[2008.11.15] 全球经济峰会：萧瑟秋风后

The global economic summit
全球经济峰会

After the fall
萧瑟秋风后

Nov 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition

On November 15th world leaders are due to sit around a table in Washington, DC, to fix finance. They have their work cut out
11月15日世界领袖们将聚会华盛顿来修整金融体系，他们重任在肩

Illustration by Bill Butcher


THE leaders arriving in Washington, DC, for this weekend’s economic summit are being presumptuous. If they want what they are calling Bretton Woods 2 to live up to the original, which took place in New Hampshire overshadowed by war and the Depression, it will have to establish a new economic order for the capitalist world. In 1944 that meant creating the IMF, the World Bank and a body to oversee world trade. Imagine Hank Paulson, America’s treasury secretary, as John Maynard Keynes; or picture Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, as Winston Churchill(as Mr Brown himself secretly may), and you get a sense of the task ahead.

来 华盛顿出席本周末举行的经济峰会的领袖们此行有些自以为是。如果他们想使其所谓的”布雷顿森林体系第二版”达到第一版（在战争和大萧条阴云笼罩下诞生于新 罕布什尔的布雷顿森林体系）的效果，就必须为资本主义世界建立一个新的经济秩序。在1944年[译者注：布雷顿森林会议于此年召开]经济新秩序意味着：创 建世界银行和国际货币基金组织以及一个监督国际贸易的机构。将美国财政部长汉克 保尔森想像成约翰梅纳德凯恩斯，或者将英国首相戈登布朗描绘成为温斯顿丘吉尔（也许布朗先生私下里会这么做），那么你就可以想象下一步会是如何了。

The Bretton Woodsmen of 2008 are grabbing the credit before they have earned it-rather as all those subprime householders did. More than two years of gruelling technical work laid the ground for the wartime conference of officials and finance ministers (prime ministers and presidents had other things to deal with). By contrast, the leaders gathering this weekend from the G20, a mix of industrial and emerging countries, plus the European Union, have cobbled together an agenda in a few frenetic weeks. They will doubtless produce no shortage of promises. Just what these are worth will depend on sweat and summits yet to come.

准备制定2008年布雷顿森林体系这帮家伙正在透支其信誉额度–就像之前那些用次级贷款买房的房主一样。对于 参加上次战时[译者注：当时二战还未结束]会议的官员和财政部长们（因为首相和总统们还有其它事情要去处理）来说，超过两年的紧张而繁重的技术工作准备为 其工作提供了前提。而本次出席峰会的二十国（发达国家和新兴国家加上欧盟）领袖们只是在几周内草率拼凑了一份日程。峰会必定不会缺少承诺。而这些承诺有多 少价值则取决于有多少付出，但是峰会马上就要开始了。

The summit is sure to stir up a debate about the institutions that oversee the international economy. By convening theG20 rather than the closed, rich club of the G7, the old order has in effect acknowledged that the rest of the world has become too important to bar from the room. But what new order should take its place?Answering that question has been a parlour game for economists since long before the crisis. By encouraging them to dust off their pet ideas, the summit will at the very least create a bull market in new schemes for global economic governance.

这次峰会必将激起对国际经济监督组织的争论。召开二十 国峰会而不是七国峰会，就意味着旧的秩序实际上已经承认：其它世界其它国家已经变得非常重要，而不能将之拒之门外了。但是新的秩序应该是什么？早在本次金 融危机很久之前，这就是经济学家们津津乐道的话题。通过鼓励经济学家们重温他们喜欢的话题，这次峰会至少会在全球经济治理的新秩序下创造出一个看涨的市 场。

Because everyone agrees that something big needs fixing and that the world expects action, calling the summit Bretton Woods 2 could yet come to be seen as a rallying cry for reform. And yet there are lots of reasons to see it as vainglory. The agenda is vague and sprawling. With so many of the world’s political leaders sitting around the table, it will be hard to escape platitudes and hypocrisy. There may be disagreements-especially where sovereignty or competitiveness is threatened. And most of all, the recent international financial collaboration is fraught with in-fighting and complexity.

因为每个人都同 意需要进行大的调整，全世界都希望采取切实举措，因此，把此次峰会称为”布林顿森林体系第二版”可以视作是对改革的迫切呼唤。但仍有很多理由可以视之为噱 头。议事日程是模糊而且杂乱无序的。有如此多的政治领袖齐聚一堂，免不了些繁文缛节，陈词滥调。而且可能会有分歧–特别是在主权和竞争力受到威胁的时 候。最重要的是，在最近的国际金融合作中，充斥着明争暗斗和纷繁交错的情况。

At first sight, this summit seems no different. For instance, consider how Mr Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, have vied to claim paternity of the summit for their own domestic reasons. Mr Sarkozy sees a chance to show he is a man of action, and he will find it easier to force through domestic reform if he can show he is not in thrall to all that Anglo-Saxon free-market ideology.

乍看起来，这次峰会没什么不同。例如，可以想象，由于国内的原因， 英国首相布朗和法国总统萨科齐肯定会争着声称自己是本次峰会的发起者。萨科齐先生想借此机会来显示下他是个实干家，而且如果能显示出他不屈服于盎格鲁-撒 克逊人的自由市场意识形态，他国内的改革必将会推进的更容易些。

Mr Brown has been calling for a global summit for weeks, emboldened by international acclaim for his plan to rescue Britain’s banking system. The prime minister is keen to show that the crisis is one of those worldwide messes that-honestly-has nothing to do with the past 11 years of Labour government. And he wants to play the lead in Washington so as to protect the free-market City of London from the Gallic machinations of Mr Sarkozy.

国际社会对布朗救助英国银行系统的行为赞誉有加，受此鼓舞，布朗数周来一直呼吁召开一个全球峰会。他想迫切地告诉世人，这次金融危机是世界金融动荡的一部分（的确如此），与工党过去十一年的执政没有任何关系。而且他想在华盛顿扮演领导者的角色，以保护自由市场的城市伦敦不要中了萨科齐高卢人的诡计。

From despair, hope
于绝望中见希望

But there is more to the summit than politics. Perhaps inevitably, the run-up to the summit has produced dozens of different proposals.Broadly, they fall into three areas. First and most urgent is the need to limit the crisis, which is even now spiralling from the rich world to emerging economies. Second is financial regulation: its flaws have been laid bare, and the summiteers will want to put it right. Third is global macroeconomics. The G20 needs to find ways to correct the imbalances-Asian saving and Western spending-that lay behind the boom.

然而这届峰会的意义却绝不止是政治上的。在峰会的预备阶段会产生各种各样的提议，这也是很自然的事情。 总体而言，这些意见大致集中在三方面：首先也是最紧要的是要对危机的影响加以限制，这场金融危机已经从富裕的国家波及到了发展中国家；其次是金融监管，现 有体制的缺点在危机中暴露无遗，与会成员希望对其进行纠正。第三是全球宏观经济。在贸易繁荣的背后，亚洲大量储蓄，而欧洲则巨额支出，G20需要设法弥补 的失衡局面。

Pervasive economic gloom is the best reason for hoping that something important will come of this weekend’s meeting. After savaging the financial markets, the credit crisis has broken loose into the real economy. This month the IMF lowered its forecast for global growth next year by 0.8percentage points, to 2.2%. The rich world is already in recession.Unemployment, foreclosures and corporate bankruptcies are rising.Emerging economies have also been ensnared, as investors from richer countries retreat to their home markets. The fund cut its forecast for their growth rate by a percentage point, to 5.1%.

在 各国经济状况普遍低迷的情况下，大家对周末这场会议的重要性都充满着期待。在把金融市场搅了个天翻地覆之后，次贷危机的魔爪开始伸向实体经济。本周IMF 将对明年的经济增长预期降到了2.2%，调低了0.8个百分点。发达国家已经面临经济衰退，失业率不断上升，贷款人屡屡止赎，越来越多的企业濒临破产。由 于来自发达国家的投资者纷纷退守本土市场，发展中国家也受到了波及。IMF对发展中国家的增长速度预期也调低了一个百分点，达到5.1%。

Such pain demands an ambitious policy response. On November 6th Kevin Warsh,a governor of the Federal Reserve, put it in dramatic terms: “We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of every asset everywhere in the world,” he said. “The establishment of a new financial architecture, thus, is the essential policy response to the greatest economic challenge of our time.”

在这种艰难的时局中，人们期待决策层作出高姿态的反应。11月6日，美联储的理事凯文 沃什发表了激动人心的宣言：”我们正在见证一场剧变，一场世界范围内的资本价值重铸。面对我们这个时代最严重的经济挑战，我们需要建立一套全新的金融体系，这是应对策略中的第一要务。”

The easy bit will be to harness that sense of urgency to produce concerted interest-rate cuts and government spending. Already, several countries are talking about a co-ordinated fiscal stimulus to help offset a collapse of private-sector demand. China set the standard on November9th, with a huge spending plan worth 4 trillion yuan (nearly $600billion), or about 15% of GDP (see article). Not everyone can muster such resources, but other countries, including America and Britain, are preparing to act too. Germany, which has promised a piffling euro 12billion ($15 billion), may be shamed into spending more. With concerted action, countries will find that each national stimulus buys more confidence than it would do alone.

在这项计划中，最简单的部分无疑是借助危机感，多个国家共同削减利 率，同时加大政府的投入。已经有部分国家开始讨论联合采取财政措施，对在危机中面临崩溃的私营经济需求进行补偿。中国于11月9日发布了一项总额为4万亿 人民币（合6千亿美元）的财政投入计划，该项开支占其GDP的15%，为其他国家树立了榜样。不是每个国家都可以承担如此大手笔的举动，不过包括英美在内 的其他国家也准备有所动作了。德国之前承诺的仅120亿欧元（合150亿美元）的投入相形见绌，他有可能会追加投入。如果各国政府能够协同一致，将比单独 出台财政措施更能激励民众的信心。

Many commentators also want to build confidence by increasing the spending power of the IMF. If a large emerging market, such as Poland or Turkey, were to need help, says Willem Buiter, an economist at the London School of Economics, its present resources of $250 billion “would be gone before you can say ‘special drawing rights’.” Although some European delegates want to strengthen the IMF, the Americans are resisting: the summit may produce nothing more than a pledge to find the money if the fund needs it.

许多评论家还希望通过增加IMF的资金支配权来为大众树立信心。伦敦经济学院的经济学家威廉 布特称，如果像波兰、土耳其这样的广大新兴市场陷入困境，那么IMF2500亿美元的应急资金储备马上就会消耗一空，”特别提款权”[1]*形同虚设、与事无补。虽然欧洲代表希望加强国际货币基金组织的力量，美国却对此有所抵触。峰会上能达成的最好结果，也不过是承诺如果IMF需要资金援助的话会施加援手。
*Special Drawing Rights(SDR): Unit of account from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), i.a. used to express the amount of the limitations of a carrier’s liability.

In financial regulation, some changes ought to be easy to agree on-such as ensuring that banks stop holding assets off their balance-sheets and put capital aside against possible failures in a wider range of securities. The summit is also likely to try to bring order to the market for credit-default swaps,which trade the risk that borrowers will not honour bonds, by concluding that, within 120 days, the business should be routed through clearing houses rather than settled privately by investors.

在金融监管的改革方面应该不难达成一定的共 识，例如，确保银行停止持有资产负债表以外的资产，让银行采取更多的途径存放资产以规避风险；同时，参与峰会的各方还可能会对市场加以整顿，以应对信用违 约互换（即在没有信用保障的前提下进行风险转嫁）。总而言之，在接下来的120天里，应该通过确立秩序的方法使市场恢复正常，不能指望投资者自己解决问 题。

That is progress, to be sure. But it is small potatoes next to the summiteers’ ambitions. And little else will be easy, even if the leaders can issue a declaration that sets out their common principles and a schedule of negotiations for further reform. To see why, leave behind the first Bretton Woods conference for the more recent history of international financial regulation.

无可否认，这些举措都将是积极进步的。然而较之与会者的 雄心，这些都不过是些鸡毛蒜皮的小事。与会的领导人诚然可以对外宣布：他们已经在原则性问题上达成了广泛的共识，并为长远的改革谈判制订了时间表；然而余 下的事务就没这么简单了。要想知道缘由，我们还要从第一次布雷顿森林会议说起，来回顾一下近代国际金融监管史。

No end of squabbles
无尽的争吵

Illustration by Bill Butcher

The difficulty with cross-border rules in finance is explained by Barry Eichengreen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of 20 economists from around the world who have written an”e-book”* that describes what this weekend’s summit should do.

加州大学伯克利分校的巴里 艾肯格林教授曾就在跨国金融秩序的建立过程中所遭遇的困难做过详细的解说。包括巴里教授在内的20名经济学家共同编纂了一本电子书，列举了本周的峰会上应该解决的事情。

On the one hand, finance is every country’s business. This crisis has shown that what happens deep inside one national financial system can wreck another halfway across the world. In the United States subprime lending was a relatively small bit of the mortgage market-itself just apart of America’s financial markets. And yet the cascade of failing credit and risk aversion that began there, partly as a result of inadequate supervision, has spread not just to the overstretched banking systems of Europe, but also now to untroubled banks in emerging markets.

一方面来说，金融政策与每个国家都有干系。从这次的危机中可以看出，某一个国家的金融系统内部出现了问题，会在地球另一 面产生毁灭性的影响。在美国，次级贷款只在抵押信贷市场中占有相对较小的份额，而抵押信贷市场也只是美国金融市场的一部分。在信贷运作与风险规避过程中， 由于监管失当等原因，出现了小范围的崩盘，影响到的却不仅仅是过度扩张的欧洲银行系统，甚至连发展中国家那些本该置身事外的银行现在也受到了波及。

On the other hand, nation-states jealously guard the right to oversee their own banks. This is not just out of principle, or a desire to see that the regulations suit their own financial institutions-although most regulators would think these alone to be sufficient reason. It is also because, when a crisis comes, the nation-state foots the bill for a bail-out. In addition, Wendy Dobson, of the University of Toronto,notes that regulators need intimate local knowledge of their charges and their own financial structures if they are to have a hope of prevailing-and even then, as the world has seen, the odds are against them.

而从另一个角度来讲，民族国家对本国银行的监管权视若至宝，绝不容许他人染指。这并非只是原则性问题，或只是 因为民族国家希望监管条例与本国的金融机构相适应–从监管者的角度来讲这已经是个足够有说服力的理由了。它还因为，当危机到来时，民族国家要为救市计划 买单。此外，多伦多大学的温迪·多布森指出，若想取得成功，监管者所作的每项决策都必须充分考虑本国的国情和金融系统特色。然而事实上，他们成功的机会并 不大。

The tug between national and supranational regulation has gradually led to an ad hoc arrangement for the international banking system. In the1980s America and Britain grew worried about the expansion of Japanese banks, which by 1988 accounted for nine of the world’s ten largest by assets, up from one at the start of the decade. What bothered the West was that Japanese regulators allowed their banks to count shareholdings as core capital. Cheap capital fed their growth. And it was indeed reckless, as the subsequent collapse of the Japanese stock market showed.

在国际银行体系中，为了权衡一国监管与跨国监管之间的冲突，曾经做出过一定的妥协。上个世纪 80年代，美国和英国曾因日本的银行业扩张而忧心忡忡。80年代初，在全世界资产最雄厚的前十家银行中，只有一家是日本银行；而到了1988年，前十名中 已有九个被日本银行占据。令西方国家烦躁的是，在日本的监管制度中，允许银行将股权计入核心资本，日本银行就这样靠着廉价的资本飞速增长。此后不久，日本 股市便告崩溃，也证明了这一行为的确是太过冒险的。

Under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a central bankers’ central bank in Basel, in Switzerland,the big economies agreed to set common standards for what counted as capital and how much a bank should hold in order to qualify as safe. Their negotiations were partly about rules to make the global financial system more resilient. But they were also, in effect, about a trade dispute, over what the West saw as a subsidy to Japan’s banks. This ambiguity between the common good and national interests complicates all financial negotiations-including any that will follow the G20 summit.

在国际清算银行（BIS）的支持下，各个经济大国在瑞士的布塞尔建立了中央银行的中央银行。各国决定为资本的计量设立统一的标准，并为银行的资产状况进行风险评定。他们的谈判部分是关于如何对国际金融系统进行管理，使其更有弹性。然而事实上，谈判当中也混杂了商务争端的成份，西方国家就应将什么视为对日本银行的救助而争执不下。公共利益与国家利益的含糊不清使得所有的金融谈判变得复杂，G20峰会之后也一样。

Andrew Gracie, who worked on regulatory design at the Bank of England and founded Crisis Management Analytics, which advises central banks on financial stability, points out that right from the start regulators looked at systemic risk one bank at a time. The assumption was that if each institution was safe, then the system as a whole would be too.Similarly, when banks had many subsidiaries, regulators short of money and time tended to worry only about their own piece of the jigsaw.

安 德鲁•格雷西是英国央行负责调整设计的官员，他创立了风险应对分析中心，为各国央行如何稳定金融秩序提供意见。格雷西指出，监管者一直是对每家银行进行独 立的系统风险评估。他们认为，只要每一家银行都是安全的，那么整个系统也会安然无恙。同样，对那些分支众多的银行，财力与时间都不充裕的监管者往往只对自 己的门前雪感兴趣。

This “micro-prudential” philosophy was always questionable. Now it looks absurd. Banks tend to own similar assets. In a crisis the capital of the entire industry tends to fall, which means that the instability of one bank can undermine the standing of the next. Hence the talk about a new “macro-prudential” sort of regulation that seeks to take account of the whole system’s vulnerabilities, as well as the health of individual banks, by, say, adjusting capital charges over the economic cycle.

这种”微观审慎”哲学一直饱受争议，而今更是显得荒谬不经。银行更倾 向于拥有相似的资产。在危机中整个产业的资本都会贬值，所以只要一家银行根基不稳，其他银行也会受到牵连。因此有人提议，建立全新的”宏观审慎”监管机 制。该机制不仅关注单家银行的健康状况，同时还通过调整经济循环中的资本支出等手段，对整个系统的风险弱点进行考查。

The strengths of the original Basel standards (Basel 1) lay in being reasonably simple to negotiate and administer. But there in lay their weaknesses also. Banks soon started to favour business that was profitable (ie,risky) but which, under Basel 1’s crude definitions, escaped the appropriate capital charges. As the banks adapted to Basel 1, so the rules became less useful.

最初的巴塞尔协议（巴塞尔协议1）相对比较简洁，益于谈判和管理，这是它的长处，也是它的缺陷所在。银行很快就开始转向更有利可图的风险领域，而在巴塞尔协议1那粗略的定义中，他们能够绕开资本支出。由于银行对付巴塞尔1已经游刃有余了，其作用相应削弱。

That gave rise to the effort to create Basel 2, which began in the late1990s. This sought to strike a different balance, by asking banks to be more sophisticated in assessing the riskiness of their assets and thus their capital requirements. But sophistication came at a high cost. A recent book† by Daniel Tarullo, a professor of law at Georgetown University who is fancied for a senior economic post under Barack Obama, describes how the negotiations dragged on for years as governments jostled for a deal that would give their own banks some advantage. Mr Tarullo observes that the banks would accept all sorts of arbitrary provisions as long as the end result was to reduce the amount of capital they had to put aside.

因此到了90年代末期，各国开始致力为巴塞尔协议2做准备。协议2 将达到另一种平衡，要求银行进行更复杂的资产风险和资产需求评估。然而复杂度的提升同时也会使成本增加。乔治敦大学的法律教授达内尔•塔鲁罗，巴拉克•奥 巴马计划中的资深经济顾问，在最近出版的一本专著中写道，各国政府在协议上拖沓不决，谈判拖延数年，实际上都是为了达成一个对自己国家的银行更为有利的协 议。塔鲁罗指出，只要最终结果能够减少银行需要储备的资产总量，不管多么专横多么复杂的条款，银行都可以接受。

Faults and lessons
缺陷与教训

Basel2 is a flawed agreement. Although it is not yet in force, it already needs updating. Its chief failing is its reliance on rating agencies and the banks’ own models of the risks that they are carrying-an idea that has been discredited by the way banks have been caught out. In addition, the accord did not allow for the evaporation of liquidity that prevented the banks from financing their businesses. It is hardly reassuring that the minimum capital that rescued banks are aiming for today is far above the minimum set by Basel 2.

巴塞尔协议2是个有缺陷的协议。虽然尚 并未被强制执行，但它仍需改进。它最主要的缺陷是依赖评级机构和银行自己所承担风险的模型–银行一些漏洞恰是因此被曝光，这也使其声名狼藉。另外，这个 协议也不允许流动性减少，这就阻止了银行对其业务的融资行为。更让人感到难以放心的是：现在能够拯救银行最低限度的资本远高于巴塞尔协议2所设定的标准。

The story of bank-capital standards contains important lessons for the leaders gathering at the G20. The talks dragged on because their objectives were unclear, the subject matter was complex, negotiators were fighting for the upper hand and there was little sense of urgency.Even if all that can be put right, the schedule of work has expanded.Supervision may need to extend beyond banks, to any financial institution whose failure could threaten financial stability, which might include some large hedge funds and non-bank financial companies such as GE. The capital-standards regime also needs to become more macro-prudential. Regulators need to be able to put more trust in banks’ risk models and rating agencies and supplement them with simple rules about the level of borrowing. Mr Tarullo suggests that banks should issue new securities to serve as gauges of investors’ faith in them.

对参加二十国峰会的领袖们来说，应该足够重视上述银行资本标准的故事中蕴含的重大教训。而（关于修改巴塞尔协议2的）对话陷入 僵局的原因是因为其对象模糊，主题复杂，而谈判的各方则在争相获取自己的优势地位，但对事情的紧迫性毫无概念。即使所有这些都可以纠正，工作日程也已大为 扩展。监管必须不仅限于银行，而且还要拓展到其它一旦倒闭就危及金融稳定的金融机构（包括一些对冲基金和非银行金融公司，例如通用电器）。资本标准的体系 架构同样需要更加宏观审慎。监管者需要对于银行自身的风险模型和评级机构更为信任，并且使用有关借贷限度的简单规则来补充其不足。Tarullo先生建 议，银行应该发行新的证券来测试投资者对其信心指数。

There are two difficulties in all this. The first is that it will take time and, as urgency fades and the negotiators drown in complexity, national interest may gain at the expense of collective safety. The second is that original dilemma:international rules require enforcement, but nation-states demand sovereignty. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, wants an inspectorate. Mr Eichengreen has proposed a World Financial Organisation, with disciplinary panels. The EU wants “colleges” of national regulators for each bank and an IMF to give warning of crises.The summit looks most likely to back the EU idea-but it ought to be more ambitious. The system will work only if governments heed outside warnings. But just look at how they browbeat the IMF into giving favourable assessments of their economies.

上述诸多事情中有两个比较困难。 首先，这会很费时间，而且随着事情紧迫性的降低、谈判者深陷繁杂事务之中，单个国家的利益的获取可能会危及整个集体的安全。其次则是固有的两难问题：国际 准则需要强制实施，但是单个国家则要求主权独立。国际货币基金组织主席DominiqueStrauss-Kahn希望设置一个监察处。 Eichengreen则提议，建立一个世界金融组织来负责专门负责纪律监督。欧盟则想设立一个国家监管者的”联合会”，并让国际货币基金组织成为世界金 融监管者，为每个银行发出危机警告信号。这次峰会看来比较会支持欧盟的建议，但是它的想法应该更加大胆些。这个系统只有在政府听从警告时才奏效。但是看看 它们在争取良好经济评级时是怎样恫吓国际货币基金组织的，就会知道这很难奏效了。

Although this summit looks likely to dwell on financial regulation, it cannot ignore the macroeconomics that preoccupied the original Bretton Woods conference all those years ago. As Martin Wolf, a columnist at the Financial Times, explains in a new book‡, the boom was fuelled by the imbalances that grew out of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

虽然这次峰会看似要着力于金融监管问题，但它同样也不能忽视数年前第一次布雷顿森林会议所关注的宏观经济问题。如同《金融时报》专栏作家马丁 沃夫在其新书中所说的那样，1997年亚洲金融危机产生的不均衡为此次金融危机推波助澜。

Illustration by Bill Butcher

Countries that had grown used to incoming foreign capital suffered terribly when it suddenly flowed back out again. To protect themselves in future,they started to run current-account surpluses and to amass foreign-exchange reserves. Spendthrift America and Britain were happy to help Asia save, even if that meant running the corresponding deficits.

过去常常依靠引入外资而发展的国家，在外资撤离时往往会遭受严重冲击。为了在未来保护自己，这些国家开始提升经常账户盈余并且增加外汇储备。即使这意味着要承受相应的财政赤字，喜欢挥霍的美国人和英国人仍乐意帮助亚洲人增加储蓄。

Surpluses are all very well, but they cannot continue to accumulate for ever.Perversely, if they unwind violently, they will create instability.Much of the cheap money recycled from the saving countries found its way into housing and other assets in the West. It was too much to hope that it would flow back out of those assets in an orderly way.

外汇盈余是比较好，但是这不可能持续积累下去。而且一但外汇储备急剧减少，那么将会产生极大的不稳定因素。许多来自储蓄国家的低息贷款投到西方国家房屋以及其它资产上了。因为这些资金数量太大，所以很难完整而有序地从西方国家那些资产中抽身。

The conflict between sovereignty and safety here is even less easy to disentangle than it is in financial regulation. Clearly, no country would agree to live by a rule that it should balance its current account. Raghuram Rajan, a professor at the University of Chicago and a former chief economist at the IMF, points out that current-account surpluses and deficits can indeed help countries cope with shocks and finance investment. At the same time, no international organisation like the IMF could plausibly have the independence or the resources to make a credible promise to back all the economies suffering from capital flight in a crisis.

主权和安全之间的斗争的解决比金融监管更为困难。显然，没有任何国家会同意依靠一个要求其经常账户平衡的规则。前国际货币基金组织首席经济学家，现任芝加哥大学教授RaghuramRajan指出，经常账户盈余和赤字确实能够帮助一个国家应对冲击和处理金融投资问题。与此同时，没有任何一个国际组织（如IMF）可以正当的拥有独立权或足够的资源，给所有在危机中陷入外资逃离困境的经济体一个可靠的保证。

This conundrum leads straight back to a souped-up IMF-still too small to save the world,admittedly, but bigger than today’s, and backed by swap lines from the three large regional central banks, the Fed, the European Central Bankand eventually the People’s Bank of China. For that to work and for the IMF’s help to lose some of its stigma, rich countries will have to admit more emerging economies to the fund’s board. Cue yet more difficult negotiations.

这些难题导致要对国际货币基金组织进行加速扩 充，因为它还太小，不足以拯救整个世界。它肯定要比今天的规模大，而且获得三个大型地区央行（美联储，欧洲央行以及中国人民银行）的换汇额度支持。为了使 上述构想奏效，并让国际货币基金组织摆脱自身的一些弱点，发达国家必须允许更多的新兴国家加入IMF的理事会中来。当然这也预示着更多的谈判困难。

There are two ways of thinking about this weekend’s summit in Washington. To be charitable, look on and wonder at the sheer ambition of taking on so many hard, important questions. A severe financial crisis may be the only time when the technicalities wallowing near the bottom of policymakers’ agendas receive the attention they deserve. But there is a more cynical interpretation. Perhaps the summiteers will bask in the headlines and then, out of the glare of the television lights, set about something disappointingly modest.

看待本周末的华盛顿峰会有两种方式。仁慈一点来看，会 惊讶于其解决如此艰难和重大问题的十足雄心。也许只有在一场严重的金融危机时，被政策制定者所轻视的技术细节才能得到其应有的重视。但也有更悲观的理解： 或许这些与会者将沉浸于媒体的关注，然后当失去了电视镁光灯的聚焦后，他们就令人失望的讨论些不蕴不火的问题。

第一章，第四章，rushor；第二章，第三章Lennow.W