Paul Samuelson保罗.萨缪尔森Dec 17th 2009From The Economist print editionThe last of the great general economists died on December 13th, aged 9412月13日，最后一位经济学通才去世，享年94岁“I WAS reborn, born as an economist, at 8.00am on January 2nd 1932, in the University of Chicago classroom,” wrote Paul Samuelson in a memoir published earlier this month. He became probably the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century. For his work in several branches of the dismal science he became the first American economics Nobel laureate. Through his bestselling textbook, he introduced millions of people to the subject. And right to the end he kept on mentoring the profession‟s brightest stars.“1932年1月2日，在芝加哥大学的讲堂中，我得到了第二次生命——作为经济学家重生了。
”本月早些时候出版的保罗.萨缪尔森回忆录中，他如是写道。
他或许是20世纪下半叶最具影响的经济学家。
沉闷如经济学，他在该领域数分支都有著作于世，并因此成为第一位荣膺诺贝尔奖的美国经济学家。
在自己的畅销课本中，他向千百万人介绍了这门学科。
直至生命垂暮，萨缪尔森仍在谆谆教诲着经济领域中最闪亮的学者。
His actual birth took place almost 17 years earlier in the steel town of Gary, Indiana, to a family of upwardly mobile Polish immigrants. His earliest memories—of the recession of 1919-21 and strikebreaking immigrant workers from Mexico, and of the boom and bust that followed—shaped Mr Samuelson‟s macroeconomic views throughout his life. He approved of massive government spending to help an economy escape from recession when monetary policy can do no more. Whenthe Obama administration introduced just that sort of stimulus this year, partly on the advice of Mr Samuelson‟s nephew, Larry Summers, who is Mr Obama‟s chief economic advise r, he was quick to approve.其实，萨缪尔森在此17年前生于印第安纳州“钢都”加里市的一个波兰移民家庭中，当时正值家族兴旺。
他儿时经历1919-21年经济衰退和墨西哥民工罢工，以及随后的繁荣萧条更迭，而这些早期的记忆对他的宏观经济理论产生了毕生影响。
他同意如货币政策力不能及，政府应大幅出资避免经济萧条。
今年奥巴马政府引入上述经济刺激，其首席经济顾问，萨缪尔森的侄子拉里.萨默斯谏言有功，而萨缪尔森毫不含糊，双手赞成。
Though regarded as America‟s lead ing standard-bearer for Keynesian economics, he called himself a “cafeteria Keynesian”, just picking the bits he liked. His combination of Keynesian and classical economic ideas became known as the “neoclassical synthesis”. From his chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in his column in Newsweek, the self-described “dull centrist” became a fierce critic of the libertarian Chicago School, and especially of Milton Friedman (writer of a rival Newsweek column). Markets are not perfect, he believed, and dire warnings from Friedman, and earlier from Friedrich von Hayek, about the regulation of markets “tells us something about them rather than something about Genghis Khan or Franklin Roosevelt. It is paranoid to warn against inevitable slippery sl opes…once individual commercial freedoms are in any way infringed upon.”纵使萨缪尔森被推崇为凯恩斯经济理论的倡导先锋，却自称“自助餐厅凯恩斯主义者”，发扬理论全凭爱好。
他综合凯恩斯和古典经济思想成就“新古典综合”，传扬于世。
在麻省理工大学的讲台上，在《新闻周刊》的专栏中，他自诩“沉闷中间派”却激烈批判倡导自由主义的芝加哥学派，尤其是同为《新闻周刊》专栏写手的弥尔顿.弗雷德曼。
他认为市场并不完美，而弗雷德曼——以及从前弗雷德里希.冯.海因克——的耸人听闻“只能揭示他们心底的脆弱，而看不到一丝一毫成吉思汗和罗斯福的身影。
下坡路不可避免……看到个体商业自由受到侵犯就发出防范警告，纯属偏执抓狂。
”As for Mr Samuelson‟s friend of 50 years, Alan Greenspan, once chairman of the Federal Reserve, “the trouble is that he had been an Ayn Rander”—a devotee of laissez-faire capit alism. “You can take the boy out of the cult but you can‟t take the cult out of the boy,” Mr Samuelson told the Atlantic this summer. “He actually had [an] instruction, probably pinned on the wall: …Nothing from this office should go forth which discredits the capitalist system. Greed is good‟.”萨缪尔森曾经评价自己五十年老友——美联储前主席艾伦.格林斯潘：“他就是曾经追随艾茵.兰德，才不慎失足。
”艾茵.兰德是放任资本主义的忠实拥趸。
“改邪归正易，浪子回头难呐。
”萨缪尔森今年夏天接受《大西洋月刊》采访时说，“他还真有个座右铭，还钉在了办公室墙上，写着：…轻渎资本主义，一律不准出门。
人皆贪婪，此乃常情。
‟”The huge sales of Mr Samuelson‟s textbook, “Economics”, f irst published in 1948 and updated every three years, owed much to his lively writing. (The abstract of his recent memoir ended with the words: “Boo hoo.”) The book transformed how economics was—and is—taught around the world. If the earlier editions too readily believed that an economy could achieve equilibrium, that may have stemmed from the author‟s conviction that mathematics could be a useful tool for economists, and that economics had much to learn from physics and the laws of thermodynamics. Today it is fashionable to argue that economics was led astray by “physics envy”, which blinded it to the subtleties of human behaviour, yet after winning his Nobel prize in 1970 Mr Samuelson anticipated economists‟ current interest in biological systems by writin g several papers on Mendelian dynamics.1948年，萨缪尔森的课本《经济学》首次出版，此后每三年就进行一次修订，其销量之大，盖因老人家笔调鲜活。