在
美国黯淡衰落的过去10年，最可悲叹的景象莫过于一个个财政部长都跑到国外去，毕恭毕敬地请求中国人对我们的经济不要再那么吝啬。看到这种景象，我想得最多的就是在慕尼黑危机期间，身为世界最大帝国首相的内维尔•张伯伦(Neville Chamberlain)飞往德国贝希特斯加登国家公园(Berchtesgaden)乞怜的不堪镜头。
我们现在就像是走向末日的大英帝国。
且看这周末的G20会议。它对中国趁人之危的汇率操纵发表了更加道貌岸然的措辞，但没有丁点实质内容。下个月还要开会，我们或许只能指望它的措辞显得更加一本正经。
对于中国将采取措施降低其巨额贸易顺差的说法，香港研究公司GaveKal的分析师做了分析：如果像北京最近提出的那样，中国经常项目顺差要花四年时间才能回到国内生产总值(GDP)4%（上次处于这个水平是在2004年）以下，那么假设名义GDP增长率为11%，顺差实际上还会再增加1,000亿美元，如此一来，2014年顺差就将达到4,000亿美元，高于2007年达到的峰值水平，是2004年水平的六倍。也就是说，中国将需要其他国家的需求进一步大幅提高。
与此同时，我们当前经济上的张伯伦、财政部长盖特纳(Tim Geithner)对一位采访他的记者说，他预计中国将会“继续”向上重估人民币汇率。盖特纳一定是个超级乐观派。在过去五年里，中国仅允许人民币每年对美元升值4.4%，而且完全是出于自己的考虑，不是为了照顾其他任何人。
一届又一届的美国政府甚至都拒绝判定中国违反贸易规则。
中国汇率的低估有多严重？问问国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)就知道。据它的数据，人民币按实际购买力计算的真实汇率差不多刚好是官方汇率的两倍。
这种情况对美国经济有何实际影响？关于这个问题，你听到的也都是谎言。多数美国人完全是蒙在鼓里。
中国以巨大的代价压低人民币汇率，使其出口产品比我们的更加便宜，让我们的工厂都关门歇业，然后在他们那边创造就业岗位；同时又使我们的产品在中国市场卖得更加昂贵，带来的也是一样的效果。
自中国加入世界贸易组织(World Trade Organization)的10年来，我们一直是用经济绥靖主义来回应这种政策。我们拿过中国的钱，用它压低利率，提振房地产市场。这个办法很管用。
现在看看今天的头号危机：就业。
官方失业率是9.6%，就业不足率大约是17%。实际情况比这还要糟糕。每四位中年男人找不到一份全职工作，五位中有一位什么工作都找不到。
10年前，约2,460万美国人从事的是生产实体商品的工作，其中多数是在制造业。这可都是些好工作，工资高，福利好。在日本、韩国等国崛起的时候，这方面数字并没有出现多大变化，我们差不多还是保住了自己的就业岗位。
自那以来，这个数字减少了650万之巨。看看密歇根，看看底特律市中心，看看俄亥俄，看看宾夕法尼亚，曾几何时，这些地区都处于世界上最富饶之列。如今它们已经轰然倒下，生活、社区遭到毁灭性打击。人一找不到活干，是非当然就多了。
和你过去听到的说法刚好相反，这并不是因为制造东西的工作已经或多或少地过时了，就像是生产马车鞭的工作一样。在过去10年里，世界经济规模翻了一番，世界消费的产品比以往任何时候都多，但多数产品都是在中国生产的。随便拿一样你买过的产品，看看上面的标签就知道了。不久以前，多数东西的标签上还都写着“美国制造”，而将来任何不满30岁的人听说这点之后都会感到吃惊。当初它可是世界上最流行的短语呀。
看一些简单的数字吧。今天官方认定的失业人口是1,480万（真实的非官方数据当然要高得多），就算我们只把那650万个就业岗位拿回来，这个数字也会只剩下820万。
仅仅这一条就足以把失业率从9.6%降到5.3%。真的，不是开玩笑，只需要拿回我们失去的制造业岗位，有没有什么增量都别去管，这样官方失业率也会降到5.3%。
好处还不仅限于此。如果那650万人口又找到了好工作，比如说年薪五万美元，显然他们就会使国民收入增加3,250亿美元。他们会拿这笔钱去购买商品和服务，让其他人有工作可做。他们会缴纳税款并摆脱对福利的依赖，把财政赤字降下来。
这样来刺激经济怎么样？
与此同时，在眼下的选举期间，我们听到的东西各种各样，既有奥巴马的医改，也有一位茶党活动家请人参拜“水佛”的八卦，但有关中国的话题却谈之甚少。
当前的经济复苏为什么如此无力？2001年到2003的复苏为什么同样无力？一个原因在于，这是我们在失去一个重要的制造业基础后经历的头两次复苏。
我们任由单边“自由贸易”、也就是经济绥靖主义自然发展，最后发展到2010年以数百万人失业为代价，换来的是稍微便宜一点点的袜子和手机。失业了别担心，看看这部新的iPhone！
这不是一个偶然结果。有了掌管着我们整个系统的经济绥靖主义者，这始终都是宿命。
那些失去的工作多数都在接近10年前失去，如果你认为房地产泡沫太疯狂，请你想想如果没有这个泡沫，五年前的就业市场会是怎样一种状况。
代表纽约州的民主党参议员舒默(Charles Schumer)，是少数曾经力图对此有所作为的人士之一。多年来，他一直在推动一项十分合理的议案，要是通过了，美国早就对中国产品征收了惩罚性关税，从而抵消人民币汇率的影响，亦即促成了贸易的公平。那会是一场强有力的制裁行动，或许最有可能迫使中国人回到公平竞争的赛场。
这项法案已经石沉大海。任何人任何时候，只要一提起这个话题，别人马上就会歇斯底里地喊“贸易战啦”，然后拿30年代一定程度上造成了大萧条的恶名关税法案《斯姆特－霍利关税法》(Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act)来说事，于是他们只好默不做声。
但这些人误读了历史。
《斯姆特－霍利关税法》是一个灾难，但它并不是一种典型的关税法。首先它目标太高了，它对产业的保护力度还比不上对产业的扼杀。其次，法案生效时美国已经是世界上最大的债权人、最大的制造业国家。其他国家欠我们的钱，买了我们的很多东西。我们当时需要购买更多它们生产的东西，这样它们才能挣钱偿还利息。当我们限制进口的时候，它们就土崩瓦解。
今天，与30年代的美国对应的是中国，与《斯姆特－霍利关税法》对应的不是舒默议案，而是中国持续的货币操纵。《斯姆特－霍利关税法》仍然健在，它现在住在北京。
Brett Arends
（编者按：本文作者Brett Arends是《华尔街日报》网络版专栏作家，他的专栏《投资回报》帮助投资者分析最新时事并做出相应投资决定。）
（本文译自MarketWatch）
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
During the past 10 dismal years of American decline, few sights have been more pathetic than that of a succession of U.S. Treasury secretaries traveling to foreign cities, cap in hand, to beg the Chinese to stop being so mean to our economy.
It has reminded me of nothing so much as the infamous footage of Neville Chamberlain, then the first minister of the world's greatest empire, flying as a supplicant to Berchtesgaden during the Munich crisis.
We now look like the British Empire near its end.
Witness the G-20 meeting this weekend. It produced yet more pious words about China's predatory currency manipulation, but nothing of substance. Another meeting is scheduled for next month, from which we probably can expect yet more pious words.
As for the suggestion that China will work to lower its gigantic trade surplus, analysts at GaveKal, a research firm in Hong Kong, have the takedown: 'If, as Beijing recently proposed, it takes the country about four years to get the current account surplus back down below 4% of GDP (where it last was in 2004),' they write, 'then assuming nominal GDP growth of 11%, a further $100 billion will actually be added to the surplus. That brings it to $400 billion by 2014, higher than the peak level of 2007 and six times the level of 2004. In other words, China will still be demanding a lot of excess demand from the rest of the world.'
Meanwhile, Tim Geithner, our economic Neville Chamberlain du jour, told an interviewer he was hopeful China that would 'continue' to revalue its currency upward. Geithner must be a great optimist. In the last five years, China has allowed the yuan to rise against the dollar by just 4.4% a year ─ all for its own purposes, and not for anyone else's.
Successive U.S. governments have refused even to cite China for violating trade rules.
How far is China undervaluing its currency? Just ask the International Monetary Fund. According to its data, the true value of the yuan in real purchasing-power terms is almost exactly double its official exchange rate.
Meanwhile, you are being lied to about what this actually means for the economy. Most Americans simply don't know.
China spends billions to drive down the price of its currency, the yuan. That makes its exports cheaper than ours, putting our factories out of business and generating jobs over there. It also makes our products more expensive in China, with a similar effect.
For a decade, since China joined the World Trade Organization, we have met this policy with economic appeasement. We took the Chinese money and used it to drive down interest rates, boosting the housing market. That worked out well.
Now look at today's No. 1 crisis: jobs.
The official unemployment rate is 9.6%; the underemployment rate is about 17%. The real picture is even worse than that. One middle-aged man in four lacks a full-time job, and one in five lacks any work at all.
Ten years ago, 24.6 million Americans had goods-producing jobs, most of them in manufacturing ─ and these were good jobs, paying good wages and benefits. Despite the rise of Japan, South Korea and elsewhere, we pretty much held our own; the number hadn't changed much.
Since then, that has collapsed by 6.5 million. Look at Michigan, look at downtown Detroit, look at Ohio, look at Pennsylvania. These were once among the richest and most productive places on earth. They've been flattened, lives and communities destroyed. And the devil, of course, makes work for idle hands.
Contrary to what you have heard, it's not because jobs making things have somehow been made obsolete, like the jobs of those making buggy whips. During the past 10 years, the world economy has doubled in size. The world is consuming more goods than ever before. But most of the goods are made in China. Just look at the label on any product you own. It will come as a surprise to anyone under 30 that not long ago most things said 'Made in U.S.A.' It was the best-known phrase on the planet.
Look at some simple numbers. Today there are 14.8 million official unemployed. (The true, unofficial numbers are of course much higher.) If we just had those 6.5 million jobs back, the number would only be 8.2 million.
That alone would be enough to cut the unemployment rate from 9.6% to 5.3%. No kidding: Just having back the manufacturing jobs that we've lost ─ even ignoring any growth ─ would cut the official unemployment rate to 5.3%.
It doesn't end there. Naturally, if those 6.5 million people were back in good jobs, at say $50,000 a year each, they'd be generating another $325 billion in income. They'd spend that money on goods and services, employing other people. They'd pay taxes and come off welfare, bringing down the deficit.
How's that for a stimulus?
Meanwhile, in this election season we're hearing about everything, from ObamaCare to Aqua Buddha. But we're not hearing much about China.
Why is the economic recovery so weak? Why was the recovery in 2001-03 weak as well? One reason is that these are the first recoveries where we have lacked a major manufacturing base.
Instead, we have let unilateral 'free trade,' also known as economic appeasement, run to its natural conclusion: the 2010 nirvana of slightly cheaper socks and cell phones in exchange for millions of unemployed. Don't worry that you're out of work ─ look at this new iPhone!
This wasn't an accident. For the economic appeasers who run our system, this was the destination all along.
Most of these jobs went nearly a decade ago. If you think the housing bubble was crazy, imagine what the jobs picture would have looked like five years ago without it.
One of the few people who have tried to do anything about this is Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. For years, he has pushed an eminently sensible bill that would have slapped a tariff on Chinese goods to offset the value of its currency. It would, in other words, have imposed fair trade. It would have been a powerful sanction. It probably would have had the best chance of forcing the Chinese to return to a level playing field.
The bill has gotten nowhere. Any time anyone raises the issue, they are immediately slapped with hysterical cries of 'trade war' and references to Smoot-Hawley, the infamous 1930 tariff act that helped cause the Great Depression.
But they are misreading history.
Smoot-Hawley was a disaster, yet it was not a typical tariff. It was, first, set way too high: It didn't protect industry so much as kill it. Second, Smoot-Hawley came when the United States already was the world's biggest creditor and manufacturer. The rest of the world owed us money and bought lots of our stuff. We needed to buy more from them, so they could earn the dollars to pay the interest on the loans. When we killed our imports, they collapsed.
Today, the equivalent of 1930 America is China. And the equivalent of Smoot-Hawley isn't the Schumer bill; It's China's continued currency manipulation. Smoot-Hawley is alive and well and living in Beijing.
Brett Arends
It has reminded me of nothing so much as the infamous footage of Neville Chamberlain, then the first minister of the world's greatest empire, flying as a supplicant to Berchtesgaden during the Munich crisis.
We now look like the British Empire near its end.
Witness the G-20 meeting this weekend. It produced yet more pious words about China's predatory currency manipulation, but nothing of substance. Another meeting is scheduled for next month, from which we probably can expect yet more pious words.
As for the suggestion that China will work to lower its gigantic trade surplus, analysts at GaveKal, a research firm in Hong Kong, have the takedown: 'If, as Beijing recently proposed, it takes the country about four years to get the current account surplus back down below 4% of GDP (where it last was in 2004),' they write, 'then assuming nominal GDP growth of 11%, a further $100 billion will actually be added to the surplus. That brings it to $400 billion by 2014, higher than the peak level of 2007 and six times the level of 2004. In other words, China will still be demanding a lot of excess demand from the rest of the world.'
Meanwhile, Tim Geithner, our economic Neville Chamberlain du jour, told an interviewer he was hopeful China that would 'continue' to revalue its currency upward. Geithner must be a great optimist. In the last five years, China has allowed the yuan to rise against the dollar by just 4.4% a year ─ all for its own purposes, and not for anyone else's.
Successive U.S. governments have refused even to cite China for violating trade rules.
How far is China undervaluing its currency? Just ask the International Monetary Fund. According to its data, the true value of the yuan in real purchasing-power terms is almost exactly double its official exchange rate.
Meanwhile, you are being lied to about what this actually means for the economy. Most Americans simply don't know.
China spends billions to drive down the price of its currency, the yuan. That makes its exports cheaper than ours, putting our factories out of business and generating jobs over there. It also makes our products more expensive in China, with a similar effect.
For a decade, since China joined the World Trade Organization, we have met this policy with economic appeasement. We took the Chinese money and used it to drive down interest rates, boosting the housing market. That worked out well.
Now look at today's No. 1 crisis: jobs.
The official unemployment rate is 9.6%; the underemployment rate is about 17%. The real picture is even worse than that. One middle-aged man in four lacks a full-time job, and one in five lacks any work at all.
Ten years ago, 24.6 million Americans had goods-producing jobs, most of them in manufacturing ─ and these were good jobs, paying good wages and benefits. Despite the rise of Japan, South Korea and elsewhere, we pretty much held our own; the number hadn't changed much.
Since then, that has collapsed by 6.5 million. Look at Michigan, look at downtown Detroit, look at Ohio, look at Pennsylvania. These were once among the richest and most productive places on earth. They've been flattened, lives and communities destroyed. And the devil, of course, makes work for idle hands.
Contrary to what you have heard, it's not because jobs making things have somehow been made obsolete, like the jobs of those making buggy whips. During the past 10 years, the world economy has doubled in size. The world is consuming more goods than ever before. But most of the goods are made in China. Just look at the label on any product you own. It will come as a surprise to anyone under 30 that not long ago most things said 'Made in U.S.A.' It was the best-known phrase on the planet.
Look at some simple numbers. Today there are 14.8 million official unemployed. (The true, unofficial numbers are of course much higher.) If we just had those 6.5 million jobs back, the number would only be 8.2 million.
That alone would be enough to cut the unemployment rate from 9.6% to 5.3%. No kidding: Just having back the manufacturing jobs that we've lost ─ even ignoring any growth ─ would cut the official unemployment rate to 5.3%.
It doesn't end there. Naturally, if those 6.5 million people were back in good jobs, at say $50,000 a year each, they'd be generating another $325 billion in income. They'd spend that money on goods and services, employing other people. They'd pay taxes and come off welfare, bringing down the deficit.
How's that for a stimulus?
Meanwhile, in this election season we're hearing about everything, from ObamaCare to Aqua Buddha. But we're not hearing much about China.
Why is the economic recovery so weak? Why was the recovery in 2001-03 weak as well? One reason is that these are the first recoveries where we have lacked a major manufacturing base.
Instead, we have let unilateral 'free trade,' also known as economic appeasement, run to its natural conclusion: the 2010 nirvana of slightly cheaper socks and cell phones in exchange for millions of unemployed. Don't worry that you're out of work ─ look at this new iPhone!
This wasn't an accident. For the economic appeasers who run our system, this was the destination all along.
Most of these jobs went nearly a decade ago. If you think the housing bubble was crazy, imagine what the jobs picture would have looked like five years ago without it.
One of the few people who have tried to do anything about this is Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. For years, he has pushed an eminently sensible bill that would have slapped a tariff on Chinese goods to offset the value of its currency. It would, in other words, have imposed fair trade. It would have been a powerful sanction. It probably would have had the best chance of forcing the Chinese to return to a level playing field.
The bill has gotten nowhere. Any time anyone raises the issue, they are immediately slapped with hysterical cries of 'trade war' and references to Smoot-Hawley, the infamous 1930 tariff act that helped cause the Great Depression.
But they are misreading history.
Smoot-Hawley was a disaster, yet it was not a typical tariff. It was, first, set way too high: It didn't protect industry so much as kill it. Second, Smoot-Hawley came when the United States already was the world's biggest creditor and manufacturer. The rest of the world owed us money and bought lots of our stuff. We needed to buy more from them, so they could earn the dollars to pay the interest on the loans. When we killed our imports, they collapsed.
Today, the equivalent of 1930 America is China. And the equivalent of Smoot-Hawley isn't the Schumer bill; It's China's continued currency manipulation. Smoot-Hawley is alive and well and living in Beijing.
Brett Arends
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