【经济学人】负利率：悄悄偷走你的存款-经管之家官网！

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EUROPE’S leaders have once again managed to make a drama into a crisis by, at least at first, agreeing to a 6.75% levy on insured Cypriot depositors as the price of a bail-out. The plan to rescue Cyprus has quickly turned into another botched job.

An overnight raid on savings is a shock. But savers in other developed countries have also seen a hit to their purchasing power in the form of negative real interest rates, a type of financial repression. The clever thing about this approach is that it erodes the purchasing power of savers’ capital slowly but steadily, rather than dramatically, and thus tends not to provoke much protest.

Americans who invested in six-month bank certificates of deposit earned 3.2% between 2009 and 2012, before tax, whereas consumer prices rose by 6.6%. The financial-repression levy was therefore 3.2%.

In Britain even savers who put cash in the best tax-free “individual savings accounts” (which have modest annual limits) would have earned a cumulative 11% between 2009 and 2012, during which time consumer prices rose by 13.4%. Outside that tax shelter, middle-class savers who pay a marginal tax rate of 40% would have earned a net return of 6.6%. In real terms, their savings would have declined by 6%, not far short of the original Cypriot deposit levy.

True, British and American savers have had the option of putting their money in the stockmarket (which has rebounded since 2009) or into property. But most people like to keep their rainy-day money in a savings account. And many investors are highly suspicious of the stockmarket, which has suffered two big bear markets this century, and of property, which took a hit in 2007 and 2008.

You could also make the case (although best not to try it in a bar in Nicosia) that Cypriot savers could have taken evasive action. The problems of the Cypriot banks have been known for a long time, and a deposit guarantee is only as good as its guarantor: the Cypriot state needs foreign help to make good on its pledge. If British or American savers were supposed to be far-sighted enough to switch money into the stockmarket, prescient Cypriots should have bought German shares, or gold, or simply stuck their money under the mattress. All those approaches would have avoided any levy.

In the developed world total debt (including that of the financial sector, consumers and companies, as well as governments) is so high that it is implausible that it can be repaid via the fruits of economic growth. The debt must either be written off (defaulted on) or slowly inflated away. That means inflicting pain on someone: sorting out the crisis has been so difficult because no one wants to take the hit.

The Cypriot deal is a very clumsy attempt at a write-off. Your humble deposits are banks’ debts. So taking the deposits and using the proceeds to recapitalise the banks is a roundabout way of defaulting. But any form of outright default creates the potential for contagion.

Because it is more subtle, financial repression is more successful. It was the way that many countries reduced their debt burdens after the second world war. It takes advantage of the phenomenon of money illusion: people get confused between nominal and real numbers.

The danger is that savers will eventually get wise to the erosion of their spending power. In the post-war era capital controls stopped them from moving their money abroad. Now there are no such controls, but with most developed countries having the same rock-bottom interest rates, there is little incentive to shift.

Will savers instead indulge in a portfolio switch, putting more of their money into risky assets? Or will they regard saving as a waste of time and help the economy by going on a spending spree? The evidence from the 1970s—the last prolonged period of negative real rates—is “no” on both counts. Britons ended the decade with more of their savings in deposits (40%, compared with 33% in 1969) and increased their savings rate relative to the 1960s, when inflation was lower and real rates were positive.

There are two plausible explanations. Perhaps savers have some ideal figure for a nest-egg in mind, and step up their savings if they are eroded by inflation. That, however, would suggest they are immune to money illusion. Alternatively, since negative real rates tend to occur at times of turmoil, people may simply become more cautious and save more. Government raids on bank deposits will only fuel their fears, another reason why the Cyprus deal was so misguided.

欧洲领导人再次成功地将一场重大事件变成了一次危机——他们（至少在一开始）同意对已投保的塞浦路斯储户征收6.75％的存款税，以此作为欧盟纾困计划的条件。于是，纾困塞浦路斯的计划很快就被办砸了。

对存款的夜袭确实让人感到震惊。但其它发达国家储户的购买力也遭到了打击，其形式就是负的实际利率——一种金融抑制现象。此种做法的聪明之处在于，它缓慢而又平稳地削弱了储户资金的购买力，由于避免了过激的做法，因此往往不会引发太多的抗议。

2009年至2012年期间，存款期限达6个月的美国储户可以获得税前3.2％的收益，然而，同期居民消费价格却上涨了6.6％。因此，这种金融抑制税的税率为3.2％。

2009年和2012年期间，即使英国储户把现金存入最佳的免税”个人储蓄账户”（设有一定年度限额），他们将累计获得11％的收益。而在此期间，居民消费价格上涨了13.4％。如果不参加那种避税储蓄，那么需要支付40％边际税率的中产阶层储户将获得6.6％的净回报。按实值计算，他们的储蓄将减少6％，这与最初的塞浦路斯存款税税率相差无几。

诚然，英国和美国的储户可以选择将资金投入股市（自2009年以来已反弹）或房产。然而，大部分人都喜欢将其应急钱款存入储蓄账户。并且许多投资者对股市和房地产行业持高度怀疑态度，因为，股市在本世纪已经历了两次大的熊市，而房地产在2007年和2008年遭受严重打击。

你也可以证明，塞浦路斯储户可以采取规避措施（当然，最好不要在该国首都尼科西亚的某一酒吧中这么说）。塞浦路斯银行的问题早已为人所知，并且存款担保的好坏完全取决于其担保人的好坏：塞浦路斯需要外援来兑现其承诺。如果英国或美国的储户应当有远见地把资金投入股市，那么，有先见之明的塞浦路斯人也应该购买德国的股票，或购买黄金，或直接把钱放在家里。所有这些方法都会避免任何存款税。

在发达国家，债务总额如此之高（包括金融业、消费者、企业以及ZF债务），很难想象它可以通过经济增长的成果来偿还。这些债务要么直接被免除（违约），要么在通胀中缓慢消化。这意味着总有人要遭受痛苦：消除危机相当困难，因为无人愿意承受打击。

此次塞浦路斯销债协议实属拙劣之举。储户微薄的存款是银行的债务。因此，拿走存款并用于银行资本重组，这实际上是一种迂回的违约。然而，任何形式的公然违约都会造成潜在的危机传染。

因为其较难理解，所以金融抑制的做法也较为成功。这正是二战以后众多国家减少其债务负担的方式。它充分利用了货币幻觉这一现象：人们对名义和实际利率之分比较糊涂。

危险在于，储户终将知道其购买力的下降。在战后时期，资本管制政策不允许储户把钱存到国外。现在这种限令已被取消，但由于大多数发达国家都保持同样低到极点的利率，这也使得储户缺乏转移存款的动机。

储户是否会热衷于投资组合调整，把更多的钱投到风险资产上？或者，他们会否把存款看成是浪费时间，转而通过大肆消费来带动经济发展？从上一次发生在20世纪70年代的长期”负实际利率”情况来看，这两种情况都不会出现。英国人在那十年中的储蓄存款不断增加（由1969年的33%增加到了40%），而且，其储蓄率较60年代也有所增加——60年代的通货膨胀率较低，且实际利率为正。

这其中存在两种可能的解释。也许储户脑海中有一个理想的储蓄数额，如果储蓄的购买力因通货膨胀而降低，他们就会增加其储蓄。然而，这表明他们已不受货币幻觉的影响。另一种情况是，由于负实际利率往往发生在动荡时期，人们可能只会变得更加谨慎，进而想多存点钱。ZF对银行存款征税的做法只会助长他们的恐惧，这是塞浦路斯救助协议思路错误的原因之一。

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