【英语生活】20世纪30年代那些褪色的记忆

General Electric, bellwether of corporate America, has cut its dividend – its first reduction since 1938. This year we will probably see the largest reduction in dividends since 1938. But 1938 is not generally remembered as a remarkable year in economic history. What happened?

An explanation takes us back to the history of the Great Depression, as recounted entertainingly by J.K. Galbraith and influentially by Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve. The Wall Street crash of 1929 was not, initially, a dramatic event: by the standards of more recent history, the share price correction was modest. What was remarkable was that the share price decline went on and on. By 1933, US equities had lost three-quarters of their 1929 value.

There is not much dispute that government actions after 1929 made the crisis worse, even if there is still controversy about the relative contributions of restrictive fiscal policy, inept monetary policy and protectionist trade and financial strategies. When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, America's monetary system had reached the point of collapse.

Whatever Wall Street financiers thought of Roosevelt's New Deal, markets responded positively. Stocks doubled in value in 1933, and their ascent continued until 1936. US gross domestic product, which fell precipitously in 1929-33, made a modest recovery in Roosevelt's first term.

As they often do, markets anticipated movements in the real economy. In 1936 the stock market stalled and fell back. From 1937 to 1938, US GDP dropped more than 3 per cent. The effect on corporate profits was particularly marked: down by 40 per cent, they led companies to reduce dividends by more than 30 per cent. Only preparation for war and involvement in hostilities from 1941 pulled America out of depression.

The European experience was more mixed and more complex. Britain never enjoyed America's 1920s boom. Plagued by Winston Churchill's return, as chancellor of the exchequer, to a substantially overvalued exchange rate in 1925, the British economy grew little in the years that followed. The rebound, after the Gold Standard was abandoned in 1931 and interest rates reduced, was earlier than America's. But Britain's recovery, too, petered out after 1936. GDP would almost certainly have fallen between 1938 and 1939 had not public expenditure risen dramatically – by about 50 per cent from 1936 to 1939. Whatever politicians said in public, economic statistics tell a story of active preparation for war.

Experience of the Great Depression reveals that economic downturns can last a long time, and that markets can rebound sharply but sometimes ephemerally. Perhaps the clearest lesson, but we hope an irrelevant one, is that war is good for output, employment and corporate profits.

Yet there is another, perhaps no less gloomy, way to draw parallels between the present crisis and the Great Depression. From this perspective, we are not at the start of the crisis but several years into it. The analogue of the 1929 Wall Street crash is not the 2007 credit crunch, but the bursting of the New Economy bubble in 2000. The follies of the 1990s resembled those of the 1920s, as Galbraith's readers know. The underlying structural weaknesses of the world economy – US budget and trade deficits financed by Asian surpluses – re-emerged in 2000 after being disguised by the imaginary wealth of the New Economy.

The difference between the years after 1929 and the years after 2000 is that the policy mistakes were almost opposite. This time monetary and fiscal policies were strongly expansionary from the outset. These measures led to a wide boom in asset prices, extended unsustainable credit levels and induced further growth of the fundamentally flawed financial infrastructure on which the 1990s boom had been based.

In 1937-38, markets and business leaders came to doubt the durability of the business foundations on which partial recovery from the Great Depression had been built. In 2007-08, markets and business leaders came to doubt the durability of the financial foundations that had supported consumption and asset price growth after the New Economy fiasco.

Our capacity to learn from the Great Depression is limited because we do not know how economies would have evolved after 1938 if politics had not supervened. Life, said Kierkegaard, is understood backwards but must be lived forwards.

美国企业界的领头羊通用电气(General Electric)自1938年以来首次削减了股息。今年，我们可能会看到自1938年以来规模最大的股息削减举措。但通常来说，1938年并不被视为经济史上不同寻常的年份。那一年发生了什么呢？

一种解释让我们回忆起了大萧条(Great Depression)的历史，J•K•加尔布雷思(J.K. Galbraith)对此的描述颇为有趣，而美联储(Fed)主席本•伯南克(Ben Bernanke)的描述则颇具影响力。起初，1929年那次华尔街危机并非一次严重事件：以最近时期的标准衡量，当时的股价回调幅度尚属温和。引人瞩目的是，接下来股价持续不断下跌。到1933年，美国股市市值较1929年损失了四分之三。

尽管人们对于限制性的财政政策、不合理的货币政策以及保护主义贸易和金融战略对危机的相对影响程度尚存争议，但有一点没多大争议：即1929年以后的政府行动令危机雪上加霜。当美国总统富兰克林•罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt) 1933年就职时，美国货币体系已到了崩溃的地步。

不管华尔街金融家如何看待“罗斯福新政”(New Deal)，市场对此做出了积极回应。1933年，股市市值增长一倍，升势一直持续到1936年。在罗斯福首任任期内，美国国内生产总值(GDP)实现了温和复苏。1929年至1933年，美国GDP曾出现大幅下滑。

与通常情况一样，市场先期反映了实体经济的变化。1936年，股市停滞并出现回调。从1937年至1938年，美国GDP下滑逾3%。对企业利润的影响尤为明显：企业利润减少40%，这导致企业将股息减少逾30%。只是由于战争准备及1941年参战，才使得美国摆脱了经济萧条。

欧洲的经历更是好坏参半，且更为复杂。英国从未经历过美国上世纪20年代那样的繁荣。1925年，英国财政大臣温斯顿•邱吉尔(Winston Churchill)重新回归了大幅高估的英镑汇率。受此拖累，随后几年英国经济几乎未见增长。在1931年放弃金本位(Gold Standard)并降息之后，英国经济先于美国复苏。但在1936年后，英国的复苏也逐渐停止。如果不是因素大幅增加公共支出——1936年至1939年间增加了50%左右——GDP几乎肯定会下滑。不管政治家们在公开场合说了些什么，从经济数据来看，完全是一个积极备战的故事。

大萧条的经历表明，经济下滑可能会持续很长时间，市场可能会大幅反弹，但有时十分短暂。最明显的教训（但我们希望这是一个毫无关系的教训）或许是：战争有利于产出、就业和公司利润。

不过，把目前的危机与大萧条相比，还有另一种可能不那么悲观的方式。从这种角度看，我们并非处于危机的开端，而是已经历了几年时间。与1929年华尔街危机类似的，不是2007年的信贷紧缩，而是2000年新经济(New Economy)泡沫的破裂。正如加尔布雷思的读者们所知道的那样，上世纪90年代的罪恶与20年代相似。2000年，全球经济的根本结构性缺陷——亚洲盈余为美国预算及贸易赤字提供融资——再度出现，而此前新经济虚构的财富掩盖了这一点。

1929年之后的几年与2000年之后几年的不同之处在于，政策错误几乎正相反。这一次，货币和财政政策从一开始就是大力扩张性的。这些举措导致资产价格普遍上涨、长时间不可持续的信贷水平，并导致存在根本缺陷的金融基础设施的进一步增长——90年代的繁荣正是基于这些金融基础设施。

1937年至1938年，市场和企业领袖开始怀疑大萧条籍以部分复苏的商业根基的持久性。而2007年至2008年，市场和企业领袖则开始质疑新经济崩溃后推动消费及资产价格上涨的金融基础的持久性。

我们从大萧条中汲取教训的能力有限，因为我们不知道，如果政局没有出现意外变化的话，1938年之后经济形势会如何演变。克尔恺郭尔(Kierkegaard)说过，理解生活需要向后看，但要生活下去，则必须向前看。

译者/梁艳裳