夏洛特：劫后余生的美国金融中心

    这种讨论显然适合奥巴马总统的连任竞选。在这样的背景下，6,000名代表和约3万名随从人员将来到夏洛特，出席9月初举行的民主党全国代表大会（the Democratic National Convention）。2008年，奥巴马在该州仅获得了1.4万张选票，很难想象他的连任之路可以绕过北卡罗来纳州。他有多么需要这个州？非常需要，足以使他愿意在美国银行体育场（Bank of America Stadium）里发表提名演讲。

    考虑到奥巴马总统在大银行行为问题上偶尔发表的言论，这有些讽刺意味，但夏洛特并不是个特别喜欢冷嘲热讽的地方。这里的交易气氛更为浓厚，适合成为一个不抗拒商业的社区。大型折扣零售商家庭一元店（Family Dollar，在财富美国500强企业排行榜上排在第301位）的总部就在马修斯市，刚好越过夏洛特的城边。该公司董事长霍华德•莱文宁愿把奥巴马总统的决定视为和解的象征。“或许他的意思是，我们都需要继续向前看，不只是夏洛特这座城市，整个国家也是如此。”

    译者：千牛絮

   This is just the kind of narrative that fits in with President Obama's bid for reelection, and it's against this backdrop that 6,000 delegates and another 30,000 or so hangers-on will descend on Charlotte in early September for the Democratic National Convention. Obama carried the state by a mere 14,000 votes in 2008, and it's hard to imagine a road to his reelection that doesn't run through North Carolina. How much does he need the state? Enough that he's willing to give his acceptance speech at Bank of America Stadium.

    Given the comments that the President occasionally tosses around about the conduct of the big banks, there's some irony in this, but Charlotte isn't a particularly ironic place. It's more transactional, as befits a community without any counterweight to commerce. Howard Levine, the chairman of Family Dollar (No. 301) (FDO), the big discount retailer whose headquarters are just beyond the city limits in Matthews, prefers to see the President's decision as a symbol of reconciliation. "Maybe's he's signaling that we all need to move on as a country, not just the city of Charlotte, but as a country."