华尔街赌桌上的挥金如土的赌客们再次感到好运光临。

　　就在这曾经让国家陷入衰退边缘的赌博业现在又开始生意兴隆。周日的泰晤士报头版提到，这一转机“表明了大型银行和经纪公司自2008年秋天得到美国政府救助后出现了惊人的恢复，而且这次转机是尾随着纽约股市出现强劲的回弹而来，其收益总在2009年达到了历史最高，614亿美元。”

　　这些赌徒总是想着刮些油水，管它寻常百姓家的人间冷暖。

　　2007年圣诞节前几天（也就是经济衰退开始的那个月）出版的一个专栏里，我写道了华尔街分得的创记录的季度红利：可恶的380亿，这可是历史最高啊。次级房贷也崩溃了，经济已是折戟沉沙，但是赌场的人群照样欢声震天。“就像华尔街正订好了无数只船的香槟和鱼子酱正向他们招手”我提到，“美国人的梦想就是生命保障”

　　大佬中的大佬永远生活在“正面我赢，反面你输”的环境中。但是如果你走出华尔街的赌场，你会注意到在这个国家的其他地方，情况并不是那么好。一千四百万美国人失业了，他们中近一半的人失业已半年甚至更长时间。美国黑人的失业率为15.4%.

　　美国的校区也在大刀阔斧地整顿崩溃的开支，裁员，增加教室规模，减少幼儿园和暑期学校项目，有时，还会将一周的上课时间变为四天制。美联社在最近的一次报道中说：随着学校预算危机的加深，全国的管理者已开始把学校图书馆看作是奢侈物，要减少，而不是说个让孩子们学会爱上读书和做研究的场所，这的确让人心寒。

　　如此一个国家。我们会想尽一切办法让银行家们过上层生活，畅饮香槟，却同时把那书从想受教育的孩子们的手中抢走。

　　我不跟那些赤字鹰派人物为伍，但是在过去几年我们花的那些惊人数量的钱却没能让那些最需要帮助的人受益，也没有为经济向前发展打下基础。我们给富人（看看那些昂首阔步走在第五大街的，他们穿着普拉达，穿着百万价格的人字拖）不合理的免税优惠，还给那些私人保镖几十亿，任凭他们厚颜无耻地从阿富汗和伊拉克战争的极大伤痛中榨取血肉。

　　当美国的银行破产时，布什和奥巴马团队马上站了出来，我们需要的是同样紧急感去帮助正在挣扎中的家庭，让人们重回工作岗位。这种紧迫感在普通人们处于水深火热之中时就荡然无存。

　　成百上千万美国人困在了经济萧条之中。有几百万人，有的人的家在危机时期被没收，有的人也将要失去。长时间失业的人们每天都在如是买食物还是买必备处方药，还是付电费这些基本的问题上面临痛苦的选择。

　　回到今年二月，泰晤士报的Peter Goodman写到了新型的穷人，“就是长期习惯于中层阶级生活的安逸的，如今却平生第一次（在未来几年也可能如此）靠着公共援助生存的人”。

　　这么多人都依旧处在深重的危机之中，那么国家经济也就没有实现真正的复苏。我们可以假装我们被困在了某种信心的危机之中，想着只要是人们对自己和国家经济有信心，他们就又可以消费了。这是Phil Gramm所称的“心理衰退”精神失常的变体。Phil Gramm是麦凯恩在总统大选期间的首席经济顾问。

　　失业，债台高筑的人再也没有钱消费了。唯一的让钱重回腰包和银行帐户（也就重回国家）的方法是让这些人重回工作岗位。

　　没有我们的帮助，银行和和华尔街就就已经过得很好了。这比他们期望我们做什么要好。而正是这些赌场外的平凡老百姓，还在渴望帮助。但是在这们一个富人的，为富人而形成的，偏向富人的社会，人们期待的这点帮助还是遥遥无期。

　　译文：

　　The hustlers and high rollers at Wall Street’s gaming tables are starting to feel lucky again.

　　Hiring is beginning to pick up in the very sector that led the country to the edge of a depression. An article on the front page of The Times on Sunday noted that this turnaround “underscores the remarkable recovery of the biggest banks and brokerage firms since Washington rescued them in the fall of 2008 and follows the huge rebound in profits for members of the New York Stock Exchange which totaled $61.4 billion in 2009 the most ever.”

　　The hustlers and high rollers are always there to skim the cream no matter what’s happening in the real world of ordinary American families.

　　In a column that was published a few days before Christmas 2007 the very month that the great recession began I wrote about the record-breaking seasonal bonuses being handed out on Wall Street: an obscene $38 billion the highest total ever. The subprime mortgage debacle was already upon us and the economy was sinking like a stone but the casino crowd was celebrating as never before. “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar ” I noted “the American dream is on life support.”

　　The fattest of the fat cats live in a perpetual heads-I-win tails-you-lose environment. But if you step outside the Wall Street casino you’ll notice that things aren’t going too well in the rest of the country. More than 14 million Americans are out of work and nearly half of them have been jobless for six months or longer. The unemployment rate for black Americans is 15.4 percent.

　　School districts across the country are taking drastic steps to cope with collapsing budgets: firing personnel increasing class sizes cutting kindergarten and summer-school programs and in some cases moving to a four-day school week. The Associated Press in a demoralizing report recently noted: “As the school budget crisis deepens administrators across the nation have started to view school libraries as luxuries that can be axed rather than places where kids learn to love reading and do research.”

　　What a country. We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure the bankers keep living the high life and swilling that Champagne while at the same time we’re taking books out of the hands of schoolchildren trying to get an education.

　　I’m no friend of the deficit hawks but the staggering amounts of money we’ve been spending for the past several years have not benefited the people most in need of help and have not laid the foundation for a more secure economy going forward. We’ve handed over unconscionable tax breaks to the very rich （you can see the Prada paraders high-stepping along Fifth Avenue in their million-dollar flip-flops） and countless billions to the private contractors brazenly feeding off the agony of the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

　　What’s needed is the same sense of urgency about helping struggling families and putting people back to work as the Bush and Obama crowds showed when the banks were about to go bust. That sense of urgency is always missing when it’s ordinary people who are in trouble.

　　Millions of Americans are stuck in an economic depression. Several million have either lost their homes to foreclosure during the recession or are in imminent danger of losing them. The long-term unemployed are facing painful daily choices on such basic matters as whether to buy food or refill needed prescription medication or pay electric bills to keep the lights on.

　　Back in February The Times’s Peter Goodman wrote about the new poor “people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.”

　　There can be no real national recovery with so many millions of people in such deep economic distress. We can pretend that we’re locked in some kind of crisis of confidence that if only people felt better about themselves and the economy then they’d start spending again. This is a variation on the “mental recession” lunacy spouted by Phil Gramm John McCain’s top economic adviser during the presidential campaign.

　　People who are out of work and deeply in debt don’t have any money to spend. The only way to get real money back into their wallets and bank accounts （and thus back into the economy） is to get them back to work.

　　With our help the banks and Wall Street have done fine. Better than they had any right to expect. It’s the ordinary folks outside the casino in the real world who are still in desperate need of help. But in a society of by and for the rich that help will be a long time coming.