Caveat creditor
诚告债权人

Jul 2nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

A new economic era is dawning
新经济时代正在临近

SOMETIMES you can have too much news. There was so much financial turmoil in the autumn that it was hard to keep up with events. In retrospect it is clear that a change in the economic backdrop akin to the demise of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s has taken place. Investors will be dealing with the aftermath for decades to come.

有时你可能觉得信息泛滥。秋日里发生的金融风暴事件实在太多，很难实时跟进事态的发展。现在回想起来，显而易见的是，与20世纪70年代初的布雷顿森林体系解体背景相似的经济巨变已然发生。而投资者将在未来十年中疲于善后。

From the mid-1980s onwards the answer to big financial setbacks appeared to be simple. Central banks would cut interest rates and, eventually, the stockmarket would recover. It worked after Black Monday (the day in October 1987 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 23%) and the Asian crisis of 1997-98. It did not rescue shares after the dotcom bust but the easing led to the housing boom and the underpricing of risk in credit markets.

从之前20世纪80年代中期的经验来看，解决大型金融衰退的方法很简单：央行削减利率，最终股市恢复如初。这在黑色星期一（1987年10月间，道琼斯工业平均指数单日下跌了23%）以及1997-98亚洲金融危机时都发挥了作用。然而在网络泡沫破裂后，该方法却未能力挽股市于狂澜，反而开启了房市的繁荣并且压低了信贷市场的风险定价。

Easing monetary policy was pretty popular. It lowered borrowing costs for companies and homebuyers. To the extent that savers earned lower returns on their deposit accounts, they were usually compensated by a rebound in the value of their equity holdings.

放松货币的政策一度非常流行。它降低了公司以及购房者的借贷成本。而就投资者而言，尽管这减少了他们存款账户上的收益，但股票价格的回升通常能够补偿他们。

Indeed, monetary easing appeared to be costless. When policymakers cut interest rates in the 1960s and 1970s they often ignited inflationary pressures. Not so in the 1990s. Whether that was down to the brilliance of central banks or the deflationary pressures emanating from China and India is still a matter of debate.
确实，放松货币似乎毫无代价。20世纪60及70年代，当政策制定者们调低利率时，他们往往会引发通胀的压力。而90年代时却并未如此。而这到底是归功于央行的聪明才智还是发源于中国以及印度的通缩压力仍是争论的焦点。

This time around conventional monetary policy has not been enough. The authorities have also had to resort to quantitative easing, using the balance-sheets of central banks to ensure the funding of clearing banks and to keep the lid on bond yields. And there has been a huge dollop of fiscal easing. Some countries’ budget deficits have soared to 10% of GDP.

如今，仅用传统的货币政策却远未足够。当局也不得不求助于量化宽松，即利用央行的资产负债表以保证筹资帮助银行清理有毒资产以及抑制债券收益。财政宽松也已经做出巨大努力。某些国家的预算赤字已激增至国民生产总值的10%以上。

The fiscal packages have proved rather less popular than monetary easing. Initially they were seen as bail-outs for greedy bankers. But the focus of criticism has shifted to the deterioration of government finances and the potential for higher future taxes, borrowing costs and inflation.

财政系列措施被证明比货币宽松政策更不受欢迎。起初，他们就被视为是对贪婪银行家的援救。而关注的焦点也从批评逐渐转移至对政府财政恶化以及未来税收，借贷成本与通胀增长的可能性之上。

An eerie parallel seems to be at work. There was a time, back in the 1950s and 1960s, when Keynesian stimulus packages were seen as costless. Governments thought they could fine-tune their economies out of recession. Eventually it was realised that the ultimate result of too much stimulus was higher inflation and excessive government involvement in the economy. Keynesian demand management was abandoned in favour of the monetary approach. The past couple of years have demonstrated that the use of monetary policy had its costs too, not in consumer inflation but in rising debt levels and growing asset bubbles.

不堪的历史似乎即将重演。回溯20世纪五六十年代，当时看来，凯恩斯刺激系列措施被认为是毫无代价的。政府认为他们能够微调经济，便能摆脱衰退。最终，他们却意识到太多刺激的结果仅仅是更高的通胀以及政府过多的卷入经济运作之中。倾向于货币调整的当局弃用了凯恩斯需求管理理论。而过去的十数年也已证明，运用货币政策也有其代价，尽管不会产生消费者通胀，但会提高债务水平以及催生资产泡沫。

The authorities never even considered allowing the financial crisis to continue unhindered. The damage to the economy would have been too great. But the costs of this latest round of government action will be big. Investors will have it in mind during the next boom that governments will rescue the largest banks, slash rates, intervene in the markets and run huge deficits. In other words the moral-hazard problem will be even greater.

当局从未想过让金融危机持续蔓延。这对经济的打击将会是巨大的。但是，上一轮政府行动的代价也是巨大的：投资者在下次繁荣时将牢记于心的是，政府将会拯救最大的银行，大幅调低利率，干预市场以及严重赤字。换言之，道德风险问题只会变得更大。

Before we get there, however, the authorities will have to work out an exit strategy. Past cycles have shown that the tightening phase, after a long period of low rates, can be very dangerous. Bond markets were savaged in 1994 when the Federal Reserve started to raise rates from 3%. What will bond markets do if central banks also unload the holdings acquired during the crisis? And how will stockmarkets perform if interest rates and taxes are being raised at the same time?

然而，当我们真到那步田地之前，权威将不得不设计一套全身之计。过去周期表明，经过长时间低利率之后的紧缩阶段将会是十分危险的。1994年时，当美联储开始从3%升息时，债券市场剧烈波动。又，当央行开始出售危机时购入的股权时，债券市场又会做何反应？而当利率与税收同时上调时，股市又会如何波动？

Given these risks, the new era will surely be a lot more fragile than the one that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s. There is simply more scope for policymakers to go wrong.

考虑到这些风险，新时代肯定会比20世纪80、90年代同期更为不堪一击。决策者更容易抑或更多地做出错误决策。

In addition, the global financial system has lost its anchor. When Bretton Woods broke down and the last link to gold was severed, there was in theory nothing to stop governments from creating money. It took independent central banks, armed with inflation targets, to reassure creditors. But now central banks have shown they have another priority apart from controlling inflation: bailing out the banks.

此外，全球金融体系已然是无本之木。当布雷顿森林体系分崩离析之时，与黄金的最后联系便已断绝。理论上已没有任何东西能够阻止政府滥印货币了。这需要拥有通胀目标的独立央行以安抚债权人。但是现在，央行已将另一目标优先至于控制通胀之上：拯救银行。

The new era is one in which governments are using floating exchange rates, near-zero interest rates and vast fiscal deficits to protect their economies. None of this is good news for creditors, who will surely not put up with the situation for long. The actions they take to protect their portfolios—demanding higher bond yields, pushing for fixed exchange rates—will define the next economic system.

新时代中，政府将运用浮动汇率，接近于零的利率以及巨额财政赤字以保护经济。而对债权人来说，这些没一个是好消息。债权人必定不会对该处境容忍过久。而他们保护其投资组合行为将是，要求更高的债券收益率，推高固定汇率，而这些对下个经济体系起到决定作用。