现在担心增长似乎有些奇怪，此时德国实现了自两德统一以来最快的季度增长——折合年率约9%。然而，除了德国以及另外一两个发达国家以外，对增长的忧虑普遍存在。英国央行(Bank of England)和美联储(Fed)最近都警告称，本国增长可能会令人失望。日本政府最近也表示，今年第二季度，该国增速大幅下挫。
解读发达国家增速放缓的一个好方法是选择合适的比喻，展开我的哲学导师多年前所称的“思想试验”，然后想想美联储不久前没有做的事情。
首先来打个比喻。如果你将2008年底至2009年初的可怕金融危机诊断为一次暂时的“抑郁”，那么处方显而易见：大量抗抑郁药物，即全球有史以来最大规模的财政和货币刺激。最终，患者将更快乐，世界将变得更光明。到那时，就可以停药了。
相比之下，如果你认为此前经济增长的推动力是不可持续的债务增加，那么换一种说法来比喻经济刺激似乎是适当的——那就好比给吸毒者使用美沙酮。这种镇静剂的药效将是暂时性的，患者在将来某个时候必须彻底戒毒。
来一场思想试验（我的哲学导师会称之为“有条件的反事实”），我们就可以恰当说出哪种比喻更好。假如刺激措施起的是抗抑郁剂似的作用，你现在就可会看到短期利率、利率预期和债券收益率大幅上升。但在可预见的未来，发达国家的利率看上去好像将保持在接近零的水平。债券收益率确实曾暂时大幅上升，但最近却直线下滑。
并非巧合的是，除英国以外，发达国家的通胀率也一直在下降（通胀预期也日趋下降），失业率接近多年高位，全球增长势头不妙。
这种不利局面让我们联想到不久前美联储没有做的事情。投资者原期待美联储出台更多定量宽松政策，以进一步放松货币政策。他们认为这是必要之举，这有力的说明了患者旧病复发的程度有多深。
然而，通过保证把到期证券的收益重新拿去投资，美联储只是延续现行货币政策，而没有进一步放松。市场意识到了美联储没有做出的举措，这似乎是随后一系列情况的主要原因：高风险资产市场表现不稳定；仍被视为近乎无风险（越来越变成一种有风险的资产类别）的政府发行的较长期债券的收益率仍在进一步下滑；基于市场的通胀预期指标进一步下滑，不过仍高于2008年底的水平。
美联储内部——或其它任何央行——似乎都没有就通过印钞进一步放松货币政策达成共识，这要么是因为央行人士认为，现在还没必要这么做；要么是因为他们担心进一步扩大其资产负债表；就美国而言，也可能是他们希望向国会施压，不要通过结束布什(Bush)时代出台的减税政策而收紧财政政策（至少眼下不要这样做）。
然而，如果增长果真继续大幅放缓，美联储肯定会进一步放松货币政策。美联储已未能完成其两项使命之一：就业最大化。美联储还很有可能无法实现另一项使命：稳定物价。美国核心通胀正快速下滑。
对于投资者而言，问题是他们不知道美联储何时会扣动扳机。而由于下的是猛药，至少短期而言，其对资产市场的影响可能是深远的。
比较乐观的人可能会辩称，美联储最新举措，为出台更多货币刺激敞开了大门。较悲观人士则分为两类。第一类担心这些药物的副作用（特别是通胀），如果过量服用的话。第二类是不知道形势变得多糟糕美联储才会再采取行动，即便美联储采取了行动，其用药量是否会过小。针对债务上瘾，美联储和其它央行所能做的就是应对停药后的最糟糕症状。
本文作者是花旗私人银行(Citi Private Bank)全球首席投资官
译者/梁艳裳
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034302
It may seem strange, at a time when Germany has notched up its fastest quarterly growth since unification – about 9 per cent at an annual rate – to worry about growth. But, apart from Germany and one or two other developed economies, growth concerns abound. Both the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve warned recently that growth in their countries is likely to disappoint, while Japan's government said this week that the country's growth rate collapsed in the second quarter.
A good way to interpret these slowing growth rates in the developed world is through a choice of metaphor; what my philosophy tutor many years ago called a thought experiment; and by considering what the Federal Reserve did not do last week.
Take the metaphor first. If you diagnosed the horrific financial crisis at the end of 2008 and early 2009 as a temporary depression, the prescription was clear: vast amounts of antidepressants in the form of the biggest fiscal and monetary stimulus the world has seen. Eventually the patient would feel cheerier and the world a brighter place. In time, it could be weaned off the medicine.
If, in contrast, you thought growth had been powered by an unsustainable rise in debt, then a different metaphor for the stimulus seems apposite: giving methadone to a heroin addict. The effects of the medication would be transitory and the patient would at some point have to go cold turkey.
We can reasonably say which metaphor is best by dint of a thought experiment that my philosophy tutor would have dubbed a “conditional counterfactual”. Had the stimulus worked like anti-depressants, you would by now have expected short rates, rate expectations and bond yields to have risen sharply. But rates look as though they will be stuck at close to nothing across the developed world for the foreseeable future. Bond yields did rise sharply for a while; of late, however, they have been dropping like a rock.
Not coincidentally, with the exception of the UK, inflation rates (and, increasingly, inflation expectations) in the developed world have also been falling, unemployment has remained close to multi-year highs and growth globally is sputtering badly.
This noxious cocktail brings us neatly to what the Fed did not do last week. Investors had hoped for more quantitative easing to loosen monetary policy further. That they thought it necessary speaks volumes about how much the patient had relapsed.
But by guaranteeing to invest the proceeds of maturing securities, the Fed has merely put monetary policy on hold, it has not eased it. The realisation of what the Fed did not do appears largely responsible for the subsequent wobbly performance of risky-asset markets; for yields on longer-dated bonds issued by governments still considered fairly riskless (an increasingly endangered species) falling still further; and for market-based measures of inflation expectations, still elevated compared with the end of 2008, dropping further.
There does not seem to be a consensus at the Fed – or any other central bank – for further monetary loosening via the printing press, either because central bankers do not think it yet necessary; or because they are worried about expanding their balance sheets further; or, in the case of the US, perhaps because they want to put pressure on Congress not to tighten fiscal policy (for now, at least) by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.
Yet if growth does continue to slow sharply, the Fed will surely ease policy further. It is already failing one of its two mandates: maximising employment. It is in severe danger of failing the other: keeping prices stable. Core inflation in the US is dropping fast.
The problem for investors is that they do not know when the Fed might pull that trigger. And since the medicine is powerful, the effects on asset markets are, in the short term at least, likely to be profound.
Those of a more bullish persuasion might argue that the Fed opened the door to more monetary stimulus by its actions last week. The more pessimistic fall into two camps. The first worries about the side-effects of these drugs (notably inflation), if administered in overly large doses. The second wonders how much worse things have to get before the Fed acts and whether, even if it does, the dose will be too timid. Perhaps all the Fed and other central banks can do when it comes to debt addiction, is to manage the worst symptoms of withdrawal.
The writer is global chief investment officer at Citi Private Bank
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