turning japanese

A GOVERNMENT’S credibility is founded on its commitment to honour its debts. As a result of the dramas of the past few weeks, that crucial commodity is eroding in the West. 

crucial commodity指的是政府的公信力

 It is a mark of how low expectations have sunk that the euro zone’s half-rescue of Greece on July 21st was greeted with relief.

7月21日，欧元区未尽全力救助希腊也让人们松了口气，这表明人们所抱的期望是多么的低。       同位语加上主语从句

 No wonder China’s autocrats, flush with cash and an (only partly deserved) reputation for getting things done, feel as if the future is on their side.

难怪拥有充足现金并以马到成功著称（只是在一定程度上是名副其实的）感觉未来好像是他们的天下。

 By contrast the stand-off in Washington is a political creation, thrust upon initially incredulous investors (see article). 

相比之下，华盛顿的僵局是政治的产物，迫使起初多疑的投资者接受

 have recklessly used it as a political tool to embarrass Barack Obama.

不顾后果地把它当做一项政治工具让贝拉克•奥巴马难堪。 文字功底太差

have gone to absurd lengths to avoid admitting two truths

为避免承认两个事实所做的努力有点荒唐

 If this deal spawns a fiscal union within Europe, as it may well, that will not be because Mrs Merkel and her peers took a bold, strategic and transparent decision to create one, but because they ran away from more immediate forms of pain (see article).

如果那份协议在欧洲促成了财政联盟，这是很有可能的事，那并不是因为默克尔女士及其同仁作出了一项大胆、富有战略性和透明的决定来成立一个财政联盟，而是因为他们要逃避更加近在眼前的痛苦方式。
 Its fiscal problem is not now—it should be spending to boost recovery—but in the medium term. 

当前并没有财政问题——现在应该是支出促进复苏的时候——中期才会出现

中间一句是插入语句 首句和末尾一句的主语相同

 Its absurdly complicated tax system raises very little, and the ageing of its baby-boomers will push its vast entitlement programmes towards bankruptcy

美国荒唐而复杂的税收制度并没有怎么提高税收，婴儿潮一代的老龄化将把巨大的联邦资助计划推向破产的边缘

The president also stuck too long to the fiction that the deficit can be plugged by taxing the rich more

总统也过长地执着于向富人增税可以填补赤字这一不切实际的想法

 In both Europe and America well-connected public-sector unions obstruct progress. 

具有良好人脉的公共部门工会都阻碍进步

And then there is the greatest (and also the least sustainable) division of all: between the old, clinging tightly to entitlements they claim to have earned, and the young who will somehow have to pay for all this.

不过也存在最大（也是最难以为继）的差异：在严重依赖他们声称自己赚取了联邦资助的老人和一定程度上必须为此买单的年轻人之间。

Japan has mostly been led by a string of weak consensus-seekers

日本的领导人大多数都是软弱的共识寻求者 ------------beauty

In Europe national politicians, answerable to their own electorates, are struggling to confront continent-wide problems.

在欧洲，为各自选民负责的各国政客都在努力面对整个欧洲大陆的问题。

Moreover, Western politics is less broken than many allege. 

此外，西方政治并没有像许多人宣称的那样支离破碎。

 For all their petty foolishness

尽管。。。

 inefficiencies that hold back their growth

消除阻碍经济增长的任人唯亲、腐败以及一切低效的行为

Autocrats need not sneer at the troubles of Western democracies. The problems the latter face would tax any government; 

独裁国家没有什么号得意的。民主国家所遇到的问题会使所有政府都会不堪重负。