储蓄,杀鹅取卵

 Savings
储蓄

When the golden eggs run out
杀鹅取卵

A decade of poor returns and the onset of recession are likely to make investors cautious. That would be understandable, but mistaken.
一个投资低回报的时代和突然来临的经济衰退可能使投资者们谨小慎微。这可以理解，但却是个大错误。

IT IS the envelope they dare not open. When this year’s statement from the financial adviser or pension plan lands on the doormat, many people will not want to know the bad news. They would rather put the envelope in a drawer and forget all about it.
这个是大家都不敢拆开的信封。当今年理财顾问的报告和退休金计划终于出现在门口的垫子上时，大部分人都不会希望知道里面的内容是什么。人们情愿把这个信
封锁进抽屉然后当作什么都没发生。

This year has been a disaster for savers. The value of stockmarkets around the world has fallen by almost half and is now about $30
trillion below its peak. The prices of corporate bonds and commercial property have plunged. Anyone who diversified into commodities, hedge funds and private equity has also lost out. Even those shrewd enough to stick their money in a savings account have had to worry about the
safety of the banks.
今年对于存钱的人来说是场灾难。全球的股市市值已经缩水了近一半，现在比它最高峰时低了30万亿。公司债券和商业地产的价 格一落千丈。投钱在商品期
货，对冲基金和私募股权的人赔得血本无归。即使那些精明谨慎懂得把自己的钱锁在储蓄帐户的人也一直在担心银行会不会在某天关门溜 之大吉。

Worse still, the value of many people’s main source of wealth—their houses—has fallen sharply, as The Economist’s house-price indicators continue to show (see article). On a quarter-on-quarter basis, residential-property prices are dropping in 23 of the 45 countries surveyed by Knight Frank, an estate agent.
更糟糕的是，大多数人财富来源——他们的房子的价值——大幅跳水，详情见本报关于房价指数的文章（见文章）。房地产经济公司Knight Frank的调查表明，按季度环比计算，在全球45个国家中23国的住宅不动产价格持续下降。

The damage will vary from one person to the next, depending on where they have put their money, so figures on pooled portfolios are pretty much the only way of estimating savers’ pain. The Investment Company Institute, the national association of American mutual funds, says the value of assets in such funds was $9.6 trillion at the end of October, $2.4 trillion less than at the end of 2007. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated in October that American pension funds had dropped in value by $2 trillion in the previous 18 months. And these American losses are just a portion of the global whole.
不同的人，取决于投资方式，损失程度也各不相同。因此集成投资工具的统计数字大概是估量储蓄人损失的唯一办法。美国投资公司协 会（The Investment Company Institute）——美国共同基金公司的联盟，证明共同基金到今年10月底为止总值为9万6千亿美元，比2007年底缩水2万4千亿。国会预算办公室 （The Congressional Budget Office）计算10月美国退休基金在18个月以来损失了2万亿。而这些美国人的损失也仅是全球的冰山一角而已。

By way of comparison, the Bank of England estimates that $2.8 trillion has been lost in credit-related instruments, the devices that dragged the financial system down in the first place. The blow to savers in pooled investments thus easily exceeds the direct damage to the arcane area of the banking system where the crisis began.
想比较而言，英格兰银行估计已经有2万8千亿美元损失在与借贷相关的金融产品身上，这些产品正是把整个金融系统拖入深渊的始作俑者。储蓄者投资金融产品组合中遭受的打击因此轻而易举的超越了银行系统核心业务遭受的直接损失——危机开始的地方。

Indeed, the stockmarket’s decline this year has been so steep that it has erased all the gains made in the rally from 2003 to 2007. In late November, the S&P 500 index dipped to its lowest level in 11 years. The extravagant claims made for equities in the late 1990s, when there was talk of the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting 36,000 (or even 100,000) have proven to be hollow. Lately the Dow, which was at about 13,000 at the end of last year, has been trading between 8,000 and 9,000.
实际上，今年股市的损失之惨烈，直接导致2003年至2007年这4年间的积累付之东流。11月末，S&P500 指数触到11年来的最低点。九十年代末关于股票价格的夸夸之谈——其中不乏吹捧道琼斯指数挑穿36000点（甚至100，000点）的妄言——最终证明不 过是黄粱一梦罢了。最近的道指，去年底还有13000点左右，一直在八九千点附近摇摆。

A good deal of these losses will have fallen on the very wealthy, who can cope. Many others, though, are not so well placed. And one class of investor will be especially badly hit: workers in defined-contribution, or money-purchase, pension schemes. These people’s retirement income depends solely on the return generated by their pension funds; their employers are not liable to top up their pots if things go wrong. And the CBO reckons that defined-contribution plans are more exposed to equities than final-salary plans, in which the employer bears the risk.
由这些损失产生的“大馅饼”将会落在有本事的大富豪头上。然而，其他许许多多人就没有这个福气，能站在好位置等着被砸。而 有一类投资者将受到特别严重的打击：参与养老金固定缴费计划（注1），基金购买计划（注2）和各种退休金计划的工人们。这些人将来的退休收入完全系于他们 养老基金的收益；如果那些出了问题，他们的老板可不负责向他们钱包里补钱。CBO认为养老金固定缴费计划，相对雇主承担风险最终薪金计划（注3）而言，更 加直接的暴露在股市的风险动荡之下。

A possible consequence of this is that workers will feel frustrated or let down, and thus be discouraged from saving for their old age—or at least from buying shares for the purpose. They were told that saving would pay in the long run. But those who have been methodically putting money into pension plans (often known in America as 401(k) schemes) must be wondering why they bothered.
由此而生的一个非常可能的后果是工人们会感到沮丧和失望，于是乎不愿意存钱防老——或者不愿意为这个目标投资。别人告诉他们储蓄是百年大计。但是那些一直在有计划的向养老金计划（在美国通常是401K计划）里存钱的人一定会很奇怪为什么自己也深受影响。

Figures from Morningstar, an investment-research firm, show that an American who put $100 a month for the past ten years into the average equity fund would have accumulated just $10,932—$1,068 less than he invested (see chart 1). Even a balanced fund (one that mixes government bonds and equities) would have lost money. A European who invested a flat amount every month for the past decade would have lost almost 25% of his money, according to Lipper, another research firm.
投资调研公司晨星（Morningstar）的数据表明过去10年如果一个普通美国人每个月拿出100美元放进股市最后将会拿回10932美元——比投资 总数还亏损1068美元（见表1）。即使把钱放进平衡基金(国债和股票的混合体)也是亏钱。根据另外一家研究公司理柏( Lipper )的数据，对于欧洲人而言，如果在过去10年每个月投资同样的数目最后可能已经亏掉几乎四分之一之多。（上图依次是股票基金，混合基金，床底下，国债）

It is hard to get individuals to defer gratification: retirement seems a long way off for someone in their 20s or 30s. So, faced with the returns from past thrift, the temptation for many will be to opt out of the system altogether. Already, the American Association of Retired People estimates that 37% of workers lack a pension plan.
让人们推迟享乐确实很难：退休对于二三十岁的年轻人来说遥遥无期。所以，面对靠节衣缩食抠出养老钱的苦楚，很多人无法抵御今朝有酒今朝醉的诱惑。实际上， 美国退休人士协会（American Association of Retired People）估计37%的劳动者缺乏一个退休计划。

Spend, spend, spend
花，花，花

For a decade or more, American households in particular have seen little need to save out of income at all (see chart 2). The household savings ratio (the proportion of disposable income that is not spent) has been below 2.5% since 1999. Asset markets—first for shares, then for housing—were doing households’ saving for them.
最近十几年来，特别是美国的家庭几乎不需要把自家收入储蓄起来（见表2）。自1999年以来，家庭储蓄率（未支出的可支配收入的比例）一直低于2.5%。资产市场——首先是股票，之后是房地产——实际上在帮助普通家庭做存钱的动作。

Calculating the savings ratio is an inexact business, because it is the residual between measures of income and consumption and so tends to be revised a good deal. It also excludes capital gains on existing investments, although the taxes on those gains are deducted from the income measure. You might imagine that a low ratio was nothing to worry about: add in capital gains—the savings a rising asset market bestows—and the ratio looks healthier.
储蓄率的计算方法并不准确，因为它是计算收入和消费之间的剩余产品，所以需要大幅度的修改。而且它也把从投资上得到的资本收益排除在外，虽然这些收益带来 的税务已经在计算收入时被扣除了。你可能认为一个比较低的比率无需大惊小怪：把资本利得（注5）加进去——资本牛市带来的储蓄——这样这个比率看起来就漂 亮多了。

Some economists accepted this argument. A paper from the American government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis in 2002 argued that capital gains “can be as important as personal saving in determining the future consumption possibilities of households” and pointed out that the ratio of household wealth to income had rocketed in the late 1990s.
一部分经济学家认同这种说法。美国政府经济分析局（Bureau of Economic Analysis）的一篇报告认为资本利得“与个人储蓄在决定未来消费可能性上是同等重要的”而且指出九十年代末家庭财富收入比率增长迅猛。

But should this really have been reassuring? Financial assets are simply a claim on goods and services. If their value rises a lot faster than GDP, that either suggests investors expect the GDP growth rate to rise substantially (unlikely in a mature economy), or that the assets are overvalued.
但是这样真的就让人高枕无忧么？金融资产简言之即对产品和服务的求偿权。如果它们升值的速度比GDP快很多，或者意味着投资人预期GDP增长率将显著提高(发生在成熟的经济体的可能性极低)，或者意味着这些资产被定价过高。

Similarly, if people borrow to buy houses, the immediate effect will be to push prices up higher and make personal balance-sheets look healthy. But as the past couple of years have demonstrated, that can push prices too far, prompting consumers to overextend themselves. As the economy deleverages—ie, borrowers are obliged to repay debt—balance-sheets then deteriorate sharply.

相似的，如果人们举债买入房产，直接的影响将会是推高房价从而使个人财务状况看起来很健康。但是过去几年证明，价格已被推离实际太远，这导致消费者盲目无节制的做超越自身能力的投资决定。当经济的杠杆效应减小时（注6）——例如，借贷人被要求清还债务时——其收支簿平衡性将会严重恶化。

All this looks particularly pertinent today. Americans and Britons may have been living in a fool’s paradise for a decade, saving less than they should because they thought share and house prices would stay high for ever. Now they have learnt the awful truth, they may decide to save a lot more, making the recession even worse than expected. Economists at Lombard Street Research estimate that the American savings ratio, which turned negative in one quarter of 2005 (ie, consumers spent more than their incomes), may rise to 10% over the next year and a half.
今天看来这点恰好正中要害。美国人和英国人可能近十多年来一直住在自欺欺人的乌托邦里面，他们不太存钱因为大家都觉得股市和房价永远只涨不跌。现在他们已 经见识到惨痛的现实，他们于是决定要多存些钱，这将使经济衰退雪上加霜。伦敦朗伯德街研究公司(Lombard Street Research)的经济学家估算2005年第一极度为负值（即消费者花钱比赚钱多）的美国储蓄率有可能在下个一年半内达到10%。

Changes in the savings ratio are driven as much by borrowing as by saving habits. The ratio is a net figure. Many consumers spend more than they earn, borrowing or dipping into savings to make up the difference. Indeed, David Owen, an economist at Dresdner Kleinwort, an investment bank, points out that during this decade British households have generally saved more of their income than German households have. But they have borrowed more too: so much more that their savings ratio is much lower than the Germans’.
储蓄习惯对储蓄率变化的驱动力与借贷是相同的。其比值是净数值。很多消费者支出比收入多，需要靠举债和动用积蓄来填沟。实际上，投行德累斯顿-克莱沃特( Dresdner Kleinwort )经济学家David Owen指出这十年中英国家庭通常比德国家庭从收入中拿出更多钱存起来。但是他们借得更多：以至于他们的储蓄率比德国人的低很多。

If the savings ratio is going to jump, it is most likely to be driven by the reluctance or inability of consumers to borrow. That was what happened in Britain in the recession of the early 1990s. According to Capital Economics, a research firm, borrowing (including mortgage equity withdrawal) fell by nearly £22 billion ($38 billion) between 1988 and 1992; conventional saving rose by just £14 billion in the same period.
如果储蓄率骤增，最大的原因是消费者不愿意而且没有能力借贷。九十年代初期的英国经济衰退时曾发生过这样的事情。根据研究机构Capital Economics称，在1988到1992年间，借贷（包括抵押股票赎回）下降了近220亿英镑（380亿美元）；而传统意义上的储蓄同期仅增长140 亿英镑。

Many economists might regard a marked increase in saving as a bad thing just now. With rich economies all around the world in recession, governments would rather people spent, not saved. That will not happen without a push—when workers are worried about the outlook for their jobs, they usually save more if they can. The same tends to be true when their existing wealth, including their houses, falls in value. So governments are loosening fiscal policies to try and maintain spending power.
很多经济学家会把目前储蓄的明显增长认为具有负面效应。随着世界范围的发达经济体陷入衰退，政府更愿意人们消费，而不是储蓄。但是没有外在的推动力这样的 事情很难发生——当员工们为自己的工作前景忧虑的时候，他们通常尽量存钱。当他们手头的财产，包括房子贬值的时候尤其如是。所以政府正在放松财政政策并且 竭力保持消费力。

Recklessly conservative
因噎废食

That said, saving could be good news for companies. In the long term, saving gives companies the funds to invest in new equipment and in research and development. In the short term, companies would be grateful for any equity capital they could raise from retail investors, so they could bolster their balance-sheets.
一般认为，储蓄对公司方面是利好消息。长期看，储蓄给公司增加了用于投资新设备和研究发展的资金。短期看，公司会为从散户那里筹集的股票资产感到欣慰，所以他们可以强化他们的资产负债表。

Alas, that looks unlikely. The problem is that investors do not regard financial assets as they do other goods; lower prices do not encourage them to buy more, but simply reduce their confidence. Past returns are the main determinant of flows into the stockmarket; investors buy when prices have gone up, not down.
唉，可惜上面的事情不太可能发生。问题在于投资人并不把金融资产当作其他产品一样对待；他们并不逢股价低廉而买进，股市低迷只会打击信心。历史回报率是股市资金流向主要决定因素；投资人追捧高价而不问低价。

Net retail sales of British mutual funds were £14.1 billion in 1999 and £17.7 billion in 2000, the two years at the peak of the dotcom bubble. Investors were happy to pay price-earnings ratios of 20 or 30 for the market, and more than 100 for some technology stocks. By 2003, the FTSE 100 index had fallen by more than half; net retail sales of mutual funds were only £8.1 billion. In the first ten months of this year, which have seen price-earnings ratios fall into single digits, net sales have slumped to just £1.3 billion.
英国共同基金的净销售额在1999年是141亿英镑和2000年的177亿，恰逢互联网泡沫顶峰的两年。投资者乐于为市盈率20或者30，和一些高达100的科技公司大掏腰包。到了2003年，英国金融时报指数（FTSE 100 index）大跌超过一半；而共同基金的净销售额仅为81亿镑。那一年的头十个月，市盈率曾经跌进个位数字，净销售额跳水至仅仅13亿镑。

British investors have been relatively stoic. In America, equity mutual funds saw net outflows of $195 billion in the first ten months of the year. In some European countries, the picture is a lot worse. According to Huw Van Steenis, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, the annualised pace of mutual fund outflows in Italy and Spain this year has been 24% and 26% respectively. Across Europe as a whole, about $200 billion has been withdrawn from mutual funds in the past 12 months.
英国的投资人还能表现的相对坚韧克制。在美国，股权共同基金在当年的前十个月见证了1950亿美元的资金外流。在一些欧洲国家，状况更惨不忍睹。根据摩根 斯坦利分析师Huw van Steenis所说，按年折算的共同基金资本外流增速，在意大利和西班牙分别为24%和26%。欧洲作为整体，在过去一年内有近2000亿美元从共同基金里被取走。

Indeed, continental European savers’ appetite for equities never recovered from the bursting of the dotcom bubble. A shareholder culture was being created in the late 1990s, thanks to privatizations and the creation of the German rival to the NASDAQ, the Neuer Markt, which collapsed spectacularly after the dotcom bust. But now investors want only the safest kind of mutual fund. European money-market funds received euro 95 billion ($120 billion) of inflows in the first nine months of the year, according to Morgan Stanley.
实际上，欧洲大陆的储蓄者对于股票的胃口迟迟未从互联网泡沫破裂后恢复过来。一种股东的文在90年代末期产生了一股投资股市的风气，需要感激私有化和与纳 斯达克（nasdaq）同样风格的德国的新市场（Neuer Markt），后者在泡沫破裂后就惨烈的倒闭了。但是现在投资这只想要最可靠的共同基金。摩根斯坦利称今年前9个月，欧洲货币市场基金净流入950亿欧元 （合1200亿美元）。

A focus on cash has its advantages. In the short term, the banks themselves will be very glad of a flood of retail deposits: that will leave them less dependent on jittery wholesale markets. And politicians will also be happy if cautious investors are willing buyers of government debt; many countries are moving into heavy deficit in the face of the recession.
把精力放在现金上有一定益处。短期看，银行自身会为大笔的个人存款大量流入而不亦乐乎：这将降低他们对规模型的市场依赖性。而且政客们会因为胆小的投资者愿意为政府欠债买单而欢欣雀跃；很多国家在衰退当前正亦步亦趋的进入严重赤字时代。

But it does not look helpful to companies. If they want to raise equity, who will buy it? Not the big corporate pension funds, which have been moving into bonds and alternative assets (like property) in recent years. And not the hedge funds, which are being forced to sell assets to return money to clients.
但是现金对公司而言帮助甚微。如果他们希望增发股票集资，谁掏钱呢？不是大公司的养老基金，在近些年他们已经移情别恋，更钟情债券和替代型资产（比如不动产）。也不是对冲基金，他们需要卖掉手里的资产应对临客户提款的压力。

Nor is it good, in the long run, for savers. Cash generates very low long-term real returns, of around 1% a year. Roger Urwin of Watson Wyatt, a firm of consultants, describes an overconcentration on cash as “reckless conservatism”.
对于普通储户而言，长远看也不是好事。现金的长期回报率超低，大约1%一年。咨询公司华信惠悦（Watson Wyatt）的Roger Urwin把这种现金的过度集中形容为“不计后果的保守主义”。

Even low interest rates may not put them off. Having become used to (nominal) rates of 4-6% in recent years, savers may initially suffer from “sticker shock” if rates fall to 1% or so, as they already have in America and may well do in Europe. But the example of Japan suggests that nervous savers may be happy to receive nothing at all from their accounts if they think that is the only safe option: the return of capital becomes more important than the return on it.
即使低利率也无法拖延这种潮流的发展。对于渐渐习惯了近年来（名义）利率在4%-6%左右的储户而言，他们在见到利率跌至1%时，可能会感到阵阵的“贴纸 休克”（注7）。这个情况在美国已经发生了，欧洲也相差不远。但是日本的先例已经证明了一件事，当心里没底的储户们认为把现金存进银行是唯一安全的时候， 他们即使什么利息都不赚心里也特别高兴：资金是否能有回报比资金是否有回报重要的多。

What investors may be missing to their cost is that financial markets tend to revert to the mean. On the one hand, high past returns are an indicator of low future returns: that has certainly proved true for those who bought equity mutual funds at the turn of the decade. On the other hand, the converse is also true: low past returns (and low valuations) create an opportunity for the stout-hearted investor.
投资者可能忽视的事情是金融市场总趋向回归平均指数。一方面，过去的高回报率是未来低回报的指标：对于那些在这十年交替中购买股权共同基金的人们而言，这点已经证明是真理了。另一方面，反之亦真：过去的低回报（低估价）为铁了心的股市勇者们创造了一个淘真金的良机。

James Montier, a strategist at Société Générale, a French bank, has calculated that when American shares have traded on a low cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio (a measure that smooths profits over the previous ten years), returns over the next decade have averaged 8% a year in real terms. When the initial valuation was high, the subsequent average was just 3%.
法国兴业银行(Societe Generale) 的策略师James Montier计算出当美国的股票在较低的周期性调整市盈率，（一个衡量过去十年平均收益的指标），后面十年实期的年收益平均为8%。当初始估值偏高的时候，随后的收益平均值仅为3%。

Risky assets look more attractive now than they have in ages. Corporate-bond spreads are sufficient to compensate for the kind of default levels seen in the Depression. Stockmarkets in America and Europe now offer a dividend yield that is higher than the yield on government bonds, something that has happened only rarely in the past 50 years.
高风险的财产比以前有更大吸引力。公司债券的价差足以补偿目前大萧条中所见到的欠偿违约的窟窿。目前美国和欧洲的股市提供比政府债券收益高的股息分红，这可是50年难得一遇的事情。

Unfortunately, savers do not seem to take account of these long-term factors. When the stockmarket is falling, they tend to view the idea of investing more money into equities as sending good money after bad. And the average diversified American equity fund is down 41% for the year, according to Lipper.
很不幸的是，储蓄人并不看重这些长期的要素。当遭遇熊市的时候，他们认为再继续投资股票是拿钱打水漂。基金评级机构理柏(Lipper)的数据称各类美国股票基金今年平均跌掉41%。

Falling stockmarkets mean that, without doing much, a lot of savers are less exposed to equities. A recent survey by Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm, found that the proportion of 401(k) plans invested in equities was at an all-time low of 53.8%, compared with 74.2% in 2000. Arguably, workers were overexposed to shares at the turn of the decade. But they may be underexposed now.
做自由落体运动的股市意味着，无须多劳，很多储户暴露在股市的机会大大降低。翰威特咨询公司（Hewitt Associates）一份最近的调查发现401（k）（注8）计划中股票投资的比例达到空前的低位53.8%，相比2000年的数字是74.2%。基本 可以认定的是，劳动者们在十年交替的时候参与股市投资有些过度。但是他们现在参与度又有些低。

Whatever their asset allocation, savers ought to be putting more money into their pensions, given their nest-eggs have taken such a beating. But there is little sign of that; employees subscribed just 7.8% of their salaries to 401(k) plans this year, according to Hewitt. Even if you add in the average employer’s contribution of 4.4%, the amount is nowhere near sufficient to match the 20% of pay needed to fund the equivalent of a final salary pension.
无论资产分配的情况如何，考虑到他们养老救急的钱（注9）近况堪忧，储蓄者都应该把更多的钱投放到自己的养老金里。但是目前这点几乎让人看不出来：根据翰 威特的数据，企业员工们仅仅把自己薪水的7.8%投入401（k）计划中。即使把雇主平均贡献的4.4%增加进去，数量也远远不足以与占据收入20%比重 的最后薪资养老金计划相匹敌。

Indeed, it was the realisation of how expensive that promise had become that led to many employers abandoning final-salary pension schemes in recent years, thereby passing the risk on to workers.
事实上，正是因为意识到对于员工承诺的代价过于昂贵才导致近年来老板们渐渐放弃采用最后薪资养老金计划，而把风险完全转嫁到普通的员工身上。