【英语财经】人民币大贬值的“尾部风险”？ Renminbi ‘tail risk’ threatens to wag the inflationary dog

Let’s forget the Federal Reserve for a moment. Instead consider China, its currency and a

piece of financial jargon known as “tail risk”. Tail, like many terms misappropriated by finance, has a former life in statistical mathematics where it refers, very broadly, to anything that does not happen very often.

Modern usage is different, however, and it now often means something like: “Damn it! We should have paid more attention.” So when three-quarters of investors told pollsters at Bank of America Merrill Lynch this month a recession in China was the greatest tail risk they faced, what it meant is they had noticed the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy and were trying to decide what to think about it.

A recession should not really be thought of as a remote possibility. Developing economies tend to expand very quickly for a period, and then experience growing pains. The when is the hard part, not the if.

When could be as soon as next year. Economists at Citigroup have declared a recession the most likely result for 2016, a view supported by the collapse in commodity prices. China has guzzled raw materials for a decade but, according to the International Monetary Fund, it has more residential floor space per person than Spain — infamous for its construction boom. If China no longer builds houses at the same pace, its economic growth will slow.

Assessing the economic path of a one-party state of 1.4bn people is perhaps left to better minds. A different question might be this: what would a real China tail risk look like? One answer is the renminbi. A drop in its value against the dollar by a fifth or more falls into the category of unlikely but plausible scenarios worth consideration.

A fall of such size would probably count as a surprise. From 1994 to 2006 the renminbi was pegged to the dollar, and since then it has been allowed to trade in a narrow range against a basket of currencies. The state demands control of capital flows, and the central bank has at its disposal $3.6tn of foreign reserves. So the renminbi is not an easy target for speculators compared with, say, the Brazilian real, which has collapsed relative to the dollar in 2015.

Beijing has allowed the currency to fall a little this year, first widening the range in which it could trade, then in August allowing a small but unexpected depreciation. Larger falls for several emerging market currencies followed, leading to pressure on the dollar/renminbi exchange rate in offshore markets, which the government can influence but does not control.

The central bank spent $130bn in August to preserve the value of the renminbi against the dollar. Intervention has continued this month, albeit at a lower pace. Nomura estimates that $47bn has been spent onshore and offshore in so far this month. The size of reserves gives plenty of ammunition for intervention at such a rate, although not indefinitely, and not without adding to expectations that the currency will at some point fall.

Assume that rich Chinese have similar concerns to the investors mentioned above, and react by moving money out of the country. State controls mean such capital flight is not straightforward, but the system is leaky.

Remember too the series of haphazard measures taken by the government to prop up the Shanghai stock market in recent months. Confidence in its control of the economy has slipped, and it is possible to imagine allowing the currency to float, or at least fall significantly, as a policy choice for a rattled leadership.

Which brings us back to the Fed, and the finely balanced outlook for US employment, inflation and the path of monetary policy.

International trade is not a large part of the American economy, and services are the biggest contributor to the basket in which inflation is calculated. But still a big drop in the price of durable goods shipped from China would be a push in the wrong direction.

So what would happen if this tall tail came true, and

the currency dropped by a fifth or more? Then it would indeed be time to return to the Fed and the outlook for

US inflation.

让我们暂时忘了美联储(Fed)吧，反过来想想中国、人民币以及一个名为“尾部风险”的金融术语。与许多被金融领域盗用的术语一样，尾部之前是统计数学中的术语，指代所有不经常发生的事情，外延非常宽泛。

然而，现代用法有所不同，它现在往往意味着：“该死！我们本该多注意些”。因此，当四分之三的投资者本月告诉美银美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)的调查人员，中国经济衰退是他们面临的最大尾部风险的时候，他们的意思是说，他们注意到了全球第二大经济体的经济放缓，并试图判断其中的含义。

切勿认为衰退是遥不可及的事情。发展中经济体往往会在一段时期内迅速扩张，然后就会经历“成长的烦恼”。棘手的问题是什么时候会经历这种烦恼，而不是是否会经历。

时间最早可能在明年。花旗集团(Citigroup)的经济学家们宣称衰退是2016年最有可能出现的情景，这一观点得到了大宗商品价格暴跌的支持。中国十年来大肆抢购原材料，但国际货币基金组织(IMF)的数据显示，中国人均住房面积比西班牙还高——后者以建筑热潮闻名。如果中国不再以相同步伐建房，它的经济增长就会放缓。

评估一个拥有14亿人口的一党制国家的经济道路或许可以留给更聪明的人。一个不同的问题是：一个真正的中国尾部风险会是什么样的？一个答案是人民币。人民币兑美元贬值20%乃至更多，属于那种不太可能但值得考虑的合理情景。

这种幅度的贬值或许算是一种意外。从1994年到2006年，中国施行人民币盯住美元汇率的政策，此后允许人民币对一篮子货币窄幅波动。中国政府要求管制资本流动，央行还有3.6万亿美元的外汇储备可以动用。因此与巴西雷亚尔等货币相比——2015年雷亚尔兑美元大幅贬值——人民币并非是投机者能够轻易攻击的目标。

中国政府今年允许人民币小幅贬值，先是扩大了交易区间，随后在8月出其不意地允许人民币小幅贬值。在这之后，新兴市场多种货币更大幅下跌，导致离岸市场上的美元/人民币汇率承压——中国政府可以影响但无法控制离岸人民币市场。

中国央行在8月份动用1300亿美元支撑人民币兑美元汇率。本月央行继续进行干预，不过频率有所下降。野村证券(Nomura)估计，本月迄今中国央行可能拿出了470亿美元在在岸和离岸市场进行干预。中国庞大的外汇储备让央行有大量的弹药以这样的力度进行干预，虽然这些弹药并非是无限的，而且也难免加剧人民币在某一时点贬值的预期。

假设中国富人怀着与上文提到的投资者类似的担忧，并因此将钱转移出中国。政府管制意味着资本无法直接流出国门，但制度存在漏洞。

也别忘了，最近几个月中国政府毫无章法地推出一系列举措来提振上海股市。外界对中国控制经济的信心下降，对于慌乱的领导层来说这并非绝无可能的政策选项：允许人民币自由浮动、或者至少大幅贬值。

回头来看美国就业、通胀以及货币政策路径三者之间的微妙平衡前景。

国际贸易在美国经济中占比不大，服务业是计算通胀率的篮子中最大的一块。但进口自中国的耐用品价格大幅下降仍将从错误的方向施加压力。

那么，如果这个大尾部风险转化成现实，人民币下跌20%以上，将会出现什么情况？到那时话题又得回到美联储和美国通胀前景上了。

译者/邹策