The bankruptcy of the once great city of Detroit comes just a few years after that of General Motors, Motown’s legendary car manufacturer. Both collapses crystallise decades of accumulated failures, including a failure to look reality in the eye sooner.

美国汽车城传奇般的汽车制造商通用汽车公司(General Motors)破产几年后，曾经风光的城市底特律也走上了这条路。二者的破产都暴露了几十年累积的失败，包括未能更早地面对现实。

They also symbolise the US’s big advantage over Europe: its greater willingness to let go of hopeless causes so that more successful activities have room to grow. The ability to let doomed ventures die is a sign of strength, not weakness. If Europe – especially the eurozone – wants out of the crisis, it should adopt American-style tough love.

但通用汽车和底特律的破产也体现了美国相对欧洲的巨大优势：愿意放弃没有希望的事业，让更加成功的活动有增长空间。放手注定要失败的项目是一种力量的象征，而不是示弱。如果欧洲，特别是欧元区，想要走出危机的话，就应该采取美国式的“严厉之爱”。

It is natural to be rattled when giants buckle. The liabilities restructured by GM amounted to $172bn. Its host city faces debts of possibly $20bn, according to Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr. Much of this represents losses borne by people who were sure their claims would be honoured. That is no doubt unfair; and one cannot fault burned creditors for doing what they can to get others to make them whole, as Detroit unions now want the federal government to do.

巨人跌倒了，引发慌乱是自然的。底特律紧急事务主管凯文·厄尔(Kevyn Orr)指出，通用汽车重组债务达到1720亿美元，而其所在的城市的债务大约为200亿美元。承受损失的将是那些曾经认为自己的债权能够实现的人。毫无疑问这是不公平的。我们也不能责怪债权人尽力让其他人偿还其债务，这正是底特律工会现在希望联邦政府所做的。

By and large, however, the US is prepared to let the chips fall where they may; more so, anyway, than Europe. It was not always so – president Gerald Ford’s infamous “drop dead” to New York City (which he never really said) in 1975 ended with rescue loans anyway. But in the past few years, the US has pointed banks (Lehman Brothers and many smaller ones), other systemic corporations (the car industry) and many municipal governments to the nearest bankruptcy court.

然而，总的来说，美国准备让赌注倒向它们能够倒向的地方；至少比欧洲更愿意。情况不总是这样，1975年杰拉尔德·福特(Gerald Ford)总统说过一句出名的难听话“去死吧，纽约”（实际上他从未这么措辞），但最终纽约还是获得了救助贷款。但在过去几年里，美国政府不惜让银行（如雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)和很多较小的银行）、其他系统性企业（如汽车工业）以及很多市政府去找就近的破产法院。

America matches this toughness with love. In the US, taking a risk and failing is not the end: there is honour in getting back up. Bankruptcy offers a new chance, and the culturally favoured response is to keep fighting. American economic dynamism owes much to this forgiving attitude to risk-taking.

美国的这种严厉也伴随着关爱。在美国，冒险之后失败并不是终结：重新站起来是一种荣耀。破产提供了一个新的机会，而美国文化倾向于选择继续奋斗。美国经济活力在很大程度上来源于这种对冒险行为的宽容态度。

Europeans regard insolvency with a much darker moral taint. To go bankrupt has traditionally been to be branded untrustworthy – a shame to hide by leaving business for ever, even (once upon a time) by taking leave of one’s life. This still shows up in such archaic rules as Ireland’s 12-year bankruptcy period (which is finally being reformed).

欧洲人将破产看成一种更阴暗的道德玷污。传统上，陷入破产就是被贴上“不可信赖”的标签，为了遮羞，可能需要永远离开商界，甚至（曾经发生过）要了结自己的生命。这种态度仍体现于一些陈旧的规则，如爱尔兰的12年破产期限（现在终于要改革了）。

Paradoxically, this cultural allergy to failure leads not just to less risk-taking, but to policies that bail out those that do take big risks and lose. Europe finds the idea of default so intolerable that, in the current crisis, it has preferred to cover the debts of the bankrupt. It suffers as a result.

矛盾的是，在文化上对失败的这种厌恶，不仅导致了冒险行为的减少，也导致了救助那些冒大风险而失败者的政策。在欧洲看来，违约实在不可容忍，以至于在当前的危机中，欧洲宁愿帮助破产者偿债，结果就是吃苦头。

This was clear in the case of Greece. Creditor states insisted that a bailout was unacceptable. But the thought that a sovereign European state might not pay its debts proved more unacceptable still. So loans from the eurozone – and an International Monetary Fund bullied into participating – were spent to postpone the reckoning.

希腊就是一个清晰的例子。债权国坚持认为纾困是不可接受的。但结果证明，一个欧洲主权国可能不偿还其债务的局面是更不可接受的。于是，欧元区（以及被迫参与的国际货币基金组织(IMF)）的贷款就是为了延后面对现实的那一天。

The same has happened with banks. In 2010, the Irish government did all it could to fill the holes in its banks’ balance sheets with taxpayer money rather than declare them insolvent, protect retail depositors and let creditors pick up the pieces. When Dublin realised it did not have enough taxpayer funds to do the job, its eurozone partners strong-armed it into borrowing from them to keep the bailout going. The aversion to bankruptcy disfigured policy towards banks in Spain and elsewhere, too.

银行业发生了同样的情况。2010年，爱尔兰政府竭尽所能用纳税人的钱填补本国银行的资产负债表的空缺，而不愿意宣布它们资不抵债、保护私人储户、让债权人来收拾残局。当爱尔兰政府意识到纳税人的资金已经不足以完成这项工作的时候，欧元区伙伴国迫使该国借款来维持纾困。对破产的极度厌恶，也扭曲了西班牙和其他一些国家的银行政策。

Reality has forced Europeans to change their minds, as it usually does in the end. Greece’s sovereign debt was eventually restructured – but not before much of the benefit of restructuring had been lost, and not without the pretence that it was voluntary for bondholders. In Cyprus, although the amounts were small, the prospect of bailing out Russian depositors was too much to stomach for northern Europe.

与往常一样，现实最终迫使欧洲人改变他们的想法。希腊的主权债务最终得以重组，但却是在已经错失重组的很多效益之后才进行的，而且躲在债券持有人“自愿”的幌子下。尽管塞浦路斯的债务总额较少，但救助俄罗斯储户的可能性让北部欧洲的人难以下咽。

Even these lessons are taking time to sink in. The US gave itself the power to wind down big banks, and impose losses on their creditors, in 2010. Most EU governments have still not got around to passing this crucial legislation. It will be years before they are forced to do so by Brussels, even though the need for a “bail-in” is agreed in principle.

即使是这些教训也需要时间来消化。2010年，美国政府赋予自己权力，能够清盘大银行，迫使债权人承担损失。但大多数欧洲国家政府尚未推动通过这一关键立法。布鲁塞尔迫使这些国家这样做还需要数年的时间——即使各方原则上已经对“内部纾困”的必要性达成了一致。

How much the eurozone could have saved itself by embracing debt restructuring as a pragmatic policy from the start of the crisis is unknown. But years of missing growth – relative to the US’s modest but decent trot out of the crisis – is partly due to Europe’s remaining debt overhang. As debt balances in the US economy have come down steeply, people are spending again. Europe is held back by banks wobbling on top of capital cushions that are all too thin – the result of a refusal to convert debt into equity when other sources of capital dry up.

如果从危机一开始就采取债务重组的务实政策，欧元区能够实现多大程度上的自救？我们无从得知。但相对于美国和缓但却明显地摆脱危机，欧洲错过这么多年的增长，部分原因就在于欧洲积重难返的债务。美国经济的债务状况已经大大缓解，消费再次上升。在欧洲，银行依靠微薄的资本缓冲苟延残喘（在其他资金来源枯竭的时候不愿意实施债转股的结果），拖累了整体经济。

Europe can retort that the worst bankruptcy of them all – Lehman’s – showed the damage wrought by US willingness to let go. A fair point. But Americans and Europeans drew different lessons from this too. The US has worked to end “too big to fail” (but still has a way to go). Until Cyprus, Europe did the opposite, treating even the smallest banks as if their bankruptcy would be as devastating as that of Lehman.

欧洲可以反驳说，最严重的破产——雷曼兄弟的破产体现了美国让银行破产带来的损害。这话没错。但美国人和欧洲人从中得到不同的教训。美国在致力于终结“大到不能倒”（当然这方面的工作尚未完成）。在塞浦路斯危机之前，欧洲却在做相反的事，在对待即使是最小的银行时，也好像它们的破产会具有雷曼那样的破坏性。

F Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s boom days.” Fitzgerald had in mind the 1929 crash that silenced the roaring Twenties. Europe must learn from the lesson America has shown many times: allow the second act to take place, and a third can follow in due course, as it did for GM, and as it is surely will for Detroit.

F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德(F Scott Fitzgerald)曾经写道：“我曾以为美国人的人生中没有第二幕，但毫无疑问纽约的繁荣时期是有第二幕的。”他指的是1929年的大崩溃终结了20世纪20年代的繁荣。欧洲必须学习美国多次展示出来的经验：允许第二幕上演，到时候再让第三幕登台。就像通用汽车那样，底特律也必将走上这条路。