近日美国财政部长奥尼尔出访南非,可以看作华盛顿对人们日益不满发展中国家经济衰退的事实的最新回应。奥尼尔对经济政策模棱两可的态度早已众所周知,也许现在已经到了他应该老老实实正视低中收入国家过去20年来的遭遇的时候了。对于这些国家,20世纪最后 20年里,它们目睹的只是自从大萧条以来最糟糕的经济衰退。 设想一下,拉丁美洲的人均收入从1960年到1980年间增长了75％,但在1980—2000年间却顶多增长了7％。非洲的遭遇就更糟了,过去20年,人均收入实际上是下跌了——下跌了大约15％。 Recently, U.S. Treasury Secretary O’Neill’s visit to South Africa can be seen as the latest response to the fact that Washington is increasingly dissatisfied with the economic recession in developing countries. O’Neil’s ambiguous attitude toward economic policy has long been known and perhaps it is now time for him to be honest with the low-income countries over the past two decades. For these countries, in the last two decades of the twentieth century they have only witnessed the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Imagine, per capita income in Latin America increased by 75% from 1960 to 1980, but it increased by as much as 7% during 1980-2000. Africa is even worse off, with per capita income actually falling over the past two decades - down about 15%.