有关“全球不平衡”的辩论已经“回到未来”。美国财长蒂姆•盖特纳(Tim Geithner)提议为经常账户余额设定指标，这让我们回想起约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)在1944年7月的布雷顿森林会议上极力关注的事情。代表英国出席会议的凯恩斯执着的辩称，盈余国家和赤字国家之间的不对称调整存在种种危险。美国这个当时全球最主要的盈余国家，断然拒绝了要求建立一种对盈余国家和赤字国家双方施加压力的机制的呼吁。今天，美国站在相反的立场。
美国当年拒绝的呼吁，中国今天会接受吗？答案也许为“是”。10月23日，20国集团(G20)财长和央行行长在韩国举行了会议，会议公报称，“长期性大规模不平衡的存在（我们将根据有待商定的指标性准则对此进行评估），使得我们有理由把对其本质和妨碍调整之根本原因的评估，纳入相互评估程序(Mutual Assessment Process)。我们认识到，在评估时有必要考虑各国或各地区的具体情况，包括大宗商品出产大国[的具体情况]。”这段晦涩的文字，是对盖特纳提议把经常账户余额指标设定为国内生产总值(GDP)的4%的回应。
那么，美国到底想达成什么目的？它的提议合理吗？行得通吗？
美国的目的是要建立一项原则，即盈余国家和赤字国家均有义务做出调整。它提议，各国应该商定一个盈余或赤字数值，一旦某国的盈余或赤字达到这一数值，该国就应采取行动。这并不是什么目标，也不会有什么制裁。全球货币体系将继续运行，而不会实施凯恩斯在1944年提出的自动机制。此外，美国还希望确保若干新兴经济体的货币（尤其是人民币）相对高收入国家的货币（尤其是美元）升值。
这一提议是否合理？面对这一提议，德国经济部长莱纳•布吕德勒(Rainer Brüderle)以正统的理由予以了驳斥。他表示，“我们应该依靠市场经济过程，而不是指令性经济”。不过，在我看来，这里面有三个决定性的限定条件。
首先，今天某些国家累积的巨额外汇储备并非一种市场现象：它们是政府决策的产物（见图表）。这种累积最初或许有其道理，因为它们能够建立缓冲、防范冲击。但是，这些储备的规模已远远超出了防范冲击的需要。本次危机期间，这些储备仅小幅减少了4700亿美元，相当于总量的6%，便足以证明这一点。其次，我们决不能忽视一点：事实已反复证明，世界经济无法以安全有效的方式使用巨额盈余储蓄流。最后，当今世界产能严重过剩。因此，让赤字国家独自做出调整是极不可取的主张——凯恩斯如果活着，一定会这么认为。
那么，哪些G20国家会受到美国所提指标的影响？如果把西班牙与G20国家一并考虑，那么美国、南非、土耳其和西班牙今年预计将出现“过剩的赤字”；中国、俄罗斯、德国和沙特阿拉伯将出现“过剩的盈余”。不过，俄罗斯与沙特阿拉伯作为“大宗商品出口大国”多半会得到豁免。此外，如果我们关注盈余和赤字的绝对规模，而不仅仅是它们占GDP的比重，那么“盈余过剩”国家还将包括日本，“赤字过剩”国家还将包括意大利、巴西和英国（见图表）。
这类经常账户指标只能算是一个起点。同样重要的是聚焦于那些具有系统重要性的国家：新加坡的经常账户盈余预计将占GDP的20%，但世界其它国家无需关注这一点。而对那些超大型国家来说，即使盈余只占其GDP的4%，绝对规模恐怕也过大了。尽管如此，量化指标起码可以让有关调整的讨论较之前有的放矢得多。
最后，这种做法行得通吗？我认为至少存在一定的机会。在国际货币基金(IMF)和世界银行(World Bank)的华盛顿年会上，两位中国经济学家分别向我表示，中国已决定限制本国盈余。所以说，就此问题展开讨论能够取得的成果，应该比只针对汇率问题展开讨论取得的成果多得多。不过，考虑到中国外汇储备的庞大规模（接近其GDP的50%）以及该国经济的高速增长，它应该寻求的是对外收支平衡（如果不是赤字的话），而不是占GDP 4%的盈余。如果按照后一个目标，到2015年时，中国的外部盈余可能达到4000亿美元，因为该国以美元计的GDP很可能每五年就会翻一番。
与当年让凯恩斯深感担心的赤字国家不同，美国至少手中握有“重型武器”——尤其是它发行世界首要储备货币的能力。如果美国不愿做出调整，其它国家是无法轻易迫使它就范的。此外，包括中国在内的其它各国，似乎都对美国进一步实施定量宽松的货币后果感到恐惧。幸运的是，全球需求扩张以及实际汇率调整得越成功，美国就越无必要实施这一政策。
因此，任何关于全球调整的讨论，都必须围绕美中两国展开。德国将继续扮演妨碍者的角色，但因此而遭殃的是它的欧元区贸易伙伴：它们已选择接受不可取消的固定汇率体系，忍受德国的对外竞争力和国内节省这两大打击。日本看上去根本没有能力应对自己的宏观经济困境。但中国的情况截然不同，它是一个正在迅速崛起的超级大国，人口众多，国内需求巨大。中国没有理由继续扮演巨额资本输出国的角色。
G20的作用，是为现任超级大国与未来超级大国之间必要的讨论提供掩护。假如中国致力于扩大需求、进而消除经常账户盈余（理想方式是通过增加消费），中国民众将变得更加富足，世界其它国家的民众也会受益。与此同时，美国应致力于长期财政巩固。
另外，其它G20国家政府首脑下周在韩国应该发挥的作用是，推动达成必要的协定。如果他们成功做到这一点，他们将向我们展示多边主义的一项最大好处：它的确可用来处理超级大国之间的冲突。盖特纳给出了一项富有想象力的替代方案，来化解无休止的汇率摩擦。中国最高领导人应该抓住美国提供给他的这一走出困局的机会。
译者/汪洋
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035371
The debate on “global imbalances” has gone back to the future. The proposal from Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, to target the current account takes us back to the preoccupations of John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944. Keynes, representing Britain, was obsessed with the dangers of asymmetric adjustment between surplus and deficit countries. The US, then the world’s dominant surplus country, rebuffed calls for a mechanism that would impose pressure on both sides. Now the US is in the other camp.
Might China accept what the US rejected? The answer may be “yes”. The communiqué of the October 23 meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 leading economies in South Korea stated that “persistently large imbalances, assessed against indicative guidelines to be agreed, would warrant an assessment of their nature and the root causes of impediments to adjustment as part of the Mutual Assessment Process, recognising the need to take into account national or regional circumstances, including [those of] large commodity producers.” This ugly sentence was in response to Mr Geithner’s suggestion of 4 per cent of gross domestic product as an indicator for the current account.
So what is the US after? Does its proposal make sense? Can it work?
The US aim is to establish the principle that both surplus and deficit countries have an obligation to adjust. It suggests that there should be an agreed numerical value for the surplus or deficit at which a country should act. This would not be a target. Nor would there be sanctions. The global monetary regime would continue without the automatic mechanisms proposed by Keynes in 1944. In addition, the US hopes to secure appreciation of the currencies of a number of emerging economies, particularly China’s, against those of the high-income countries, particularly the US dollar.
Does the proposal make sense? Rainer Brüderle, Germany’s economy minister, provided the orthodox rejection. He stated that “we should lean toward a market economy process and not on a command economy”. But there are three, in my view, decisive qualifications.
First, today’s huge accumulations of foreign currency reserves are not a market phenomenon: they are the product of government decisions (see chart). They could be justified, initially, as a way of creating insurance against shocks. But these reserves have gone well beyond that, as the modest decline during the crisis of $470bn, or 6 per cent of the total, showed. Second, the repeated evidence that the world economy is unable to use large flows of surplus savings in a safe and effective way cannot be ignored. Finally, the world of today has massive excess capacity. That makes adjustment by deficit countries alone hugely undesirable, as Keynes would surely have argued.
So which G20 countries would be affected by the US indicators? If one adds Spain to the group, the US, South Africa, Turkey and Spain are forecast to have “excessive deficits” this year, and China, Russia, Germany and Saudi Arabia to have “excessive surpluses”. But Russia and Saudi Arabia would presumably be exempt, as “large commodity exporters”. Moreover, if one were to focus on the scale of the surpluses and deficits rather than just shares of GDP, Japan would be among the surplus countries and Italy, Brazil and the UK countries among those with large deficits (see charts).
Such current account indicators can only be a starting point. It is also important to focus only on countries that are systemically significant: Singapore’s current account surplus is forecast at 20 per cent of GDP. But the rest of the world need not care about that. Moreover, for the very biggest countries even 4 per cent of GDP might be far too large. Yet quantitative indicators can at least make the discussion of adjustment far better focused than hitherto.
Finally, can this approach be made to work? There is at least a chance of it. At the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, two different Chinese economists informed me that China has already decided to limit its surpluses. So a discussion of this topic should be far more fruitful than a focus on the exchange rate alone. Yet, given the vast scale of its reserves (close to 50 per cent of GDP) and its rapid growth, China should seek external balance, if not a deficit, rather than a surplus of 4 per cent of GDP. Under the latter target, its external surplus might be $400bn by 2015, since its dollar GDP seems likely to double every five years.
Unlike the deficit countries that so worried Keynes, the US at least has heavy weaponry at its disposal, not least its ability to issue the world’s principal reserve currency. The rest of the world cannot easily force the US to adjust if it does not wish to do so. Moreover, everybody, including the Chinese, seems frightened of the monetary consequences of further US quantitative easing. Happily, the more successful is the expansion in global demand and adjustment in real exchange rates, the less necessary becomes such a US policy.
The core of any discussion of global adjustment, then, must be between the US and China. Germany will continue to be obstructive. But its victims are its partners in the eurozone: they have chosen to live with Germany’s devastating combination of external competitiveness with domestic restraint, under an irrevocably fixed exchange rate. Japan seems simply unable to deal with its macroeconomic predicament. But China is a very different case, as a burgeoning superpower with a vast population and enormous domestic needs. There is no reason for it to remain a massive capital exporter.
The role of the G20 is to give cover for the needed discussions between the incumbent and prospective superpowers. If China were to set itself the goal of raising demand and so eliminating its current account surpluses, ideally via higher consumption, the Chinese people would be better off and so would the rest of the world. The US should simultaneously commit itself to long-term fiscal consolidation.
Meanwhile, the role of the other heads of governments of the G20, in Korea next week, is to promote the necessary agreement. If they succeed, they will demonstrate one of the biggest benefits of multilateralism: it is a way to manage conflicts between the greatest powers. Mr Geithner has offered an imaginative alternative to endless friction over exchange rates. China’s president should seize the escape the US has offered him.
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