古老欧洲重获青春【《财富》杂志经典回顾，1963（节选）】

    今天的旅客可以从两个视角观察欧洲。如果退后一步，悉心观察周围的景象和声音，他会被眼前戏剧般的变化搞得目瞪口呆。教堂的尖塔已经将其对天际的主宰权让位于直冲云霄的高楼大厦，这些由玻璃、钢筋和混凝土组成的建筑物仿佛跟纽约公园大道上的那些摩天大楼出自同一张画板。街上的自行车队，甚或摩托车队已风光不再，取而代之的是汽车及其邪恶的副产品：交通拥挤。驾驶着私家车去上班的工人们太多了，为泊车位留出价值不菲的地皮已经成为企业一个不可小觑的成本项目。在欧洲的历史上，富裕的生活第一次惠及社会深层，衣食住方面的阶级差异也因此变得模糊不清。

    但如果旅客向前一步，靠近人群，聆听他们在此刻的所思所想，他又会发觉这片大陆似乎充斥着种种问题，局势相当紧张。一两年前还在以不可思议的速度快速扩张的欧洲经济正逐渐减缓到比较正常的步态。昔日热情高涨的商人开始担忧起一些世俗的问题：利润越来越稀薄，股市看跌，国内外的竞争变得愈加激烈，某些区域经济萧条，他们跟政府的关系已变得紧张起来。

    在本文作者最近访问法国、英国、意大利、德国和比利时期间，这两种印象时不时地交织在一起。访问期间，笔者对大约50位公司高管、银行家及政府官员进行了采访。他们中的许多人都深陷自己的困境，对现状非常不满，在报道欧洲现状时，这些情况不可不察。但眼前这些细节，不应掩盖更宏大的图景：欧洲的经济环境正在演变，跟美国的情形非常类似。

    当然，美国的理念和资本对这种变化发挥了推波助澜的作用。众多的美国公司（既有大公司，也有小公司）在欧洲的工厂和其他设施上投下重资，与欧洲公司组建合资企业，引进新产品、技术工艺和分销方式。美国在欧洲的存在随处可见。我们可以想象，一位欧洲的公司高管早上醒来以后，或许使用明尼阿波利斯—霍尼韦尔（Minneapolis-Honeywell）调节其中央供热系统，用高露洁牙膏（Colgate）刷牙，早餐吃家乐氏（Kellogg）麦片，开着欧宝轿车（Opel，美国通用汽车公司旗下品牌）去写字楼，乘坐奥的斯电梯（Otis）上楼，使用通用电话（General Telephone）设备打几通电话，咨询从IBM终端上获取的数据，跟福斯特惠勒公司（Foster Wheeler ）的工程师商讨某个工厂建设项目。大西洋显然不再是美国经济的边疆。

    The traveler today can see Europe in either of two perspectives. If he stands back and lets the sights and sounds sink in, he is stunned by the spectacle of dramatic change. Church steeples have yielded their domination of the skyline to towering glass-and-steel slabs that look as if they came off the same drawing boards as those on New York's Park Avenue. The picturesque platoons of bicyclists and even the motor scooters have given way to the automobile and its satanic byproduct, the traffic jam. So many factory workers drive their own cars to work that the laying aside of valuable real estate for parking space has become an appreciable cost item in industry. Class distinctions in living, dressing, and eating have been blurred by an affluence that, for the first time in Europe's history, reaches deep down.

    But if the traveler gets close up and listens to people talk about what is on their minds at the moment, the landscape seems crowded with problems and tensions. The fantastic pace at which European economies were expanding a year or two ago is slowing to a more normal gait, and the euphoria of businessmen has given way to mundane worries about thinning profits, bearish stock markets, stiffer competition at home and abroad, depressed areas, abrasive relations with government.

    These two sets of impressions constantly intruded on each other during a recent trip this writer made to France, Britain, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, a trip that included talks with some fifty corporation executives, bankers, and government officials. Many of these people were engrossed in their own difficulties and grievances, and these deserve serious consideration in any report on the current state of Europe. But the foreground specifics should not be allowed to obscure the bigger story: the evolution in Europe of an economic environment much like our own.

    American ideas and American capital have, of course, helped bring this about. A vast number of U.S. corporations, big and small, have made heavy commitments in European plant and other facilities, formed joint ventures with European firms, introduced new products, technical processes, and distribution methods. The on-the-spot evidence of the U.S. presence is overwhelming. It is conceivable that a European executive could wake up in the morning, adjust the Minneapolis-Honeywell thermostat on his central heating system, brush his teeth with Colgate, eat a Kellogg cereal for breakfast, drive to his office building in an Opel (General Motors (GM)), ascend in an Otis elevator, make a few phone calls on General Telephone equipment, consult data from an I.B.M. (IBM) machine, discuss a plant-construction project with Foster Wheeler engineers, and so on. The frontier of the U.S. economy, clearly, is no longer the Atlantic.