Charles Merrill: Hero of Wall Street
查尔斯·梅里尔：叱咤华尔街的风云人物
A poor boy from the backwaters of Florida, Merrill was forced to leave college by lack of funds. But he schemed his way to Wall Street and made himself wealthy by the time he was 31.
梅里尔是佛罗里达州一个贫穷的男孩，由于缺乏资金，他被迫离开了大学。但在31岁的时候，他策划了去华尔街的道路，使自己变得富有。
He was the first investment banker to realize that chain stores would one day dominate retailing, and he got rich by underwriting (and often controlling) such future power houses and Safeway Stores. He set up one of America's first wire houses - brokerage firms with branch offices in different cities connected to the main office by Teletype. He was also the first big name Wall Streeter to predict the Great Crash of 1929. Indeed, in the months leading up to the Crash, Charles Edward Merrill pleaded (to no avail) with President Calvin Coolidge to speak out against speculation. By February 1929, Merrill was so sure the end was near that he liquidated his firm's stock portfolio, an act that made him famous in October, when the Crash finally came.
他是第一个认识到连锁店终有一天会主宰零售业的投资银行家，他通过承销（并经常控制）这些未来的发电厂和西夫韦商店而致富。他成立了美国第一家电报公司——经纪公司，在不同城市设有分支机构，通过电传打字机与总公司相连。他也是第一个预测1929年大崩盘的大名鼎鼎的华尔街人。事实上，在股市崩盘前的几个月，美林恳求（无济于事）美国总统柯立芝（CalvinCoolidge）公开反对投机行为。到了1929年2月，美林非常确定这一结局已经接近尾声，于是他清算了自己公司的股票组合，这一举动使他在10月声名鹊起，当时金融危机终于来临。
Write an essay within 250 words, introducing a financial giant.
写一篇250字以内的文章，介绍一个金融巨头。
https://lanfeizi.wixsite.com/english-learning/blog/buffett-s-9-life-lessons
The firm had become the largest brokerage in the country, a distinction it holds to this day. But Merrill died a sorely disappointed man. Wall Street had not rushed to follow his example, and the majority of the country, still scarred by the memory of the Depression, was not ready to plunge back into stocks. He was simply too far ahead of his time.
这家公司已成为该国最大的经纪公司，迄今为止一直享有盛誉。但梅里尔死了一个非常失望的人。华尔街并没有急于效仿他的榜样，全国大多数人，仍然被大萧条的记忆所吓坏，还没有准备好跳回股市。他实在是太超前了。
Did the events of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression change Merrill's views? Quite the contrary. The Crash proved that people should have listened to him instead of to those charlatans who encouraged investors to borrow so heavily and to speculate so wildly. He turned to the only man he thought capable of the task: himself.
二十年代的轰鸣和大萧条的事件是否改变了美林的观点？恰恰相反。这次崩盘证明，人们应该听他的，而不是那些鼓动投资者大量借贷和疯狂投机的江湖骗子。他转向唯一能胜任这项任务的人：他自己。
In retrospect, Merrill Lynch was really Charlie Merrill's bully pulpit, the platform from which he could preach the virtues of the stock market and show the country that the small investor could get a fair shake on Wall Street.
回想起来，美林实际上是查理美林的天字第一号讲坛，他可以借此讲坛宣扬股票市场的优点，并向全国表明，小投资者可以在华尔街得到公平的待遇。
The small investor, far more than the professional trader, is the true foundation upon which the modern bull market has been built.
小投资者远远超过专业交易者，是建立现代牛市的真正基础。
Which, it turns out, is a pretty fair description of how Merrill always viewed the market. Its ability to create wealth broadly was to him an undeniable proposition.
事实证明，这是对美林如何看待市场的一个相当公正的描述。它创造财富的能力对他来说是不可否认的。
The Street was largely a rigged game. Insiders manipulated the market from behind the curtains, behavior that, while unseemly, was legal then. Small investors were scorned - or fleeced. Yet Merrill was untouched by the cynicism that pervaded Wall Street. Like so many American visionaries, he was marked by naive and exaggerated optimism that was unshakable, even in the face of the darker reality he saw all around…
Merrill was the first person to openly advocate that the stock market should not just be a plaything for Wall Street insiders but should also be an avenue for the broad mass of Americans. He coined the phrase "Bringing Wall Street to Main Street."
Can there be any doubt that the democratization of the markets is the single most profound financial trend of the past half-century? The statistics certainly bear this out: by some measures, half of America's households now invest, compared with only 16% in 1945, and mutual funds alone hold more of America's financial assets than banks do.
美林是第一个公开主张股市不仅应该成为华尔街内部人士的玩物，也应该成为广大美国人的一条途径的人。他创造了“把华尔街带到大街上来”这句话。
市场民主化是半个世纪以来唯一最深刻的金融趋势，这是否有任何疑问？这些统计数据确实证明了这一点：按某些衡量标准，美国现在有一半家庭进行投资，而1945年只有16%，而仅共同基金就拥有比银行更多的美国金融资产。