文 / 柳下婴
选自TE20221008，Leaders
A new macroeconomic era is emerging,bringing promise and peril.
宏观经济学的新时代即将来临,随之而来的有机遇，也有风险。
A great rebalancing between governments and central banks is under way
政府与央行间需要寻找新的平衡点
[1] For months, there has been turmoil in financial markets and growing evidence of stress in the world economy. You might think that these are just the normal signs of a bear market and a coming recession. But, as our special report this week lays out, they also mark the painful emergence of a new regime in the world economy—a shift that may be as consequential as the rise of Keynesianism after the second world war, and the pivot to free markets and globalisation in the 1990s. This new era holds the promise that the rich world might escape the low-growth trap of the 2010s and tackle big problems such as ageing and climate change. But it also brings acute dangers, from financial chaos to broken central banks and out-of-control public spending.
数月来，金融市场动荡不安；越来越多的证据表明，世界经济正面临压力。你可能会认为，这些不过是熊市和衰退即将到来的正常迹象。但是，正如我们本周特别报道所指出的，它们也标志着世界经济正在经历新体制诞生的阵痛——这一转变的重大意义可能不亚于二战后凯恩斯主义的兴起，以及20世纪90年代转向自由市场和全球化。这一新时代给富裕国家带来了希望，它们可能会摆脱21世纪前10年的低增长陷阱，解决老龄化和气候变迁等重大问题。但它也带来了严重的风险，从金融混乱到中央银行崩溃和政府开支失控。
[2] The ructions in the markets are of a magnitude not seen for a generation. Global inflation is in double digits for the first time in nearly 40 years. Having been slow to respond, the Federal Reserve is now cranking up interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s, while the dollar is at its strongest for two decades, causing chaos outside America. If you have an investment portfolio or a pension, this year has been gruesome. Global shares have dropped by 25% in dollar terms, the worst year since at least the 1980s, and government bonds are on course for their worst year since 1949. Alongside some $40trn of losses there is a queasy sense that the world order is being upended as globalisation heads into retreat and the energy system is fractured after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
市场动荡的规模是一代人从未见过的。近40年来，全球通胀首次达到两位数。由于反应迟缓，目前美联储加息的速度是自20世纪80年代以来最快的；而美元则是20年来最强劲的，在美国以外造成了混乱。如果你有一个投资组合或养老金，今年你会瑟瑟发抖。以美元计算，全球股市下跌了25%，这是至少自上世纪80年代以来最糟糕的一年，而政府债券也将迎来自1949年以来的最糟糕一年。除了40万亿美元的损失外，还有一种令人不安的感觉，即随着全球化走向衰退，以及俄乌冲突爆发后能源系统的崩溃，世界秩序正在被颠覆。
[3] All this marks a definitive end to the age of economic placidity in the 2010s. After the global financial crisis of 2007-09, the performance of rich economies assumed a feeble pattern. Investment by private firms was subdued, even at those making monster profits, while governments did not take up the slack: the public capital stock actually shrank around the world, as a share of GDP, in the decade after Lehman Brothers collapsed. Economic growth was sluggish and inflation was low. With the private and public sectors doing little to stimulate more activity, central banks became the only game in town. They held interest rates at rock-bottom levels and bought huge volumes of bonds at any sign of trouble, extending their reach ever further into the economy. On the eve of the pandemic, central banks in America, Europe and Japan owned a staggering $15trn of financial assets.
所有这些都标志着21世纪前10年经济平稳时代的终结。在2007-09年全球金融危机之后，富裕经济体的表现呈现出疲软态势。私营企业的投资受到抑制，即使是那些赚取巨额利润的私营企业也是如此，而政府也没有收拾残局：在雷曼兄弟倒闭后的十年里，在GDP中占有一定份额的公有资本存量实际上出现了全球性萎缩。经济增长缓慢，通货膨胀率低。由于私人和公共部门几乎没有采取任何措施来刺激更多经济活动，中央银行成了不二之选。他们将利率维持在最低水平，并在出现任何麻烦迹象时购买大量债券，从而将他们的影响力进一步扩展到经济领域。在新冠大流行爆发前夕，美国、欧洲和日本的央行拥有的金融资产达到惊人的15万亿美元。
[4] The extraordinary challenge of the pandemic led to extraordinary actions which helped unleash today’s inflation: wild government stimulus and bail-outs, temporarily skewed patterns of consumer demand and lockdown-induced supply-chain tangles. That inflationary impulse has since been turbocharged by the energy crunch as Russia, one of the largest exporters of fossil fuels along with Saudi Arabia, has isolated itself from its markets in the West. Faced with a serious inflation problem, the Fed has already raised rates from a maximum of 0.25% to 3.25% and is expected to take them to 4.5% by early 2023. Globally, most monetary authorities are tightening too.
新冠大流行带来的巨大挑战引发了一些特别的行动，帮助释放了今天的通货膨胀：疯狂的政府刺激和紧急救助，暂时扭曲的消费者需求模式，以及封锁导致的供应链乱局。自那以后，能源危机进一步为通货膨胀增加压力。作为最大的化石燃料出口国之一的俄罗斯，与沙特阿拉伯一道，将自己与西方市场隔绝开来。面对严重的通货膨胀问题，美联储已经将利率从最高0.25%提高到3.25%，预计到2023年初再将利率提高到4.5%。全球范围内，大多数金融机构都在收紧货币政策。
[5] What on earth comes next? One immediate fear is of a blowup, as a financial system that has become habituated to low rates wakes up to the soaring cost of borrowing. Although one mid-sized lender, Credit Suisse, is under pressure, it is unlikely that banks will become a big problem: most have bigger safety buffers than in the past. Instead, the dangers lie elsewhere, in a new-look financial system that relies less on banks and more on fluid markets and technology. The good news is that your deposits are not about to go up in smoke. The bad news is that this system for financing firms and consumers is opaque and hypersensitive to losses.
接下来到底会发生什么？一个迫在眉睫的担忧是，金融体系本来已经习惯于低利率，却突然意识到借贷成本在飙升，金融体系将面临崩溃。尽管瑞士信贷这一中型银行正面临压力，但这并意味着银行会出现大的问题：大多数银行拥有比过去更大的安全缓冲。相反，危险在别处，在一个新面孔的金融体系中。这个体系不再那么依赖银行，而是更多地依赖流动的市场和技术。好消息是你的存款不会化为乌有。坏消息是，这个体系对融资公司和消费者来说是不透明的，而且它对损失非常敏感。
[6] You can already see this in the credit markets. As firms that buy debt shy away from risk, the interest rate on mortgages and junk bonds is soaring. The market for “leveraged loans” used to finance corporate buy-outs has seized up—if Elon Musk buys Twitter the resulting debts may become a big problem. Meanwhile investment funds, including pension schemes, face losses on the portfolios of illiquid assets they have accumulated. Parts of the plumbing could stop working. The Treasury market has become more erratic while European energy firms have faced crushing collateral calls on their hedges. Britain’s bond market has been thrown into chaos by obscure derivatives bets made by its pension funds.
你已经可以在信贷市场上看到这一点。由于购买债券的公司不愿承担风险，抵押贷款和垃圾债券（高风险债券）的利率正在飙升。用于为企业提供并购基金的“杠杆贷款”市场已陷入停顿—如果埃隆•马斯克收购twitter，由此产生的债务可能成为一个大问题。与此同时，包括养老金计划在内的投资基金，它们积累的非流动性资产投资组合面临亏损。这个渠道的部分功能可能会停止运转。美国国债市场将变得更加难以预测，而欧洲能源公司则面临着为对冲基金提供沉重抵押的责任。英国的债券市场已经因为用养老基金进行模糊衍生品投资而陷入混乱。
[7] If markets stop working smoothly, impeding the flow of credit or threatening contagion, central banks may step in: already the Bank of England has done a U-turn and started buying bonds again, cutting against its simultaneous commitment to raise rates. The related belief that central banks will not have the resolve to follow through on their tough talk is behind the other big fear: that the world will return to the 1970s, with rampant inflation. In one sense this is alarmist and over the top. Most forecasters reckon inflation in America will fall from the present 8% to 4% in 2023 as energy price-rises ebb and higher rates bite. Yet while the odds of inflation going to 20% are tiny, there is a glaring question about whether governments and central banks will ever bring it back down to 2%.
一旦市场的平稳运行停止，阻碍信贷畅通或是有快速蔓延的威胁，中央银行可能会介入：英格兰银行已经来了个180度的大转弯，重新开始购买债券，放弃了同时做出的加息承诺。与此相关的是，人们相信央行将没有决心将艰难的谈判进行到底，而这将意味着人们的另一个巨大担心：世界将回到通胀猖獗的20世纪70年代。从某种意义上说，这有些危言耸听也有些夸大。大多数预测人士认为，随着能源价格上涨势头减弱，到2023年，美国的通货膨胀率将从目前的8%回落到4%，同时高利率会收紧。然而，尽管通胀上升到20%的可能性微乎其微，但是有一个明显的问题是：政府和中央银行能否把它带回到2%。
A moving target
一个活动的目标
[8] To understand why, look beyond the hurly-burly to the long-term fundamentals. In a big shift from the 2010s, a structural rise in government spending and investment is under way. Ageing citizens will need more health care. Climate change and the quest for security will boost state investment in energy, from renewable infrastructure to gas terminals. And geopolitical tensions are leading governments to spend more on industrial policy. Yet even as investment rises, demography will weigh ever more heavily on rich economies. As people get older, they save more, and this excess of savings will continue to act to depress the underlying real rate of interest.
要理解其中的原因，就要透过喧嚣看到长期的基本面。在21世纪前10年开始的这一重大转变中，政府支出和投资中的结构性增长正在发生。老龄化公民将需要更多的医疗保健。气候变化和对安全的追求将推动国家对能源的投资：从可再生能源基础设施到天然气终端。地缘政治紧张局势将促使各国政府在产业政策上投入更多资金。人口统计对富裕经济体将产生越来越大的影响。随着人们年龄的增长，他们储蓄更多，而这种储蓄过剩将继续压低基础实际利率。
[9] As a result, the fundamental trends in the 2020s and 2030s are for bigger government but still-low real interest rates. For central banks this creates an acute dilemma. In order to get inflation down to their targets of roughly 2% they may have to tighten enough to cause a recession. This would incur a high human cost in the form of job losses and trigger a fierce political backlash. Moreover, if the economy deflates and ends up back in the low-growth, low-rate trap of the 2010s, central banks may once again lack enough stimulus tools. The temptation now is to find another way out: to ditch the 2% inflation targets of recent decades and raise them modestly to, say, 4%. That is likely to be on the menu when the Fed begins its next strategy review in 2024.
其结果是，21世纪20年代和30年代的基本趋势是扩大政府规模，但实际利率仍保持在较低水平。这给各国央行带来了一个严峻的困境。为了将通胀率降至约2%的目标水平，它们可能不得不收紧到足以引发衰退的程度。这将导致以失业为形式的高人力成本，并引发激烈的政治反弹。此外，如果经济出现通货紧缩，最后又跌回到21世纪前10年的低增长、低利率陷阱，各国央行可能再次缺乏足够的刺激工具。现在有一个诱人的想法是寻另辟蹊径：放弃近几十年来2%的通胀目标，并将其适度提高到，比如说4%。当美联储在2024年开始下一次战略评估时，说不定这就是一个备选方案。
[10] This brave new world of somewhat higher government spending and somewhat higher inflation would have advantages. In the short run, it would mean a less severe recession or none at all. And in the long run, it would mean that central banks have more room to cut interest rates in a downturn, reducing the need for bond-buying and bail-outs whenever anything goes wrong, which cause ever-greater distortion of the economy.
这是一个大胆的新世界：政府支出有所增加，通货膨胀有所上升，而这一切都将是有利的。在短期内，这将意味着衰退并不那么严重或干脆没有。从长期来看，这意味着央行在经济低迷时期有更大的降息空间，从而减少了在出现任何问题时购买债券和纾困的必要性，因为它们一旦这样做，就会导致经济出现更大的畸变。
[11] Yet it also comes with big dangers. Central banks' credibility will be damaged: if the goalposts are moved once, why not again? Millions of contracts and investments written on the promise of 2% inflation would be disrupted, while mildly higher inflation would redistribute wealth from creditors to debtors. Meanwhile, the promise of moderately bigger government could easily spiral out of control, if populist politicians make reckless spending pledges or if state investments in energy and industrial policy are poorly executed and morph into bloated vanity projects that drag down productivity.
然而，它也伴随着巨大的危险。中央银行的可信度将受到损害：如果球门柱（目标）能改动一次，为什么不能再来一次？数百万的以2%通胀率为基准的合同和投资将不复成立，而稍高的通货膨胀会使得财富在债权人（债主）和债务人（借方）间进行重新分配。与此同时，适度扩大政府支出的承诺很容易失控，如果民粹主义政客们做出不计后果的支出承诺，或者如果国家在能源和工业政策方面的投资执行不力而演变成奢侈的形象工程，生产力就会被拖垮。
[12] These opportunities and dangers are daunting. But it is time to start weighing them and their implications for citizens and businesses. The biggest mistakes in economics are failures of imagination that reflect an assumption that today’s regime will last forever. It never does. Change is coming. Get ready.
这些机会和危险令人生畏。但是现在恰逢其时，我们应该开始权衡它们，以及它们对公民和企业的影响。经济学中最大的错误是缺乏想象力，它反映了一种假设，即当今的制度将永远存在下去。它永远不会永存！变革即将到来。做好准备吧。
王不留注：
柳下婴老师是我认识的英语大佬之一，擅长外文翻译，爱看《经济学人》，乐于分享。
根据不少考研朋友的建议，现在将其翻译作品，上传到百度网盘，在“柳下婴精翻系列”中，以PDF方式免费分享。欢迎下载。谢谢。
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