美国当代最具影响力的经济大师保罗·克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman),现任美国普林斯顿大学教授,以对趋势判断准确而著称:1994年,他预言亚洲金融危机的到来;2001年,他认为油价将开始飙涨;2006年,他呼吁关注美国房价潜在的风险。瑞典皇家科学院将2008年诺贝尔经济学奖授予他,以表彰他在分析国际贸易模式和经济活动的地域等方面所作的贡献。
2009年5月12日,保罗·克鲁格曼在上海交通大学,展开了一场题为“新格局下的中美经济未来”的经济演讲。大家都热切关注着这位经济学鬼才在全球经济危机出现后的新一轮预测。
人类发展史上,曾出现过一次全球性的经济大萧条(Great Depression, 1929—1939),尽管克鲁格曼觉得自2008年爆发金融危机后,现今社会环境不会再出现Great Depression Ⅱ,但这次危机引发国际贸易萎缩,过分乐观引发过度负债,我们很可能会面临日本上世纪90年代 “失去的十年” 那样的状况。
美式发音 适合泛听
And my great concern now is not “Great Depression Ⅱ,” but something like the experience of Japan, this time not in one country but in the world economy as a whole.
So, if we’re looking for the thing to be worried about, it would be something like this. This is “1)Per Capita Real GDP in Japan”. Japan, as you see, with a high growth economy, of course in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and continuing into the 1980’s, remained an economy with a high rate of growth. Then it had a financial crisis—falling land prices, falling stocks—at the beginning of the 1990’s. There was never a really severe recession. It’s interesting that in comparing the current crisis with Japan in the 90’s, we have actually started out much worse. As some of my friends say, “These days, Japan’s ‘Lost Decade’ is actually looking pretty good compared with what we’re going through.” But the Japanese economy, while it did not experience a really severe downturn, also did not have any real recovery for a very extended period. Japan, essentially, as the line says, it experienced a decade—really about 12 years—of 2)stagnation in its economic growth. It finally broke out of that stagnation starting about 2003 largely thanks to a rapid increase in exports, a large 3)trade surplus, which is in itself a little bit disturbing.
Let me describe where I think we are right now in the world economy. Like Japan, we’ve suffered the 4)deflation of a major bubble; this time a bubble in housing in the United States but also housing in a number of European countries. Also a bubble in capital flows. Much of European growth was being driven by very large flows of capital to the emerging markets of Eastern Europe. Those flows have collapsed as people realized that they were not sustainable. So we have a large 5)imploded bubble very much like Japan in the 1990’s. We have the 6)exhaustion of conventional monetary policy. Interest rates are zero at the 7)short end; no further room for monetary expansion. We have the use of fiscal policy, expansionary spending policies in a number of countries, especially the United States and China. All of these policies enough to help but not enough to produce full recovery. So, as for example, to look at the United States, the Obama plan is expected to create about 3.5 million jobs, which is a reasonable estimate. “Three point five million” sounds about right, although, because this is economics, you probably want to say plus or minus two million. But still, 3.5 million jobs is the best estimate, which sounds good until you realize that the United States has lost 5.7 million jobs already in this recession and needed to create about 1.8 million jobs for the recession just to keep up with a growing population. So we are, in fact, already 7.5 million jobs down, and yet we have a stimulus plan which will only create about 3.5 million, and it will probably get worse.
What this suggests is that the world may well be facing something that looks like Japan’s “Lost Decade.” I hope that it does not go on for a decade. If we are wise and fortunate, we may be able to produce a full recovery sooner than that, but it is probably going to be a very extended period of economic weakness. Sometimes we talk in terms of the alphabet. We’re very unlikely to have a “V”-shaped recovery, where the economy goes down but then goes sharply back up again. We are very likely to have a “U”-shaped recovery, where the economy goes down and then it takes a long time before it comes back up again. And there is a real possibility that we’ll have an “L”-shaped recovery, or more accurately, lack of recovery; that the economy, having gone down, will stay down for a very long time.
我现在真正的担心不是说会出现第二次经济大萧条,而是会出现像日本那时一样的状况,然而这次不是只出现在一个国家,而是波及全球整体经济。
那么我们所担心的情况也许大概会是这样——如图,这是日本人均国内生产总值。如你所见,日本经济发展迅速:它在上世纪50、60、70年代,一直持续到80年代,经济保持着高增长率。然后出现了经济危机——然后地价下跌、股价崩溃——这是90年代初开始的。但是这个衰退并不是那么严重。有趣的是把目前的经济危机与日本90年代的相比,我们开始阶段的状况要糟糕得多。我的一些朋友说:“日本当初‘失去的十年’和现在的情况相比好多了。”日本的经济当时并没有遭遇巨大的衰退,但在相当长的时间内也没有出现真正的复苏。从本质上讲,日本就像这个图上的曲线所显示的那样,经历了长达十年——确切来说是在其经济发展中历经了12年的停滞期。但是自2003年起,日本最终也脱离了疲软状态,这主要归因于日本出口的快速增长带来了丰厚的贸易盈余,这对日本自身经济也带来了一点困扰。
让我描述一下我眼中当今世界经济所处的状况。就像日本90年代一样,我们经受了一轮重要的泡沫破灭;这次的泡沫是在美国的房地产业,还包括一些欧洲国家的房地产业,以及资金流向方面。欧洲的经济增长,主要是靠流入新兴东欧市场的大量资金。但是随着人们逐渐意识到这个市场的发展是不可持续的,便出现了资金断流。所以我们这次由内引爆的泡沫危机与90年代时的日本所遭受的情况很相像。我们也已经用尽了常规的货币政策。比如说现行利率为零已把我们置于不利的位置,我们已经失去了采用货币扩张政策的空间。有些国家,尤其是美国和中国,已实施增加开支的扩张性财政政策。这些政策能起到一定作用,但不足以促使经济的全面复苏。那么,看看美国这个例子,奥巴马的计划是希望能够创造350万个就业机会,这是个合理的估算。尽管“350万”听起来不错,但现在讲的是经济学,那么咱们应该说这个数字还会有正负200万的误差。尽管如此,350万已经是最理想的估算了,这数字听起来不错,直到你发现在这次的经济萧条当中美国的失业人数已增加了570万,且为了与人口增长速度保持一致,还要在这样的困境中多创造约180万个就业机会。因此,美国实际失业人数达750万,而我们的刺激计划只能创造350万个就业机会,所以情况还可能会更糟。
这意味着整个世界可能会面临日本“失去的十年”般的状况。我不希望有10年那么长。如果我们既聪明又幸运的话,我们可能不需要10年就可以获得全面的复苏,但是我们很可能会经历一个相当长的经济疲软期。有时候我们会用字母表示这种态势:我们很难会有一个经济下滑后急速回升的“V”型复苏。我们很可能是一个“U”型的复苏,也就是经济下滑后经过很长一段时间才能回暖。我们还可能会碰到一个“L”型的复苏,确切来说,是回天乏力——经济下跌以后很长一段时间持续处于谷底状态。
翻译:晓敏
Lessons from Japan's "Lost Decade"
To understand those economic risks, it is worth considering Japan's experience in the 1990s.A bursting housing bubble there sparked a banking crisis that was followed by a decade of economic stagnation.
The Japanese government lacked the resolve to do what was necessary. It failed to fix its banks and stopped its early fiscal stimulus before recovery had taken hold, leaving the economy all too vulnerable to outside shocks, including the Asian currency crisis and the dot-com collapse[互联网沫破灭] in 2001. Japan's annual growth rate-which had averaged four percent since 1973-slowed to less than one percent, on average, from 1992 t0 2003.
In 1997, after three years of tepidc[微温的] growth, the Japanese government stopped its stimulus: it raised a consumption tax[消费税]，ended a temporary incomec[暂时收入] tax cut, increased social security premiumsc[社保费] and nipped recovery in the bud.
Japan's other blunder[大错]was its unwillingness to fix its banks. Regulators did not force banks and indebted firms to recognize trillions of yen worth of bad loansc[坏账].Banks squanderedc[浪费] credit to keep insolvent[无力还债的]firms on their feet. When the Asian currency crisis hit, many undercapitalized banks toppled over.
If there is an overarching[全部的；包罗万象的]lesson from Japan's lost decade, it is that 'half measures don't pay.