【英语国际】美国会不会重蹈日本覆辙？

As a Princeton professor in the 1990s, Ben Bernanke lectured Japanese officials for mishandling their economy.

Today, Tokyo's economic problems are more than academic for the Federal Reserve chairman. They are a window into his own situation as he stares at what could be a long period of slow growth, high unemployment and declining inflation in the U.S.

Mr. Bernanke is preparing for a potentially important policy speech Friday, when he could detail his thinking on the Fed's next steps at a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on monetary policy in a low-inflation environment. The conference is a reprise of a 1999 conference at which Mr. Bernanke and other academics took Japanese officials to task for failing to get their economy moving.

Buried in Mr. Bernanke's earlier writings on Japan are hints of how he is shaping the Fed's responses to today's slow recovery.

Just a few months ago, Fed officials were focused on how they would exit from their easy-money policies. Now, they are positioning themselves to do more to support growth.

High on the list of options: restarting a program of buying U.S. Treasury bonds to drive down long-term interest rates and boost growth, despite strong reservations among some colleagues. Fed officials also are debating how to make clear their commitment to preventing deflation, a state of falling prices that economists say can be even more debilitating than inflation. This is a task that puts them in the uncomfortable position of calling for more inflation.

Many Fed officials agreed at a policy meeting in September that if growth doesn't pick up and inflation remains low, 'it would be appropriate to provide additional monetary policy accommodation,' according to minutes of the meeting released by the Fed Tuesday.

Mr. Bernanke's mission, in part, is to make sure the U.S. stays off the path trod by Japan. Yet it's proving harder than he thought when he was offering advice to officials overseas.

Japan's stock market peaked in 1989 and its property bubble popped two years later. Since then, it has averaged annual growth of just 0.7%. Its national government debt has soared to more than 200% of its national output. And in seven of the past 10 years its consumer prices have fallen.

All this happened even though the Bank of Japan has held short-term interest rates at or near zero since 1999 and has taken other stimulative steps such as buying government bonds and short-term corporate debt.

'I remember once making a comment in a Federal Open Market Committee meeting that this seemed easier when I was advising other people how to do it than when I was involved in doing it myself,' says Donald Kohn, who retired from his post as Fed vice chairman last month. The comment, he recalls, was met with nervous laughter by other officials.

Mr. Kohn says he took two lessons from Japan: Be aggressive about providing stimulus to the economy in the early stages of a downturn and avoid canceling it too soon.

Before becoming Fed chairman, Mr. Bernanke led a band of U.S. academics who argued that Japanese officials weren't doing enough to jolt their economy out of its torpor. In a 1999 paper, Mr. Bernanke lashed out at Japanese officials, saying their country's woes were the result of their own 'self-induced paralysis.' Japan's responses to deflation, he charged in atypically blunt terms, were confused, inconsistent and too cautious.

Mr. Bernanke has since told others privately he regrets the tone of those attacks. But the lessons he drew have played a role in shaping the Fed's responses to the economy and could shape decisions in the weeks ahead.

Mr. Bernanke urged Japan to commit to keeping interest rates low until it got more inflation, and he defended novel ideas like buying government bonds with the understanding that fiscal policy makers would use the money thus raised to finance tax cuts to boost consumer demand.

The analogy between the U.S. economy and Japan's isn't perfect. Japan has an older population, less-profitable banks that didn't get quick capital or attention from regulators after the property bust, low job-market turnover and many industries shielded from international competition.

Other differences: Japan is a big exporter, while the U.S. is a big net importer; Japan wasn't a big debtor to the rest of the world, as is the U.S.; and Japan has a high savings rate, so its deficits have been funded internally. While Japan has experienced many years of deflation, the U.S. hasn't had any in the modern era.

But the similarities between the two economies are striking. Both countries went through stock and real-estate busts that severely damaged financial systems, Japan in the early 1990s and the U.S. in 2007 and 2008. Both saw unemployment rise and developed much slack in their economies.

Both ran up large budget deficits and pushed interest rates to zero. Both have important globally traded currencies that didn't dramatically weaken after their bubbles burst. That meant their exports didn't soar, as happened in some smaller economies after financial crises.

'The Japanese experience raises a warning flag for the United States, taking into account the differences that we know about,' says Jeffrey Fuhrer, the director of research at the Boston Fed, which has been examining the Japanese experience.

20世纪90年代，在普林斯顿大学担任教授的贝南克（Ben Bernanke）曾指责日本官员对日本经济管理不当。

今天，对这位美国联邦储备委员会（Federal Reserve）主席来说，日本的经济问题已不仅仅是个学术话题。在他看到美国经济增长缓慢、失业率高企以及通货膨胀率不断下降有可能成为旷日持久的现象之际，日本的经济问题就成了一扇窗，透过这扇窗户，他能看到自己所面临的形势。

贝南克正在准备即将于周五发表的重要政策演讲，届时他将在波士顿联邦储备银行（Federal Reserve Bank of Boston）主办的货币政策会议中就美联储在低通货膨胀率的环境下将采取何种措施详细阐述自己的看法。这次会议与1999年的那次会议类似，贝南克当时和其他几位学术界人士责备日本官员未能推动日本经济发展。

从贝南克早期关于日本的文章中，我们能够找到他将如何策划美联储应对目前经济放缓形势的蛛丝马迹。

就在几个月前，美联储官员还在致力于解决该如何从宽松货币政策中走出来。现在，他们改变了立场，把重点放在如何采取更多的措施支持经济增长。

最要紧的是：重新开启购买美国国债的计划，从而降低长期利率，刺激增长，虽然一些美联储官员对此持强烈的保留意见。美联储官员们还在争论如何明确向外界传达他们阻止通货紧缩的承诺，通货紧缩状态下价格会下降，经济学家说这对经济的损害比通货膨胀还严重。这一承诺将他们推到了一个不安的境地，即提倡更多的通货膨胀。

美联储周二发布的会议纪要显示，很多美联储官员在9月份的一次政策会议上同意，如果经济增长未见好转、通货膨胀依然走低，则应当进一步放松货币政策。

贝南克的一部分使命是确保美国不会重蹈日本的覆辙。但事实证明这比他想象的要难。

日本股市1989年达到顶点，两年后房地产市场的泡沫破裂。从此日本经济的平均年增长率就停留在0.7%。日本国债总额增加至国内生产总值的200%多。过去十年中，有七年时间消费价格指数处于下跌状态。

虽然日本央行从1999年开始就将短期利率维持在零水平左右，并采取了包括购买政府债券和短期公司债券等刺激性措施，这一切还是不可避免地发生了。

上月退休的美联储副主席科恩(Donald Kohn)说，记得我在美国联邦公开市场委员会(Federal Open Market Committee)上发表评论时讲，建议别人如何操作比自己身体力行去实践似乎要容易得多。他回忆说，自己的这番言论引来其它官员尴尬的笑声。

科恩说，他从日本的经验教训中学到两点，一是在经济下行之初就应积极提供刺激措施，二是不要过早取消这些措施。

贝南克就任美联储主席之前，曾率一众美国学者坚持认为，日本官员对于刺激本国摆脱疲弱做出的努力还不够。贝南克曾在1999年一份报告中痛批日本官员，说日本的经济困境是官员作茧自缚的恶果。他将日本应对通货紧缩的作为形容成混乱不堪、前后矛盾及过于谨小慎微，措辞之直白可谓是非比寻常。

后来，贝南克曾私下告诉他人，他对自己的激烈言辞表示后悔，不过他从中得到的教训却在美联储应对美国经济危机时发挥了作用，也有可能在未来数周对其决定产生影响。

贝南克敦促日本在其经济出现通货膨胀之前，坚持压低利率水平，而且他还支持那些购买政府债券等创新想法，因为他的理解是，财政政策的制定者将利用购买国债的资金对减税措施进行补贴，以刺激消费需求。

美国和日本经济之间的类比并不十分恰当。日本人口老龄化程度较深，日本各银行的盈利能力也较差，当房地产泡沫破裂、就业市场循环增速降低以及很多产业受到保护不参与国际竞争之后，这些银行无法迅速得到资金或监管者的注意。

除此之外，日本是出口大国，而美国是净进口大国；日本没有累累外债，而美国则债台高筑；日本储蓄率很高，因此财政赤字可以通过内部解决；日本多年来通货紧缩，而美国在进入现代历史后就从未有过紧缩遭遇。

然而两国经济也有很多异常明显的相似性。日本和美国分别在上世纪90年代初和2007-2008年经历了股市和房地产市场的崩盘，并都对其金融系统造成了重大破坏。另外，两国都曾有过失业率高涨、经济低迷的情况。

两国均曾有过巨额预算赤字，都曾将利率降至零点，股市和房市泡沫崩盘后作为全球重要交易货币的日圆和美元并未显著走低，这说明两国出口没有激增，而一些规模较小的经济体在发生金融危机之后则会出现出口暴增的情况。

一直研究日本应对经济危机做法的波士顿联储(Boston Fed)研究部负责人Jeffrey Fuhrer说，虽然日美两国的国情有差异，但日本的经验仍足以给美国敲响警钟。