[2009.4.23] The monetary-policy maze 货币政策的迷宫

Central banks
中央银行

The monetary-policy maze
货币政策的迷宫

Apr 23rd 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

The simple rules by which central banks lived have crumbled. A messier, more political future awaits
各国中央银行的生存法则轰然倒下。等待它们的将是更加紊乱、更加政治性的未来。

Illustration by Derek Bacon

IN THE world that existed before the financial crisis, central bankers were triumphant. They had defeated inflation and tamed the business cycle. And they had developed a powerful intellectual consensus on how to do their job, summarised recently by David Blanchflower, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, as “one tool, one target”. The tool was the short-term interest rate, the target was price stability.

在金融危机尚未袭来之时，央行官员们个个得意洋洋。他们击退了通货膨胀，驯服了经济周期。他们还就如何开展他们的工作达成了一项强大的智力共识。英格兰银行货币政策委员会委员David Blanchflower最近将这一共识概括为“一种工具，一个目标”。这里说的工具就是短期利率，而目标则是价格稳定。

This minimalist formula fitted the laissez-faire temper of the times. A growing array of financial markets could price risk and allocate credit efficiently. Central bankers had merely to calibrate their interest-rate tools and all other markets would automatically adjust. Central banks still cared about financial stability and full employment, but could argue these were best served by stabilising prices—without, if you please, interference from politicians.

这种极度简化的公式很适合当时放任自由的风气。越来越多的金融市场能够有效地为风险定价并分配信贷。央行官员们只需要调整他们手中的利率工具，所有其它市场就会自动调整。各国央行那时仍然在乎金融稳定和全民就业，但是它们认为实现这些目标的最佳途径是稳定价格——抱歉，无需政客的干预。

The financial crisis has upended all that. The business cycle was supposedly subdued, yet the world is in the deepest recession since the 1930s. Deflation has become a more dangerous enemy than inflation; with interest rates in many countries at or close to zero, central banks have had to reach for other tools.

金融危机则将这种观点全盘颠覆。经济周期按理说是被控制住了，但是全世界都处于自20世纪30年代以来最严重的经济衰退。通货紧缩已经变成比通货膨胀更危险的敌人；随着很多国家的利率都达到或接近于零，各国央行已经不得不另寻其它政策工具。

More fundamentally, the collapse of stable relationships in financial markets has forced central banks to make judgments they once left to the private sector. From lenders of last resort, they became lenders of first resort when banks stopped trusting each other. They are, increasingly, arbiters of which types of borrowers get credit. With the reputation of market discipline in tatters, central bankers will get vast new supervisory powers. All this is dragging central banks back towards political turf from which they had been distancing themselves for years.

更重要的是，金融市场中各稳定关系的崩溃迫使各国央行作出那些一度留给私人部门去作的判断。当各家银行不再相互信任的时候，各国央行就从最后借款人变成了最先借款人。它们正越来越多地充当决定哪几种借款人可获得信贷的裁决人角色。随着市场秩序名声扫地，央行官员们将获得新的巨大的监管权。所有这些将把各国央行重新拖回它们多年来一直竭力疏远的政治地盘。

Central bankers still believe that once the crisis has passed they will return to their pre-2007 roles as apolitical technocrats pulling a single lever and eyeing a single variable. It may be a vain hope. “When you question the basic premise which you have worked under for the last 15 to 20 years, which is that markets are rational and efficient, there is a case for a different approach to both monetary policy and regulation,” says Thomas Mayer, chief European economist of Deutsche Bank.

央行官员们仍然相信这场危机一旦过去，他们就将恢复2007年之前的角色，即不带政治色彩的技术官僚，手拉唯一的操纵杆，眼盯唯一的变量。这个愿望恐怕要落空。“当你质疑‘市场都是理性而高效的’这个过去15-20年工作的前提时，就有理由换一种处理货币政策和市场监管的方法了。”德意志银行首席欧洲经济学家Thomas Mayer说。

Start with the most immediate question: what tools will central banks use to steer the economy in the near future? Before the crisis almost all leading central banks operated through the short-term (usually overnight) money-market rate. By itself, that rate mattered much less to economic activity than, say, those on 12-month corporate loans or 30-year mortgages. But the links between these and official rates were stable enough to allow the central banks to influence overall financial conditions and hence the entire economy.

从当下最亟待回答的问题说起：在不久的将来各国央行将使用哪些政策工具来驾驭经济呢？危机前，几乎所有主要国家的央行都通过短期（一般是隔夜）资本市场利率来运行。这一利率本身对经济活动的重要性远不如，比如说，一年期企业贷款利率或三十年期抵押贷款利率。但是这些利率和官方利率之间的关系的稳定程度足够让各国央行影响总体金融情况，从而掌控整体经济。

Those links came under strain before the crisis, as a global saving glut caused a decoupling of long- and short-term rates. During the crisis they disintegrated as lenders worried that loans could not be sold on or would not be repaid. Central banks responded by expanding their lending operations through a mixture of more types of credit and collateral, longer terms and more counterparties (see chart 1). The Federal Reserve began lending to investment banks. The European Central Bank (ECB) guaranteed unlimited funds for up to six months instead of one week. Some have gone much further. The Bank of Japan has bought equities and the Swiss National Bank has intervened in the currency markets.

这些联系在这场危机前受到了压力，这是因为全球储蓄过剩导致了长期利率水平和短期利率水平的脱钩。在这场危机中，这些联系进一步解体，这是由于借款人担心贷款要么无法被出售给下家，要么无法得到偿还。各国央行对此的反应是通过采取混和了增加贷款和抵押品种类、延长还款期限、增加交易对方数量等方法的政策来扩大借贷（见图表1）。美联储开始向各投资银行发放贷款。欧洲央行担保的无上限贷款期限从一周增加到半年。一些国家的央行采取的政策则大胆得多。日本银行干脆收购股票，而瑞士国家银行已经干预了货币市场。

Even if the crisis is getting no worse, it is not over and most of the world is in recession. No central bank is about to withdraw any emergency measures. Some are contemplating new ones. Both the Bank of Canada and the ECB are considering outright purchases of government or corporate debt to boost the quantity of credit.

即使这场危机已经见底，它还没有结束而大部分国家还处在经济衰退中。也没有哪国央行即将撤回任何的应急措施。一些国家的央行正在考虑采取新措施。加拿大银行和欧洲央行都在考虑直接购买政府或企业的债务以提高信贷量。

Central bankers assume they will wind down these measures when the crisis ends. The Fed, for example, is required by law to end some when the need is no longer urgent. It charges a penalty for some programmes so that borrowers will return to private markets once these have healed. An exit strategy is necessary to “end up with a market-based economy that is more balanced and more resilient,” Donald Kohn, the Fed’s vice-chairman, has said. Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has said the exit strategy will be dictated by the outlook for inflation and that central banks should not support markets that cannot survive on their own.

央行官员们设想一旦危机过去他们就会逐步撤销这些措施。例如，根据法律，美联储被要求在需要不再紧急的情况下取消一部分这类措施。美联储还对一些项目收取罚金，这样一来一旦私人市场复原借款人就会回去。美联储副主席唐纳德•科恩说必须要有一项抽身策略以“最终获得更加平衡而有韧性的以市场为基础的经济”。英格兰银行行长默文•金则说抽身策略将取决于通胀前景，而中央银行不应该支持那些无法靠自身力量生存的市场。

In need of new targets
需要新目标

But withdrawal may be harder than it sounds. A study last year by IMF staff asked, “What will ‘normal’ look like?” It argued: “There is no expectation that markets will return to their pre-crisis mode of operation soon, if ever. Market spreads taking account of credit and liquidity risk had arguably become too compressed pre-August 2007, and are now wider than they should be long-term. But it is not clear what the appropriate level should be.”

然而抽身出来听起来容易做起来难。去年国际货币基金组织职员所作的一项研究提出一个问题：“‘正常’将会是什么样子？”该研究认为：“没有人预期市场将很快恢复到危机前的运行模式，即便有人预期它还会恢复的话。计算了信贷风险和流动性风险的市场差价在2007年8月份之前被过分压缩了，尽管这个观点尚有争议。而现在的市场差价却高于合理的长期水平。不过还不清楚怎样才算是合理的水平。”

After the Bank of Japan became the primary supplier of overnight funds to banks earlier this decade, the interbank market atrophied. It remains a fraction of its former size. European banks today are now heavily dependent on the Fed for dollars (supplied via swap lines with local central banks) and on the ECB for six-month euro funds.

日本银行在本世纪第一个十年头几年里成为银行隔夜融资的主要提供者之后，银行间市场就萎缩了。它目前的规模只有以前的一小部分。今天欧洲各银行的美元贷款严重依赖美联储（通过美联储与银行所在国央行间的货币互换协议供应）而半年期欧元则严重依赖欧洲央行。

A tepid recovery will make central banks reluctant to withdraw support from critical markets, especially if business or politicians protest. In 1942 the Fed agreed to hold down long-term interest rates to help the Treasury finance the war; it did not extract itself from the commitment until 1951. When the time comes to sell its large holdings of mortgage debt, it may face resistance from America’s housing lobby.

疲软的经济复苏将会使各国央行不愿意停止支持那些关键性的市场，尤其是如果面临商界和政界的抗议的话。1942年美联储同意压低长期利率来帮助美国财政部为战争筹资；直到1951年美联储才取消该项承诺。当是时候抛售手中巨额的抵押贷款债务时，美联储或许将面临美国住宅产业游说集团的阻力。

Central banks may not just have to rethink their tools. They may also have to rethink their goals. Governments and central banks had come to agree that they should focus only on achieving low and stable inflation. The Fed by law must emphasise employment and inflation equally, but in practice it, too, targets inflation. This consensus was forged in central banks’ research departments and universities, and its adoption paralleled a rise by academics to the top ranks of central banks: among the leading lights are not only Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, and Mr King but also Lucas Papademos, vice-president of the ECB, and Lars Svensson, a deputy governor of Sweden’s Riksbank.

各国央行或许不仅要重新考虑它们的政策工具。他们也许还得重新思考它们的政策目标。各国政府和各国央行已经达成一致，即它们必须集中力量确保通胀稳定在低水平。根据法律，美联储必须给与就业和通胀同样的重视，但实际操作上美联储也主要以控制通胀为目标。这一共识是在各国央行的研究部门和各所大学里达成的，而其获得采纳也与学者纷纷被提拔到各国央行的领导岗位上正好在时间上重合。这些学者中不仅包括美联储主席本•伯南克，英格兰银行行长金，还有欧洲央行副行长Lucas Papademos，以及瑞典央行副行长Lars Svensson。

Macroeconomics in general has come under fire for depending too much on assumptions of efficient markets and its inability to incorporate the spasms of emotion that create economic manias and panics. “As a monetary policymaker I have found the ‘cutting edge’ of current macroeconomic research totally inadequate in helping to resolve the problems we currently face,” said Mr Blanchflower, a labour economist, in a speech he gave on March 24th.

宏观经济学总体上由于过度依赖高效市场之假设以及无力整合导致经济疯狂和恐慌的情感波动而饱受诟病。“作为一个货币政策制定者我发现眼下宏观经济研究的‘前沿’在帮助解决我们目前面临的问题方面完全是不够的，”Blanchflower先生这位劳务市场经济学家在他3月24日发表的一场演说中如是说。

The exclusive focus on low and stable inflation is being questioned for the same reason. The recession began against a backdrop of price stability—as did America’s Depression and Japan’s lost decade. “Inflation targeting alone will not suffice,” Mr Blanchflower said. “This approach failed to prevent the build-up of imbalances that presaged the crisis and was insufficient in dealing with failing banks and financial-market stress as the crisis developed. There is now a consensus that new tools are required to regulate the financial sector and prevent such crises in the future.”

单独专注于确保通胀维持在稳定的低水平也出于同样的理由受到质疑。目前这场经济衰退是在价格稳定的背景下发生的——美国的大萧条和日本失落的十年同样如此。“光有通胀目标制是不够的，” Blanchflower先生说。“这一方法不仅无法防止失衡的累积——而这正预示了这场危机的到来——而且也不足以在危机发展的过程中应付陷入困境的银行和金融市场的压力。目前已经形成这样一种共识，即需要有新的政策工具来监管金融业并防止这样的危机在未来再次发生。”

Mr Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, argued before the crisis that bubbles are hard to identify before they burst. Pricking them is even harder without wrecking the economy. Central banks should act only if bubbles threaten price stability; otherwise, they should wait and clean up after they burst. The shallow recession that followed the tech-stock boom of the late 1990s seemed to vindicate them.

伯南克和他的前任，阿兰•格林斯潘，在这场危机之前均认为泡沫在破碎前难以识别。在不伤害经济的情况下戳破泡沫则更难。各国央行只有在泡沫威胁到价格稳定时才应该行动；否则，它们应该等待泡沫破碎后再收拾残局。上世纪九十年代科技股繁荣后随之而来的温和衰退似乎佐证了他们的观点。

Recent experience does not help their argument. William White, who retired last year as chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, argues that because central banks were focused on price stability in the medium term, they allowed bubbles to form. The bursting of these raises the risk of deflation in the long run.

最近的经验却无助于他们的论点。威廉•怀特去年刚从国际清算银行首席经济学家的职位上退休，他认为由于各国央行把注意力集中于中期价格稳定，这就为泡沫的生成提供了可能。这些泡沫的破碎长期来看提高了通货紧缩的风险。

Inflation in many countries will be negative this year mainly because of cheaper fuel. But even in 2010, when that effect is fading, inflation will stay below the 2% most central banks define as price stability. In its latest forecast, published on April 22nd, the IMF says prices will fall in America, Japan and Switzerland (see chart 2).

许多国家今年的通胀率都将为负数，这主要是由于燃料价格将更加低廉。但甚至到这一作用将逐渐消退的2010年，通胀率仍将处于大多数央行定义为价格稳定的2%这一水平以下。在于4月22日发布的最近一次预测中，国际货币经济组织说美国、日本和瑞士的价格都将下降（见图表2）。

To be sure, many central banks are more sanguine, noting that inflation expectations are, in the jargon, well-anchored. Many in the market fear that once the crisis passes central banks will be too slow to raise rates and wind down their credit programmes, unleashing inflation. But persistently falling prices would constrain central banks’ ability to boost growth, because they would be unable to push interest rates below inflation—ie, make them negative in real terms. Using the Taylor rule, a popular rule of thumb, economists at Deutsche Bank suggest that given today’s degree of economic slack and inflation rates, short-term rates should be negative in America, Britain and the euro area. Instead, they are at or near zero (see chart 3). Were deflation to deepen, real interest rates would rise, further hampering economic activity.

可以肯定的是，很多央行都更加乐观，指出通胀预期都是，用术语来讲，高度锚定的。很多市场人士担心一旦危机过去，各国央行提高利率和逐步撤消信贷项目的速度过慢，将从而释放通胀。但是持续下跌的价格将限制各国央行刺激增长的能力，因为他们将不能够将利率推低到通胀率以下——也就是说，将实际利率保持在零以下。利用泰勒规则，一种常用的经验性方法，德意志银行的经济学家们认为考虑到目前的经济松弛和通胀率，美国、英国和欧元区的短期利率应该为负。事实上，它们处于或接近于零（见图表3）。假设通货紧缩将加深的话，实际通胀率将上升，从而进一步阻碍经济活动。

Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, noted recently that the Fed has hit, or all but hit, the zero limit twice this decade. That is more often than earlier simulations had indicated—and it suggests higher inflation targets should be considered. Another proposal is that central banks aim at a path for the price level rather than the inflation rate. Suppose that this path rose by 2% each year. Then after deflation of 1% in year one, the central bank would aim for inflation of more than 2% in later years (inflation of 5% in year two, say) to bring prices back up to the target. Greg Mankiw, a Harvard University economist, goes further, suggesting that inflation simply be given lower priority. “There are worse things than inflation,” he says. “We have them today.”

波士顿储备银行主席Eric Rosengren最近谈到美联储在这个十年中两次已经或几乎将利率降到零。这样的频率高于先前模拟得出的结果——这显示应该考虑将通胀目标设定得更高。另一项建议是各国央行瞄准一条价格水平轨迹而非通胀率。假设这条轨迹每年上升2%。那么在第一年出现1%的通货紧缩后，央行在之后的几年中将设定超过2%的年通胀率（比如第二年通胀率为5%）从而使价格重新回到目标水平内。哈佛大学经济学家Greg Mankiw走得更远，他认为就应该降低通胀的优先程度。“有比通胀更麻烦的难题，”他说。“眼下我们就面临着这些难题。”

Altering or abandoning inflation targets would make a big dent in the credibility that central banks took decades to establish and is therefore highly unlikely. And although benign neglect of bubbles no longer appears an option, central bankers are not ready to advocate pre-emptive popping, because the problem of identifying them early enough remains unsolved. Better, they argue, to use regulation to identify and defuse dangerous accumulations of risk in the financial system.

修改或放弃通胀目标将大幅削弱央行花了几十年来才建立起来的公信力，因而可能性很小。尽管对泡沫的善意忽略看来已不再是一种选择，央行官员们还没准备好提倡先发制人的去泡沫政策，这是因为在足够早的时候识别泡沫的问题仍然没有解决。他们认为最好还是利用监管来识别并平息金融系统中风险的危险累积。

The term for this is “macroprudential” supervision. Last year Mr Bernanke laid out how this would differ from the normal supervision of individual banks. He said a single firm may have an acceptable exposure to a particular type of risk that would be unacceptable if replicated across many firms. Similarly, a supervisor might press a particular bank to lend less during a slump whereas a “macroprudential supervisor would recognise that, for the system as a whole,” that could make matters worse.

这种监管有个专门的名称，叫做“宏观审慎”。伯南克去年详细阐述了这种监管与常规的对各银行单独监管之间的区别。他说单独的一家金融企业对某种特定风险的敞口或许是可以接受的，但是很多家金融企业都复制这样的风险敞口就不可接受了。类似的，监管者也许会迫使某家特定的银行在经济衰退期间减少借贷，而一个“宏观审慎的监管者则会认识到对于整个系统来说，”这只会使事情变得更糟。

The embrace of macroprudential supervision represents a reversal of another pre-2007 trend—for central banks to shed supervisory duties and concentrate on monetary policy. Academics argued that supervision was a distraction from the pursuit of price stability and created potential conflicts: a central bank might run an inflationary policy to cushion a failing banking system, or prop up an insolvent bank to cushion the economy. Central banks in Australia and Britain gave up some or all of their supervisory roles. The ECB was created with none.

接受宏观审慎监管代表着另一2007年前潮流的逆转——即各国央行卸下监管职责转而集中注意力于货币政策。学者们认为监管让央行在努力实现价格稳定的过程中分心，从而产生潜在的冲突：一家央行也许会采取通胀政策来缓冲陷入困境的银行体系带来的影响，或是支撑一家资不抵债的银行来缓和经济受到的冲击。澳大利亚和英国的央行已经放弃了部分或全部的监管角色。欧洲央行创建时就没有被赋予任何的监管职能。

The run on Northern Rock, a British bank, and problems at state-owned German banks were blamed in part on inadequate involvement by the central bank in supervision. This year the Bank of England received a more formal role in overseeing banks. A commission headed by Jacques de Larosière, a former head of both the Bank of France and the IMF, has recommended that the ECB chair a new European Systemic Risk Council made up of its member central banks and supervisors, but that it remain out of firm-specific supervision. The Fed until recently was the leading candidate to fill the American Treasury’s proposed job of “systemic risk regulator”, empowered to examine any corner of the financial system and act against emerging risks.

发生在诺森罗克这家英国银行的挤兑和几家德国国有银行的问题被部分归咎于央行参与监管不足。今年英格兰银行接受了一个更加正式的监管银行的角色。一个由前法兰西银行行长、前国际货币基金组织主席Jacques de Larosière领导的委员会已经建议欧洲央行主持一个新的由各成员国央行和监管机构组成的欧洲系统风险理事会，同时避免介入具体到金融企业的监管。美联储直到最近都是美国财政部建议设立的“系统性风险监管者”一职的最热门侯选人，该监管者被授权检查金融体系的任何角落并针对各种抬头的风险采取反制措施。

Yet macroprudential supervision smacks of a fad that will not live up to its billing. It faces the same difficulty as conventional monetary policy does in spotting and popping bubbles. Moreover, there has been no correlation between a central bank’s supervisory responsibilities and its ability to prevent or deal with the crisis. The Fed is America’s most powerful and best informed financial regulator but the trouble began under its nose. Neither Australia’s central bank nor Canada’s has any supervisory duties, yet the financial systems of both countries have been virtually unscathed. This record has less to do with who supervises the financial system than with local laws and behaviour. Subprime mortgages peaked at about 1% of the total in Australia and 2.5% in Canada, compared with more than 14% in the United States.

然而宏观审慎监管有点像那种实际效用并没有宣传的那么好的时尚品。跟常规货币政策一样，它也面临着识别并去除泡沫的困难。此外，央行的监管责任与其防止或应付危机的能力之间并没有联系。美联储是美国权力最大、信息渠道最多的金融监管机构，但是麻烦正是在它眼皮底下开始的。澳大利亚和加拿大的央行都没有任何监管职责，然而这两个国家的金融体系基本上没有受损。这些事实与其说跟谁监管金融体系的关系有关，还不如说是跟当地法律和行为有关。次级抵押贷款在澳大利亚和加拿大的最高水平分别是1%和2.5%，而在美国则是超过14%。

New combatants in the political arena
政治舞台的新斗士们

Rightly or wrongly, central banks will emerge from the crisis with a bigger role in the markets and in supervision. This will challenge another element of the pre-2007 consensus: that central banks be as far removed from politics as possible. Formal independence insulated the central bank from politicians’ desire to play fast and loose with inflation. And part of the appeal of “one tool, one target” was that it made monetary policy explicitly a technical rather than political affair.

对也好错也罢，当这场危机最终过去的时候，央行将在市场中和监管上发挥更重要的作用。这将挑战2007年前达成的共识中一个重要的部分：即央行尽可能地远离政治。先前的独立性保护央行不受政客们轻率玩弄通胀之欲望的影响。而“一种工具，一个目标”这一口号的吸引力部分在于它使得货币政策明显地成为一种技术性而非政治性事务。

The divide between central banking and politics looks much less clean today. Unconventional policies often require a central bank to make loans that may not be repaid in full. Because taxpayers will bear any losses, finance ministries need some say. Credit allocation and tighter regulation make some firms winners and others losers, and so require more public accountability. With interest rates at zero, the Fed and the Bank of England are buying government debt to boost the quantity of credit and the money supply. But governments could come to rely on such purchases to finance budget deficits. The potential for political conflict extends abroad too. Having cut its rates to zero, the Swiss National Bank has bought foreign currency to drive down the Swiss franc. Some labelled this competitive devaluation.

央行运行和政治之间的隔阂今天看来比以前模糊得多。非常规政策常常要求央行实施款项可能无法全额收回的贷款。由于任何损失都将由纳税人承担，各国财政部需要获得部分决定权。信贷分配和更严格的监管使得某些企业成功，另一些失败，因而需要更强的公共问责制。由于利率处于零，美联储和英格兰银行正通过购买政府债务来增加信贷总量和货币供应。然而各国政府也可能依靠这样的购买来为财政赤字融资。潜在的政治冲突亦延伸到了国境之外。瑞士国家银行已经将利率降到零，并且通过购买外汇来压低瑞士法郎的汇率。某些人把这种举动界定为竞争性贬值。

Managing such conflicts is a delicate job. The Fed and the Treasury attempted to assuage concerns by releasing a joint statement affirming the Fed’s sole responsibility for price stability. Mr King broke a longstanding silence on fiscal policy to warn the British government against adding to a fast-growing national debt.

管理这些冲突是一件微妙的工作。美联储和美国财政部试图通过发表一项联合声明确认前者是唯一对价格稳定负责的机构来减轻外界对这方面的忧虑。金行长打破长时间在财政政策上的沉默，警告英国政府不要再继续增加急速上升的国家债务。

Such tensions are unlikely seriously to dent the institutional protections built around central banks in recent decades. Last year Japanese opposition parties blocked the appointments of two candidates to head the Bank of Japan on the ground they were insufficiently independent of the government. There are exceptions: Iceland’s government amended the law so that it could fire David Oddsson, the head of its central bank. But Mr Oddsson had presided, first as prime minister and then as central-bank governor, over the policies that led to the country’s crisis.

这种紧张状态不可能严重削弱近几十年来在央行周围构筑的制度性保障。去年日本反对党否决了两位日本银行行长侯选人提名，理由是他们对于政府的独立性不足。也有例外：冰岛政府修改了法律从而使其能够解雇冰岛央行行长David Oddsson。但正是原先担任首相后来又担任央行行长的Oddsson制定了最后导致该国危机的那些政策。

Central bankers’ jobs matter even more than they did before 2007. At the same time, they have been drawing more criticism and political scrutiny. Public disapproval ratings have risen notably for Mr Bernanke, the Bank of England and the ECB. They are having to defend their policies to the public as well as to the markets. Mr Bernanke agreed to a profile by “60 Minutes”, a news programme, in which he strolled down the streets of his hometown. Mr King sat for an interview with the BBC to explain quantitative easing. The six members of the ECB’s executive board gave 200 interviews last year.

现在央行官员的工作较2007年前更重要了。与此同时，他们也受到了更多的批评和政治上的详细审查。公众对伯南克、英格兰银行和欧洲央行的不支持率已经明显上升。他们不得不在公众和市场面前捍卫其政策。伯南克许可了“六十分钟”这个新闻节目中他沿着家乡的街道往前走的形象。而金行长则坐下来接受英国广播公司的采访解释定量宽松政策。欧洲央行执行董事会的六位成员去年接受了200场采访。

After the Riksbank slashed its interest-rate target to 0.5% on April 21st, its governor, Stefan Ingves, took questions from the public in an online chat session. Asked what he liked most about his job, the former economics professor said that what he used to study in theory he now gets to put into practice. He added: “It’s fun to go to work every day.” You may wonder how many of his peers would agree with him.

瑞典央行4月21日将目标利率调低到0.5%后，该行行长Stefan Ingves在网上聊天室接受了公众提问。当被问及他最喜欢他工作的哪一点时，这位前经济学教授说他最喜欢的是以前在理论上研究的东西现在可以用到实践中。他补充说：“每天去上班是一种乐趣。”你或许会好奇他的同行中有几个人赞同他的观点。

 

译者/premiermao：http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=18936