空色一體
千江有水千江月，萬裏無雲萬裏天。
約翰遜：通往財政危機之路
西蒙·約翰遜，前國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）首席經濟學家，現為著名經濟學博客http://BaselineScenario.com的共同創始人，麻省理工斯隆學院教授，彼得森國際經濟研究所資深研究員
華盛頓特區——
華盛頓圈內人士之間流行一種時尚——民主黨和共和黨都不能免俗——就是攤開手表示無奈，當眾宣稱：我們美國終將遭受大規模預算危機，特別是如今 醫療保險費用攀升，增加了醫療保障方案財政負擔的情況下。但也是同一夥人通常笑著指出，他國投資人仍願意借給美國大量的錢，保持較低的遠期利率，並在可預 見的將來允許美國擁有巨額赤字。
這一觀點漏洞百出。它認為隻要美元是世界首要的儲備貨幣，並且美國為冒進的投資人提供最佳避難港，美國就能把這個問題一直拖延下去。按此邏輯， 到2015年，政治家將不會增稅，也幾乎不用縮減開支，所以美國將還有約一萬億的預算赤字，其中大部分將以向外國人銷售政府債券的方式融資。到2050 年，無疑將出現財政問題——但即便如此，現在還是有足夠的時間可以無視它。
美聯儲壓低所有利率的明確意圖，支撐著這一理論，表明美國基準利率——比如10年期國庫券——在近期將維持在4%以下（甚至可能是3.5%以 下）。本周，這一政府債券的利率是3.2%，從曆史標準看也是十分低了。如果“華盛頓財政共識”是正確的，則基準利率最終開始上行時，也將速度緩慢。
但這一共識忽略了重要的一點：美國以及全球的財政部門在近幾十年裏已經變得更加動蕩不安，而且從2008年金融危機以來，沒有一項改革措施能讓其穩定下來。
人們有時候會提到“係統風險”，就像它是係統與生俱來的屬性一樣。但現代財政的曆史，包括新興市場的曆史，明顯表明事實並非如此。當銀行和其他金融機構遭遇困境時，私營部門的損失將明確或暗中轉移到政府的資產負債表上。危險的金融係統將有巨大的財政風險。
闡明這一問題的三人中，有兩人是全球著名央行的行長。本·伯南克出任美聯儲委員會主席之前，曾以研究大蕭條的學術成就而聞名，其研究表明在正確 （或錯誤）的條件下，金融部門是如何在實體經濟（非金融）的發展中起到加速作用的。美聯儲過去三年試圖穩定銀行和其他金融部門，無疑很大程度上是由於這種 見解。
斯坦福商學院教授阿納德·阿瑪蒂則十分關注銀行資本——特別是銀行為高杠杆率（幾無資產淨值，卻有大量的債務）的行為融資的動機。我認為，她的網頁是當今整個互聯網中最重要的一個(http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/admati.etal.mediamentions.html)，其中既有她自己、彼得·德馬佐、馬丁·黑爾維希和保羅·法德雷的研究，也有他們多次涉足的政治辯論。
阿瑪蒂和她的同事的見解簡單而有力。高杠杆率讓銀行家掙更多錢，但對股東來說很可能變得多餘——因為這使得銀行在金融崩潰中更易受到波及——並 且對納稅人和全體公民來說也很糟糕，因為他們要承擔大幅的負麵成本。在美國，這一成本包括自2007年以來損失的超過八百萬工作崗位，政府債務對GPD比 率的40%增幅（主要由於稅收損失），以及更多。
默文·金曾是一名學者，現任英格蘭銀行行長，他和他的同事對導致這種結果的毒酒有個生動的名字：“毀滅循環”。因為每次財政係統出了問題，就會收到央行和政府預算上的大量支持。這樣就減少了股東的損失，並完全保護了幾乎所有的債權人。
結果是，銀行有了更強烈的動機繼續進行大額借貸（阿瑪迪這樣認為），並且隨著資產價格促進了正在恢複期的經濟，它們就能借到更多的錢（伯南克對 此很清楚）。但這最終導致冒更大的險，通常是以無規章，無管製的方式——並且在銀行自身中沒有有效的管理（阿瑪蒂再次解釋為什麽銀行主管喜歡這樣做）。
“伯南克-阿瑪蒂-金”觀點表明，華盛頓財政共識缺陷重重。美國和世界經濟會恢複，確實。但這種恢複隻是“繁榮-崩潰-救濟”循環中的另一階段罷了。
美國“大到不能倒”的銀行就快變得“大到沒有救”了。等到拯救大銀行，保護債權人，穩定經濟這些行為將讓美國政府深陷債務之中，其主權出現危機，利率飛漲，財政危機爆發的時候，這些銀行就真的“大到沒有救”了。
換言之，“毀滅循環”其實並不是一個循環。它最終確實有個終結，就像冰島、愛爾蘭和希臘一樣（這才開了個頭）。
西蒙·約翰遜，前國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）首席經濟學家，現為著名經濟學博客http://BaselineScenario.com的共同創始人，麻省理工斯隆學院教授，彼得森國際經濟研究所資深研究員
The Road to Fiscal Crisis
03-24 17:04 Caijing
The financial sector in the US and globally has become much more unstable in recent decades, and there is nothing in any of the reform efforts undertaken since the near-meltdown in 2008 that will make it safer.
By Simon Johnson
WASHINGTON, DC – It has become fashionable among Washington insiders – Democrats and Republicans alike – to throw up their hands and say: We ultimately face a major budget crisis in the United States, particularly as rising health-care costs increase the fiscal burden of entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. But then the same people typically smile and point out that investors from other parts of the world still want to lend the US vast amounts of money, keeping long-term interest rates low and allowing the country to run big deficits for the foreseeable future.
This view is seriously flawed. It implies that the US can kick the can down the road as long as the dollar remains the world’s preeminent reserve currency, and America offers the best safe haven for skittish capital owners. By 2015, according to this logic, politicians will have done nothing to raise taxes and very little to cut expenditure, so the US will still have a budget deficit of around $1 trillion, and will finance a substantial portion of it by selling government bonds to foreigners. By 2050, there will undoubtedly be a fiscal problem – but, again, there is plenty of time to ignore it.
This logic, supported by the clear intention of the Federal Reserve to keep all interest rates low, suggests that benchmark US interest rates – for example, on the 10-year Treasury – will remain below 4% (and perhaps under 3.5%) in the near term. This week, such government debt paid around 3.2%, which is very low by historical standards. If the “Washington Fiscal Consensus” proves correct, when benchmark rates eventually edge upwards, they will move slowly.
But this consensus misses an important point: the financial sector in the US and globally has become much more unstable in recent decades, and there is nothing in any of the reform efforts undertaken since the near-meltdown in 2008 that will make it safer.
People sometimes talk about “systemic risk” as if it were intrinsic to the financial system. But modern financial history, including in emerging markets, strongly indicates otherwise. When banks and other financial institutions get into trouble, private losses are transferred – explicitly or implicitly – to the government’s balance sheet. Dangerous financial systems pose big fiscal risks.
The three people who have articulated this problem most clearly include two of the world’s leading central bankers. Before Ben Bernanke became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he was rightly renowned for his academic work on the Great Depression, which showed how, under the right (or wrong) conditions, the financial sector could act as a form of accelerant for developments in the real (nonfinancial) economy. The Fed’s efforts in the past three years to stabilize banks and other parts of finance have no doubt been motivated in large part by this insight.
Anat Admati, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, focuses on bank capital – specifically, the incentives that banks have to fund their activities with very high leverage – little equity and a great deal of debt. In my view, she has the single most important page on the Web today (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/admati.etal.mediamentions.html), containing both original research by her, Peter deMarzo, Martin Hellwig, and Paul Pfleiderer and their many interventions in the policy debate.
The insight of Admati and her collaborators is simple and very powerful. Higher leverage allows bankers to earn more money, but it can easily become excessive for shareholders – because it makes the banks more vulnerable to collapse – and it is terrible for taxpayers and all citizens, as they face massive downside costs. In the US, the costs include more than eight million jobs lost since 2007, an increase in government debt relative to GDP of around 40% (mostly due to lost tax revenue), and much more.
Mervyn King, a former academic who is currently Governor of the Bank of England, and his colleagues have a vivid name for the toxic cocktail that results: “doom loop.” The idea is that every time the financial system is in trouble, it receives a great deal of support from central banks and government budgets. This limits losses to stockholders and completely protects almost all creditors.
As a result, banks have even stronger incentives to resume heavy borrowing (as Admati argues), and, as rising asset prices lift the economy in the recovery phase, it becomes possible for them to borrow even more (as Bernanke knows). But what this really amounts to is taking on more risk, typically in an unregulated, unsupervised way – and with very little effective governance within the banks themselves (again, Admati explains why bank executives like it this way).
The Bernanke-Admati-King view suggests that the Washington Fiscal Consensus is seriously deficient. The US and global economy will recover, to be sure. But that recovery will be just another phase in the boom-bust-bailout cycle.
America’s too-big-to-fail banks are well on their way to becoming too big to save. That point will be reached when saving the big banks, protecting their creditors, and stabilizing the economy plunges the US government so deeply into debt that its solvency is called into question, interest rates rise sharply, and a fiscal crisis erupts.
In other words, the “doom loop” isn’t really a loop at all. It does end eventually, as it has – just for starters – in Iceland, Ireland, and Greece.
Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a leading economics blog, http://BaselineScenario.com, a professor at MIT Sloan, and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His book, 13 Bankers, co-authored with James Kwak, is now available in paperback.
