【英语财经】美国加息将加剧全球经济动荡 Interest rate rise: emerging markets set to feel the wrath

For policymakers in emerging markets, the prospect of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates for the first time since 2006 has been building like a storm cloud on the horizon for much of the past two years.

Officials at the Fed, however, seem determined to play down any suggestion that their actions might contribute to slower growth in EMs and the rest of the world.

Yet the consequences of a US rate rise — which Janet Yellen, Fed chair, says would be “appropriate” by year end — would be felt across the world, from China to the likes of Brazil and Turkey, countries that grew used to ultra-loose monetary policy in the US and the cheap financing that it spawned.

Since the great recession, EMs saw growth soar, partly in response to US borrowing costs at historic lows, then fall back as the Fed moved to tighten even as Chinese growth slackened. Now, against a backdrop in which developed economies account for less than half of world GDP by some measures, the question is whether the US and other industrialised countries will suffer from the fallout from a further EM slowdown caused by a Fed rate rise.

“First we had the spillover phase,” says Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser to Allianz and chairman of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council. “This was the inability of the west to generate growth and its use of experimental monetary policies, which have undermined growth in EMs.

“Stage two is the spill back — the weakness in EMs that disrupts the economies of the west and makes its challenges even harder.”

The most profound consequence of higher US rates will be to accelerate capital outflows from China, the source of recent global market turmoil, making the world’s second economic superpower potentially yet more unstable.

“That could create another layer of risk for the Chinese economy,” says David Lubin, head of emerging market economics at Citi. “The most important, or the least anticipated consequence for EM, will be the impact on China.”

This, he adds, is because of a big increase in lending to China by foreign banks over the past six years. The funding costs of such banks are affected by the Fed’s short-term interest rates, expected to rise by more than long-term rates. As they increase, this source of capital for Chinese borrowers is likely to be cut.

That, in turn, threatens to feed directly back to the US by contributing to a reduction in Chinese buying of US Treasuries. Analysts are concerned that China had to sell more than $100bn of its holdings of US Treasury debt to support the renminbi during the turbulence that followed Beijing’s decision last month to devalue its currency.

If China — which is the largest foreign investor in US Treasuries with $1.27tn — starts to liquidate its holdings regularly, it could create funding shortfalls for the US government and add upward pressure on US interest rates.

Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens, a New York investment consultancy, says China and other EMs have already had a big negative impact on the US economy by contributing to the sharp fall in oil prices, in turn reducing the flow of “petrodollars” — US currency from the dollar-dominated oil trade that is recycled back to US markets.

“By cutting the knees from under a critical contributor to our recovery?.?.?.?[China and other EMs] have flipped the switch from risk ON to risk OFF,” she wrote.

To many investors, the impact on developed markets of slowing growth in China and other EMs is already clear: falling import prices, lower capital goods orders and the much weaker profitability of US and European companies, many of which do a lot of business in EMs.

The biggest direct impact from the Fed outside the US is likely to be in those economies that depend on short-term capital flows to finance current account deficits.

David Hauner, managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said: “Worst off are the commodity exporters such as Brazil, Russia and South Africa as they get caught between the strong dollar and a weak China.”

Optimists point out that many emerging economies are less vulnerable to a rise in US rates than they were during the EM crises of the 1980s and 1990s because governments have cut back on so-called “original sin”. The sin consisted of borrowing in US dollars or other foreign currencies and thus exposing themselves to the risk of a devaluation of their own currencies and a consequent explosion in debt servicing costs.

While that is broadly true of governments over the past decade, there has also been an explosion in foreign currency borrowing by corporations in EMs. Many of these have earnings in foreign currencies, saving them from original sin. But the build-up in such debt among other EM corporate borrowers has generated big currency mismatches.

Bhanu Baweja, emerging markets strategist at UBS, says this is not the only problem.

“Sovereign borrowers have committed less original sin but more new sin,” he says. Even though their debts are in local currency, debt levels have gone up, he adds. “Most people believe EMs are structurally sound in terms of debt. I think that is no longer valid.”

The idea that EMs have built up enough foreign exchange reserves to cover debt payments is misplaced, he argues, because “the guys holding the assets and the guys holding the liabilities are not the same”.

This would mean a vast stock of EM debt coming under pressure as rates rise, even if foreign exchange reserves stay put.

Others argue that these and other conditions mean a Fed rate rise would be damaging across the globe, for EMs and the developed world alike.

John-Paul Smith of Ecstrat, an investment consultancy, says: “The Fed should listen to what the markets are saying. Raising rates would be a very negative signal — it would show that they are not aware of or don’t care about what happens in the rest of the world.”

对于新兴市场的政策制定者而言，在过去两年中的很多时间里，美联储(Fed)自2006年以来首次加息的前景就好像天边一片不断扩大的乌云。

然而，美联储官员似乎决心淡化这种说法：美联储加息可能造成新兴市场和世界其他地区的经济减速。

其实，美国加息——美联储主席珍妮特?耶伦(Janet Yellen)表示年底前加息将是“恰当”的——将影响整个世界，从中国到巴西和土耳其等国，这些国家已习惯美国的超宽松货币政策及其催生的廉价资金。

自从“大衰退”以来，部分由于美国借款成本处于历史低位，新兴市场增速飙升，而后，随着美联储准备收紧银根——即便中国经济放缓——新兴市场增速出现回落。如今，在发达经济体占全球GDP不到一半的背景下，如果美联储加息导致新兴市场进一步放缓，美国及其他工业化国家是否会受到影响？

“首先，我们经历了溢出期，”安联集团(Allianz)首席经济顾问、美国总统巴拉克?奥巴马(Barack Obama)的全球发展委员会(Global Development Council)主席穆罕默德?埃尔-埃利安(Mohamed El-Erian)表示，“在这个阶段，西方未能实现增长，实行了实验性货币政策，从而削弱了新兴市场的增长。”

“第二个阶段是溢回期，新兴市场的疲弱将影响西方经济，令其面临更为艰巨的挑战。”

美国加息的最深刻影响将是加速中国资本流出，让这个全球第二大经济强国可能变得更不稳定。中国是最近全球市场动荡的源头。

“这可能会给中国经济带来另一层风险，”花旗(Citi)的新兴市场经济主管戴维?卢宾(David Lubin)表示，“对于新兴市场而言，（美联储加息）最为重要或者最意想不到的影响是对中国的影响。”

他补充称，这是因为过去6年外国银行向中国发放的贷款大幅增加。这些银行的融资成本受到美联储短期利率的影响，而后者上升幅度预计将超过长期利率。随着利率上升，中国借款者的这一资金来源可能会被切断。



这进而可能直接反作用于美国，导致中国减少购买美国国债。分析师担心，在中国上月将人民币贬值后引发的市场动荡期间，中国可能必须出售超过1000亿美元其持有的美国国债，以支撑人民币汇率。

如果中国开始定期抛售美国国债，可能导致美国政府融资短缺，并加大美国利率上行压力。中国持有1.27万亿美元的美国国债，是美国国债最大的外国投资者。

纽约投资咨询机构Macro Mavens的斯蒂芬妮?波姆博伊(Stephanie Pomboy)表示，中国和其他新兴市场国家助推了油价的大幅下跌，从而减少了“石油美元”的流动，已经对美国经济造成了巨大的负面影响。石油美元是指从美元主导的石油贸易中获得的美元，它可以回流至美国市场。

她写道：“突然不再是我们复苏的关键贡献者……（中国和其他新兴市场）将市场情绪的开关从‘趋险’(risk on)拨到了‘避险’(risk off)。”

对许多投资者来说，中国和其他新兴市场经济增长放缓对发达市场的影响已经是显而易见的：进口价格不断下降、资本商品订单减少以及美欧公司盈利能力大幅下降——其中许多公司在新兴市场有大量业务。

在美国以外，受美联储加息直接影响最大的可能是那些依赖短期资本流入为经常账户赤字融资的经济体。

美银美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)的董事总经理戴维?豪纳(David Hauner)表示：“受影响最大的将是巴西、俄罗斯和南非等大宗商品出口国，它们受到美元强势和中国经济疲弱的夹击。”

乐观者指出，与上世纪八九十年代的新兴市场危机期间相比，许多新兴经济体已经不那么容易遭受美国加息的影响，因为各国政府减少了所谓的“原罪”。这种原罪包括借入美元或其他外国货币，从而让自己暴露于本币贬值以致偿债负担暴增的风险之中。

尽管新兴市场国家的政府在过去十年基本上不再有外币借款，但它们的企业的外币借款出现了爆炸性增长。其中许多企业有外汇收入，这让它们避免了原罪。但其他新兴市场企业此类债务的累积导致了巨大的货币错配。

瑞银(UBS)新兴市场策略师巴努?巴韦贾(Bhanu Baweja)表示，这并非唯一的问题。

他说：“主权借贷者减少了过去的原罪，但增加了新的罪恶。”他补充称，即便它们的债务是以本币计价，但债务水平也上升了。“大多数人认为，新兴市场债务在结构上是稳健的，我认为这种说法不再适用。”

他指出，认为新兴市场国家累积了足以偿还债务的外汇储备的观点并不正确，因为“那些拥有资产的人和那些背负债务的人是不同的”。

这将意味着，随着利率上升，存量巨大的新兴市场债务将受到压力，即便外汇储备保持不变。

还有人指出，以上这些情况再加上其他种种情况，意味着美联储加息将在全球范围造成不良影响，无论是新兴市场还是发达世界。

投资咨询机构Ecstrat的约翰-保罗?史密斯(John-Paul Smith)表示：“美联储应该倾听市场的声音。加息将是非常负面的信号，它将表明，他们没有了解或者不关心世界其他地区的情况。”

译者/何黎