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策马翻译培训 EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING | GV W. M 1 www.cemachina.com EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING 欧 盟 口 译 训 练 人间有情 策马有译 www.cemachina.com Copyright © 2010 CEMACHINA.COM, All Rights Reserved 策马翻译培训 EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING | GV W. M 2 www.cemachina.com 我们仍在“盲人摸象” WHY THE FINANCIAL TURMOIL IS AN ELEPHANT IN A DARK ROOM “I was gradually coming to believe that the US economy's greatest strength was its resiliency – its ability to absorb disruptions and recover, often in ways and at a pace you'd never be able to predict, much less dictate.” Alan Greenspan, ‘The Age of Turbulence'. “我越来越相信，美国经济最强大的力 量在于它的弹性：那种化解混乱并且复苏的 能力。它发挥作用的方式和步伐常常让人根 本无法预测，更不用说去操控它了。”—— 《动荡年代》(The Age of Turbulence)，艾伦• 格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)著。 We all hope that Mr Greenspan proves right about the US economy. The Federal Reserve's rate cut yesterday will succeed if Mr Greenspan's view is correct. Yet many fear he is wrong. Many, too, blame him for the current mess. So how did the world economy fall into its predicament? 我们都希望格林斯潘先生关于美国经 济的论述是正确的。如果他的观点正确，美 联储(Fed)在本周二的降息就能够成功实现 目标。不过，也有很多的人担心他错了。还 有许多的人则因为当前的混乱而对他加以指 责。那么，全球经济究竟是怎样陷入目前困 境的呢？ One view is that this crisis is a product of a fundamentally defective financial system. An e-mail I received this week laid out the charge: the crisis, it asserted, is the product of “greedy, immoral, solely self-interested and self-delusional decisions made throughout the 2000s, and earlier, by very real human beings at the very top of the financial food chain”. 有一种观点认为：这场危机是存在根本 性缺陷的金融体系的产物。我上周收到的一 封电子邮件就提出了这样的指控：它断言， 这场危机“正是那些处于金融食物链最顶端 的人物在 21 世纪开始的前前后后所做出的 贪婪、不道德、极端自私自利并且自欺欺人 的决策”的后果。 The argument would be that a liberalised 这个论点的意思是：自由的金融体系不 策马翻译培训 EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING | GV W. M 3 www.cemachina.com financial system, which offers opportunities for extraordinary profits, has a parallel capacity for generating self-feeding mistakes. The story is familiar: financial innovation and an enthusiasm for risk-taking generate rapid increases in credit, which drive up asset prices, thereby justifying still more credit expansion and yet higher asset prices. Then comes a top to asset prices, panic selling, a credit freeze, mass insolvency and recession. An unregulated credit system, then, is inherently unstable and destabilising. 仅提供获得非凡收益的机遇，它还同样具备 产生自发性错误的能力。这样的叙述并不陌 生：金融创新和冒险的热情催生了信贷的快 速增长，进而推动资产价格上涨，从而让更 大规模的信贷扩张以及更高的资产价格显得 合情合理。接踵而至的，便会是资产价格触 顶、恐慌性抛售、信贷冻结、大批人失去偿 还能力，最后是步入衰退。因此，一个缺乏 监管的信贷系统，与生俱来地缺乏稳定，并 会产生动荡。 This is the line of argument associated with the late Hyman Minsky, who taught at Washington University, St Louis. George Magnus of UBS distinguished himself by arguing early that the present crisis is a “Minsky moment”: “A collapse of debt structures and entities in the wake of asset price decay, the breakdown of ‘ normal' banking functions and the active intervention of central banks ” . This follows an extraordinary dependence on credit growth in the recent cycle (see chart). 这个论证过程让人想起了已经故去的、 曾在圣路易斯的华盛顿大学 (Washington University) 教 的 海 曼•明 斯 基 (Hyman Minsky)。瑞银(UBS)的乔治•玛格纳斯(George Magnus)一鸣惊人，他很早就指出目前的危机 是一个“明斯基时刻”(Minsky moment)：“随 着资产价格下跌，信贷结构和实体垮台，‘正 常'银行功能崩溃，央行开始积极干预”。而 在这一切发生之前，在最近的经济周期中， 经济对信贷增长极其依赖（见图）。 Economists would offer contrasting explanations for this fragility. One is in terms of rational responses to incentives. Another is in terms of the short-sightedness of human beings. The contrast is between misdirected intelligence and folly. 对于这种脆弱性，经济学家们会拿出两 种不同的解释。一个是关于对激励的理性反 应，另一个是关于人类的短视。区别在于被 误导的智慧和天生的愚蠢。 Those who emphasise rationality can readily point to the incentives for the financial sector to take undue risk. This is the result of the interaction of “asymmetric information” – the fact that insiders know more than anybody else what is going on – with “moral hazard” – the perception that the government will rescue financial institutions if enough of them fall into difficulty at the same time. There is evident truth in both propositions: if, for example, the UK 那些强调合理性的人，可以很容易地将 矛头指向那些刺激，是它们使得金融行业承 担过多风险。这是“信息不对称”（内部人士 得到的信息多于其他人）与“道德风险”（认 为如果很多金融机构同时遭遇困境，政府将 出手挽救）相互作用的结果。这两点都有明 显的道理：例如，如果英国政府认为有必要 挽救北岩银行(Northern Rock)这样规模的抵 押贷款银行，其中就存在着极大的道德风险。 策马翻译培训 EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING | GV W. M 4 www.cemachina.com government feels obliged to rescue a modest-sized mortgage bank, such as Northern Rock, moral hazard is rife. Yet it is also evident that everybody involved – borrowers, lenders and regulators – can be swept away in tides of all-too-human euphoria and panic. To err is human. That is one of the reasons regulation is rarely countercyclical: regulators can be swept away, as well. The financial deregulation and securitisation of the most recent cycle merely encouraged an unusually wide circle of people to believe they would be winners, while somebody else would bear the risks and, ultimately, the costs. 然而，同样明显的是，其中涉及的所有 人——借款人、贷款人和监管者——都将被 过于人性化的快乐和恐慌潮水所吞噬。人非 圣贤，孰能无过？这就是监管很少具有反周 期性表现的原因之一：监管机构也可以被吞 噬。在最近的经济周期中，金融监管放松和 资产证券化的结果，只是导致无数人相信自 己将成为赢家，而其他人将承担风险并最终 承担成本。 Yet there is a different perspective. The argument here is that US monetary policy was too loose for too long after the collapse of the Wall Street bubble in 2000 and the terrorist outrage of September 11, 2001. This critique is widely shared among economists, including John Taylor of Stanford University.* The view is also popular in financial markets: “It isn't our fault; it's the fault of Alan Greenspan, the ‘serial bubble blower'”. 然而，也有不同的观点。有一种观点认 为，在 2000 年华尔街泡沫破裂和 2001 年的 “9•11”恐怖袭击之后，美国的货币政策在 很长一段时间之内过于宽松。经济学家们普 遍支持这种观点，包括斯坦福大学(Stanford University)的约翰•泰勒(John Taylor)。*这一观 点在金融界业也颇受欢迎：“这不是我们的错 误；这是艾伦•格林斯潘的错误，他是‘连环 吹泡泡者'(serial bubble blower)”。 The argument that the crisis is the product of a gross monetary disorder has three variants: the orthodox view is simply that a mistake was made; a slightly less orthodox view is that the mistake was intellectual – the Fed's determination to ignore asset prices in the formation of monetary policy; a still less orthodox view is that man-made (fiat) money is inherently unstable. All will then be solved when, as Mr Greenspan himself believed, the world goes back on to gold. Human beings must, like Odysseus, be chained to the mast of gold if they are to avoid repeated monetary shipwrecks. 有些人认为，此次危机是货币政策重大 失调的产物。这种观点有三种变体：正统观 点认为，只是犯了一个错误；稍微不那么正 统的观点认为，这属于智力错误——在制定 货币政策过程中，美联储决定忽视资产价格； 还有一个更不正统的观点认为，人造货币（法 币）天生就是不稳定的。就像格林斯潘自己 所认为的那样，如果全球回到金本位时代， 那么所有的问都将得到解决。如果人类希 望避免货币政策频繁失事，那么他们必须像 奥德修斯(Odysseus)那样，把自己捆在黄金桅 杆上。 策马翻译培训 EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING | GV W. M 5 www.cemachina.com A final perspective is that the crisis is the consequence neither of financial fragility nor of mistakes by important central banks. It is the result of global macroeconomic disorder, particularly the massive flows of surplus capital from Asian emerging economies (notably China), oil exporters and a few high-income countries and, in addition, the financial surpluses of the corporate sectors of many countries. 最后一个观点认为，这场危机既不是金 融脆弱性的结果，也不是央行重大错误的结 果。它是全球宏观经济失调的结果，尤其是 来自亚洲新兴市场（特别是中国）、石油出口 国以及少数高收入国家的资本盈余以及许多 国家的企业界金融盈余大举流入美国的结 果。 In this perspective, central banks and so financial markets were merely reacting to the global economic environment. Surplus savings meant not only low real interest rates, but a need to generate high levels of offsetting demand in capital-importing countries, of which the US was much the most important. 从这个角度而言，央行以及金融市场只 是对全球经济环境做出反应。储蓄盈余不仅 仅意味着实际利率处于低位，而且意味着需 要刺激资本输入国的需求，以抵消资本流入 的影响。其中，美国是最为重要的资本输入 国。 In this view (which I share) the Fed could have avoided pursuing what seem like excessively expansionary monetary policies only if it had been willing to accept a prolonged recession, possibly a slump. But it had neither the desire nor, indeed, the mandate to allow any such thing. The Fed's dilemma then was that the only way to sustain domestic demand at levels high enough to offset the capital inflow (both private and official) was via a credit boom. This generated excessively high asset prices, particularly in housing. It has left, as a painful legacy, stretched balance sheets in both the non-financial and financial sectors: debt deflation, here, alas, we come. 根据这种观点（我同意这种观点），当 时，如果美联储愿意接受长时间的衰退（也 可能是暴跌），它本可以不用实行看上去过度 扩张的货币政策。然而，美联储既没有这种 愿望，实际上，也没有允许这种情况发生的 权力。美联储当时的困境在于，要想令国内 需求维持在高位，以抵消（企业和官方的） 资本流入的影响，唯一的是制造一场信 贷热潮。信贷热潮造成资产价格过高，尤其 是住宅价格。作为一项令人痛苦的遗产，它 给非金融行业和金融行业留下了过度紧绷资 产负债表：债务型通缩(debt deflation)。唉， 我们正面临着这一处境。 When I read these analyses, I am reminded of the story in which four people are told to go into a dark room, hold on to whatever they find and then say what it is. One says it is a snake. Another says it is a leathery sail. A third says it is a tree trunk. The last says it is a pull rope. 当我读到这些时，我想起了一个故 事，有 4 个人被带入一间黑暗的屋子，抓住 他们摸到的任何东西，然后说出是什么。一 个人说是蛇，第二个人说是皮质帆布，第三 个人说是树桩。最后一个人说是一条绳子。 策马翻译培训 EU INTERPRETATION TRAINING | GV W. M 6 www.cemachina.com It is, of course, an elephant. The truth is that an accurate story would be a combination of the various elements. Global macroeconomic imbalances played a huge part in driving monetary policy decisions. These, in turn, led to house-price bubbles and huge financial excesses, particularly in securitised assets. Now policymakers are forced to deal with today's symptoms as best they can. But they must also tackle the underlying causes if further huge disturbances are not to come along. What those responses should ideally be at both national and global levels will be the subject of my post-World Economic Forum column next week. 当然，答案是大象。这蕴含着一个真理： 正确的故事是将所有不同的因素综合起来。 在推动货币政策决策方面，全球宏观经济失 衡起到了重大作用。这进而导致住宅价格泡 沫和巨大的金融盈余，尤其是在证券化资产 领域。如今，决策者正被迫尽力应对目前的 状况。但是，如果没有进一步出现大规模的 混乱状况，那么，他们还必须解决那些根本 原因。下周，在“世界经济论坛”(World Economic Forum)闭幕之后，我将在专栏里探 讨最理想的国内和国际反应。 *Housing and Monetary Policy, September 1 2007, www.kc.frb.org 《住宅地产和货币政策》(Housing and Monetary Policy) 2007 年 9 月 1 日发表， www.kc.frb.org / 我们仍在“盲人摸象” WHY THE FINANCIAL TURMOIL IS AN ELEPHANT IN A DARK ROOM ts�¦^ü­ï›&łÁÀF�öШh¬�O‰�ˇìï·{)(‘