当政府篡改账目时会发生什么

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这里是NPR的《金钱星球》节目。艾米·奥哈拉是数据专家，经济学背景，曾就职于美国人口普查局，现任职于乔治城大学大规模数据研究所。上周五她正在那里准备前往纳什维尔参加一个重要统计会议。

This is Planet Money from NPR. Amy O'Hara is a data person. Trained as an economist, worked at the US Census Bureau, now works at something called the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown. And that's where she was last Friday, getting ready to go out of town to Nashville for a big statistics conference.

本该是个出行前轻松的周五，你懂吧？但事实并非如此。

It would have been a pretty chill Friday before travel. You know what I mean? But it wasn't.

因为当天中午，艾米走出办公室见同事时——对方是来取准备带到会议上的贴纸（这些贴纸都强调优质数据的重要性）——她发现同事脸色不对。对方问：你听说了吗？

It wasn't because in the middle of the day, Amy comes out of her office to meet one of her colleagues. He's coming to pick up some stickers that they're planning to bring to that conference, Stickers all about how important good data is. But when Amy comes out of the office, she realizes that her colleague does not look happy. He's like, have you heard?

天啊，听说劳工统计局的事了吗？我说没有，劳工局怎么了？

Wow. Did you hear about BLS? I said, no. What about BLS?

BLS即劳工统计局。你可能已经听说，他们上周五发布的月度就业报告很糟糕：新增就业岗位低于预期，同时还修正了过去两个月的数据——结果比我们原以为的

BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As you may have heard, they released their monthly jobs report last Friday, and it was a bad one. The economy is adding fewer jobs than people expected. And the BLS also released their revisions to the previous two months of jobs data. And those two months were worse than we

更差。数据修正本是常态，这次幅度虽大但仍在正常范围内。报告基本表明劳动力市场表现不佳。特朗普总统获知后，立即解雇了劳工统计局局长埃里卡·麦金塔弗——这位资深统计学家。

had thought. Revisions always happen, and these revisions were big but within a normal range. Basically, the report said that the labor market is not doing so great. President Donald Trump, upon getting this bad news, fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a career statistician named Erica McInturfer.

艾米和同事都认识埃里卡，两人震惊不已。

Amy and her colleague both know Erica, and they're both shocked.

就那样沉默地站在那里，大概有二三十秒吧，让这个事实慢慢沉淀，因为某些事情已经发生了戏剧性的转变。你知道吗？那些关于统计数据可以在不受政治干预下产生的规范，那些规范已经被粉碎了。

Just literally standing there in silence for, I don't know, twenty or thirty seconds, letting it sink in because something had dramatically shifted. You know? It was that the norms that statistical information could be produced without political interference, those norms were shattered.

劳工统计局负责各类重要的政府统计数据，失业率、通胀率等等。这次解雇事件对艾米和她的同事以及许多人来说如此重大的原因在于，政府提供可靠无党派的经济统计数据至关重要。地方政府依赖这类信息了解当地情况，企业用它来规划未来。

The BLS is responsible for all kinds of important government statistics, The unemployment rate, the inflation rate. And the reason this firing is such a big deal to Amy and her colleague and a lot of people is having solid nonpartisan economic statistics from the government. That is important. Local governments rely on that kind of information to know what's going on in their area. Businesses use it to plan for the future.

整个经济体系中的决策者都依赖这些坚如磐石的数据。而现在劳工统计局的负责人被解雇了。

Decision makers all over the economy rely on these numbers to be rock solid. And now the head of the BLS had been fired.

这是对政治上不便的数字的直接回应。

This was a direct response to numbers that were politically inconvenient.

这引发了各种担忧。政府可能会试图向这些独立统计机构施压，要求压制信息，甚至发布经过篡改或虚假的内容。艾米担心这一点，也担心更细微的变化。在特朗普执政期间，劳工统计局及类似机构已经出现人员流失。存在一个

And that raises all kinds of worries. The government could try to pressure these independent statistical agencies to suppress information or even to put out something that's manipulated or false. Amy is worried about that, and she's worried about smaller, subtler changes. The BLS and agencies like it have already been losing staff under Trump. There's a

担忧是这可能会使这些机构更难做好本职工作。如果政府开始以政治理由解雇更多员工，维护规范和流程的人手就会减少。也许统计数据会逐渐恶化。

worry that could make it harder for those agencies to do their job well. And if the government starts firing more of these staffers, perhaps for political reasons, that is fewer people to uphold norms and processes. Maybe the statistics will slowly get worse.

我认为可怕的是，作为外部的数据使用者，我所注意到的东西。明白吗？这种变化检测非常棘手——如果数字看起来稍有不同，或者即使数字看起来完全一样，我如何消化和解读它，始终依赖于对联邦政府发布数据工作质量的完全信任。任何偏离这一点的情况都让我感到恐惧。

What I think is scary is, as a consumer on the outside, what I notice. You know? So that sort of change detection is really tricky that if the number looks a little different or even if the number looks exactly the same, how I consume that, how I interpret it, has always relied on the full trust that the feds were doing a good job putting out numbers. And anything that deviates from that to me is scary.

上周在纳什维尔举行的大型统计会议上，这些担忧成为焦点话题。

At the big statistics conference this past week in Nashville, these concerns were front and center.

人们感到悲伤，感到震惊。你知道，现在有一种新的不安，对我们必须关注什么、接下来可能发生什么保持警惕。

There is sadness. There is shock. You know, there's this this new uneasiness, you know, a wariness about what we have to be looking at, what could happen next.

接下来会发生什么？艾米告诉我她不会直接跳到最坏的情况，我们也不会。有理由相信美国的数据收集可能不会出大问题。这些系统本身设计就是为防止政治干预而建立的，它们具有分散性。

What could happen next? Amy told me she is not jumping to the worst case scenario, and neither are we. There are some reasons to believe that US data collection might be okay. The systems are built to prevent political tampering. They're decentralized.

这些数据涉及众多人员。局长甚至要到流程后期才能看到就业数字。而且劳工统计局有许多员工，一旦发现异常随时可以举报。但政治性的数据操纵确实发生过，情况曾一度恶化，我们必须牢记为何篡改经济统计数据绝非明智之举。

They involve many people. The commissioner doesn't even see the jobs numbers until very late in the process. And there are many BLS employees who could blow the whistle if they saw anything amiss. But political data manipulation, it has happened. It has gotten bad, and it is worth remembering exactly why manipulating economic statistics is really not a good idea.

大家好，欢迎收听《金钱星球》。

Hello, and welcome to Planet Money.

我是萨莉·赫尔姆。我是玛丽·柴尔兹。今天节目将讲述两个历史性的统计警示故事——当政客试图伪造数据时会发生什么。

I'm Sally Helm. And I'm Mary Childs. Today on the show, two historical, statistical cautionary tales about what happens when politicians get tempted to cook the books.

而且数据一旦被篡改，还能恢复原状吗？

And once you've cooked them, can they get uncooked?

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今天我们将讲述两个历史性的统计警示故事。第一个故事：如何伪造数据。

Today, we offer you two historical, statistical cautionary tales. Tale number one, how to cook the books.

我们从2006年2月的阿根廷开始。当时通胀高企，而没人喜欢高通胀。记得2022年年中美国通胀率达9%时，我至今还没从那些超市账单的心理阴影中走出来。

We begin in Argentina 02/2006. Inflation has been high, and no one likes high inflation. I remember when inflation was around 9% in The US in mid twenty twenty two. I feel like I still have not emotionally recovered from those grocery bills.

说实话，我也是。而两千年代中期阿根廷的情况更糟。

Honestly, same. Argentina in the mid two thousands had it even worse.

当时情况严重到通胀率已接近两位数，大约10%。

It got to the point where it it was reaching two digits, about 10%.

很高。

High.

是的。没错。很高。要知道，阿根廷过去经历过多次通胀危机，所以这显然是个政治敏感问题。

Yeah. Yes. High. You know, Argentina has gone through many inflation crisis in the past, so it was obviously a politically sensitive issue.

经济学家阿尔贝托·卡瓦洛在阿根廷长大，他深入研究过这段时期。阿根廷对高通胀确实不陌生，甚至超过10%。但即便如此，伤害依然存在。

Economist Alberto Cavallo grew up in Argentina, and he has studied this period closely. Argentina is indeed no stranger to high inflation, even higher than 10%. But still, it hurts.

大约在2006年2月，选举临近，阿根廷政府似乎决定，与其采取加息等痛苦手段，不如做些更简单的操作——直接把那个高通胀数字变成另一个更低的数字。

And around 02/2006, an election is coming up, and the government of Argentina seems to have decided that instead of going through something painful like higher interest rates, maybe they could do something simpler. Just make that high inflation number become a different lower inflation number.

我认为他们基本上是说：好吧，我们不喜欢这个数字。是谁在编制这个数字？又是怎么编制的？

I think they basically said, okay. We don't like the number. Who is putting together this number, and how is it being put together?

在阿根廷，这个数字由国家统计局INDEC编制，它是该国主要的统计机构。

In Argentina, the number is put together by an agency called INDEC, the main statistical agency in the country.

快速回顾一下：通胀率是根据特定一篮子消费品和服务的价格计算的，这些商品和服务是经济中任何个人都可能购买的，比如食品、衣物、家具等。INDEC和类似机构（包括美国的劳工统计局）

Quick refresher here. Inflation is calculated based on the prices of a particular basket of consumer goods and services, a group of things that any given person in the economy is likely to be buying. Things like food, clothes, furniture, INDEC and agencies like it, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics here

会持续追踪这些商品的价格变化。砰——通胀率就出来了。为此，这些机构会派人实地走访商店，询问鞋类、生菜或微波炉等商品的售价。INDEC有固定的一组商店会反复调查，而阿根廷政府想出了个主意。

in The United States, they will track the prices of those goods over time. Boom. Inflation rate. And to do this, these agencies send people out to real stores to ask, what is the price of the shoes you're selling or the lettuce or the microwaves? Indec had a particular group of stores that they would return to over and over, and the Argentinian government came up with an idea.

所以他们做的第一件事就是去统计局询问：能否告诉我你们采集数据的这些商店地址和具体名单？

So the first thing they did is they went to a statistical office and said, can you tell me the location, and who are these stores that you go to and you collect data from?

他们为什么要问这个问题？

And why were they asking that question?

我认为他们最初主要是想试探能否通过施压这些商店，在数据收集过程中采取某些手段来压低那个数字。

They were essentially, I think at the beginning, trying to figure out if they could go, possibly pressure these stores, see if they could do something in that process of data collection that would help them bring that that number down.

那个至关重要的通胀数字。这是操纵通胀率的第一个方案。阿尔贝托表示计划是这样的：如果政府能查明统计人员的数据来源，或许就能影响数据——通过向特定店主施压，让他们保持特定商品（如生菜、鞋子或微波炉）的低价。

That ever important inflation number. This is idea number one for messing with the inflation rate. Alberto says the plan seems to be this. If the government could find out where these statisticians got their data, maybe they could influence that data. Lean on particular store owners to keep their particular lettuce or shoe or microwave prices low.

这样通胀数字就会显得更低，尽管实际通胀率并未变化。这是通过改变原材料来篡改账目的狡猾手段。但那些统计人员拒绝了。

Then the inflation number would look lower even though inflation rates had not actually changed. It's a sneaky way to cook the books by changing the ingredients. But those statisticians said no.

他们拒绝透露商店信息。阿根廷首次压低通胀数字的尝试失败了。于是政府不得不改弦易辙，采用第二种做假账的方法——调整通胀统计的算法配方。

They wouldn't reveal the stores. This first attempt to bring the inflation number down in Argentina failed. So the government had to try a different tack, a second way to cook the books. You could tweak the statistical recipe for inflation.

他们开始提出：能否在统计方法上做些调整？部分施压正是通过这种方式实现的。

They started saying, well, can you make methodological changes? And some of these pressures started materializing that way.

方法论调整。这非常有趣，因为这说明数字计算方式确实存在操作空间。能具体说说他们是如何在这个空间里动手脚的吗？

Methodological changes. That's so interesting because it speaks to the fact that there is a little bit of room in the way these numbers are calculated. Can you give me any more specifics? How did they try to mess in that space that they had?

你说得对。由于购买商品不同，我们每个人经历的通胀率都不同。所以通胀率本质上是反映经济中典型消费者的平均值。他们可以调整的正是各类别商品在计算中的权重比例。

You're absolutely right. There every one of us experiences a different inflation rate because we buy different things. So the inflation rate is meant to be, you know, an average that represents a typical consumer in the economy. So one of the things they they can change is the actual percentages that are assigned to each of the different categories.

比如——假设医疗费用大幅上涨，你可以降低医疗项目在消费篮子中的权重占比。

Like, I don't know. If health care costs are going up a lot, You could change how much weight you're putting on the health care part of the basket.

然后把更多权重分配给家具这类商品。

Put more weight on, like, furniture.

或者至少在理论上，你可以调整权重。坦白说，这会相当明显。

Or at least theoretically, you could change the weighting. Frankly, it would be pretty obvious.

因为统计机构会报告他们使用的权重，任何权重的变化都会立即被标记出来，人们会质疑为什么会发生这种情况。

Because statistical agencies report the weights they're using, and any changes in those weights would be immediately flagged, and people would would question why is this happening.

政府提出了其他更微妙的方法论变更，但统计学家拒绝配合。这种操纵通胀数字的想法也未奏效。经过约一年施压后，2007年2月，阿根廷负责计算通胀数字的负责人被解雇了，其他几位统计学家也遭此命运。

The government suggested other subtler methodological changes, but the statisticians refused to play along. This idea for messing with the inflation number also didn't work. After about a year of this pressure in 02/2007, the person in charge of calculating the inflation number in Argentina, she got fired. So did some other statisticians.

政府声称：听着，我们调查过了，发现存在这些方法论问题。我们要把这个统计机构办得更好。解雇这些人只是因为他们工作失职。

The government said, look. We've gone there. We've discovered there are all these methodological issues. We're gonna make this a better statistical agency. We're just gonna fire these people because they didn't do the right job.

他表示，最初有些人旁观这一切时会想：好吧，谁知道呢？也许他们确实不称职。

And he says, you can imagine at first, some people watching all this are like, okay. Fine. Who knows? Maybe they were bad at their jobs.

但随后部分被解雇的统计学家开始发声，讲述政府施加压力的内幕。这时像阿尔贝托这样的人才意识到整件事的来龙去脉。阿尔贝托说随后开始出现诡异现象，比如某些数据离奇消失。

But then some of these fired statisticians start speaking out, telling these stories about the pressure that the government had been applying. That's when people like Alberto learned that all this had been going on. And Alberto says weird things started to happen, like some data went missing.

统计机构官网上有些信息开始消失，他们停止发布部分更详细的指数。我们开始产生怀疑，但依然没人确切知道发生了什么。

There were some pieces of information that started disappearing from from the website of the statistical agency. They stopped publishing some more detailed indices. We started to raise suspicions. But, again, nobody really knew exactly what was going on.

此后阿根廷公布的通胀数字显得异常偏低。人们确信政府正在篡改数据，于是经济学家决定亲自走访调查真实通胀率。

After this point, the inflation numbers coming out of Argentina seem too low, lower than they should be. People are pretty sure the government is now cooking the books. So economists decide to try to figure out the real inflation number by knocking on doors themselves.

经济学家派人去商店采集少量商品样本测算通胀，但政府辩称这些只是特定地点采集的极小样本。

Economists were sending people to the stores to build these small baskets of goods and try to measure inflation. But the government would reply that, you know, these are very small samples taken in very specific places.

政府不仅试图质疑这些数字的可靠性，还以可能入狱的诉讼威胁统计学家和经济学家，并开出了巨额罚单。

The government did more than try to discredit the numbers. They threatened statisticians and economists with lawsuits that could land them in jail. They issued huge fines.

阿尔贝托当时在美国。他正在哈佛大学学习。他避开了这场报复，并且想提供帮助。

Alberto was in The US at the time. He was studying at Harvard. He was safe from this retaliation, and he wanted to help.

于是我想到了一个主意。我说，我其实可以尝试利用网上可获取的数据，用从网络收集的信息来构建这个指数。

So I had this idea. I said, I can actually try to use the data that is available online and and build this index using data collected from the web.

阿尔贝托决定尝试用这个新数据源——这些在线价格——来计算真实的通胀数字。因为政府并不能垄断向店主询问生菜价格的权利。他们真正拥有的是规模优势——庞大的雇员数量。像INDEC这样的大型机构，独立经济学家很难与之匹敌。

Alberto decides to try his hand at calculating the true inflation number using this new data source, these online prices. Because the government doesn't have a monopoly on asking store owners, how much does this lettuce cost? The thing they do have is scale. So many employees. It was hard for rogue economists to match a huge agency like INDEC.

阿尔贝托的解决方案是创建一个在线指数。他能够从阿根廷主要在线杂货店抓取大量价格数据。这有助于解决样本篮子太小的问题。他用这些价格计算通货膨胀，特别是所谓的超市指数，类似于政府发布的指标。他不仅在阿根廷这样做，还在巴西、智利、哥伦比亚和委内瑞拉实施了这一方法。

Alberto's solution is to create an online index. He's able to scrape a ton of prices from major online grocery stores in Argentina. That helps solve the too small basket problem. And he uses those prices to calculate inflation, specifically something called the supermarket index, which is similar to something that the government publishes. And he did this not just in Argentina, but also in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela.

他发现，在其他四个国家，他的在线价格指数与官方数字吻合得很好，但在阿根廷却不然。

And he found that in those four other countries, his online price index matched up well with the official numbers, but not in Argentina.

我发现通胀水平比政府公布的高出两到三倍。我的感觉是，如果政府想批评这些数据，他们必须告诉我牛奶的价格并不是我在这个网站上显示的那样。但政府实际上忽视了我，我开始收到很多网站用户的感谢邮件。因为仔细想想，通胀是一个极其重要的指标，不仅对政府和投资者，消费者和企业都需要基于这个指标做决策。

I was finding levels of inflation that was two or three times higher than what the government was was showing. And my feeling was if the government wants to criticize these, they actually have to tell me that the price of milk is not what I am showing on this website. So the government actually ignored me, but I started getting a lot of emails from users of the website that were very thankful. Because if you think about it, inflation is a tremendously important indicator, not just for the government, not just for investors, but consumers have to make decisions. Businesses have to make decisions that are based on this.

没错。人们需要知道预期的通胀率，以便规划大宗购买，比如现在买车还是等到明年。而阿根廷人已经完全不再相信政府的通胀数字了。

Yep. People need to know how much inflation to expect so that they can plan a big purchase, like buy a car now or wait till next year. And people in Argentina had just fully stopped trusting the government inflation number.

这很公平——那个数字本来就是谎言。阿尔贝托非常想弄清楚政府到底是怎么计算出那个数字的。他们背后肯定有某种公式。他反复尝试用自己的价格数据来推导出政府的通胀数字，想精确搞清楚账目是如何被操纵的。

Which fair. That number was a lie. And Alberto really wanted to figure out how was the government even calculating that number. Like, they must have some formula behind the scenes. He tried and tried to take his price numbers and get them to give him the government's inflation number to figure out how precisely the books were being cooked.

我尝试了很多方法。我可以（用技术细节）让你听得昏昏欲睡，但我始终无法得出那个'正确'的数字。

So I tried lots of things. I, you know, I could bore your world technical details, but I could never get the right number.

真的吗？

Really?

后来我发现了一个经验规律。如果你观察通胀水平，它们总是比政府报告的数字高出约三倍。所以将实际通胀率除以三，就能得到政府报告的真实数字。

Then I realised there was an empirical regularity. If you looked at the levels of inflation, they were only always about three times higher than what the government reported. So if you divide the the real inflation rate by three, you got the actual number that the government was reporting.

除以三。这似乎就是他们使用的基本算法。

Divide by three. That seemed to be basically the algorithm that they were using.

听起来有点滑稽。起初你会想，既然要撒谎，为什么要用这么简单的算法？我怀疑这里有两个原因。一是你一生中从未撒过谎——当然我确信在座各位都撒过谎。

Which sounds sounds funny. At the beginning, you would think if they're gonna lie, why use such a simple algorithm? And there are two things I suspect happened there. One is that you've never lied in your life, and I'm sure all of us have.

从来没有。绝对没有。

Never. Never.

不，确实如此。但如果你必须撒谎，还需要保持动态一致性。这是什么意思呢？

No. Exactly. But if you have to lie, you also have to be dynamically consistent. So what do I mean by that?

他的意思是通胀率需要动态上下波动。政府并非总是简单地宣布通胀率在下降，那样会显得不可信。数字确实会随着经济周期涨跌，这样才合理。除以三只是实现这一目标的简单方法，让数据大致朝着正确方向变动。

He means that the inflation rate had to move up and down dynamically. The government was not simply always announcing that the inflation rate was falling. That wouldn't have been plausible. The number did go up and down in a way that made some sense given overall booms and busts. Divide by three is just a simple way to achieve that, to keep things roughly moving in the right direction.

只需让总体数字更低就行。

Just make the overall number lower.

但阿尔贝托怀疑这里可能还有另一个因素，这与像INDEC这样的机构背后的运作机制更相关。

But there's another thing that Alberto suspects might have been going on here, and it has more to do with the behind the scenes factors at an agency like INDEC.

如果政府想撒谎，基本上有两种方式。他们可以替换统计机构里所有采集价格数据的人员，让这些人也参与造假——这非常困难，相当于要替换数百人。另一种方式是替换顶层负责汇总数据的人。

If the government wanted to lie, they basically had two ways of doing this. They could replace everyone in the statistical agency that was collecting all these prices and get them to lie as well. Very hard to do. You basically have to replace hundreds of people. The other thing you could do is you replace the people at the top that aggregate the data.

这样每个人都只能看到数据的一小部分，而看不到汇总数字。

So everybody sees a little piece of the data, but not the aggregate numbers.

更简单的做法是替换或影响顶层的一小群统计学家，这样其他统计学家可以照常工作。直到后来某个环节，当所有数据汇总时，才有人暗中篡改了数字。

It would be simpler to replace or influence just some smaller group of statisticians at the top, so that all the other statisticians can do what they normally do. And it's only at some point later down the line when all the pieces get put together that someone somehow messes with the number.

无论他们如何操作，政府多年来一直在通胀率上撒谎，这是人尽皆知的事。阿尔贝托后来专门研究了阿根廷民众对这些操纵数据的反应——人们是直接忽略，还是试图解读这些‘茶叶渣’般的信号？他

However they did it, the government lied about the inflation rate for years, and everyone knew it. Alberto actually later studied how people in Argentina reacted to these manipulated statistics because he was curious. Did people just ignore them, or did they try to interpret them? Read the tea leaves. And he

发现民众确实在听政府公告。当政府报告通胀上升时，人们会说‘实际肯定更高’；但对好消息却充满怀疑——他们凭直觉就能感知真实数字。

found that people were listening to what the government said. When the government reported higher inflation, people were like, yeah. Must be even higher. They had an intuitive sense of the real number. But when there was good news, they didn't trust it.

人们总是做最坏揣测，因为他们认为政府的一切行为都不可信。

People suspected the worst because they thought they could not trust anything that the government was actually doing.

民众的信任已彻底崩塌。即便情况确有改善，他们仍认定形势糟糕。这证明：单纯美化数字无法扭转民意，反而可能适得其反——因为我们通过生活切身感知物价，而非仅凭统计数据。

People had just lost so much trust. They started assuming that things were bad even if things actually had gotten a little better, which goes to show. Simply making the number look better does not actually change people's minds. It might even backfire because we know what the prices are, not just from reading the statistics, but from living our lives.

最终终结这场骗局的是政权更迭。谎言从2007年持续到2015年政府换届，新班子花费数月才恢复系统，重新发布真实通胀数据。

What finally ended this was an election. The lie went on from about 2007 until the government turned over in 2015. It took the new people a while to get things up and running again to start publishing the true inflation numbers.

阿根廷有约半年时间没有通胀指数。当指数恢复时，其数值已与我们线上采集的数据高度吻合——那时我便知道秩序回归了。

So for about six months, Argentina had no inflation index. And when it came back, it actually started reflecting very close to what we were collecting online. So that's when I knew things had gone back to normal.

就美国劳工统计局(BLS)局长被撤职事件，阿尔贝托认为这会长期损害机构公信力和统计质量。当然关键还看继任者人选。不过他强调美国统计体系基础扎实，尤其通胀数据方面他并不担忧——

I asked Alberto about what's happening right now in The US with the BLS commissioner being fired. He said he thinks the firing is really bad for the credibility of the institution and potentially for the quality of statistics in the long run. Of course, a lot depends on who gets appointed next. But in general, he said The US is starting from a really good place with a lot of solid statisticians. And when it comes to the inflation number in particular, he's not that worried.

如今私营机构发布的指数众多，数据操纵将极其困难。

There are so many private indices now. It would be really hard to mess around.

若涉及就业报告这类数据会更令人忧虑——毕竟统计机构在全美范围内开展的大规模调查，是私营部门难以复制的。

I would be more concerned if we are talking, for example, about the jobs report because that's the the kind of thing that the private sector cannot easily replicate because the statistical agency runs these massive surveys all over The US, which are very hard for the private sector to replicate.

但他表示会密切关注账目是否开始出现任何粉饰迹象。

But he says he'll be watching for any signs that the books are starting to get even a little bit cooked.

广告过后，我们将看到另一个国家经历的账目修正速成课——希腊的统计历史警示案例二号。

After the break, another country gets a crash course in book uncooking. We look at statistical historical cautionary tale number two, what happened in Greece?

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条款适用。详情参见capital1.com。

Terms apply. Details at capital1.com.

现在进入第二个警示案例：如何修正财务造假。说到这个问题，有个再明显不过的求助对象。

Alright. Time for cautionary tale number two, how to uncook the books. When you're thinking about uncooking the books, there is someone very obvious to call.

您好，我是乔治·帕帕·康斯坦丁诺，欧洲大学研究院教授，曾任希腊财政部长。

Hi. I'm George Papa Constantino. I'm a professor at the European University Institute and a former minister of finance in Greece.

所以您是经济学家。

So you're an economist.

你教什么

What do

课程？

you teach?

我教授经济学。我教宏观经济学，也教危机应对，因为我亲身经历过多次危机。

I teach economics. I teach macroeconomics, and I teach crisis because I've been through a number.

对乔治和我们来说，当下最突出的危机是希腊金融危机。我们从那段时期提取了这个简短故事，请他为我们重温。对乔治和希腊而言，这一切始于2009年2月。

The most salient crisis for George and for us today is the Greek financial crisis. We extracted this one little story from that time and asked him to relive it for us. For George and for Greece, it started in 02/2009.

那年10月希腊举行了总理选举，乔治所在的中间偏左政党赢得了胜利。

Greece had an election in October that year for prime minister, and George's party, the center left party, wins.

我们以压倒性优势赢得选举，我也获得了新职位。

We won the elections with a huge landslide, and I got a new job.

他的新职务是财政部长。当时正值雅典的秋天，全球各国经济在全球金融危机后都处于混乱状态。但在希腊，乔治记得人们对新政府充满乐观情绪，大家都很振奋。

His new job was finance minister. So it's fall in Athens. Economies around the world were kinda in shambles in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. But in Greece, George remembers a lot of optimism about the new administration. People were feeling good.

十月是新季节的开始，人们度假归来，心情相当放松。我们这边则是欢欣鼓舞，满怀巨大期待。

October is the beginning of the season, so people are back from vacation. They are fairly relaxed. There was, on our side, a lot of jubilation and huge expectations.

于是乔治入驻新办公室，坐下后心想：好吧，现在是什么情况？让我调出这些文件看看。

So George gets his new office, and he sits down, and he's like, okay. Where are we at? Let me pull up some of these documents.

我们隐约知道情况不妙，只是没想到会糟糕到什么程度。最早发生的其中一件事，就是财政部负责账目的官员走进我办公室说：实际情况相当严峻，比官方公布的严重得多。

We kind of knew things were bad. We just didn't know how bad things were. One of the first things that happened was the person responsible within the ministry for the accounts comes into my office and says, look, things are actually quite bad. Much worse than the official announcements.

真的吗？他们直接就坦白了？

Oh really? They just confessed right away?

是啊，因为那个人工作做得对，他们在准备月度报表交给部长，而部长只是把它们放进抽屉里不公布。所以整个夏天哇，没有任何数据发布。

Yeah, because that person was doing their job right and they were preparing monthly statements which they were giving to the minister, and the minister was just putting them in in his drawer and not announcing them. So over the summer Woah. There was no published data.

没有公布数据。政府就是什么都没说

No published data. The government just wasn't saying anything

关于赤字。在阿根廷，每个人关心的神奇数字是通货膨胀。但对希腊来说，那个神奇数字是预算赤字。政府花的钱比它进来的钱多多少。

about the deficit. In Argentina, the magic number that everybody cared about was inflation. But for Greece, that magic number was the budget deficit. How much money the government was spending versus how much it had coming in the door.

年初时，前政府预测预算赤字将是GDP的3.7%。但几个月后，他们开始说，你知道吗？

And at the start of the year, the prior administration had projected that the budget deficit was gonna be 3.7% of GDP. But then after several months, they'd started saying, you know what?

实际上看起来更像是6%。这个数字是一个国家财政健康的重要晴雨表。越低越好。如果低，意味着政府相对于其经济没有借太多钱。大家都乐意借钱给这个国家。

It's actually looking more like 6%. And this number is an important barometer of a country's fiscal health. The lower, the better. If it's low, that means the government hasn't borrowed too much relative to its economy. Everyone is happy to lend to this country.

如果高，债务太多而经济不够，人们就会担心。作为希腊加入欧盟的一部分协议是，你应该把赤字控制在GDP的3%以下。

If it's high, there's too much debt and not enough economy, and people get worried. And part of the deal of being in the European Union as Greece is is you're supposed to keep your deficit under 3% of GDP.

计算这个比率的方法，那些输入通常相当直接。有规则。但希腊政府在如何遵守这些规则上相当有创意。比如，多少东西应该算进去，什么时候算？

And the way to calculate that ratio, like, those inputs are generally pretty straightforward. There are rules. But the Greek government was being pretty creative with how to follow them. Like, how much of something should count and when do you count it?

他们基本上在那些灰色地带大做文章，隐藏了应该包括在内的东西。

They were basically taking a lot of liberties with those gray zones and hiding stuff that should have been in there.

所以如果比6%还糟，乔治就想，我们这里差了多少？

So if it's worse than 6%, George is like, how far off are we here?

这是揭露账目造假的第一步。一旦发现账目被动了手脚，就必须弄清楚被夸大的程度。于是乔治开始打电话联系相关人员。他联系了

This is step one to uncooking the books. Once you find out that the books have been cooked, you have to figure out how much cooked. So George starts calling people. He calls the

负责税收的部门，负责开支的部门。他联系了希腊中央银行——希腊银行，并开始获得答案。

people in charge of taxes, the people in charge of spending. He calls Greece's central bank, the Bank of Greece, and he starts getting answers.

他们当时低估了支出，高估了收入。因此，年底的赤字预测看起来是GDP的6%，而实际上当时已是十月份，希腊银行的数据显示我们已经达到了10%。

I mean, they were underestimating expenditures and overestimating revenues. Hence, the deficit projection for the end of the year looked to be 6% of GDP, whereas in fact, we were October and the Bank of Greece data were telling us that we're already at 10% Oh

天啊。

my goodness.

每个月还在增长1%。所以我们至少会达到12%。

Going up 1% every month. So we're gonna hit at least 12%.

因此到年底时，预计赤字至少会是12%，是政府宣称数字的两倍。乔治说他当时就想，这样的错误是怎么发生的？

So by the end of the year, the estimated deficit would be at least 12%, twice what the government had been saying. George says he was like, how does a mistake like this happen?

于是我召见了统计局局长，问他到底怎么回事？

So I called in the head of the statistics office, and I said, what's going on?

乔治说，我们这里有三个数字：6、10和12。而你们提供的是最低的那个，差距还不小。那么哪个数字才是真实的？

George is like, we got three numbers here, six, ten, and 12. And yours is the lowest by a fair amount. So which number is real?

结果他说，我们只是做预测而已。于是我当场解雇了他，因为我非常清楚他在隐瞒真相。实际上他一直在按照前任部长的要求提供数据。

So he said, well, you know, all we do is project. Right? So, basically, I fired him on the spot because I felt quite clear that he was hiding the truth. Basically, he was feeding the previous minister the the numbers that the minister was asking him to to give.

需要说明的是，此人现已去世。但在2010年2月时，他确实否认有不当行为，并告诉《纽约时报》他是主动辞职的。至此第一步完成。乔治现在知道数字有问题，可能偏差高达两倍。

For the record, that guy has since passed away. But back in 02/2010, he did deny wrongdoing, and he told the New York Times that he resigned. So step one is done. George now knows the numbers are off, maybe double off.

而他在账目清理过程中遇到的另一个问题是：现在他所知与公众所知之间存在差距。公众最后听到的赤字率是6%，他们还沉浸在乐观情绪中。所以迟早他得戳破这个泡沫。

And here is his next problem in the process of uncooking the books. There is now a gap between what he knows and what the public knows. The last they heard, the deficit was 6%, and they're also out there feeling great. So at some point, he's gonna have to burst their bubble.

你需要斟酌如何公布坏消息——既不能彻底粉碎人们的希望和期待，也不能误导他们。

You have to sort of calibrate how you break the bad news because you don't want to completely dash people's hope and expectations, but you also don't want to mislead them.

乔治及其执政团队需要重获民众信任。他们必须重建公信力，才能解决问题继续前进。

George and the administration, they need people to trust them. They need to somehow reestablish credibility so they can fix the problem and move forward.

乔治表示下一步很明确：应该坦白真相。但他指出这并非共识。

George says the next step is obvious. They should come clean. But he says that was not a universal opinion.

因为当时确实有人建议我们：何不继续隐瞒一点？但我们说这笔债务是事实，如果持续撒谎，谎言只会越滚越大。

Because some people actually at the time said to us, why don't you continue sort of hiding a little bit? You know? We said, this thing is it it's we owe this money. Right? And you if you keep lying, it the lie gets bigger and bigger.

我们做不到。我们当选不是为了持续撒谎。所以必须坦白。

You can't it's cannot do it. We're we're not elected to continue lying. Right? So we had to come clean.

这就是第二步：忏悔。停止谎言。乔治说为此他召见了央行行长，两人共同面对记者。

This is step two. Confess. Unlie. To do this, George says he calls in the governor of the central bank, and they go stand in front of a bunch of journalists.

我们共同出席发布会，他宣布赤字率将超过12%。这是个重要时刻，因为这是首次公开真相。

We both come out, and he says, you know, it's gonna go above 12%. So that's a significant moment because that's the first time when it's out in the public.

现在所有人都知道预算赤字不是6%，而是接近12%。很遗憾。

So now everybody knows the budget deficit is not 6%. It's closer to 12%. Sorry.

第二步就此完成。但乔治并未因坦白获得赞誉。人们并未回应'感谢告知'——因为我们仍要面对残酷现实。

That is step two accomplished. But George doesn't get much credit for coming clean. His message was not received with a thank you for letting us know because we still have a problem, reality.

接下来是第三步，实际的手动还原操作。他们必须查明现实情况，即真实的赤字数字究竟是多少。不是12%的估计值，而是2009年2月确切的真实赤字，以及过去几年的情况。为此，他们需要逐笔统计所有实际进账和出账的资金，这是一项浩大的工程。

Here comes step three, the actual manual uncooking. They have to figure out reality, what the deficit number actually is. Not the 12% estimate, but the real exact deficit for 02/2009, and for that matter, the past few years too. So for this, they have to tally up all the money that literally came in the door and all the money that literally went out the door, which is a lot of work.

我有几周时间永远铭刻在心，那时我们基本上从早到晚都在开会，形形色色的人物进进出出。我们试图敲定具体数字——有来自税务部门的人，有来自财政支出部门的人，有统计局的人，还有希腊央行的人。每天结束时我们都会得出一个新数字。我问：这次确定了吗？他们回答：是的。

I have a couple of weeks, which will forever stay in my mind, where we have basically morning to evening meetings with, you know, a huge cast of characters coming in and out. So we can actually try to nail down the numbers. So we've got the people from the revenues and the people from the expenditures and the people from the statistical office and the people from the Bank of Greece and at the end of every day we have a new number. And I go, is this it guys? And they say, yes.

但总会有人从会议室后排发出微弱的声音，举手说：部长，其实还有一件事。接着就会冒出价值数亿美元的未计入项目，而这些显然必须被纳入统计。于是数字就这样不断攀升。

And then there's always this little voice from the back of the room, a guy raises his hand and says, actually Minister, there's one more thing. And then there's this additional item which is hundreds of millions of dollars which has not been counted and needs to be because it it has to be, obviously. Right? And then the number keeps going up.

乔治给我们举了个例子。希腊政府曾出售过某家公共企业，但交易时不知为何保留了养老金支付义务。乔治说政府确实在向退休人员支付这些款项，只是从未将这笔支出纳入赤字计算。

George tells us one example. There was some public corporation that the Greek government had sold. But when they sold it, they, for some reason, kept the pension obligations. George says the government was dutifully paying those obligations to retirees, but just not including that outgoing money in its deficit calculation.

这意味着每年约有78亿美元支出未入账，尽管我们实际支付了这笔钱。这显然是为了确保赤字数字看起来比实际情况小。

Which means that every year, there was something like $7,800,000,000, which were not written in the accounts even though we were actually paying it. It was a clear attempt to to make sure that the deficit did not show as big as it really was.

是的。乔治说这些本应纳入统计的数字，在赤字计算过程中莫名其妙地消失了。

Yeah. George says somehow those numbers, which should have been included, were getting lost on the way to the deficit calculation.

整个过程耗时逾年。获取信息阻力重重，相关人员消极怠工。他们新聘了统计局长，欧盟统计机构派驻专员，最终在数周连轴转的会议后，所有藏在角落里的问题都浮出了水面。

This all takes over a year. It is so hard to get the information. People are dragging their feet. They hire a new head statistician. The European statistical agency sends in their people, and eventually, the weeks of morning to evening meetings are finally done, and they have finally heard from all the guys in all the backs of all the rooms.

全面统计后，2009年赤字最终达到GDP的15%。从6%到15%，这9个百分点的GDP差额让金融市场彻底崩溃。

Once we counted everything, the 2009 deficit ended up being 15% of GDP. So from '6 to 15%, that's nine percentage points of GDP missing, which is what made the financial markets completely freak out.

金融市场完全失控了。这就是第四步：当你真正认清现状，坦白之后就要承担后果。

The financial markets completely freaked out. And this is step four. You know how cooked you truly are. You've confessed, and now it's consequence time.

后果接踵而至，最先体现在金融市场尤其是债券市场。过去乐意借钱给希腊的全球投资者，现在纷纷要求希腊立即偿债。

And there are many consequences. They show up first in financial markets, the bond markets. Investors around the world who had happily lent Greece money in the past were now demanding that Greece pay up.

我们的借贷成本立刻上升了。

Cost of our borrowing went up immediately.

那感觉如何？

How did that feel?

哎，你看。首先不仅是你的借贷成本增加了，还因为你意识到某一年需要偿还的债务比你原先以为的要多得多，所以不得不借更多钱。

Oof. Look. It was first of all, you it's not just that your cost of your borrowing is more. It's also that you have to borrow much more because you realize that what you owe in a given year is bigger than what you thought you owed.

真实数据显示，希腊的实际负债比他们想象的多出超过一倍。他们需要借款来填补这个窟窿。而当你借更多钱时，借贷成本就会上升。你知道还有什么会让借贷成本上升吗？就是不得不向债权人坦白真实的财政数据。

The real numbers showed that actually Greece owed a lot more than they thought, more than double. And they were gonna need to borrow to cover it. And whenever you borrow a lot more, your cost of borrowing goes up. And you know what else makes your cost of borrowing go up? Having to come clean to your lenders about your numbers.

他们可不喜欢这样。乔治发现，信任几乎在一夜之间完全消失了。

They don't like that. George found that trust had entirely evaporated almost overnight.

一旦这种情况发生，市场基本上就在说：好吧，我们不相信你的数据。进而，我们也不相信任何政策声明。所以你说要控制赤字？除非亲眼所见并验证，否则我们不会相信。你连做事时获得疑点利益的好处都失去了。

And once this happened, basically the market said, okay, we don't trust your numbers. And by extension, we don't trust any policy announcement. So you're going to tell us that you're going to rein in the deficit. We're not gonna trust until we see it, and then we verify it. So you lose even the benefit of the doubt in everything that you're doing.

和阿根廷的情况一样，不再相信这些数据的人直接做了最坏打算，并因此向希腊收取更高利息。

As with Argentina, people who no longer trusted the numbers just assumed the worst and charged Greece even more because of it.

在希腊，他们还不得不解决上届政府最初试图掩盖的实际问题——他们资金为负。市场已对他们失去信任，所以希腊不得不向欧元区其他成员——德国、法国等国家——寻求资金填补这个无底洞，金额高达数百亿美元。

And in Greece, they also had to fix the actual problem that the prior administration had been trying to paper over in the first place. They had negative money. The market had lost trust in them, so Greece had to go to the other members of the eurozone, Germany, France, all those guys, and ask for money to fill in the hole. Billions and billions of dollars.

但和所有资金一样，这不是免费的。他们必须同意削减开支并增加税收。紧缩政策——没有政客想要的东西——通常意味着经济衰退。而对希腊来说，这持续了近十年。

But as with all money, this was not free. They had to agree to cut spending and raise taxes. Austerity, something no politician wants. It generally means you got a recession. And for Greece, it did for nearly ten years.

做假账的后果真的很严重。

The consequences of book cooking were really bad.

信任一旦丧失——这种情况可能转瞬发生且轻而易举——要重新赢回则难如登天。失去信任易如反掌，而要重获信任，你必须历经多年考验，通过重重审核，由外部机构验证数据的真实性。人们往往意识不到这有多么微妙。

That loss of trust, which is can happen very quickly and very easily, it is then incredibly difficult to bring back. You lose it easily and to gain it back you've got to really prove yourself and go through hoops over years, have external agencies validate indeed your data, and people don't realize how delicate this is.

因为篡改数字并不能让你逃避现实。现实依然存在。你只是在拖延应对，同时让情况变得更糟。做假账最终比一开始就诚实记账代价更高。所以上周五8月1日，当劳工统计局局长被解职的消息传出时，这是否让你想起了往事？

Because messing with the numbers doesn't actually let you hide from reality. Reality is still there. You're just delaying dealing with it and also making it worse. Cooking the books ends up being more expensive than just dealing with the books in the first place. So this past Friday, August 1, when the news came out about the BLS head getting fired, has this been giving you flashbacks?

噢，完全如此。对我来说，这简直是2009年2月的重演。一个背负着高额赤字和债务的经济体，其执政当局却喜欢假装经济规律不适用。当疲软的就业数据突然出现时，他们会怎么做？

Oh, totally. To me, this is 02/2009. I mean, here is an economy which is running a very high deficit, debt and deficit, with an administration who likes to pretend that the normal laws of economics do not apply. And suddenly it gets weak employment numbers. So what does it do?

他们迁怒于传递消息的人。这极其恶劣，因为这会摧毁对独立机构的信心。要知道一旦走上这条路，如果我们不再相信这类数据，不再信任数据的生产者，那么在政治辩论中我们就失去了立足点。我们可以对政策有分歧，但不应该对基础数据有争议。数据本该就是数据。

It shoots the messenger. And this is really bad because it destroys confidence into independent institutions. And you know once you go that road, if we lose trust in these kind of numbers, we lose trust in the data, if we lose trust in the people who produce those numbers, then there is nothing to base ourselves on when we have a political debate. We can disagree on policies but we should not be able to disagree on the underlying numbers. The numbers should be the numbers.

然后你才能判断政策X是否优于政策Y，对吧？但这些数据应该是我们共同认可的事实。

And then you can decide whether X policy is better than policy Y, right? But the numbers should be the numbers that we all believe in.

这样我们才能拥有共同认知的现实，进而决定如何应对这个现实。

So that there's some shared reality and then we can decide what to do about that reality.

如果我们摧毁了这个共同现实，理性对话就失去了基础。一切都会变成主观臆断。下次劳工统计局公布失业率时会发生什么？人们是否会根据政治立场声称'不，失业率要高得多'或'不，失业率低得多'？一旦我们失去这个基准点，接受现实是可以随意操纵的相对概念，我们就走上了毁灭之路。

And if we destroy that shared reality then there is no basis for a rational conversation. Then it all becomes points of view. What's going to happen next time the Bureau of Labour Statistics announces unemployment figures? Will people say no, unemployment is much higher, or no, it's much lower, depending on their political affiliation? Once we lose that starting point and we accept that reality is a very relative concept that can be manipulated at will, then, we are on the road to oblivion.

乔治说美国尚未走上毁灭之路，但可能正处于十字路口。就目前所知，数据还算可靠。但或许我们可以从希腊的经历中吸取教训。因为纠正假账的过程痛苦不堪，能避免就该避免。想了解更多，请收听我们和兄弟节目《指标》的相关内容。

George says The US is not yet on the road to oblivion, but we may be at a crossroads. Right now, the data are, as far as we know, actually okay. But maybe there's something to learn from Greece's experience. Because the process of uncooking is unfun, and if you can avoid it, you should. If you wanna hear more, we and our siblings show the indicator.

我们制作过许多关于数据和政府统计的节目，包括探讨GDP核算方式变更的专题，以及劳工统计局如何计算通胀和就业数据的系列。相关节目链接已附在shownotes中。

We have done a bunch of episodes about data and government statistics. We did one about if you can just change how we measure GDP and others on how the BLS calculates inflation and the jobs numbers. We put links to those episodes in our show notes.

本期节目由萨姆·黄马·凯斯勒制作，杰斯·张编辑，吉米·基利与夸兹·李共同完成音频工程，事实核查由塞拉·华雷斯协助完成。执行制作人是亚历克斯·戈德马克。

Today's episode was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kessler. It was edited by Jess Jang. It was engineered by Jimmy Keeley with help from Kwazi Lee. We got some fact checking help from Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

特别感谢Hansi Loong、Steve Pearson和Nancy Potock。我是Mary Childs，

Special thanks to Hansi Loong, Steve Pearson, and Nancy Potock. I'm Mary Childs,

我是Sally Helm。这里是NPR。感谢您的收听。

and I'm Sally Helm. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

本消息由NPR赞助商卡佩拉大学为您呈现。学习不必耽误生活。通过卡佩拉革命性的FlexPath学习模式，您可以自设截止日期，按自己的节奏学习。这意味着您无需搁置生活就能获得学位。相反，以您的方式享受学习，无缝追求教育与职业目标。

This message comes from NPR sponsor Capella University. Learning doesn't have to get in the way of life. With Capella's game changing FlexPath learning format, you can set your own deadlines and learn on your own schedule. That means you don't have to put your life on hold to earn your degree. Instead, enjoy learning your way and pursue your educational and career goals without missing a beat.

卡佩拉大学助您触手可及不同的未来。详情请访问capella.edu。

A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

本消息由Greenlight赞助。Greenlight是一款儿童借记卡、家庭理财与安全应用，被数百万家庭使用，帮助孩子学会储蓄、投资和理性消费。立即开始无风险试用，请访问greenlight.com/npr。本消息由Warby Parker赞助。一副好眼镜的标准是什么？

This message comes from Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card for kids, family finance, and safety app used by millions of families, helping kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely. Start your risk free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com/npr. This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses?

在Warby Parker，所有隐形附加值都不额外收费，比如终身免费调整服务。前往warbyparker.com选购，或亲临其遍布全国的数百家门店

At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your pair at warbyparker.com or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the

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country.