Like Monty Python’s crime-fighter The Bishop, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren Buffett arrived late last week to the congressional argument over the debt crisis. By the time he published his broadside in the New York Times to the effect that billionaires like himself are being “coddled” by US politicians, Republicans had already staved off tax increases until after the next elections. Both parties had passed $1,500bn in deficit reductions to a bipartisan committee unlikely to call for tax increases. And Standard & Poor was sufficiently unimpressed to downgrade the US credit rating.
就像喜劇團(tuán)體蒙提?派森(Monty Python)塑造的那個(gè)總想打擊犯罪的“主教”(The Bishop)那樣，伯克希爾哈撒韋公司(Berkshire Hathaway)首席執(zhí)行官沃倫?巴菲特(Warren Buffett)上周姍姍來(lái)遲，加入國(guó)會(huì)關(guān)于債務(wù)危機(jī)的爭(zhēng)論中。他在《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》(New York Times)上發(fā)表了一篇炮轟美國(guó)政府的文章，大意是像他自己這樣的億萬(wàn)富翁正在受到美國(guó)政客的“嬌慣”。文章發(fā)表之前，共和黨已經(jīng)把增稅推遲到下一次大選之后。民主黨和共和黨向一個(gè)兩黨聯(lián)合委員會(huì)提交了總規(guī)模達(dá)1.5萬(wàn)億美元的減赤計(jì)劃，而該委員會(huì)不太可能要求增稅。這一計(jì)劃仍不足以說(shuō)服標(biāo)準(zhǔn)普爾(Standard & Poor’s)，它仍然決定下調(diào)美國(guó)信用評(píng)級(jí)。