The summit of the Group of 20 leading advanced and emerging countries in London on April 2 2009 will fail. Its members are refusing to meet what Lawrence Summers, senior economic adviser to the US president Barack Obama, calls “the universal demand agenda”. Conventional wisdom is the enemy. Alas, it is winning.
In the US, the spirit of Andrew Mellon, Treasury secretary to Herbert Hoover, remains alive. His advice – lamented Hoover – was: “liquidate labour, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate”. Yet this foolish view is not animating US policy. The danger is not of doing nothing, but rather of doing too little. If such timidity fails, opponents will argue: these policies have failed. This will exacerbate confusion, making attempts at decisive action later on more difficult and ineffective.
在美國，赫伯特?胡佛(Herbert Hoover)政府財政部長安德魯?梅隆(Andrew Mellon)的精神依然保持著活力。他的建議——讓胡佛懊惱不已——是：“清算勞工，清算股票，清算農場主，清算房地產”。但這種愚蠢的觀點并沒有給美國的政策帶來生命力。現在的危險不是什么也不做，而是做得太少。如果這種縮手縮腳的做法失敗了，反對者就會提出：這些政策失敗了。這將加深人們的困惑，讓以后采取果斷行動的嘗試變得更加困難，更沒有效果。