美国财政悬崖或许只是一道坎

    因此，尽管“财政悬崖”的影响是非常真实的，但它其实更像是一个“财政斜坡”，他补充说。斯通更重要的一个观点是，良好的决策需要时间。如果国会议员在财政悬崖几周或一个月之后能够拿出对策，经济就会好起来的。

    但这本身依然是一个相对较短的时间窗口。鉴于欧洲和中国经济的增长前景并不明朗，以及美国债务上限将于明年2月份到期这一事实，我们就很容易理解斯通描述的“喘息期”为什么可能不足以缓解投资者的忧虑。回想一下去年8月份在国会就联邦债务上限问题匆匆达成协议之后市场的反应吧。当时，标准普尔500指数（Standard & Poor's 500）和道琼斯工业平均指数（Dow Jones Industrial Average ）出现了几乎两年以来延续时间最长的连续下跌势头，华尔街的这些迹象表明，这项协议几乎并未减缓投资者对于经济前景的忧虑情绪。

    从技术角度来看，财政悬崖听起来或许并不像大多数人想的那么可怕。但如今的不确定性多得令人难以置信，市场的宽容度似乎在与日俱减。

    译者：任文科

    So while the implications of a fiscal cliff are very real, it's more like a "fiscal slope," he adds. Stone's bigger point is that good policymaking takes time. If lawmakers go past the fiscal cliff by a few weeks or a month, the economy would be okay.

    But that itself is still a relatively short window. Given the host of economic uncertainties surrounding growth in Europe and China and the fact that the U.S. debt ceiling comes due in February, it's easy to see why the breathing period that Stone describes may not be enough to ease investors' worries. Recall the markets' reaction last August following the rush deal struck over the federal debt ceiling. Wall Street signaled that the deal did little to calm worries about the economy when the Standard & Poor's 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw their longest losing streaks in nearly two years.

    Technically, the fiscal cliff may not sound as bad as most think. But these are incredibly uncertain times, and the market looks to be less and less forgiving.