫生委员听取了政府官员就新冠疫情所做的简报。

The fact that she is married to the chairman of New York Stock Exchange also seemed to suggest certain inside-track knowledge. She vehemently denied any impropriety, tweeting: "This is a ridiculous and baseless attack. I don't make investment decisions for my portfolio. Investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisers without my or my husband's knowledge or involvement." 

洛夫勒的丈夫是纽约证交所主席，这一点似乎也表明内幕交易的存在。她言辞激烈地否认自己有过任何不当行为，发推称：“这是荒谬无理的攻击。我的投资决策并不是我自己做出的，而是由若干第三方顾问做出的。我和我丈夫对此一无所知，也未曾参与。”

2020年2月27日，工作中的美国纽约证交所交易员/新华社

Whatever the truth of the allegations, the optics are particularly bad because of the imputation of profiting from national catastrophe. Goldman Sachs is predicting an economic shock of unparalleled severity, with a GDP decline of 24 percent during the second quarter. 

无论这些指控是否真实，其影响极为恶劣，因为此种行径是在发国难财。高盛预测美国经济将遭受前所未有的严重冲击，第二季度国内生产总值将下降24%。

The recession may be "V-shaped" with a fairly swift return to something like normality as activity resumes following the end of self-quarantining. 

随着隔离结束后各项活动恢复正常，美国经济可能会从衰退迅速走向“V”形复苏。

But already jobless totals are rising exponentially. The state of California has been recording jobless claims at 80,000 per day, compared to a normal daily average of 2000. Nationally, a panel of economists projected that 875,000 new jobless claims would be filed for the week, far exceeding the record of 695,000 in October 1982.

但是，失业人数已经呈指数增长。加利福尼亚州近期失业救济申请的数量为每天80000份左右，而平时这个数字是日均2000。在全国范围内，一组经济学家预测本周会出现875,000份新的失业救济申请，远远超过1982年10月所创下的695,000份的历史记录。

So the U.S. is clearly facing a period of severe economic strain. Using that for personal enrichment is not just immoral or illegal (though it is those things, too), it is above all a denial of common feeling and commonality. 

因此，美国经济明显面临着巨大压力。此时来浑水摸鱼，借此机会中饱私囊是不道德或违法的（尽管的确如此），更是彻底缺乏同理心和脱离民众之举。

This is doom for a politician, who is a community leader or they are nothing. If either Burr or Loefller is found to have done so they will not just have shamed themselves. They will have torched the American democratic ideal.

这对从政者是致命的。政客要么成为人民的领袖，要么一无是处。如果伯尔和洛夫勒真是如此行事，那么他们不仅是自取其辱，还会使美国的民主理想付之一炬。

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