【在生活中學習語言】George Soros:The Face of a Prophet 索羅斯：先知的臉孔
2008/4/20 | 作者：黃裕美輯譯
George Soros will not go quietly.
喬治‧索羅斯是不甘寂寞的。
At the age of 77, Soros, one the world’s most successful investors and richest men, leapt out of retirement last summer to safeguard his fortune and legacy. Alarmed by the unfolding crisis in the financial markets, he once again began trading for his giant hedge fund — and won big while so many others lost.
77歲的索羅斯，是世界上最成功的投資家和最有錢的富豪之一。去年夏天，他從退休狀態重出江湖，以捍衛他的財富和遺業。懍於金融市場日益擴大的危機，他再次出馬，開始就他龐大的避險基金進行交易，而且大贏一場，其他很多投資家則認輸慘賠。
Soros has always been a controver-sial figure. But he is becoming more so with a new, dire forecast for the world economy. Last week he rushed out a book, his 10th, warning that the financial pain has only just begun. “I consider this the biggest financial crisis of my lifetime,” Soros said. “ A superbubble that has been swelling for a quarter of a century is finally burst-ing.”
索羅斯一向是爭議很大的人物，而在他對世界經濟做出悲慘的最新預言後，爭議更大。上周，他倉促付梓出了一本書，也是他的第十本著作，在書中他警告財經陣痛才要開始。「我認為這是我這一生碰過最大的財經危機，」索羅斯說。「一個已經膨脹了四分之一個世紀的超級大泡沫，終於要破滅了。」
Soros, whose daring, controversial trades came to symbolize global capi-talism in the 1990s, is now busy pro-moting his book, “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets,” which goes on sale mid-May. An electronic version is already available online.
索羅斯爭議性的大膽交易，是1990年代全球資本主義的象徵，如今他正忙著促銷他的新著《金融市場新典範》，書在五月中旬開始銷售，但電子版已經可以在網路上看到。
And yet this is not the first time that Soros has prophesied doom. In 1998, he published a book predicting a global economic collapse that never came.
但這並非索羅斯第一次預言經濟前景黯淡。1998年，他也曾出一本書預言全球經濟崩盤，結果並未應驗。
Soros thinks that this time he is right. Now in his eighth decade, he yearns to be remembered not only as a great trader but also as a great thinker. The market theory he has promoted for two decades and es-poused most of his life — something he calls “reflexivity” — is still dis-missed by many economists. The idea is that people’s biases and actions can affect the direction of the under-lying economy, undermining the conventional theory that markets tend toward some sort of equilibrium.
索羅斯自信，這次他的預言是正確的。如今他已是坐七望八之年，他渴望世人會記得他，不只是個大炒家，也是個偉大的思想家。20年來他所提倡而且大半輩子信奉不渝的市場理論，也就是他所謂的「反射性理論」，很多經濟學家仍不表苟同。它的論點是人們的偏見和行動會影響經濟基本面的走向，破壞傳統認為市場傾向於保持某種均衡的理論。
Soros said all aspects of his life — finance, philanthropy, even politics — are driven by reflexivity, which has to do with the feedback loop between people’s understanding of reality and their own actions. Society as a whole could learn from his theory, he said.
索羅斯說，他一生的各個層面，不管是金融、慈善，甚至政治，無不以「反射性理論」為經緯，這和人們對實際情況的了解及他們本身行動之間的「反饋迴路」（譯注：集體性的預期影響現實狀況，而現實又反過來影響預期）有關。他並說，整個社會也可以從這套理論學到很多。
Soros has been worrying about the fragile state of the markets for years. But last summer, at a luncheon at his home in Southampton with 20 prominent financiers, he struck an unusually bearish note. “The mood of the group was generally gloomy, but George said we were going into a serious recession,” said Byron Wien, the chief investment strategist of Pe-quot Capital, a hedge fund.
索羅斯多年來一直擔心市場岌岌可危。去年夏天，在他位於南安普敦家中，和20位知名金融家共進午餐時，他提出異乎尋常的悲觀論調。「這群專家普遍不看好經濟前景，但喬治說，我們將步入嚴重的經濟衰退。」避險基金Pequot Capital首席投資策略分析師韋恩說。
Shortly after that luncheon Soros began meeting with hedge fund managers like John Paulson, who was early to predict a crisis in the housing market. Soros interrogated his portfo-lio managers and external hedge funds that manage his fund’s money, and he took on new positions to hedge where they might have gone wrong. His last-minute strategies contributed to a 32 percent return — or roughly $4 billion for the year.
那場午餐會後不久，索羅斯開始和他的避險基金經理人，像鮑森會商。鮑森很早就預言，美國房市將陷入危機。索羅斯並質問他的投資組合經理人和管理他基金款項的外部避險基金經理人，他建立新的部位以避開可能出錯的基金。他最後一刻的策略，使那一年創造了32%的利潤，大約相當於40億美元。
The more Soros learned about the crisis, the more certain he became that he should rebroadcast his theories. In the book, Soros, a fierce critic of the Bush administration, faults regulators for allowing the buildup of the hous-ing and mortgage bubbles. He envi-sions a time, not so distant, when the dollar is no longer the world’s main currency and people will have a harder time borrowing money.
索羅斯對金融風暴認識愈深，愈加確信，他應該再大力宣揚他的「反射性理論」。在這本新著中，索羅斯嚴辭批判布希政府，他指責主管官員坐視房市和抵押貸款泡沫愈滾愈大。展望不久的未來，他已預見美元將不再是世界主要通貨，民眾要向銀行貸款越來越難。
Yet even Soros acknowledges that many economists still slight his theo-ries.
但連索羅斯也不得不承認，很多經濟學家仍藐視他的理論。
But Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia who won the Nobel for e-conomics in 2001, said Soros might still meet success. “With a slightly different vocabulary these ideas, I think, are going to become more and more part of the center,” said Stiglitz, a longtime friend of Soros.
但2001年榮獲諾貝爾經濟學獎的哥大教授史迪格里茲說，索羅斯還是可能成功獲得學界認可。「稍微修飾一下言辭，這些理論和概念，我想，會愈來愈成為核心的一環，」史迪格里茲說，他是索羅斯長期友人。
This week, Wien illustrated the knack of Soros for timing with an old story. In 1995, Soros asked Wien why he bothered going to work every day. Why not go to work only on days when there is something to do “I said, ‘George, one of the differences between you and me is you know when those days are, and I don’t,’” Wien said.
本周，韋恩講了一則老故事，說明索羅斯時間抓得十分精準的訣竅。1995年，索羅斯問韋恩，為什麼他得每天去上班，何不等有事要做那幾天去去就行了？「我說，『喬治，你我之間最大的不同是你知道那幾天有事，我根本不知道。』」韋恩說。
【詞解】
hedge fund 避險基金
dire forecast 悲觀的預言
rush out 倉促推出
superbubble 超級大泡沫
global capitalism 全球資本主義
economic collapse 經濟崩盤
espoused 信奉
reflexivity 反射性理論
equilibrium 均衡
feedback loop 反饋迴路
bearish note 悲觀論點
portfolio 投資組合
knack for timing 時間抓得精準的訣竅paradigm 典範
來源：人間福報
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