【英语生活】如何纠正全球失衡？

Some of my older readers may remember national savings drives. These were prominent in the second world war as part of the “civilian effort”. But they lingered for many decades; and within living memory every UK Budget speech contained a sentence of thanks to the chairman of the National Savings Movement. Now the citizens of some countries, especially China and Germany, are being subjected to the opposite kind of propaganda: to spend more for the sake of the world economy. My own belief is that individuals and families should make up their own minds about how much to save. Official efforts should not go beyond school lessons in personal finance.

The reason why some experts suppose otherwise can be summed up in the words “international imbalances”. This simply refers to current balance of payments surpluses and deficits. Total world imbalances grew, according to International Monetary Fund estimates, from negligible amounts at the end of the last century to 2? per cent of world gross domestic product in 2006-08. By 2009 this total had shrunk dramatically to about 1? per cent. This was largely due to the recession. A worldwide excess of attempted saving over desired investment was brought into line by a drop in output and income, which reduced the desire to save in the surplus countries and the desire to invest in the deficit ones. The IMF fears that economic recovery may lead to a return to larger imbalances, which will put that recovery at risk.

There are basically two views about imbalances. The goody-goody view is that “excess” surpluses and deficits need to be reduced by appropriate policies, preferably co-ordinated internationally. The alternative view is that so-called imbalances are the natural outcome of international borrowing and lending. A German surplus or a US deficit is no more pathological than a payments imbalance between Yorkshire and Sussex – as David Hume pointed out two and a half centuries ago. The remedy for slumps and booms should be monetary and fiscal policies to expand or contract demand without attempting to play God with the pattern of inter-country payments.

There is, however, not an economic but a political case for doing something about imbalances. The Chinese government is not going to launch an anti-savings drive to please the IMF. But it is getting restive about holding its huge and ever increasing reserves in short-term dollar securities of minimal yield and uncertain value. The natural course would be to diversify into tangible real investments with better likely returns. But there is a limit to how far the US and Europe would want key strategic facilities to be held by China. The alternative would be for Asian surplus countries to put savings into other emerging countries, which to some extent they are doing. But this is a slow process.

Governor Zhou Xiaochuan of the Chinese central bank put forward in April 2009 the case for a “super-sovereign reserve currency”. Such a currency already exists in embryonic form in the IMF Special Drawing Rights. Total SDRs in existence are now worth $300bn or 3 to 4 per cent of world reserves. At the moment they are only a quasi-money. The best attempt I have seen to explain their status is in Goldman Sachs' Global Economic Paper No. 196. The main point is that they only come into existence if a member country borrows from the Fund. That is why it was so easy for the G20 to agree in 2009 to a potential “tripling of IMF resources”. Unless and until this is taken up it is a costless operation.

Why not, however, gradually give the SDR more of the characteristics of a genuine money and allocate new issues to emerging countries? This was originally proposed in a now long-forgotten plan by the late Maxwell Stamp. The purpose of a revival would not be to add permanently to emerging country reserves but to provide these countries with the wherewithal to increase investment. Surplus nations such as China would then receive payments in non-depreciating currency guaranteed against default and SDR users would have much less reason to fear undue Chinese political influence. Moreover, instead of the uphill task of persuading the western political and financial establishments that budget deficits are permissible and desirable in the face of a potential world savings surplus, the offset to that surplus would be provided by development expenditure, which would be doubly blessed as “investment” and as part of an attack on world poverty – all this would attract bien-pensant lobbies in a way that the more abstract Keynesian arguments on their own evidently cannot.

I can already hear German leaders denouncing the plan as inflationary; and an honest answer to their objections would require giving the IMF the power not to issue, or even withdraw, SDRs if it judged that the main danger was of excessive rather than deficient world demand. If we went along this route the IMF would acquire some of the characteristics of a world central bank. But at least this approach is more promising than droning on and on about “imbalances”.

一些年纪较大的读者可能还记得国民储蓄运动。该运动风行于二战时期，属于一种“民间努力”。但之后它们又迁延了好几十年；在当世人们的记忆中，过去英国政府每次发布预算案，都会提到感谢“国民储蓄运动”(National Savings Movement)的主席。如今，一些国家的民众——特别是在中国和德国——正面对一种截然相反的宣传：为了全球经济，增加消费。我本人的看法是，应该由个人和家庭自己决定该储蓄多少钱。官方努力不应超越学校教授的个人金融课程的范畴。

有些专家之所以存在不同意见，原因可以归结为几个字：“国际失衡”。这仅仅是指经常项目的收支盈余和赤字。据国际货币基金组织(IMF)估计，在2006-08年间，全球失衡总规模从上世纪末可以忽略不计的数额，扩大到全球国内生产总值(GDP)的2.5%。到2009年，总失衡水平锐减至1.5%左右。这主要是经济衰退所致。在全球范围内，人们打算用于储蓄的资金，多于打算用于投资的资金，这符合产出和收入下降的趋势，这一趋势降低了盈余国家储蓄、赤字国家投资的意愿。IMF担心，经济复苏可能导致失衡重新扩大，从而危及复苏。

关于失衡，主要存在两种观点。道学的观点认为，必须采取恰当政策减少“过度的”盈余和赤字，最好是通过国际协同行动。另一种观点认为，所谓失衡，是国际间借贷行为的自然产物。德国的盈余或者美国的赤字，并不比英国约克夏和苏塞克斯两郡之间的收支失衡更不正常——大卫?休谟(David Hume)两个半世纪前就指出了这一点。应对衰退与繁荣，应当采取货币及财政政策，以刺激或抑制需求，而不能扮演救世主，试图左右国家间的收支模式。

然而，应对失衡是出于政治目的，而非经济理由。中国政府不会发起“反储蓄运动”，以取悦IMF。但是，中国持有的大量短期美元证券储备，正变得越来越烫手。这些证券收益率极低，价值不稳定，而中国对它们的持有量还在不断上升。合理的做法是进行多元化调整，把一些储备投资于收益较为可靠的有形资产。但是，美国和欧洲不会甘心让中国持有关键战略资产。另一种做法是，亚洲盈余国家可以把储蓄投向其它新兴国家——它们已经开始这么做了。但这是个缓慢的过程。

2009年4月，中国央行行长周小川提出，应采用一种“超主权储备货币”。IMF的特别提款权(SDR)就是这种货币的雏形。现存的SDR总价值为3000亿美元，相当于全球储备的3%-4%。目前它们只是一种“准货币”。关于SDR的地位，我所见过的最佳解释，出自高盛(Goldman Sachs)第196期《全球经济报告》。其要点在于，只有当某个成员国向IMF借款时，才会存在SDR。2009年，20国集团(G20)轻易就同意“把IMF的资金规模扩大到现有的三倍”，原因正在于此。这项行动在落到实处前是不费分文的。

可是，为何不逐步赋予SDR更多的真实货币的特征，增发SDR分配给新兴国家？最早提出这一想法的是已故的麦克斯韦?斯坦普(Maxwell Stamp)，他的计划早已被人们遗忘。重提这一计划的用意，不是要永久地增加新兴国家的储备，而是为这些国家提供扩大投资的必要资金。如此一来，中国等盈余国家所接收的款项，就可采用这种不会贬值的货币，而且没有违约之虞；而SDR使用者将更没有理由担心中国政治影响力过大。此外，我们也不必费尽口舌说服西方政治家和金融机构相信，在全球储蓄可能过剩的形势下，预算赤字是允许存在、也是可取的。抵消盈余，可通过推动发展支出来实现。这种支出将受到双重称赞——它们既是“投资”，也是一种治理全球贫困的手段。这一切将以一种深奥的凯恩斯理论明显难以独力对抗的方式，吸引正统游说者。

我似乎已经听到，德国领导人在指责此项计划会带来通胀。要切实打消他们的异议，需要赋予IMF一项权力：如果该机构认定，主要危险在于全球需求过剩、而非需求不足，它就可以禁止发行、甚至提取SDR。假如我们沿着这一路线前进，IMF将具备“世界央行”的某些特征。但是，比起成天唠叨“失衡”，这种做法起码更有可能成功。

译者/杨远