The Global Economy: The Low-rate World

世界经济：低汇率世界

 

Central banks have been doing their best to pep up demand. Now they need help

各国央行始终竭尽全力提振需求。如今它们需要帮助

 

They do not naturally crave the limelight. But for the past decade the attention on central bankers has been unblinking – and increasingly hostile. During the financial crisis the Federal Reserve and other central banks were hailed for their actions: by slashing rates and printing money to buy bonds, they stopped a shock from becoming a depression. Now their signature policy, of keeping interest rates low or even negative, is at the centre of the biggest macroeconomic debate in a generation.

 

他们并非一定渴求关注。但过去十年间人们对央行官员们的关注始终未曾转移，对他们的敌意也与日俱增。金融危机时期美联储和其他央行因它们的举措而获得盛赞：通过削减利率、印钱购买债券，它们使得这场休克没有演变成经济萧条。现在它们标志性的政策，即保持低利率甚至负利率，成为这一时代关于宏观经济最大规模辩论的核心问题。

 

The central bankers say that ultra-loose monetary policy remains essential to prop up still-weak economies and hit their inflation targets. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) this week promised to keep ten-year government bond yields around zero. On September 21st the Federal Reserve put off a rate rise yet again. In the wake of the Brexit vote, the Bank of England has cut its main policy rate to 0.25%, the lowest in its 300-year history.

 

央行官员们称，要提振仍旧疲软的经济并达到通胀目标，超宽松货币政策仍然十分必要。日本央行本周承诺将十年期国债收益率保持在零左右。9月21日美联储再一次推迟了加息。英国脱欧公投之后，英国央行紧接着将主要政策利率削减至0.25%，是其300年来的历史最低点。

 

But a growing chorus of critics frets about the effects of the low-rate world – a topsy-turvy place where savers are charged a fee, where the yields on a large fraction of rich-world government debt come with a minus sign, and where central banks matter more than markets in deciding how capital is allocated. Politicians have waded in. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has accused Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chairman, of keeping rates low for political reasons. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, blames the European Central Bank for the rise of Alternative for Germany, a right-wing party.

 

但是越来越多的批评之声担心低利率环境所带来的影响——这是一个颠倒混乱的世界：银行要向储户收取费用，大部分富裕世界国家的国债收益率为负，而在决定资本如何配置方面，央行比市场更重要。政治家们已经开炮。共和党总统候选人特朗普指责美联储主席耶伦出于政治原因维持低利率。德国财政部长沃尔夫冈·朔伊布勒（Wolfgang Schäuble）将右翼政党“德国另类选择党”（Alternative for Germany）的兴起归咎于欧洲央行。

 

This is a debate on which both sides get a lot wrong. It is too simple to say that central bankers are causing the low-rate world; they are also reacting to it. Real long-term interest rates have been declining for decades, driven by fundamental factors such as ageing populations and the integration of savings-rich China into the world economy. Nor have they been reckless. In most of the rich world inflation is below the official target. Indeed, in some ways central banks have not been bold enough. Only now, for example, has the BoJ explicitly pledged to overshoot its 2% inflation target. The Fed still seems anxious to push up rates as soon as it can.

 

在这场辩论中双方的理解都有很大的谬误。把低利率环境归咎于央行官员实在太过简单；他们也在着手应对。受一些基本因素的驱动，如人口老龄化以及储蓄充裕的中国融入世界经济，实际长期利率数十年来一直在不断下降。央行官员们也并未鲁莽行事。大部分富裕国家的通胀水平低于官方目标。实际上，在某些方面央行甚至不够大胆。例如，直到现在日本央行才明确保证要超越其2%的通胀目标。美联储似乎仍急于尽快加息。

 

Yet the evidence is mounting that the distortions caused by the low-rate world are growing even as the gains are diminishing. The pension-plan deficits of companies and local governments have ballooned because it costs more to honor future pension promises when interest rates fall. Banks, which normally make money from the difference between short-term and long-term rates, struggle when rates are flat or negative. That impairs their ability to make loans even to the creditworthy. Unendingly low rates have skewed financial markets, ensuring a big sell-off if rates were suddenly to rise. The longer this goes on, the greater the perils that accumulate.

 

但是越来越多证据表明低利率环境造成的扭曲与日俱增，而益处正不断缩减。公司和地方政府养老金计划的赤字已经激增，因为当利率降低时，要保证未来养老金的发放需要投入更多资金。银行一般通过短期利率和长期利率之间的利差赚钱，但利率过低甚至为负值时，银行也将举步维艰。这损伤了银行提供贷款的能力，甚至对信誉可靠的借款人也是如此。无止境的低利率扭曲了金融市场，如果突然加息，必然引发大规模抛售。如此一来时间越久，积累的风险就越大。

 

To live safely in a low-rate world, it is time to move beyond a reliance on central banks. Structural reforms to increase underlying growth rates have a vital role. But their effects materialise only slowly and economies need succour now. The most urgent priority is to enlist fiscal policy. The main tool for fighting recessions has to shift from central banks to governments.

 

要在这个低利率世界安全存活，现在必须要超越对央行的依赖。提升基本增长率的结构性改革扮演着至关重要的角色。但是它们的影响要发挥实际作用会很缓慢，而经济目前亟需救援。谋取财政政策的帮助是当务之急。抵抗经济衰退最主要的工具必须从中央银行转至政府。

 

To anyone who remembers the 1960s and 1970s, that idea will seem both familiar and worrying. Back then governments took it for granted that it was their responsibility to pep up demand. The problem was that politicians were good at cutting taxes and increasing spending to boost the economy, but hopeless at reversing course when such a boost was no longer needed. Fiscal stimulus became synonymous with an ever-bigger state. The task today is to find a form of fiscal policy that can revive the economy in the bad times without entrenching government in the good.

 

对记得上世纪60年代和70年代的人来说，这种想法看起来既熟悉又令人担忧。彼时的政府想当然地认为提振需求是它们的责任。问题是政治家们擅长通过减税和增加支出来刺激经济，但当经济不再需要这样的刺激时，指望他们改弦更张则遥遥无期。财政刺激成为了日益庞大的政府的同义词。目前的任务是要找到一种财政政策，能够在困难时期重振经济，并且在繁荣时期也不会强化政府的地位。

 

That means going beyond the standard response to calls for more public spending: namely, infrastructure investment. To be clear, spending on productive infrastructure is a good thing. Much of the rich world could do with new toll roads, railways and airports, and it will never be cheaper to build them. To manage the risk of white-elephant projects, private-sector partners should be involved from the start. Pension and insurance funds are desperate for long-lasting assets that will generate the steady income they have promised to retirees. Specialist pension funds can advise on a project’s merits, with one eye on eventually buying the assets in question.

 

这意味着增加公共支出要超越惯常的应对方式，即投资基础设施。诚然，投资生产性基础设施是件好事。很多富裕国家需要新的收费公路、铁路和机场，而修建这些设施永远都不会便宜。为了避免产生大而无用的项目，私营部门合伙人应当从一开始就参与其中。养老金和保险基金渴望拥有能带来稳定收入的长期资产，实现对退休人士的承诺。专门的养老基金可以从最终投资者的视角，就某个项目的优点提出意见。

 

But infrastructure spending is not the best way to prop up weak demand. Ambitious capital projects cannot be turned on and off to fine-tune the economy. They are a nightmare to plan, take ages to deliver and risk becoming bogged down in politics. To be effective as a countercyclical tool, fiscal policy must mimic the best features of modern-day monetary policy, whereby independent central banks can act immediately to loosen or tighten as circumstances require.

 

但是投资基础设施并不是提振疲软需求的最佳方式。大规模的资本性支出项目无法为了微调经济而随时启动或关闭。这些项目的规划如同噩梦，又需要多年的实施，还可能因政治因素而停滞。要成为有效的逆周期工具，财政政策必须模拟当今货币政策的最佳做法，即各国央行都能够按照形势的需要迅速放宽或紧缩政策。

 

Politicians will not – and should not – hand over big budget decisions to technocrats. Yet there are ways to make fiscal policy less politicised and more responsive. Independent fiscal councils, like Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility, can help depoliticise public-spending decisions, but they do nothing to speed up fiscal action. For that, more automaticity is needed, binding some spending to changes in the economic cycle. The duration and generosity of unemployment benefits could be linked to the overall joblessness rate in the economy, for example. Sales taxes, income-tax deductions or tax-free allowances on saving could similarly vary in line with the state of the economy, using the unemployment rate as the lodestar.

 

政治家们不会也不应该将大型预算决策权交给技术官员。但是还有一些方式能让财政政策不那么政治化，且反应更为灵敏。独立的财政委员会，如英国的预算责任办公室（Office for Budget Responsibility），有助于去除公共支出决策的政治色彩，但是它们无法加速财政投资的决策。这一点上需要更多自动调整的机制，将部分支出与经济周期的变化相关联。例如失业津贴的发放时长和金额可以根据经济整体失业率而定。营业税、所得税减免或储蓄免税额同样可以依据经济状况调整，以失业率作为指导原则。

 

All this may seem unlikely to happen. Central banks have had to take on so much responsibility since the financial crisis because politicians have so far failed to shoulder theirs. But each new twist on ultra-loose monetary policy has less power and more drawbacks. When the next downturn comes, this kind of fiscal ammunition will be desperately needed. Only a small share of public spending needs to be affected for fiscal policy to be an effective recession-fighting weapon. Rather than blaming central bankers for the low-rate world, it is time for governments to help them.

 

所有这些看来都不太可能发生。自金融危机以来，由于政治家们未能肩负起自己的责任，中央银行被迫承担了过多的责任。但是超宽松货币政策的每一次微调都收效更微且弊端更多。当下一次经济衰退来临时，将迫切需要上述的财政弹药。要让财政政策成为打击衰退的有力武器，只需要一小部分公共支出受影响。现在，政府不应将低利率世界归咎于央行官员们，而应该帮助他们。

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