2010年11月18日

为美联储QE2一辩 How to chart a course out of the Sino-American storm

 

他们来了,他们看见了,他们失败了。这就是人们对上周20国集团(G20)首尔峰会全球再平衡议题的反应。在公开场合,盈余国家坚持呼吁那些赤字国家紧缩开支以实现经济健康。目前这种愚蠢做法的后果已经在欧元区显露无疑。美国在国际上永远不会接受这种做法。但人们没有注意到的是,更有成效的做法可能正在浮现。

从峰会领导人的公告中可以推导出这种更乐观的看法。公告称,“持续的大规模失衡——有待各国财长和央行行长们根据商定的指示性准则进行评估——使得我们有理由对其性质以及阻碍调整的根源作出评估……这些包括一系列指标的指示性准则将作为一种机制,以及时识别需要采取预防性和纠正性措施的大规模失衡”。这段话比较晦涩,但是很明智。除了盈余国家有必要更多依赖内需,国际货币基金组织(IMF)加强监督以及汇率这些言论外,某种更强有力的授权可能已经出现。

当然,在公开场合,辩论聚焦于美联储(Fed)推出定量宽松的“罪恶”,中国和德国对此大加鞭挞。在美国经济疲弱、货币增长停滞的背景下,为何如此温和的货币宽松政策让他们如此激动,令人难以理解。

中国批评的核心论点是,美国故意压低美元汇率,从而“出口”其问题。人们很容易看到反驳这种论点的三个理由:第一,这不符合事实;第二,汇率调整是必要的;第三,这其实是对中国汇率政策的良好描述。

美联储购买的不是外汇,而是本国债券。它这么做是为了通过“去杠杆化”来支持国内经济。没错,若其它因素不变,这类政策也可能降低美元的外部价值。但这是可取的。美国是内外失衡的经典例子——失业率高企和结构性经常账户赤字。按照教科书上的经济学理论,让实际汇率贬值是正确的应对之举。名义汇率贬值是实现这种结果的最不痛苦的方式。

然而,与美国不同,中国确实“印钱”以购买外汇和保护对外竞争力。截止2010年9月,中国累积了2.648万亿美元外汇储备(接近其国内生产总值的一半)。中国国家主席胡锦涛在首尔讲话中,呼吁各国领导人坚定不移地“反对各种形式的保护主义,取消已有的贸易保护措施”。然而,中国自身的汇率政策肯定属于“各种形式的保护主义”那一类。俗话说得好,住在玻璃房的人不应该扔石头。

然而,重要的经济学观点是,世界需要管理一场危机后的调整——资本流动在这一过程中转向。就本质而言,这是一个实际、而非货币的过程。富国不能有成效地吸收过去从穷国流向富国的资本流动。的确,它们从来都做不到那一点。不能持续的事情现在必须改变。

要明白这为何紧迫,不妨看看赤字经济体内部的财政平衡。例如,美国的情况具有说服力。家庭、企业、政府和对外部门的财政平衡(收入与支出之差)总和为零。他们如何做到这一点是颇能说明问题的。

外国人的支出始终低于收入,因此对美国运营着经常账户盈余。直到危机爆发前,美国政府和家庭部门运营着大致相等的对应赤字。在危机后,家庭和企业部门大幅削减支出(相对收入而言)。随着外资、家庭和企业部门运营着盈余,政府最终持有巨额赤字。在我看来,根本推动因素是私人部门在危机后削减支出。财政赤字在更大程度上是这些转变的结果,而非原因。

 

关键之处在于,只有其它部门扩大支出(相对收入而言),美国才能在不陷入严重衰退的情况下削减其巨额财政赤字。美国私人部门不太可能将支出扩大至足够规模,尽管在某种程度上扩大投资是可信的。必要调整的很大部分必须来自外国支出的扩大(相对收入而言)——换言之,削减美国的结构性经常账户赤字。

任何全球调整讨论的背后都是这种分析逻辑。正如IMF在G20峰会上提交的“相互评估程序”文件中所指出的那样,预计赤字国家的经常账户赤字将上升至危机前的水平。与此同时,预计盈余将会企稳。这显然是不匹配的。更重要的是,这表明全球远未能将未来增长建立在一个可持续基础之上。

改变这种情形不只符合赤字国家的利益。如果后者不能将经济建立在一个可持续的基础之上,它们就很有可能采取更粗糙的方式来阻止需求的下降。这意味着保护主义——长期而言,这将伤害所有人。一个好得多的做法是各国认真讨论如何调整,而不是在一个供应过度的世界里为市场而争斗。

要做到这一切并不容易。例如,就货币政策而言,美中之间可能出现暂时的僵局:前者可以不受限制地发行美元,而后者作为对策,可以不受限制地发行人民币以购买美元。这种斗争的“胜利者”可能是受通胀影响较晚的一方。但此类“汇率战”肯定是场悲剧,包括对汇率相对灵活的无辜国家产生巨大的负面效应。肯定有比这更好的方式。的确,这种方式显然存在:一个均衡的中期调整计划。首尔峰会可能没有让该计划更进一步,但前进的路线图已经明确。各国领导人应该明白,沿着这条路快速前进符合自身利益。

译者/何黎

 

http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035621
 
 

They came; they saw; they lost. That is the reaction to what emerged on global rebalancing at the summit meeting of the Group of 20 leading countries in Seoul last week. Publicly, surplus countries persist in calling on those in deficit to deflate themselves into economic health. The consequences of this folly are now evident in the eurozone. At the world level, the US will never accept it. But, beneath the radar, something more productive may be emerging.

This more optimistic perspective can be drawn from the texts of the leaders’ declaration. This states that “persistently large imbalances, assessed against indicative guidelines to be agreed by our finance ministers and central bank governors, warrant an assessment of their nature and the root causes of impediments to adjustment . . . These indicative guidelines composed of a range of indicators would serve as a mechanism to facilitate timely identification of large imbalances that require preventive and corrective actions.” Ugly, but sensible. Together with the talk of the need for surplus countries to rely more on domestic demand, of enhanced surveillance by the International Monetary Fund and of exchange rates, a somewhat stronger mandate may have emerged.

In public, of course, debate has focused on the sins of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, with China and Germany voluble in condemnation. Why such modest monetary easing, in the context of a weak US economy and stagnant monetary growth, has caused such hysteria is hard to understand.

The core of China’s condemnation is that the US is exporting its troubles, by deliberately driving down its currency. It is easy to see three objections to this attack: first, it is untrue; second, exchange rate adjustment is necessary; and, third, this is a good description of Chinese exchange rate policy, instead.

The Federal Reserve is not purchasing foreign currency, but domestic bonds. It is doing so in order to sustain the domestic economy through deleveraging. True, such a policy is likely, other things being equal, also to lower the external value of the currency. But this is desirable. The US is a classic example of internal and external imbalances – high unemployment and a structural current account deficit. Textbook economics suggests that a depreciation of the real exchange rate is the right response. A depreciation of the nominal exchange rate is the least painful way to achieve this outcome.

Yet, unlike the US, China is indeed “printing money”, in order to buy foreign currency and protect external competitiveness. By September 2010, China had accumulated $2,648bn in foreign currency reserves (close to half of gross domestic product). In his remarks in Seoul, Hu Jintao, China’s president, called on the leaders to be committed to “the effort of opposing all forms of protectionism and removing existing trade protectionist measures”. Yet his own country’s currency policy surely comes under the category of “all forms of protectionism”. As the proverb goes, people who live in glasshouses should not throw stones.

The big economic point, however, is that the world needs to manage a post-crisis adjustment, in which capital flows turn around. In essence, this is a real, not a monetary, process. The rich countries cannot productively absorb the flow of capital that used to flow from poor ones. Indeed, they never could. What could not go on now has to change.

To understand why this is urgent, it helps to look at financial balances within deficit economies. In the case of the US, for example, they tell a compelling story. The financial balances (gap between income and spending) of the household, corporate, government and foreign sectors sum to zero. What is revealing is how they do so.

 

Foreigners have consistently spent less than their incomes and so ran a current account surplus with the US. Up to the crisis, the counterpart deficits were run, roughly equally, by the government and the household sectors. After the crisis, the household and corporate sectors cut spending dramatically, relative to income. With foreigners, households and the corporate sector running surpluses, the government ended up in huge deficit (see chart). In my view, the underlying driver was post-crisis cutbacks by the private sector. The fiscal deficit was far more a result of these shifts than a cause.

The crucial point is that the US can reduce its huge fiscal deficits, without pushing the country into a deep slump, if and only if other sectors expand spending, relative to incomes. This is unlikely to happen in the US private sector, to a sufficient extent, though some expansion of investment is plausible. A good part of the needed adjustment must come from expansion of foreign spending relative to income – in other words, a reduction in the structural current account deficit.

This analysis lies behind any discussion of global adjustment. As the IMF’s report on the “mutual assessment process” in the G20 shows, the current account deficits of deficit countries are forecast to rise to levels seen before the crisis. Meanwhile surpluses are expected to stabilise (see chart). The inconsistency is clear. More important, this indicates how far the world is failing to put its prospective growth on a sustainable basis.

Changing this picture is not just in the interest of deficit countries. If the latter are unable to put their economies on a sustainable footing, there is a good chance that they will adopt more brutal methods to halt the drain in demand. This means protection, which would harm everybody, in the long run. It is far better to engage in a serious discussion of the path to adjustment than end up with such a battle for markets in a world of excess supply.

None of this will be easy. In monetary policy, for example, the possibility of a temporary stalemate between the US and China exists: the former can create dollars without limit, while the latter can respond by creating renminbi without limit, with which to buy the dollars. The “victor” in this struggle might be the one afflicted second by inflation. But such a “currency war” would surely be a tragedy, not least because it would have massively adverse effects on innocent bystanders with relatively flexible exchange rates. There has to be a better way than this. Indeed, there evidently is: a balanced medium-term adjustment programme. Seoul may not have brought this that much closer. But the road ahead has been laid out. Leaders should see their own interest in moving briskly along it.

 

http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035621/en

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