ترجمۀ سیاسی – متن ۷

ترجمۀ سیاسی – متن ۷

US President Barack Obama has barely won re-election and is already making waves with his first trip abroad after the crucial vote, as he spends four days in South-East Asia from Saturday through November 20. The itinerary explains more about the new foreign policy focus than a think-tank full of establishment experts ever could: Europe is no longer Washington's top priority.

The United States sees itself increasingly as a Pacific power. The United States' most pressing foreign policy challenges are Iran, Israel and Syria, and their challenges to peace. Obama is travelling to three relatively small countries — Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand — which are in the orbit of China, whose military policies have long been giving Washington headaches.

He suggests that the US will "gradually adjust itself to a nuclear-capable Iran" that does not actually have nuclear arms. The United States would have to put up with Tehran holding large quantities of enriched uranium, while the regime refrains from assembling nuclear bombs or missiles to carry them to Israel.

So far, the official line in Washington has been to force Iran to give up its nuclear programme through increasingly tough sanctions. However, a Western diplomat in Washington recently said that "a satisfactory deal could not rely on Iran unilaterally backing off." Direct talks between the United States and Iran are regarded as likely in the near future, according to The New York Times.

The second smouldering problem for Obama is Syria. So far, no military role has even been considered by the White House. It is far too dangerous, and intervention in Syria would be far more complicated than the US-led no-fly zone that helped bring down the Libyan dictatorship in 2011, the US military says. Obama ended the war in Iraq and he wants to pull out of Afghanistan: a new military quagmire would be a nightmare. But pressure may mount for the US to do something as the death toll continues to rise into the scores of thousands.

ترجمۀ اقتصادی – متن ۷

ترجمۀ اقتصادی – متن ۷

What Austerity Looks Like Around the World

By Brad Plumer, Washington Post

We’ve noted before that most countries in Europe are engaged in austerity — defined as some mix of spending cuts and tax increases. But what’s the actual mix?

Here’s one helpful graph from the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook. It shows the projected change in the “primary balance” of the world’s wealthiest countries between 2011 and 2013. This is the deficit picture after excluding net interest payments on the debt.

Some countries, like Italy, are now consolidating their budgets primarily through revenue increases. Others, like Spain and Greece, seem to be relying far more heavily on spending cuts:

(A key caveat: These forecasts could prove wrong. The OECD, for instance, seems to project that the United States will improve its primary balance through a balanced mix of spending cuts and tax increases in the next year — appearing to assume that Congress will let all of the various tax cuts expire at the end of 2012, which is far from certain.)

Some economic commentators like Paul Krugman and Martin Wolf have argued that Europe in particular is relying too heavily on austerity, period. They argue that attempts to tighten the budget during an economic slump will only hurt growth, which in turn makes it even harder for these countries to rein in their debt. Indeed, the OECD predicts that Europe’s economy will contract by 0.1 percent this year.

A few conservatives, meanwhile, have suggested that it’s not austerity per se that’s the problem — it’s the type of austerity. In the National Review, Veronique de Rugy argues that many European countries are relying too heavily on tax increases to rein in their deficits. (Per the OECD chart above, this especially describes Austria, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, though countries like Spain and France have been hiking taxes as well.) She cites a few economists, including Scott Sumner, who argue that spending cuts combined with more stimuli from the central bank is the way to go.

There are not many countries around the world that have pursued this route, however. Sweden stands out as one country that has cut spending a bit while enjoying a big monetary stimulus from the Riksbank. By contrast, there are plenty of euro zone countries that are leaning very heavily on cuts — especially Portugal, Greece, and Ireland — and they’re still in trouble. But none of these countries are getting a big boost from Europe’s central bank, so perhaps that’s the relevant variable here.

ترجمۀ اقتصادی - متن ۶

ترجمۀ اقتصادی - متن ۶

Economic Growth

The growth rate of a variable is its percentage increase per annum. To define economic growth, we must specify both the variable we wish to measure and the period over which we wish to measure its rate of change. GDP and GNP measure the total output and total income of an economy. In particular, GDP and GNP are very incomplete measures of economic output; it is difficult to account for the introduction of new products; and there is no direct relation between GDP and happiness.

GDP measures the net output or value added of an economy by measuring goods and services purchased with money. It omits output which is not bought or sold and therefore is unmeasured. The two most important omissions are leisure and pollution.

In most industrial countries, the length of an average work week has fallen by at least ten hours a week since 1990. In choosing to work fewer hours per week, people reveal that the extra leisure is worth at least as much as the extra goods that could have been produced by working harder. But when people decide to swap washing machines for extra leisure, recorded GDP is reduced; hence GDP understates the true economic output of the economy. Conversely, the output of pollution reduces the net economic welfare that the economy is producing and ideally should be subtracted from GDP.

Including leisure in GDP would have increased recorded GDP in both 1870 and 1990. Since the value of leisure has probably increased less quickly than measured output, which increased ninefold in the UK and 90-fold in Japan, over the same period, this would tend to reduce the rate of growth of a more comprehensive output measure.

The object of all economic activity is to provide people with the highest possible real incomes or standard of living.

ترجمۀ سیاسی - متن ۶

ترجمۀ سیاسی - متن ۶

If there is any hope for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear dispute with Iran, President Obama needs Congress to support negotiations. But negotiations and compromise are largely anathema in Washington, with many lawmakers insisting that any deal with Iran would be unacceptable — a stance that would make military action by Israel and the United States far more likely.

Last week, just as Iran and the major powers made some small progress in talks and agreed to meet again, two measures were introduced in Congress that could harm negotiations.

One is a Senate resolution sponsored by Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican. It says that if Israel “is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military and economic support to the government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people and existence.” No one doubts that the United States would defend Israel if it was attacked by Iran; that commitment has been made repeatedly by President Obama and his predecessors. The nonbinding resolution, promoted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, would not authorize any specific action, but it would increase political pressure on Mr. Obama by putting Congress on record as backing a military operation initiated by Israel at a time of Israel’s choosing.

The second measure, a bipartisan bill, would pile on tougher sanctions just as the two sides are trying to create trust after decades of hostility. The bill would further restrict business dealings with Iran and widen the list of blacklisted Iranian companies and individuals. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told the annual AIPA conference this week that there must be a “credible military threat” against Iran.

The best way to avert military conflict is by negotiating a credible, verifiable agreement. It is a very long shot. But Congress needs to give the talks time to play out and not make diplomatic efforts even harder.