经济学人20150421

经济学人

Business this week

本周经济要闻

Taiwan applied to join the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a rival to the World Bank that has been devised and will be unofficially led by China. More than 40 countries, including Britain, Germany and Russia, have signed up to the AIIB, despite American misgivings about its openness and credit worthiness. China was cool to the idea of admitting Taiwan: a foreign-affairs spokesman said Beijing wants “to avoid the two Chinas…situation”.

台湾申请加入新亚洲基础设施投资银行，该银行被认为是世界银行的竞争对手，并且约定俗成由中国领导。尽管美国对其开放性和信誉仍有所担忧，但还是有包括英国、德国、俄罗斯在内的40多个国家签署了AIIB。中国承认台湾地区的做法令人称赞，外交发言人表示中国政府希望避免两个中国局面。

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After some delay China at last announced that it would implement a deposit-insurance scheme starting on May 1st. By setting limits to the protection of savers, this is an important advance in the government's promise to liberalise the financial system and encourage competition among banks. The scheme will insure bank deposits of up to 500,000 yuan ($81,000), which should cover up to 98% of accounts.

经过一段时间的推迟之后，中国终于宣布存款保险计划将于5月1日起实施。设置保护储户的极限对于政府承诺放开金融体系、鼓励银行相互竞争来说，是一个重要的进步。该项计划将确保银行存款达到50万元（约合81000美元），这将覆盖98%的账户。

Examination timetable

测试时间表

The Bank of England published the criteria for this year's stress tests of seven big banks, which must demonstrate that they have adequate capital to withstand hypothetical economic shocks. The new tests place less emphasis on how the banks would respond to an economic meltdown in Britain and more on global risks, including a property crash in China and oil falling to $38 a barrel. 英国央行公布了今年七大行压力测试的标准，以此标准来证明他们有足够的资金来抵御假想经济冲击。新测试的重点不在于银行将如何应对英国的经济衰退，而是把更多的注意力放在全球经济风险上，其中包括如何应对中国房地产崩盘和油价跌至每桶38美元的问题。

UnitedHealth, America's biggest health-care group, agreed to buy Catamaran, one of the “pharmacy-benefit managers” that mediate prices between drug companies and health insurers, in a $12.8 billion deal. Spending on prescription drugs ballooned by 13% inAmerica last year, the largest increase since 2003. This was mostly because of a 31% jump in disbursements on speciality medicines, according to a report from Express Scripts, another PBM.

美国最大的医疗保健集团——联合健康公司同意收购Catamaran，一家“医药福利管理”公司在制药公司和健康保险公司之间协调价格，最终以128亿美元达成交易。去年美国处方药的支出激增了13%，是自2003年以来的最大增幅。根据来自快捷药方公司（另一家医药福利管理公司）的报告显示，这主要是由于专业药品的支出增长了31%。

经济学人

Charter Communications announced a takeover of Bright House Networks for $10.4 billion. Charter, which will be America's second-biggest cable operator after the deal closes, had bid for Time Warner Cable last year before it was trumped by Comcast.

查特传播公司宣布以104亿美元的价格收购光明屋网络公司。交易完成之后，查特传播公司将会成为美国第二大有线电视运营商，他在去年收购了时代华纳有线电视以此战胜了康卡斯特。

The legal battle between Hewlett-Packard and former executives at Autonomy rumbled on. HP alleges that Autonomy provided it with misleading accounts ahead of an ill-fated $11.1 billion takeover in 2011. For the first time HP directly sued Mike Lynch, Autonomy's founder, and Sushovan Hussain, its former chief financial officer, seeking $5 billion in damages. Mr Lynch said he would counter-sue.

惠普和Autonomy前高管之间的官司愈演愈烈。惠普称，在2011年以111亿美元成交的注定不幸的收购之前，Autonomy为它提供了误导性账户。惠普首次直接起诉Autonomy的创始人麦克?林奇和前首席财务官侯赛因，要求50亿美元的赔偿。林奇先生回应说他会提起反诉。

Annual profit at Huawei, a Chinese maker of telecoms equipment, rose by a third, to 28 billion yuan ($4.6 billion). Huawei's earnings were boosted in part by building some of the radio towers used in the roll-out of 4G in China. Its smartphone business is also thriving, with sales up by 33%. Although Huawei has come under suspicion in America for links to the Chinese army, a recent report to the national-security adviser in Britain concluded that it poses no threat.

中国电信设备制造商华为的年利润增加了三分之一，达到280亿元(约合46亿美元)。华为的业绩猛增一部分是因为在中国建立了首次用于覆盖4G网的广播塔。其智能手机业务也蓬勃发展，销售额增长33%。尽管美国方面怀疑华为与中国军队有接触，但在最近的一份报告中显示，英国的国家安全顾问认为它不构成任何威胁。

Chinese hackers were thought to be behind a cyber-attack on GitHub, a website that is popular with software developers and used to store code. But it also links to copies of websites that are banned in China, including http://wendang.chazidian.com, which provides software tools that make it easier to evade China's internet censors.

中国黑客被认为是对GitHub进行网络攻击的幕后黑手，GitHub用于存储代码并广受软件开发人员的欢迎。但它也会附上一些被中国禁止的网站的链接，其中包括提供软件工具以便逃避中国互联网审查的http://wendang.chazidian.com网站。

A negative feeling

消极的情绪

Japan recorded zero inflation in February, according to a key measure from the Bank of Japan that excludes last year's increase in the sales tax (overall consumer prices rose by 2% from the same month last year). The news raised fears thatJapan may slip back into deflation, despite a formidable effort by the central bank over the past two years to break the country's deflationary spiral.

经济学人

根据日本央行的一个关键数据显示，不包括去年增加的销售税(总体消费价格比去年同期上升了2%)，日本今年2月是零通胀记录。这一消息引发了人们对于日本可能会重新陷入通货紧缩危机的担忧，尽管在过去两年央行已经尽了最大的努力阻止日本进入通缩的螺旋循环。

Consumer prices in the euro zone fell by 0.1% year on year in March. It was the currency bloc's fourth consecutive month of deflation, though it was an improvement on February's inflation rate of -0.3% and January's -0.6%.

欧元区消费价格在3月份同比下降了0.1%。这是欧元区连续第四个月出现通货紧缩，但这比2月份0.3%的通货紧缩率和1月份0.6%的通货紧缩率来说，情势已经得到了好转。

The British economy grew at a faster pace last year than had been thought. A second estimate found GDP expanding by 2.8% in 2014, compared with the 2.6% that had been previously published. The news was welcomed by the government in the first official week of campaigning ahead of a general election on May 7th.

英国去年的经济增速比预想的要快。预计GDP在2014年会增长2.8%，相比之下之前公布的GDP增幅为2.6%。在5月7日的大选之前举行的竞选活动的第一周，这一新闻让政府大为振奋。