【英语中国】如何抵消中国的巨额储蓄？

A frequent complaint against political economists is that they hide their vision of how the world works behind complex models. This could hardly be said of John Maynard Keynes, who first burst forth on the wider public with his 1919 polemic, The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

What remained in the memory of readers who were not particularly interested in the German reparations problem was his preliminary chapter on Europe before the first world war. He described it as an “economic Eldorado” where “it was possible for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, to rise into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages”.

By the 1930s his view of the pre-1914 order had darkened. His stark conclusion was that full employment had rarely been achieved in peacetime except in rare periods of exuberance. He formulated a “psychological law” that savings tended to rise more than in proportion to income and tended to outrun investment opportunities. Some American economists called the doctrine “secular stagnation” and braced themselves for a big slump following the second world war.

That slump never materialised and in the second part of the 20th century savings were more often inadequate than excessive. What had gone wrong with the “psychological law” of savings? At any one time people on higher incomes saved more than those on lower incomes. But as national income rose, the curve relating savings to income rose too.

Yet to most people's surprise, Keynes's chronic world savings surplus has come back thanks to China's phenomenal savings rate – 49 per cent of gross domestic product and 28 per cent of global savings in 2009. This is an example of Chinese policy, not any economic “law”.

The world was kept in balance by the US acting as a consumer of last resort, in the company of a few other smaller economies such as the UK and Spain. The rise in US consumption was aided by the Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy, which was justified in the circumstances. It was also enhanced by a series of large US budget deficits. Add to this irresponsible lending by financial institutions desperate for a higher yield and, one must admit with hindsight, that the pudding was over-egged.

All this came to an end with the credit crunch and the associated collapse of bank lending. A world depression has been prevented by rock-bottom official interest rates and a leap in budget deficits in western countries. This has shown itself in a jump in their combined budget deficits to about 9 or 10 per cent of their GDP, with the US and the UK recording almost 12-13 per cent.

If western countries begin slashing their fiscal deficits, as conventional opinion so loudly demands, what will supply the offset to Chinese savings? Most of the suggested answers are non-starters. It is no use lecturing the Chinese to consume more. Indeed, the Chinese authorities are now reining back domestic demand for fear of inflation. It would be best to take Chinese policy as a fact of life.

A rise in western private investment is not impossible. But it is hardly likely to take off while prospects for final demand are so muted and there is still talk of a double-dip recession. The best hope for an offset to Chinese saving is an investment boom in other emerging countries that have been less hard hit by the recession than the industrial west. But that is hardly likely to develop quickly.

It would be foolhardy to encourage a further great rise in consumer or housing debt, at least in the English-speaking countries. If there were a single western fiscal authority, I would unhesitatingly say: let the budget deficits run for a while, if necessary financed by the central banks – which, to be fair, Gordon Brown has tried hard to achieve. In the absence of such a common front, what are the real limits to how far a country, fortunate enough to have its own currency and borrow in it, can go out on a limb?

Financial market types worry about selling government debt; but this is not the true limit. It is worth pursuing an expansionary monetary and fiscal policy up to the point where the loss on the terms of trade or the boost to inflation coming from currency depreciation begins to outweigh the gains to domestic output and employment.

Meanwhile, to the demands that the first priority of a new British government should be to reduce the fiscal deficit, I can only say: “I beg to differ.” As Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, has just reminded us, UK output is some 10 per cent below its previous trend. If the recent upturn in UK inflation turns out not to be a blip but a lasting response to sterling devaluation, the appropriate reaction would be to edge up interest rates but let the budget deficit run. This would be the opposite of the conventional wisdom and so probably correct.

人们对政治经济学家最常见的抱怨是：他们隐藏了自己对于复杂模型背后世界如何运转的见解。而对于约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)，却几乎没有这种怨言，他1919年便凭借《和约的经济后果》(The Economic Consequences of the Peace)一书一鸣惊人。

如果读者对德国的赔款问题不是特别感兴趣，他们一定会记得凯恩斯在第一章中对一战前欧洲的描述。他称之为一个“经济乐园”(economic Eldorado)，在这里“只要你拥有任何超越常人的能力或性格，就有可能进入中产阶级或上流社会，这些群体不费吹灰之力就能以很低的成本享受到生活提供的便利、舒适和愉悦，其程度远非任何时代最富有和最强大的君主所能及。”

到了20世纪30年代，他对1914年前世界秩序的看法变得阴郁起来。直白地说，他的结论就是，除了在罕有的繁荣时期，和平时代很少能够实现完全就业。他构想出一种“心理法则”，即随着收入增长，储蓄增长的幅度会增加，而不是与之形成固定比例，而且往往也会超越投资机会增加的速度。一些美国经济学家称这种学说为“长期停滞”，而且已经为第二次世界大战之后出现大萧条做好了准备。

但这场萧条从未成为现实，而且在20世纪后半叶，储蓄更多情况下是不足而非过剩。有关储蓄的“心理法则”哪儿出了问题？在任何一个特定的时间点，高收入人群的储蓄额要高于低收入人群。但随着国民收入增加，将储蓄与收入关联的曲线也会上升。

然而，让大多数人感到意外的是，凯恩斯描述的这种全球储蓄长期盈余现象又重现人间，这要感谢中国惊人的储蓄率——相当于国内生产总值(GDP)的49%，占2009年全球储蓄的28%。但这是中国政策的例证，而不是什么经济“法规”。

以往，美国在英国、西班牙等其它规模较小的经济体的陪伴下，扮演着最终消费者的角色，维持着全球经济的平衡。美联储(Fed)的低利率政策，推动了美国消费的飙升，在当时的环境下，这种政策合情合理。美国多年的巨额预算赤字，也起到了提振消费的作用。再加上一些拼命追逐更高收益率的金融机构不负责任地放贷，事后人们不得不承认，这道菜的火候有点过了。

这一切都随着信贷紧缩以及与之相关的银行放贷的崩溃而宣告结束。极低的官方利率以及西方国家预算赤字的跃升，避免了一场全球性的大萧条。西方国家预算赤字总额占其GDP的比例跃升至9%-10%，而美国和英国更是将近12%-13%。

如果西方国家像传统观念所极力要求的那样，开始大幅削减财政赤字，那谁来抵消中国的储蓄呢？人们提出的大多数答案都不切实际。告诫中国人增加消费是没有用的。事实上，由于担心出现通胀，中国政府目前正在遏制国内需求。最好还是将中国的政策作为一种无法改变的事实来对待。

西方增加私人投资并非不可能，但当对最终需求的预测如此低迷，同时关于双底衰退的讨论仍不绝于耳时，私人投资不太可能开始上升。抵消中国储蓄的最大希望，就是其它新兴国家出现投资热潮，这些国家受衰退的冲击没有西方发达国家那么严重。但此类投资不太可能快速增长。

鼓励消费或房贷进一步扩张将是愚蠢的，至少就英语国家而言如此。如果存在一家统一的西方财政权力机构，我会毫不犹豫地说：让预算赤字延续一段时间吧，如果有必要的话可以由各国央行提供资助——凭良心说，戈登•布朗(Gordon Brown)为了做到这一点很是下了一番功夫。鉴于我们没有这样一个统一战线，那么作为一个幸运地拥有自己的货币、并以其进行借贷的国家，在孤立无援的情况下，其真正的极限究竟在哪里呢？

金融市场对于出售政府债券感到不安，但这并不是真正的极限所在。直到由货币贬值造成的贸易损失或通胀抬升，开始超过国内产出和就业方面的收获之前，继续奉行扩张性货币及财政政策还是值得的。

与此同时，对于那些要求新一届英国政府将降低财政赤字作为第一要务的人，我只能说：“恕不苟同。”英国央行行长默文•金(Mervyn King)刚刚提醒了我们：英国经济产出比以往的趋势水平低了近10%。如果最近英国通胀抬头的迹象并非昙花一现，而是对于英镑贬值的长期回应，那么恰当的应对措施应该是缓慢提高利率，但允许预算赤字延续下去。这会与传统思维相左，因此可能会是正确的。

译者/管婧