你信嗎? 世界末日5個預兆

小編摘要：當下，流行文化中最賺錢的話題是殭屍、吸血鬼和世界末日——這也合情合理。本文在向瑪雅預言致敬的同時，也爲你揭示2012世界末日來臨的5個另類徵兆。

$8.5 billion ain't what it used to be

Back in June, it looked like Bank of America had a rare win on its hands: a proposed settlement with trustee Bank of New York to the tune of $8.5 billion, meant to restore the damage done by faulty mortgage-backed securities financed by BofA's Countrywide division. Come October, the settlement fell apart because investors (among many other vocal groups, too) didn't feel the figure was high enough. $8.5 billion, not enough money? Yikes. That's a scary indicator for banking in general, but also for BofA considering it is more than the institution made in the last four years combined. The collapsed deal is another low-point in a rough year for the bank and CEO Brian Moynihan. At least he axed those $5 debit card fees.

85億美元都不夠花了

2011年6月，美國銀行（Bank of America）眼看就要取得一場罕見的勝利：它計劃以大約85億美元的資金，與受託人美國紐約銀行（Bank of New York）達成和解，旨在挽回由美國銀行子公司Countrywide提供資金的不良抵押證券所造成的損失。然而到10月份，因爲投資人（以及其他衆多意見團體）認爲85億美元不足以解決問題，導致和解最終破裂。難道85億美元還不夠多嗎？沒錯！總的看來，85億美元對銀行業來說是一個驚人的數字，而考慮到85億美元超過了美國銀行過去四年盈利的總和，這一數字着實令人吃驚。美國銀行和CEO布賴恩·莫伊尼漢2011年流年不利，而這次和解破裂則意味着又一低谷，但至少布賴恩還是做出了取消5美元借記卡費用的決定。

The hottest CEOs are very, very young

Facebook. Twitter. Groupon. Zynga. LinkedIn. Yelp. The list keeps growing, but the ages don't. Mark Zuckerberg (impending Facebook IPO: shooting for a $100 billion valuation), no longer a new name to anyone, is still only 27. Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon (which raised $700 million for its IPO), is 27 as well. Zynga, which went public in December, is helmed by Mark Pincus, who even at 45 is on the young side for what was, until recently, the prototypical American blue-chip company CEO. (Think Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, 82, ex-Ford CEO Alan Mulally, 66, or ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, 60.) Let's face it: the biggest, buzziest business news is continually coming from companies that are helmed by people who listened to Green Day in middle school.

商界當紅驕子都是小年輕

Facebook、Twitter、團購網站Groupon、社交遊戲公司Zynga、商務社交網絡LinkedIn和點評網站Yelp都是如今炙手可熱的科技公司，而且這份名單還在不斷擴容，但這些公司掌門人的年齡卻沒有呈現上升的趨勢：馬克·扎克伯克（Facebook即將進行首次公開募股：估值有望達到1,000億美元）不再是個籍籍無名的名字，而他2011年只有27歲；Groupon的CEO安德魯·梅森（首次公開募股籌資7億美元）2011 年也是27歲；Zynga公司於2011年12月上市，馬克·平卡斯是這家典型的美國藍籌公司的CEO。雖然他已經45歲，仍然是較爲年輕的CEO。（想想吧：美國保險公司伯克希爾·哈撒韋公司（Berkshire Hathaway）的沃倫·巴菲特已是82歲高齡、福特公司（Ford）前CEO艾倫·穆拉利已經66歲了，埃克森美孚公司（ExxonMobil）CEO雷克斯·蒂爾納森也60歲了。）面對現實吧，如今商界的重磅新聞都是來源於這些新生力量，而他們的掌門人都是些聽着綠日樂隊（Green Day）的歌曲長大的年輕人。

Hollywood knows it's coming

Movies and film have gone gaga for the end-of-the-world trope. If this thing doesn't happen in 2012 as the Mayans predicted, the entertainment industry is going to be practically disappointed. The hottest movie and TV franchises— think Twilight (oh, Edward!)— feed our obsessions with death. 2011, with releases like Melancholia, Super 8, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, was yet another big year for the apocalypse and alien invasion movie trend that has been building for five years. This includes I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, Cloverfield, War of the Worlds, Children of Men, The Book of Eli, The Road, and of course, 2012. On television, we're watching shows like Falling Skies (alien attack), The Walking Dead (zombies), True Blood (vampires), and The Vampire Diaries (self-explanatory). All we want to see is the end of the world. Even business flicks know it: this year's two biggest, Too Big to Fail and Margin Call, were also, in a sense, movies about the end of the (financial) world.

好萊塢成了末日先知

世界末日的隱喻席捲了整個影視界。如果世界末日最終沒有象瑪雅人預測的那樣發生如期而至，演藝界將會失望透頂。最熱門的影視作品 ——如《暮光之城》（Twilight）——總是讓我們想到死亡。隨着《驚悚末日》（Melancholia）、《超級8》（Super 8）和《猩球崛起》（Rise of the Planet of the Apes）的上映，2011年是末日和外星人入侵題材的又一個豐收之年。此前的五年中，這種題材日趨火熱，電影作品包括《我是傳奇》（I am Legend）、《驚變28天》（28 Days Later）、《柯洛弗檔案》（Cloverfield）、《世界大戰》（War of the Worlds）、《末代浩劫》（Children of Men）、《艾利之書》（The Book of Eli）、《末日危險》（The Road），當然還包括《2012》（2012）。電視作品包括《隕落星辰》（Falling Skies）（外星人入侵）、《行屍走肉》（The walking dead）（殭屍）、《噬血真愛》（True Love）（吸血鬼）和《吸血鬼日記》（The Vampire Diaries）（一目瞭然）。不管我們想看什麼，看到的所有東西都是世界末日。就連商業電影也有所涉獵：2011年的兩部大片《大而不倒》（Too Big to Fail）和《利益風暴》（Margin Call）從某種角度來說也屬於（商業）世界末日電影。

Publishers know it too

The biggest novel of the year, by many accounts, was Colson Whitehead's Zone One, published in October. The subject? A plague has wiped out most of humanity and much of the remaining people are zombies. It was Esquire's "Best Book of the Fall." The New York Observer called it a "brilliant allegory of New York City living." In other words, we're basically Zombies already. Oh, and one of this year's other hugely popular releases in the literary fiction world? Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers, which focuses on the lives of the people left after The Rapture takes place.

出版界也聽到風聲了

從很多方面來看，2011年最熱門的小說當屬10月份出版的《第一區》（Zone One，科爾森·懷特海德著）。小說的主題是瘟疫奪去了大部分人的生命，倖存的人都變成了殭屍。它是《時尚先生》（Esquire）“秋季最暢銷書”。《紐約觀察家報》（The New York Observer）稱它是“對紐約都市生活最精彩的隱喻”。言外之意是，我們已然淪爲行屍走肉。另外，2011年文學小說最近流行的是哪一本？答案是湯姆 ·佩羅塔的《被遺棄的人》（The leftovers），描寫了“被提災難”（The Rapture，源自希臘文harpazo，被奪、被取及被提。因某種力量，以強迫方式將某人或某物奪走——譯者注）中生還者的生活。

Steve Jobs is gone

It's the saddest sign of them all. The satirical paper The Onion summed it up best with its headline: "Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies."

史蒂夫·喬布斯走了

這是最沉重的一條啓示錄。諷刺報紙《洋蔥報》（The Onion）的標題是最好的總結：《最後一個清楚地知道自己在做什麼的美國人去世了》（"Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies.）