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Finance & economics
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The Mona Lisa effect
蒙娜丽莎效应
How to explain the puzzle of the world economy?
如何解释世界经济之谜？
What is mona lisa doing?
蒙娜丽莎在做什么？
At first glance the subject of the world's most famous painting seems to be smiling.
第一眼看过去，这幅世界上最著名画作中的人物似乎是在微笑。
Look again and her smile fades.
再看一眼，她的笑容就消失了。
When it next reappears, it is a different sort of smile.
当笑容再次出现时，它仿佛变得不同了。
Leonardo da Vinci achieved this ambiguous effect with the use of sfumato, where he blurred the lines around Mona Lisa's face.
列奥纳多·达·芬奇使用晕涂法，模糊了蒙娜丽莎面部的线条，从而实现了这种暧昧不明的效果。
No matter how many times you look, you are unsure quite what is happening.
无论你看多少次，你都不太确定画的是什么。
The post-pandemic economy is like the Mona Lisa.
疫情之后的经济就像蒙娜丽莎。
Each time you look, you see something different.
每次你看到的都是不同的东西。
After chaos in the banking industry, many analysts are now convinced that the world economy is heading for a "hard-landing" recession.
在银行业陷入混乱之后，许多分析师现在确信，世界经济正走向"硬着陆"衰退。
Few seem to expect a "no-landing" scenario, in which the economy remains untroubled by rising interest rates--a fashionable opinion just weeks ago, and one which itself supplanted a common view late last year that a mild recession was certain.
几乎没有人预计会出现"不着陆"的情况，即经济不受利率上升的困扰--几周前这种观点还很流行，去年年底这种观点也取代了温和衰退已成定局的普遍看法。
In short: forecasting has rarely been harder.
简而言之：预测从来没有像现在这样难。
In the past year the range of analysts' expectations for American quarterly GDP growth has been twice as wide as in 2019.
在过去一年里，分析师对美国季度GDP增长率的预期区间范围比2019年的宽了一倍。
The word "uncertainty" appears more than 60 times in the IMF's latest global economic outlook, about twice as many as in April and October 2022.
"不确定性"一词在国际货币基金组织最新的全球经济展望报告中出现了60多次，是2022年4月和10月出现次数的两倍左右。
When the banking panic struck, no one had the slightest idea what the Federal Reserve would do with interest rates in March--some investors expected a rate rise, some no change, some a cut--and the next few meetings look equally unpredictable.
当银行恐慌袭来，人们对美联储会在3月份如何调整利率毫无头绪 -- 一些投资者预计会加息，一些人预计不会改变，还有人预计会降息 -- 接下来的几次会议结果也貌似同样不可预测。
At the European Central Bank's most recent monetary-policy meeting last month, Christine Lagarde, its president, was blunt about her institution's role.
在欧洲央行上个月召开的最近一次货币政策会议上，欧洲央行行长克里斯蒂娜·拉加德对欧洲央行的角色直言不讳。
"It is not possible to determine at this point in time what the path will be going forward," she said.
"目前这个时候还不可能确定未来的方向。"她说。
Official statisticians are struggling to understand the picture.
官方统计学家正在努力理解世界经济图景。
As a matter of course they update their estimates of everything from GDP to employment as more data come in.
随着更多数据的到来，他们自然更新了对从GDP到就业的所有方面的估计。
But something profound has changed.
但出现了一些深刻的改变。
GDP revisions in the euro area are four times bigger than normal.
欧元区的GDP修正值是正常水平的四倍。
In March Britain's statistics office issued some huge revisions.
今年3月，英国统计局发布了一些重大修正。
The release showed real business investment was in line with its pre-pandemic level, not 8% below as once believed.
公布的数据显示，实际商业投资与疫情前的水平一致，而不是像人们一度认为的那样比疫情前低了8%。
Last month Australian statisticians more than halved their estimate of productivity growth in the third quarter of 2022.
上个月，澳大利亚统计学家将他们对2022年第三季度生产率增长的估计下调了一半以上。
That year America's Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) issued revisions to its estimate of nonfarm payrolls (not adjusting for seasonality) of 59,000 a month between the first and third estimates, compared with 40,000 in 2019.
同年，美国劳工统计局对非农就业人数（未经季节性调整）的估计进行了修正，第一次和第三次估计之间的差值为每月5.9万人，而2019年为4万人。
What is going on?
这是怎么一回事？
Perhaps the world is simply more volatile.
或许是世界变得更加不稳定了。
In the past year Europe has seen its biggest war in seven decades, supply-chain snarl-ups, an energy crisis and banking panic.
在过去的一年里，欧洲经历了70年来最大规模的战争、供应链混乱、能源危机和银行恐慌。
The rest of the rich world has only been a bit more stable.
其他富裕国家只是相对来说更稳定一点。
