重构全球金融体系的契机-神马文学网

最近各国政府祭出的一系列经济救援计划，虽然规模庞大、行动迅速，但是对于信心水平和现行经济活动的前景并没有多少显而易见的影响。事实上，随着多数国家不再有能力应对日益增长的破产负担或是进一步承担私营部门的风险，新的大规模救援计划可能会逐渐减少。这种背景凸显出，在伦敦的会议上，由工业国和发展中国家组成的20国集团(G20)亟需打造一种新的范式，使全球金融和经济体系恢复活力。

第二项要务应该是由G20（成员国国家领导人、财政部长和央行官员）负责协调未来的国际经济政策，而不是由已经在这个任务上遭遇惨败的国际货币基金组织(IMF)。

第三项要务应该是，大刀阔斧地改造IMF，解散其委员会，代之以一种真正能够代表该组织宣称为其服务的更多国家的治理结构。IMF应继续管理其国际收支应急工具，但是要在G20的全面监督下进行。

美国政府可能会抵制这种变革，而G7中的欧洲国家会尽其所能坚持采用战后的旧框架。不过，在冷战结束、中国开始崛起成为今天这样的大国之后，那种安排的效用就开始逐渐减弱。

政府通过承担预算赤字和对银行实施资本重组来刺激经济的方式，只能暂时延缓这场危机。财政政策有其局限性。美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)已经在预测，美国今年的财政赤字将达到1.7万亿美元，大约相当于国内生产总值(GDP)的13%。他还告诉美国公众要做好准备，上万亿美元的预算赤字可能会持续数年。

在短期内，世界需要美国的经济刺激方案。但长期来看，前车之鉴证明，只有在赤字国家增加储蓄缩减开支，而盈余国家减少储蓄增加开支时，危机才能得到解决。当债权大国被排斥在国际机构的核心集团之外时，这种储蓄的不平衡不会得到纠正。如果听之任之，它们会重新采取防御性策略。如果在诚信的基础上接纳它们，它们或许会觉得改变一些习惯也无妨。

例如，中国政府在安排其盈余时，并不打算让人民币的实际汇率来改变国家资源的方向，特别是在这种行为有可能让它落入IMF之手的时候。1997年的金融危机之后，亚洲所有政府都对资本外流的政治后果感到担心——印尼总统苏哈托(Suharto)就在1998年被迫下台。

在国际货币治理实现民主化，或者至少更具代表性之前，任何主要的发展中国家——无论是不是债权国——都不会把脑袋伸进IMF连同美国财政部设下的套索。

不过，要构筑一个真正具有活力的G20框架，美国必须首先回答两个战略问题。中国是需要在战略上保持警惕的商业竞争者，还是建设多面新世界的结构单元？俄罗斯是应该成为更具代表性的世界体系的有机组成部分，还是应该继续被视为无药可救的不可信赖者？

以积极的态度解决上述问题，并改革旧的布雷顿森林体系(Bretton Woods)，就能够开创一种更加可行的世界格局。问题是，奥巴马是否会在即将召开的G20会议上意识到这个契机，以及老顾问的建议是否会让他和美国其他人继续陷在当前经济和策略的窠臼里。

迅速大规模接纳发展中国家是让世界面貌一新的唯一出路。这种局面的出现，将对信心产生深远的影响——胜过迄今出台的所有刺激方案。

A CHANCE TO REMAKE THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Global financial confidence, once destroyed, requires myriad positive events and a heavy convergence of them to counter ambient pessimism and gloom.

The recent series of government packages, notwithstanding their scale and speed, has had little demonstrable effect on the level of confidence or the outlook for ongoing activity. Indeed the number of new and significant packages may begin to peter out as the public accounts of most countries can no longer cope with the growing burden of insolvency or assume further private sector risk. This context underlines the urgent need for the Group of 20 industrialised and developing nations meeting in London to construct a new paradigm to resuscitate the world financial and economic system.

What is needed is a new global economic and political settlement. The first priority should be to make the G20 a permanent gathering. The leaders should meet at least once a year and, in current circumstances , twice. A permanent G20 structure, representative of the major debtor and creditor countries and the most strategically powerful ones, will sound the death knell of the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations. This is two decades too late, but better late than never.

The second priority should be for future international economic policy co-ordination to be conducted by the G20 – its leaders, finance ministers and central bankers – not by the International Monetary Fund, which has failed so miserably in this task.

The third priority should be radically to restructure the IMF, disbanding its board and replacing it with a governance structure that truly represents the wider world it claims to serve. The Fund should still manage its balance of payments emergency facility but under the general supervision of the G20.

The Washington establishment may resist such changes while the European members of the G7 will do all they can to hang on to the old postwar structure. Yet the utility of those arrangements began to erode when the cold war ended and China began its rise to the powerhouse it is today.

The pump-priming of government budgets through deficits and recapitalisation of banks offers only a temporary respite to the crisis. Fiscal policy has its limits. President Barack Obama is already portending a US federal deficit of $1,700bn (€1,354bn) this year, or about 13 per cent of gross domestic product and told the US public to expect deficits in the trillions for years.

In the short term the world needs the US stimulus but the longer term antecedents of the crisis can only be dealt with when deficit countries save more and spend less and surplus countries do the opposite. This savings imbalance will not be remedied while the larger creditor states are locked out of the hierarchy of global institutions. Left to themselves, they will go back to their own defensive game. Brought into the fold, on a credible basis, they may think it is safe to change habits.

For instance, the government of China has no intention of dealing with its surpluses by letting its real exchange rate redirect national resources, especially when such action risks putting it into the hands of the IMF. Following the crisis of 1997, what every Asian government fears is the political consequence of capital outflow – to wit President Suharto of Indonesia, who was forced out of office in 1998.

But to make a G20 structure that is truly dynamic, the US must answer two strategic questions. Is China a commercial competitor that has to be strategically watched or is it a building block in a new multi-faceted world? Should Russia have an organic place in a more representative world system or should it continue to be regarded as incurably untrustworthy?

A positive resolution of these questions along with reform of the old Bretton Woods arrangements can usher in a more workable world structure. The question is whether Mr Obama will recognise this opportunity at the coming G20 meeting or whether the advice of old advisers will keep him, and the rest of us, in the current economic and strategic rut.

A burst of inclusion is the only way to make the world anew. If it happens, the impact on confidence will be profound – outweighing all the packages put on the table to date.

The writer is a former Australian prime minister and a member of the inter- national advisory council of China Development Bank