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雷达卡
过度储蓄 经济复苏绊脚石
还记得昔日好时光，当时我们经常谈论「次贷危机」，有些人甚至认为这场危机可以「控制」。真怀念那段日子！
如今，我们知道，次贷只是问题的一小部分。即使一般的家庭不良贷款也只是问题的一部分。这是告贷者陷入困境的时代；他们包括购物中心开发商以至欧洲的「奇迹」经济体。新形式的债务问题才刚开始出现。
这场全球债务危机究竟如何发生？为什么如此广泛？我认为，答案可在联邦准备理事会（Fed）主席柏南克四年前发表的一次演说中找到。他当时试图安抚人心，演说的内容却已暗示问题即将出现。
这次演说题为「全球储蓄过甚与当前的美国经常帐赤字」，它为21世纪初美国贸易赤字迅速增加的现象提出另类解释。柏南克认为，原因不在于美国本身，而是亚洲。
他指出，1990年代中期，亚洲新兴经济体已是资金的主要进口国，为支应开发而向外借贷。1997至98年的亚洲金融风暴（当时看起来相当严重，与目前的局面相比却是小巫见大巫）结束后，这些国家为求自保而开始累积巨额外国资产，实质上等于将资本出口到全球各地。
其结果，全球各地充斥成本低廉的资本，急于寻找其它出口。
这些资金大多流向美国，导致美国出现巨额贸易赤字，因为贸易赤字是资金流动的反面结果。不过柏南克正确地指出，这些资金同时流向其它国家，尤其是流入一些规模比较小的东欧经济体；它们的总额固然不及流入美国的资金，如与个别的经济规模相比，依然大许多。
尽管如此，全球许多过度储蓄资金还是流入美国。何以故？
柏南克认为，这是美国「金融市场的深度与精密复杂程度所致」。（它使一般家庭得以轻易获取源自房子的财富）。深度？是。然而精密复杂？你可以说，美国银行家因长达四分之一世纪的解除管制政策而得以在领导全世界的过程中，找出各种自肥的精密复杂方法，同时隐藏风险，欺瞒投资人。
其它几个接受巨额资金流入者，都呈现这种管理松散的开放式金融体系的特性。
这或许可以解释二、三年前保守派对几个国家的赞美和当前经济灾难之间的怪异关系。卡托研究所的一项研究报告说：「改革使冰岛成为北欧之虎。」传统基金会的一篇论文题为「爱尔兰如何成为凯尔特之虎？」另一篇论文题为「爱沙尼亚的经济奇迹」。如今，这三个国家均已面临严重危机。
资金大举流入曾在这三个国家创造财富的假象，正如对于美国的自有住房者：资产价格不断提高，货币强劲，一切看来没有问题。然而泡沫迟早会破灭，昨天的奇迹经济体沦为今天的无助国家，资产化为乌有，债务却如假包换。这些债务是特别沉重的负担，因为多数贷款是以其它国家的货币借支。
伤害也不只限于原始的借贷者。在美国，房市泡沫大多集中于沿海地区，然而一旦泡沫破灭，市场对制造业商品─特别是汽车─的需求就会崩溃，而这已对工业的心脏地带产生可怕冲击。
同样，欧洲的泡沫主要集中在大陆边缘地带；德国从未出现金融泡沫，却是欧洲的制造核心，工业生产因出口大跌而迅速萎缩。
如想知道这场全球危机从何而来，不妨这么想：我们已开始看到供应过度的反噬。
过度储蓄现象仍未消失。事实上更甚于以往，因为捉襟见肘的消费者突然再度发现节约的美德，全球资产荣景曾为过度储蓄提供出口，如今已变成全球性泡沫。
看待当前国际局势的一个角度是，我们正面临全球性俭约矛盾：全球各地的储蓄超过企业愿意投资的规模，结果造成全球经济衰退，人人无一幸免。
这是我们跌入当前深渊的原因。我们还在寻找出口。
Revenge
of the Glut
By Paul
Krugman
Published:
March 1, 2009
Remember the good
old days, when we used to talk about the “subprime crisis” — and some even
thought that this crisis could be “contained”? Oh, the nostalgia!
Today we know that
subprime lending was only a small fraction of the problem. Even bad home loans
in general were only part of what went wrong. We’re living in a world of
troubled borrowers, ranging from shopping mall developers to European “miracle”
economies. And new kinds of debt trouble just keep emerging.
How did this
global debt crisis happen? Why is it so widespread? The answer, I’d suggest,
can be found in a speech Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave four
years ago. At the time, Mr. Bernanke was trying to be reassuring. But what he
said then nonetheless foreshadowed the bust to come.
The speech, titled
“The Global Saving Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit,” offered a novel
explanation for the rapid rise of the U.S. trade deficit in the early
21st century. The causes, argued Mr. Bernanke, lay not in America but in Asia.
In the mid-1990s,
he pointed out, the emerging economies of Asia
had been major importers of capital, borrowing abroad to finance their
development. But after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (which seemed like
a big deal at the time but looks trivial compared with what’s happening now),
these countries began protecting themselves by amassing huge war chests of
foreign assets, in effect exporting capital to the rest of the world.
The result was a
world awash in cheap money, looking for somewhere to go.
Most of that money
went to the United States
— hence our giant trade deficit, because a trade deficit is the flip side of
capital inflows. But as Mr. Bernanke correctly pointed out, money surged into
other nations as well. In particular, a number of smaller European economies
experienced capital inflows that, while much smaller in dollar terms than the
flows into the United States,
were much larger compared with the size of their economies.
Still, much of the
global saving glut did end up in America. Why?
Mr. Bernanke cited
“the depth and sophistication of the country’s financial markets (which, among
other things, have allowed households easy access to housing wealth).” Depth,
yes. But sophistication? Well, you could say that American bankers, empowered
by a quarter-century of deregulatory zeal, led the world in finding
sophisticated ways to enrich themselves by hiding risk and fooling investors.
And wide-open,
loosely regulated financial systems characterized many of the other recipients
of large capital inflows. This may explain the almost eerie correlation between
conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today.
“Reforms have made Iceland
a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became
the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian
Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep
crisis now.
For a while, the
inrush of capital created the illusion of wealth in these countries, just as it
did for American homeowners: asset prices were rising, currencies were strong,
and everything looked fine. But bubbles always burst sooner or later, and
yesterday’s miracle economies have become today’s basket cases, nations whose
assets have evaporated but whose debts remain all too real. And these debts are
an especially heavy burden because most of the loans were denominated in other
countries’ currencies.
Nor is the damage
confined to the original borrowers. In America, the housing bubble mainly
took place along the coasts, but when the bubble burst, demand for manufactured
goods, especially cars, collapsed — and that has taken a terrible toll on the
industrial heartland. Similarly, Europe’s bubbles were mainly around the
continent’s periphery, yet industrial production in Germany
— which never had a financial bubble but is Europe’s
manufacturing core — is falling rapidly, thanks to a plunge in exports.
If you want to
know where the global crisis came from, then, think of it this way: we’re
looking at the revenge of the glut.
And the saving
glut is still out there. In fact, it’s bigger than ever, now that suddenly
impoverished consumers have rediscovered the virtues of thrift and the
worldwide property boom, which provided an outlet for all those excess savings,
has turned into a worldwide bust.
One way to look at
the international situation right now is that we’re suffering from a global
paradox of thrift: around the world, desired saving exceeds the amount
businesses are willing to invest. And the result is a global slump that leaves
everyone worse off.
So that’s how we
got into this mess. And we’re still looking for the way out.
[此贴子已经被angelboy于2009-3-26 9:40:13编辑过]
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