【英语中国】尴尬的中国外汇储备

Creditor countries are worrying about the safety of their money. That is what links two of the big economic stories of last week: Chancellor Angela Merkel's attack on the monetary policies pursued by central banks, including her own, the European Central Bank; and the pressure on Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, to persuade his hosts in Beijing that their claims on his government are safe. But are they? The answer is: only if the creditor countries facilitate adjustment in the global balance of payments. Debtor countries will either export their way out of this crisis or be driven towards some sort of default. Creditors have to choose which.

Germany and China have much in common: they have the world's two biggest current account surpluses, at $235bn and $440bn, respectively, in 2008; and both are also powerhouses of manufactured exports. They have, as a result, suffered from the collapse in demand of overindebted purchasers of their exports. So both feel badly done by. Why, they ask themselves, should their virtuous people suffer because their customers have let themselves go so broke?

Germany and China are also very different: Germany is a highly competitive global producer of manufactures. But it is also a regional power that has shared its money with its neighbours since 1999. Its problem is that its surpluses were offset by its neighbours' largely private excess spending. Now that the borrowers are bankrupt, their countries' domestic demand is collapsing. This is leading to a huge expansion in fiscal deficits and pressure for easier monetary policies from the ECB. So Ms Merkel is driven towards undermining the independence of Germany's central bank, in order to protect the still more vital goal of monetary stability.

Germany may be Europe's pivotal economy. But China is a nascent superpower. Without intending to do so, it has already shaken the world economy. Incorporating this dynamic colossus into the world economy involves huge adjustments. This is already evident in any discussion of a sustained exit from the crisis.

A recent paper from Goldman Sachs – unfortunately, not publicly available – sheds fascinating light on the impact of China's rise on the world economy.* In particular, it broadens the analysis of the role of the “global imbalances”, on which I (and many others) have written.

The paper points to four salient features of the world economy during this decade: a huge increase in global current account imbalances (with, in particular, the emergence of huge surpluses in emerging economies); a global decline in nominal and real yields on all forms of debt; an increase in global returns on physical capital; and an increase in the “equity risk premium” – the gap between the earnings yield on equities and the real yield on bonds. I would add to this list the strong downward pressure on the dollar prices of many manufactured goods.

The paper argues that the standard “global savings glut” hypothesis helps explain the first two facts. Indeed, it notes that a popular alternative – a too loose monetary policy – fails to explain persistently low long-term real rates. But, it adds, this fails to explain the third and fourth (or my fifth) features.

The paper argues that a massive increase in the effective global labour supply and the extreme risk aversion of the emerging world's new creditors explains the third and fourth feature. As the paper notes, “the accumulation of net overseas assets has been entirely accounted for by public sector acquisitions . . . and has been principally channelled into reserves”. Asian emerging economies – China, above all – have dominated such flows.

The huge capital outflows were the consequence of policy decisions, of which the exchange-rate regime was the most important. The decision to keep the exchange rate down also put a lid on the dollar prices of many manufactures. I would add that the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000 also increased the perceived riskiness of equities and so increased the attractions of the supposedly safe credit instruments whose burgeoning we saw in the 2000s. The pressure on wages may also have encouraged reliance on borrowing and so helped fuel the credit bubbles of the 2000s.

The authors conclude that the low bond yields caused by newly emerging savings gluts drove the crazy lending whose results we now see. With better regulation, the mess would have been smaller, as the International Monetary Fund rightly argues in its recent World Economic Outlook. But someone had to borrow this money. If it had not been households, who would have done so – governments, so running larger fiscal deficits, or corporations already flush with profits? This is as much a macroeconomic story as one of folly, greed and mis-regulation.

The story is not just history. It bears just as heavily on the world's escape from the crisis. The dominant feature of today's economy is that erstwhile private borrowers are, to put it bluntly, bust. To sustain spending, central banks are being driven towards the monetary emissions of which Ms Merkel is suspicious and governments are driven towards massive dis-saving, to offset higher desired private saving.

Today, Germany wants to preserve the value of its money, while China is desperate to preserve the value of its external assets. These are understandable aims. Yet, if this is to happen, debtor countries have to stabilise their economies without another round of profligate private borrowing or an indefinite rise in government debt. Both paths will ultimately lead to defaults, inflation, or both and so to losses for creditors. The only alternative is for debtors to earn their way out. At the level of an entire country that means a big rise in net exports. But if indebted countries are to achieve this aim, in a vigorous world economy, the surplus countries must expand demand strongly, relative to supply.

China's decision to accumulate roughly $2,000bn in foreign currency reserves was, in my view, a blunder. Now it has a choice. If it wants its claims on the US to be safe, it must facilitate an adjustment in the global balance of payments. If it and other surplus countries wish to run huge surpluses and accumulate vast financial claims, they should expect defaults. They cannot have both safe foreign assets and huge surpluses. They must choose between them. It may seem unfair. But whoever said life is fair?

*The Savings Glut, the Return on Capital and the Rise in Risk Aversion, May 27 2009

债权国正担心自己的资金安全。正是这一点，将上周的两大经济新闻联系在了一起：德国总理安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)对各大央行——包括自己所属的欧洲央行(ECB)——推行的货币政策进行抨击；而首次访华的美国财长蒂姆•盖特纳(Tim Geithner)则面临这种压力：试图让东道主相信，中国所持的美国国债是安全的。但果真如此吗？答案是：债权国只有促成对全球国际收支平衡的调整，才能保证债权的安全。债务国要么将通过出口摆脱此次危机，要么被迫采取某种形式的违约。债权国必须从中做出选择。

德国与中国有许多共同点：它们拥有全球规模最大的经常账户盈余——2008年分别为2350亿美元和4400亿美元；两国都是制造业出口大国，因此都因负债过高的出口对象国的需求崩溃深受其苦。两国都觉得吃了大亏。它们想不通，凭什么它们的客户任由自己走到破产境地，本国善良的人民就要因此遭殃？

同时，德国与中国也截然不同：德国是全球具有高度竞争力的制造业生产国。但它同时还是一个地区大国。1999年以来，一直与其邻国分享资金。德国的问题在于，邻国以私人部门为主的过度支出，抵消了它的盈余。眼下既然借款人已破产，这些国家的内需也就一蹶不振。这导致了财政赤字的大规模扩张，欧洲央行也因此施压，要求各国采取更宽松的货币政策。这促使默克尔采取削弱德国央行独立性的举措，以捍卫更关键的货币稳定目标。

德国可能是欧洲最重要的经济体。而中国则是一个新兴超级大国。尽管中国无意为之，但它已经撼动了全球经济。要将这个活力十足的庞然大物融入全球经济，需要进行大规模调整。在所有关于如何持续摆脱此次经济危机的讨论中，这一点已表现得十分明显。

高盛(Goldman Sachs)近期的一篇论文——不幸的是，这篇论文没有公开——就中国崛起对全球经济的影响，提出了颇具吸引力的见解*。特别是，这篇论文拓展了对于“全球失衡”作用的分析，我（和许多其他人）曾就此撰文。

这篇文章指出了当前十年中全球经济的四大特点：全球经常账户失衡急剧恶化（特别是新兴经济体出现了巨额顺差）；全球各类债务的名义及实际收益率下滑；全球实物资本的回报率上升；“股票风险溢价”——指股票回报率与债券实际收益率之差——上升。我想要再补充一点：许多制造产品的美元价格面临强大的下行压力。

这篇论文辩称，标准的“全球储蓄过剩”假设，有助于解释前两个特点。实际上，文章指出，当前流行的替代方案——过于宽松的货币政策——无法解释长期实际利率一直处于低位的问题。但文章补充称，这种假设未能解释第三和第四个（或我提出的第五个）特点。

本文指出，全球有效劳动力供应大幅增长，以及新兴市场新债权国极度的避险意识，阐释了第三、四个特点。正如文章所言，“海外净资产的累积，完全可以用公共部门收购来解释……它们主要流入了外汇储备”。亚洲新兴经济体——首先是中国——支配着这种流动。

巨额资金外流是政策决定的结果，其中最重要的是汇率机制。维持较低汇率的决定，同时也会限制许多制造品美元价格的上涨。我要补充一点，2000年股市泡沫的破裂也加大了股市的感知风险，因而增强了那些被认为较安全的信贷工具的吸引力，我们曾在本世纪初目睹了这些工具的迅猛发展。薪资压力可能也助长了对借贷的依赖，因而助长了本世纪初的信贷泡沫。

这篇文章的作者总结道，新出现的储蓄过剩造成债券收益率处于低位，由此引发了疯狂的贷款行为，我们现在看到了这种行为的后果。国际货币基金组织(IMF)在最近的《全球经济展望》(World Economic Outlook)中指出，如果监管更完善，造成的麻烦本来会小一些，此言不谬。但一些人必须借这笔钱。如果不是家庭，谁还会这样做呢？是财政赤字规模更大的政府，还是本已利润丰厚的公司呢？与愚蠢、贪婪和监管不力一样，这也事关宏观经济层面。

这个故事并非只是历史。它与全球摆脱此次危机有着密切关系。当今经济的主要特点——坦率的说——是昔日的私人借款者已经破产。为了维持支出，央行正被推向默克尔所怀疑的货币“喷射”，而政府被推向反储蓄(dis-saving)，以抵消人们期望的私人储蓄上升的影响。

如今，德国希望保住其货币价值，中国则急切希望保护其海外资产的价值。这些目标是可以理解的。然而，要实现这些目标，债务国必须稳定其经济，同时不引发另一轮挥霍性的私人借贷，或导致政府债务无限制地增加。这两种方式最终都将导致违约、通胀或两者兼而有之，从而给债权国造成损失。债务国唯一的选择是通过收入摆脱危机。从整个国家的层面来说，这意味着净出口大幅上升。但在活力充沛的全球经济中，债务国要想达到这一目标，相对于供应而言，顺差国家就必须大力扩大需求。

在我看来，中国决定累积约2万亿美元的外汇储备，是错误之举。如今，中国可以选择。如果中国希望其对美国的债权安全，就必须促成全球收支平衡的调整。如果中国及其它顺差国家希望出现巨额顺差并累积大量金融债权，它们应预料到违约情况的出现。它们不可能既拥有安全的外国资产，又拥有巨额顺差。它们必须在其中进行选择。这或许看起来有失公平。但谁说生活是公平的呢？

*《储蓄过剩、资本收益率以及避险意识增强》(The Savings Glut, the Return on Capital and the Rise in Risk Aversion)，2009年5月27日

译者/梁艳裳