Back in 2001, just after 9/11, the Economist ran a cover with the headline The Day the World Changed. It felt right at the time. But when historians come to look back at our times I wonder if, vile as it was, that will really be the event they note as the trigger for the western world changing.
回到2001年，当时9/11恐怖袭击刚刚过去，《经济学人》(Economist)杂志刊登了一个封面，标题是"改变世界的一天"(The Day the World Changed)。当时这样的断语让人觉得颇为贴切。但是，尽管这一事件非常糟糕，当历史学家们开始回顾我们所处的时代时，我揣测他们会否真的认为那是引发西方世界改变的事件。
Instead, if you look around you now you might wonder if it was instead the poster moment of the financial crisis – the fall of Lehman Brothers.
如果你观察一下周围，你现在可能会猜测，改变世界的事件是否是金融危机的标志性时刻——雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的破产。
After all, the crisis is clearly changing global politics as fast as it is global finance. These things are obviously complicated but you can make a case that the Arab Spring was precipitated by fast rising food prices – something you can easily blame on QE – a clear and direct result of the financial crisis.
毕竟，这场危机改变全球政治格局显然与其改变全球金融格局的速度一样快。这些事情显然是复杂的，但你可以进行这样的推定：迅速上涨的食品价格——你可以轻易将其归咎于定量宽松政策——导致了阿拉伯之春(Arab Spring)，而定量宽松是金融危机的一个明显而直接的结果。
The crisis has also precipitated the sovereign debt disasters across Europe and is obviously responsible for the increasingly common protests they come with. It can be blamed for China's spat with Japan: would China's leaders be any more bothered about the Senkaku islands than usual if they weren't keen to shift attention from their own export slowdown?
这场危机还导致了欧洲的主权债务危机，并显然要对随之而来的日益普遍的抗议负责。就连中日争端也可以归咎于金融危机：如果中国领导人不是因为出口放缓而希望将注意力引开的话，他们对于尖阁诸岛（Senkaku，中国称之为"钓鱼岛及其附属岛屿"）的操心程度会否超出寻常水平？
It is also responsible in part for various independence movements. Would Scotland have elected the Scottish National Party if its voters hadn't perceived Labour as being financially incompetent? And would Catalonia be making a bid to take over tax raising powers from Madrid without Spain's economic crisis?
这场危机在一定程度上解释了各种各样的独立运动出现的原因。如果不是苏格兰选民认为工党(Labour)金融无能，那么苏格兰民族党(Scottish National Party)还会在选举中胜出吗？如果没有西班牙的经济危机，加泰罗尼亚还会要求接手马德里在该区的征税权力吗？
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