新闻中心
NEWS Center
如何实现经济持续扩张？
发布时间：2009-11-04
点击数：1682
在金融市场有力反弹后，人们忍不住会以为上涨行情已到尽头。时下流行的一种观点认为，特别刺激方案退出将导致经济增长和资产价格再次大幅下滑。
此类担忧是错误的，它往往会混淆金融恐慌与结构性经济问题。
为了说明这一点，让我们考虑一下此次危机中的金融层面吧。这个问题在很大程度上是由避险行为引起的，而对不良贷款损失规模的担心引发了人们的避险行为。
从2007年到2009年1月，1.5万亿美元的资金从风险较高的资产流向美国货币市场基金。
这种避险行为严重加剧了因银行贷款亏损导致的信贷自然减少。
这种避险行为严重加剧了因银行贷款亏损导致的信贷自然减少。
政府的回应抵消了这些影响。
短期利率下调至零的举措，逆转了2007年至2009年间约三分之一的避险资金，今年10月，折合成季度年率，从货币市场基金流入更广泛信贷市场的资金增至1.14万亿美元。
定量宽松政策直接或间接地为今年的政府借款提供了融资，并帮助将长期实际利率压低至异常低位。
与此同时，政府的财政扩张政策，抵消了实体经济中“动物精神”(animal spirits)崩溃对最终需求的影响。
自2008年初以来，家庭储蓄率上升，再加上薪资收入下降，导致消费支出（折合成年率）下降3510亿美元。
但是折合成年率的4490亿美元退税收入，以及家庭利息支出减少350亿美元，这些都大大抵消了消费支出减少的影响。
结果是，在考虑到转移支付的小幅调整后，自2008年年初以来，消费者支出增加了1260亿美元。
这种最终需求的稳定，证明企业在后雷曼兄弟(post-Lehman Brothers)恐慌期间形成的悲观预期是错误的。目前的库存水平远远低于需求。
以下事实证实了这点：与过去58年所有周期的任何可比阶段相比，供应商交货时间大幅延长。因此随着企业补充库存，劳动力市场恢复正向增长，未来几个季度的产出将继续增长。反过来预测一下，设想劳动生产率从业已很高的水平奇迹般的增长，这一结果显然会与过去资本设备投资下降产生冲突——资本设备投资占国内生产总值(GDP)的比例已降至35年来的最低水平。
与目前产出相应的水平相比，现在的就业率低1.5%至2%左右，因此就业持续复苏的几率非常高。
就这点来说，尽管储蓄率上升，但家庭收入和支出的复苏将令财政刺激在未来几个季度成为多余。
目前，市场中的风险兴趣的复苏步伐快于实体经济中的动物精神，就像风险兴趣在衰退前夕下滑速度更快一样。从纯粹金融市场的角度来看，随着股市和信贷市场估值回归公允价值，以及政府债券估值即将出现泡沫，零利率和定量宽松政策将变得不再完全合理。
然而，由于决策者往往以实体经济为目标，非常宽松的政策环境显然有可能持续足够长的时间，制造更广泛的市场泡沫。
企业和家庭去杠杆化的效应加大了这种可能性。去杠杆化大幅减少了金融资产的供应，同时增加了对金融资产的需求。
在许多经济更为健康的发展中经济体和大宗商品经济体，汇率目标的确定引入了不适合本国环境的美国货币环境。金融市场的过度狂热可能蔓延到这些经济体更广泛的实体资产，并导致消费者价格上涨。
因此决策者将必须很快做出决定，要实现经济的持续扩张其途径是削减任何假定的泡沫规模，还是支持就业全面复苏。
要阻止一些地区最近出现的一系列资产泡沫和GDP日益扩大的周期性波动，我们应指望决策者用一种不同于过去的方式，对这些问题进行权衡。
The time is growing nigh for removal of stimuli
Following a powerful financial market recovery, it is tempting to assume that we have seen the best of the rally. A popular school of thought holds that the expiry of the extraordinary stimulus programmes will see economic growth and asset prices flop lower once again.
Such concerns are misplaced, tending to confuse a financial panic with a structural economic problem.
To illustrate this point, let us consider the financial aspects of the crisis. A significant portion of the problem was caused by a flight from risk, sparked by fears over the dimensions of losses from bad lending.
From 2007 to January 2009, $1,500bn flowed into US money market funds out of more risky assets.
This retreat from risk severely compounded the natural reduction in credit due to bank loan losses.
The government response has counterbalanced these effects.
The reduction in short-term interest rates to zero has reversed about a third of the 2007-2009 flight to safety, with flows out of money market funds into the broader credit market accelerating to a quarterly annualised $1,140bn in October.
Quantitative easing has directly or indirectly financed this year's government borrowing and helped depress long-term real interest rates to exceptionally low levels.
Meanwhile, the government's fiscal expansion has offset the impact on final demand from the collapse in animal spirits in the real economy.
Since the start of 2008, the combination of higher household savings and lower income from employment should have seen annualised consumer spending flows fall by $351bn.
But this has been more than offset by an annualised flow of $449bn in tax rebates and a reduction in the household interest bill of $35bn.
The net result has been an increase of $126bn in the flow of consumer spending since the start of 2008, after accounting for small variations in transfer payments.
This stability in final demand invalidated the pessimistic expectations of businesses formed during the post-Lehman Brothers panic. Inventories are now far too low in relation to demand.
This point is confirmed by the fact that supplier delivery times have lengthened proportionally more than at any comparable stage in every previous cycle of the past 58 years. Output will therefore continue to rise in the quarters ahead, as companies restock, returning the labour market to positive growth. To forecast otherwise would be to assume a miraculous growth in labour productivity from already very high levels, an outcome strikingly at odds with the past decline in capital equipment investment, which has fallen to its lowest share of gross domestic product for 35 years.
With employment some 1.5-2 per cent below levels compatible with the current level of output, the probability of a sustained revival in employment is very high.
As such, the revival in household income and spending will make the fiscal stimuli redundant over the next few quarters, an elevated
savings rate notwithstanding.
savings rate notwithstanding.
Currently, risk appetite in the markets has revived faster than animal spirits in the real economy, just as they declined sooner in the run-up to the recession. With equity and credit market valuations back at fair value and government bond valuations bordering on a bubble, the zero interest rate and quantitative easing policies are no longer entirely warranted from a purely financial market perspective.
However, since policymakers tend to target the real economy, there is a clear risk that very easy policy settings will persist long enough to inflate a broader market bubble.
This possibility is compounded by the effects of business and household de-leveraging, which drastically reduces the supply of – and increases the demand for – financial assets.
In many of the economically healthier developing and commodity economies, the practice of exchange rate targeting imports US monetary settings that are inappropriate in the local context. Overexuberance in the financial markets might spill over into broader real asset and consumer price inflation in these economies.
Policymakers will therefore soon need to decide whether the objective of a sustained economic expansion is best served by curtailing the dimensions of any putative bubble or by underwriting a full recovery in employment.
If the recently endemic condition of serial asset bubbles and increasingly wide cyclical swings in GDP is to be interrupted, we should hope that the policymakers will weigh their deliberations somewhat differently than in the past.
（FT中文网）
（FT中文网）