英文部分来自“经济学人”杂志。译文是个人学习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝转载或用于任何商业用途。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。

The recent buds relax and spread

That is the bull case. What of the risks? One is that tighter commodity markets will stymie consumer spending in the rich world by raising prices. But core measures of inflation that strip out volatile things like food and energy costs remain low: no where in the rich world have they reached the 2% rate that is the goal of central banks, the rate seen as necessary for a “normal” cyclical recovery. America is closest to that target; the index preferred by the Fed puts America’s inflation at 1.9%, with the core rate at 1.7%. In Europe the core rate is stuck below 1%, with wage growth of around 1.3% last year; but oil prices have pushed headline inflation back to 2%.

这是乐观假设。有什么风险呢？其中之一是更紧俏的商品市场通过抬高价格阻碍富裕国家的消费支出。但去掉粮食和能源成本等波动因素后的通胀核心指标仍然不高：在富裕国家中，还没有一个达到央行制定的2％的目标，这个比率被视为“正常”周期性复苏的必要条件。美国是最接近该目标的国家; 美联储比较推荐的指数显示美国的通胀率为1.9％，核心通胀率为1.7％。在欧洲，核心通胀率保持在1％以下，而去年工资增长约为1.3％；但油价推动广义通货膨胀回到2％的水平。

There is also the risk of expecting too much. A pick-up in global aggregate demand is good news. But growth rates will always be constrained by how fast the workforce can expand and how much extra output can be squeezed from each worker. In lots of places there is scope for jobs growth; but in America, Japan, Germany and Britain the labour market is already quite tight. With America close to full employment, wage growth has picked up to 2.8%, which is consistent with 2% underlying inflation if productivity growth stays around 1%. Pay is growing fastest in less well-paid industries, such as construction,retailing, hospitality and haulage, according to Morgan Stanley, a bank.

也有过度乐观预期的风险。全球总需求回升是好消息。但增长率总是受到劳动力扩张速度的限制也受到从每个工人挤出的额外产出的约束。在很多地方还有就业增长的空间;但美国，日本，德国和英国的劳动力市场已经相当紧张。随着美国接近充分就业，工资增长攀升到了2.8％。这和生产率增长保持在1％左右时，基本通货膨胀率为2％的规律大体一致。摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）银行表示，工资在薪酬不佳的行业中增长最快，比如建筑业，零售业，酒店管理和运输业。

Wages might perk up yet more if productivity improved. But the post-crisis slump in productivity growth that has affected both rich and developing countries shows no sign of ending. In America output per hour rose by 1.3% in the year to the final quarter of 2016. Europe has not been able to match even that dismal rate. It would take an astonishing shift in productivity for America’s economy to manage the 4% GDP growth promised by MrTrump. A less fanciful view is that American GDP growth might top 2% this year, a bit better than is expected for Europe. Continued investment, and possibly deregulation, could improve productivity somewhat; but they will not provide a step change. Without one, rich-world interest rates are likely to stay well below the levels that were considered normal before 2007.

如果生产力提高，工资可能会提升更多。但是，生产力增长速度在危机后的急跌已经影响到了富裕和发展中国家，而且并没有结束的迹象。在美国，到2016年最后一个季度，美国每小时产量增长了1.3％。欧洲甚至无法和这个差劲的速度相比。要完成特朗普总统承诺的GDP增长4％的目标，美国经济生产力需要有惊人地转变。一个不那么奇幻的看法是，今年美国GDP增长率可能超过2％，比欧洲预期的好一些。持续的投资，可能放松的管制，有助于提高生产力; 但他们不会带来显著变化。如果没有大的改变，富裕国家的利率很可能会保持在远低于2007年之前公认的正常水平之下。

It is not hard to imagine things that might yet derail the recovery. Though there is a cast-iron consensus that nothing bad will be allowed to happen before the big Communist Party congress in the autumn, China’s growing debt pile could still bring markets tumbling down. Populist victories in Europe’s various elections could bring about a crisis for the euro. Even if they do not, an end to the ECB’s bond-buying programme,which has kept government-borrowing costs at tolerable levels and even allowed a bit of fiscal stimulus to lift the economy, will lay bare the euro’s still-un-fixed structural problems.

不难想象有些事可能会使经济复苏脱离轨道。虽然已经取得坚定不移的共识，即在秋季大会之前不会有什么不好的事情发生，但中国不断增长的债务堆积还是可能使市场下滑。欧洲各国选举中的民粹主义胜利可能为欧元带来危机。即使这些都没发生，欧洲央行结束债券购买计划也将暴露欧元仍未解决的结构性问题。该计划将政府借款成本保持在尚可容忍的水平，甚至允许一些财政刺激措施来提升经济。

The Fed might tighten policy too quickly,driving up the value of the dollar and draining capital (and thus momentum)from a recovery in emerging markets. Or Mr Trump might make good on the repeated threats he made in his campaign to raise import tariffs on countries he considers guilty of unfair trade, thus taking a decisive step away from globalisation just as the world’s main economic blocs are at last starting to get into sync.

美联储可能会过快收紧货币政策，推高美元的价值，并从新兴市场的复苏中抽离资本（并吸收动力）。或者特朗普可能会兑现他在竞选中反复发出的威胁，对他认为有欺诈行为或不公平贸易的国家提高进口关税，于是正当世界主要经济体终于开始同步复苏之时，采取决定性的步骤远离全球化。

These risks are not new or surprising.What brings a freshness to the air is that a cyclical recovery has managed to overcome them. There may actually be some rosebuds to gather, for a while.

这些风险并不新鲜，也不令人诧异。周期性的复苏已经克服了这些困难，给空气中带来了勃勃生机。或许真有些玫瑰花蕾可以采集了，在一段时间之内。