利兹观点 今天的美国中期选举是一场竞赛，看谁将为即将到来的一系列经济问题背锅。民主党有望赢得众议院控制权，而参议院控制权仍难以预测。
Liz’s view Today’s US midterm elections are a race to see who gets blamed for a host of economic problems coming down the pike. Democrats are favored to take the House, with control of the Senate still a toss-up.
谁赢得国会控制权，谁就将继承一堆未来两年内即将引爆的问题——正好赶上摧毁2028年大选雄心——而这些问题鲜有明显的解决办法。
Whoever wins Congress inherits a stack of problems due to detonate over the next two years — just in time to crater 2028 ambitions — and few have obvious fixes.
通胀率徘徊在3.7%左右，过去八个月中有六个月呈上升趋势，美联储已重启不得人心的紧缩政策。特朗普提名的美联储主席凯文·沃什在中期选举期间倾向鹰派立场，凸显了这一问题的顽固性。
Inflation is running around 3.7%, rising in six of the past eight months, and the Fed has gone back to unpopular tightening. That a Trump-picked Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, is leaning hawkish into a midterm election underlines how stubborn the problem is.
就业市场也好不到哪去。9月雇主仅新增2.9万个就业岗位；7月数据被修正为负值。企业对前景过于不确定——且不清楚人工智能究竟如何搅乱就业图景——因此既不招聘也不裁员，使局势处于杰罗姆·鲍威尔今年早些时候称为“一种令人不安的平衡”状态。还有外部冲击。有报道称白宫计划在中期选举后对伊朗实施打击，这可能将一场不得人心战争的政治后果推至选举窗口之外，但高昂汽油和柴油价格的经济重担将落在明年1月名义上掌权者身上。
The labor market is no better. Employers added just 29,000 jobs in September; July was revised into negative territory. Companies too uncertain about what’s ahead — and unsure of exactly how AI is muddying the employment picture — are neither hiring nor firing, leaving things in what Jerome Powell earlier this year called “an uncomfortable kind of balance.”Then there are the outside shocks. Reports that the White House is planning post-midterm strikes on Iran may push political fallout from an unpopular war outside the election window, but the economic weight of high gas and diesel prices lands on whoever’s nominally in charge come January.
这些是已知的未知数。人工智能带来了另一组未知的未知数：一场正在酝酿的金融挤压，投资毫无放缓迹象，而投资回报似乎比我们想象的还要遥远。人工智能泡沫破裂极可能发生在下届国会任内（一如既往，要关注紧张的信贷市场而非繁荣的股市，以寻找未来走向的信号）。
Those are the known unknowns. AI brings another set of unknown unknowns: A financial squeeze waiting to happen, as investment shows no signs of slowing down even as the returns on that investment appear even further out than we thought. A leaking AI bubble is likely to burst on the next Congress’s watch (as always, look to the jittery credit market, not the booming stock market, for signs of what’s to come).
第二个问题是政治层面的，国会对此推诿搁置。议员们9月休会离京，在人工智能护栏立法上毫无进展。今天的选票上出现了数十项数据中心暂停令和人工智能公投提案，仅俄亥俄州就有20多项。
The second problem is political, and Congress has punted on it. Lawmakers left town in September with no movement on AI guardrails. Dozens of data-center moratoriums and AI referendums appear on the ballot today, with more than 20 in Ohio alone.
即使是唐纳德·特朗普总统的一些媒体盟友也承认，无论国会山发生什么，他都掌控着经济叙事。但民主党控制的国会将给白宫提供一个对照组，这是自特朗普第一个任期后半段以来所没有的，每一项停滞的法案、每一次政府停摆、每一份疲软的就业报告，都可能被归咎于掌握立法权——和传票权力（详见今日通讯下文）的人手中。
Even some of President Donald Trump’s media allies concede that he owns the narrative on the economy no matter what happens on Capitol Hill. But a Democratic Congress would give the White House a foil it hasn’t had since the back half of Trump’s first term, and every stalled bill, shutdown, and soft jobs report could be pinned on the people holding the legislative pen — and subpoena power (more on that below in today’s newsletter).
无论哪种情况，明天的赢家得到的不那么像是奖品，而更像是一个包袱。
Either way, the winners tomorrow aren’t claiming a prize so much asg for a package.
值得注意的是，分析人士认为，谁控制国会对经济影响不大。“许多选民将于周二前往投票站，希望解决负担能力问题，”《华尔街日报》首席经济评论员写道。“他们将会失望。”
Notable Who controls Congress will make little difference to the economy, analysts argue. “A lot of voters head to the polls Tuesday hoping for a fix for affordability,” The Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator wrote. “They are going to be disappointed.”