全球金融危机的四大问题
作者：英国《金融时报》首席经济评论员马丁•沃尔夫(Martin wolf)
2008年7月3日 星期四
“我们跟你说过会这样。”国际清算银行(BIS)早就警告过无节制的信贷增长和资产价格通胀的危险。在今年的年度报告——最后一份在长期担任其经济顾问的加拿大人威廉•怀特(William White)的指导下写就的年度报告——中，该行毫不讳言自己的正确性。不过，它表现得很克制：“当务之急并非分清责任，而是认真思考该如何应对。”
该报告正是在进行这样的思考。但它也描述了那些不听警告的人造成的烂摊子。报告指出：“当前全球主要金融中心发生的市场动荡，在战后时期是没有先例的。鉴于美国面临严重的经济衰退风险，加上许多国家通胀急剧上升，人们日益担心全球经济可能正处于某种危急关头。这些担心不是没有理由的。”
正如国际清算银行年度报告的读者所能够预想到的，这份报告很好地回答了四大问题。
首先，为什么会发生危机？报告指出：“质量日益下降的贷款发放出来后，被卖给了轻信而贪婪的人——他们经常依靠杠杆操作和短期融资进一步提升自己的利润。这本身就构成了一大弱点。更糟糕的是，由于过程不透明，风险最终落在何处往往并不明显。”
显然，内部治理和外部监管存在不足。报告问到：“一个庞大影子银行系统的形成，怎么会没有让官方明确表示关注？”的确，怎么会这样呢？此外，这场危机的特征之一是，证券化贷款的销售范围事实上非常广泛。谁拥有它们？它们价值多少？近一年来，围绕这些问题的不确定性一直在冲击着货币市场。
然而，报告坚持认为，引发危机的与其说是新鲜事物，不如说是旧有的弊端：长期宽松的货币政策、资产价格通胀以及快速的信贷增长。我非常赞同这一观点，还有它的结论：各央行应当承担一部分责任。报告中还告诫各央行结束这种局面。我上周在国际清算银行会议上发表讲话*时曾提出，实行汇率目标制的国家所积累的大量储蓄和外汇储备，也是本世纪初美国长期实际利率处于低水平以及能够实行宽松货币政策的原因。
接着就带来了第二个问题：眼下的风险有多大？
答案是：非常大。这部分是因为，全球经济正处于某些高收入国家金融及房价通缩与全球性商品价格通胀的夹击之下。同样惊人的是许多巨大的不确定因素。近期商品价格飙升是短期泡沫还是会长期持续？美国家庭会大幅缩减开支吗（在2003至2007年期间，私人消费占美国国内生产总值的70%）？美国及其他高收入国家的去杠杆化过程能否平稳进行，而不会引起高通胀？还会出现多少坏账？新兴经济体会否通胀上升步伐过快而不得不放弃干预汇市？如果是这样，美国长期利率会大幅上升吗？新兴经济体是否比许多人预料的更容易受到美国进口放缓的冲击？金融市场何时能复苏？股市对未来的风险是否有充分的评估？
对于可能出现的结果，人们的分歧非常之大，没有人敢断言未来将会怎样。大规模风险重估与全球通胀压力并存的局面是前所未有的，而且相当令人惊慌的。
第三大问题是目前我们需要什么政策。国际清算银行的观点是，货币政策的正确倾向应是“减少宽松性”。该行认为，即使全球经济大幅放缓，也好于通胀急剧上升。我同意这个观点。但是，该行同时强调，在如今不断变化的环境中，一种货币政策是不可能普遍适用的。各央行必须评估本国形势。这本身就是新兴大国放弃盯住汇率制的好理由。
报告还将矛头指向美联储(Fed)的政策。美联储是以防范不愉快后果为前提来决定采取什么政策的。这种做法的危险在于，如果不会出现极端情况，在多数时候，美联储的货币政策可能都是严重错误的。国际清算银行还强调，政策制定者和私人部门必须正视如下现实：“如果资产价格处于不切实际的高位，最终必然会下跌；如果储蓄率处于不切实际的低位，就必然会上升；如果债务不能得到清偿，就必须勾销。”
第四个、也是最大的问题涉及我们应该吸取什么教训。一定程度的不稳定是资本主义经济的正常组成部分。但我不认为，过去10年股市和楼市的巨大泡沫是正常的。而且，即使这是正常的，它们的下跌都是不是人们所希望的。
在对教训的分析中，最有趣的地方在于，国际清算银行不是着眼于新的东西——现代金融系统的装备，而是针对旧有的内容——“金融系统内在的顺周期性和信贷的过度增长”。这里的要点是，修补监管机制的细节或者加强对个别机构的监管，并非问题的核心。关键在于整个系统的运作。
这就是为什么国际清算银行坚持认为，在信贷增长过快和资产价格猛涨之时，必须收紧货币政策，即使这会令通胀暂时降至目标水平以下。国际清算银行认为，这将是对政策工具更为对称的应用。报告强调“宏观审慎”政策也是出于同样的原因。它们针对的不是具体机构的不当行为，而是系统风险，例如在共同冲击下共有的风险，以及机构之间、市场之间以及机构与市场之间潜在的负面相互作用。
其目的是显而易见的：既不是要防止机构破产，也不是要消除盛衰的轮替。前者是不受欢迎的，后者是不可能的。真正的目的在于降低危机发生的频率和严重程度。说问题可以留待事后解决是不够的。那种说法太自满，也太片面。
我们不能给出所有问题的答案。但是，国际清算银行至少界定了恰当的问题，对此，它应得到肯定。
*Global Monetary and Financial Disorder, www.bis.org/events/ conf080626/wolf.pdf
译者/岱嵩
阅读本文章英文,请点击 THE LESSONS TO BE LEARNT FROM TODAY'S FINANCIAL CRISIS
THE LESSONS TO BE LEARNT FROM TODAY'S FINANCIAL CRISIS
By Martin Wolf
Thursday, July 03, 2008
“We told you so.” The Bank for International Settlements has long warned of the dangers of unrestrained credit growth and asset price inflation. In this year's annual report, the last to be prepared under the direction of William White, its long-serving Canadian economic adviser, it felt free to point out how right it had been. But it did so with restraint: “Rather than seeking to apportion blame,” it says, “thoughtful reactions must be the first priority.”
The report provides just such reactions. But it also describes the mess created by those who ignored its earlier warnings. “The current market turmoil in the world's main financial centres is,” it claims, “without precedent in the postwar period. With a significant risk of recession in the US, compounded by sharply rising inflation in many countries, fears are building that the global economy might be at some kind of tipping point. These fears are not groundless.”
As readers of BIS annual reports would expect, this one gives good answers to four big questions.
First, why did it happen? The report states that “loans of increasingly poor quality have been made and then sold to the gullible and greedy, the latter often relying on leverage and short-term funding to further increase their profits. This alone is a serious source of vulnerability. Worse, the opacity of the process implies that the ultimate location of the exposures is not always evident.”
Obviously, internal governance and external oversight were deficient. “How,” asks the report, “could a huge shadow banking system emerge without provoking clear statements of official concern?” How, indeed? Moreover, one of the features of the crisis is how widely distributed securitised loans turned out to be. The resulting uncertainty about who owns them, along with parallel uncertainty about what they are worth, has blighted money markets for almost a year (see charts).
Yet, insists the report, the drivers were not so much new inventions as old errors: a long period of easy money, asset price inflation and rapid credit growth. I have much sympathy with this view, along with its corollary, that central bankers bear part of the blame, with a caveat. As I argued in a speech* at a BIS conference last week, the “savings glut” and reserve accumulations by exchange-rate-targeting countries also explain the low long-term real interest rates and monetary easing of the US in the early 2000s.
This then brings us to a second question: how big are the risks now?
The answer is: very large. This is partly because the world economy is poised between deflationary financial and house-price collapses in several high-income countries and an inflationary global commodity price boom. Just as striking are the many huge uncertainties. Will the recent surge in commodity prices prove to be a short-term bubble or long-lasting? Will US households cut back sharply on consumption, which ran at 70 per cent of gross domestic product between 2003 and 2007? Can the deleveraging of the US and other high-income countries occur smoothly, without high inflation? How much more bad debt is still to emerge? Will emerging economies suffer such big inflationary surges that they will be forced to abandon intervention in currency markets? If so, will long-term interest rates jump in the US? Are emerging economies more vulnerable to the slowdown in US imports than many now believe? When will financial markets recover? Are equity markets adequately assessing the risks ahead?
The divergence in possible outcomes is so large that nobody can credibly claim to know what lies ahead. The combination of a massive re-rating of risk with global inflationary pressure is unprecedented and still quite scary.
The third big question is what policies we need right now. The BIS view is that the right bias in monetary policy is towards being “much less accommodating”. Better, it suggests, a sharp global slowdown than a big inflationary upsurge. I agree. But, as it also stresses, in today's varying circumstances, one monetary policy cannot fit all. Each central bank must assess domestic conditions. This is itself a good reason for larger emerging countries to abandon exchange-rate pegs.
Yet the report does dare to raise a telling question about the US Federal Reserve's policy of judging what to do in terms of “insurance” against unpleasant outcomes. The danger with this approach is that, if the extreme outcomes are unlikely, Fed monetary policy is likely to be seriously wrong much of the time. The BIS also stresses the need for policymakers and private actors to recognise reality: “If asset prices are unrealistically high, they must eventually fall. If saving rates are unrealistically low, they must rise. And if debts cannot be serviced, they must be written off.”
The fourth and biggest question concerns the lessons we need to learn. Some instability is a normal part of a capitalist economy. But I do not accept that the huge bubbles in equities and housing over the past decade are normal. Moreover, even if normal, they cannot fall within any definition of desirability.
The most interesting part of the BIS analysis of the lessons is that it focuses not on what is new – the paraphernalia of the modern financial system – but on what is old – “the inherent procyclicality of the financial system and excessive credit growth”. The important point here is that fiddling with details of the regulatory regime or tightening supervision of individual institutions is not the heart of the matter. What matters is the operation of the system as a whole.
This is why the BIS takes such a strong stance on the need to tighten monetary policy when credit growth soars and asset prices explode, even if that temporarily reduces inflation below target levels. This, argues the BIS, would be a more symmetrical use of policy instruments. It is also why the report stresses “macroprudential” policies. These would focus not on the misbehaviour of specific institutions but rather on systemic risks, such as their shared exposure to common shocks and possible adverse interactions among and between institutions and markets.
The aim is clear: it is neither to prevent institutions from going bust nor to eliminate the cycle of boom and bust. The former is undesirable and the latter impossible. The aim is to reduce the frequency and severity of crises. It is not enough to say that we can clear up afterwards. That is too complacent and too one-sided.
We do not have all the answers. But, to its great credit, the BIS has at least defined the right questions.
*Global Monetary and Financial Disorder, www.bis.org/events/ conf080626/wolf.pdf经济观察,全球金融危机的四大问题
