德国错了？

Ireland upends the German perspective on the eurozone

 作者：英国《金融时报》首席经济评论员 马丁•沃尔夫By Martin Wolf 报道 2010年11月29日 07:11 AM 英文 对照 如果希望爱尔兰危机能带来好处，那么首先就要认识到，德国对欧元区问题的经典看法是错误的。不同经济体之间的任何货币联盟，注定都是一项有风险的事业。但如果有关运作原理的理念是错误的，货币联盟就有可能带来灾难性后果。If any good can come out of the Irish disaster it is via the realisation that the classic German perspective on the problems of the eurozone is mistaken. Any currency union among diverse economies is bound to be a risky venture. But, with mistaken ideas about how it should work, it may prove calamitous.

那么，这种权威看法是什么？那就是，欧元区的核心问题是财政没有节制和经济缺乏弹性，因此正确的解决之道是财政纪律、结构性改革和债务重组。然而，爱尔兰陷入困境不是因为财政失败，而是由于金融过度；爱尔兰需要救援，尽管其经济具有惊人的弹性；可以预见的是，强调债务重组引发了一场危机。这些现实应该让德国反思。它会吗？我对此表示怀疑。

What, then, is this canonical perspective? It is that the core problems of the eurozone are those of fiscal incontinence and economic inflexibility and so the right solutions are fiscal discipline, structural reform and debt restructuring. Ireland, however, is not in difficulty because of fiscal failings, but because of financial excesses; Ireland has needed rescue, notwithstanding its astonishingly flexible economy; and an emphasis on restructuring of debt has, predictably, triggered a crisis. These realities should make Germany rethink. Will it? I doubt it.爱尔兰与希腊完全不同。回到2007年，爱尔兰的净公共债务只有国内生产总值(GDP)的12%。而德国和希腊的比例分别是50%和80%（见图表）。西班牙2007年的净公共债务也只有GDP的27%。如果在欧元区问世后到当前这波危机期间，财政规定的执行像德国政策制定者现在希望的那样无情（尽管本世纪初德国不愿在本国运用这些规则），那么它们对法国和德国的影响，应该是爱尔兰或西班牙的两倍多。
Ireland is nothing like Greece. Back in 2007, Ireland’s net public debt was just 12 per cent of gross domestic product. This compares with 50 per cent in Germany and 80 per cent in Greece (see chart). Spain, too, had net public debt in 2007 at just 27 per cent of GDP. If the fiscal rules had been applied as ruthlessly as German policymakers say they now want (though their predecessors resisted their application to themselves in the early 2000s), they would have affected France and Germany more than twice as often as Ireland or Spain between inception of the eurozone and the current wave of crises.在爱尔兰和西班牙，出问题的不是公共部门，而是私人部门。欧洲核心国家的需求长期疲弱——德国2008年的实际内需仅比1999年高5%，导致利率处于低位。在这种环境下，数个外围国家（尤其是爱尔兰）的资产价格和信贷出现了爆炸式增长。扩张性的货币政策只得基本上以这种方式在某些地方发挥作用。此外，直到2007年11月，爱尔兰和西班牙公共债务相对于德国的息差一直接近于零。私人信贷供应者未能抑制信贷增长也并不令人意外：信贷增长就是他们造成的。

It was not the public but the private sector that went haywire in Ireland and in Spain. In the low interest rate environment caused principally by chronically weak demand in core European countries – Germany’s real domestic demand was a mere 5 per cent higher in 2008 than in 1999 – asset prices and credit exploded in several peripheral countries, particularly Ireland. An expansionary monetary policy has to work in much this way, somewhere. Moreover, until November 2007, spreads of Irish and Spanish public debt over German levels were next to zero. Nor is it surprising that private suppliers of credit failed to discipline the boom: they caused it.

然后，“明斯基时刻”(Minsky Moment)来临了。金融市场形势发生了变化，资产价格崩溃，所有可怕的贷款都浮出水面，爱尔兰政府匆忙为银行提供担保。这些担保加上私人部门紧缩造成的巨额财政赤字——国际货币基金组织(IMF)的资料显示，爱尔兰私人部门今年的财政盈余将达到GDP的15%——导致了公共债务的爆炸式增长。但这场灾难是危机的后果，而非原因。此外，认为爱尔兰的巨额财政盈余可能足以抵消私人部门繁荣带来的破坏性影响的观点是荒谬的。未考虑私人部门不当行为的协议也没有规定这一点。

Then came the “Minsky moment”. Financial markets changed state, asset prices collapsed, all the dreadful lending emerged into view and the Irish government rushed to guarantee its banks. The combination of the guarantees with huge fiscal deficits caused by private sector retrenchment – the Irish private sector will run a financial surplus of 15 per cent of GDP this year, according to the International Monetary Fund – has caused an explosion of public indebtedness. But this calamity is the consequence of the crisis, not its cause. Moreover, the notion that Ireland might have run a fiscal surplus big enough to offset the destabilising impact of the private sector boom is ludicrous. This was also not required by the treaties, which take no account of private sector misbehaviour.

原因就谈到这里。现在考虑一下解决办法。爱尔兰当然不缺乏弹性。相反，相对于德国而言，爱尔兰的单位劳动成本已大幅下降（见图表）。从长期来看，这给了爱尔兰一个摆脱困境的良机。但短期而言，薪资和价格下降加重了欧元计价债务的威胁。在压力下，爱尔兰也实施了财政紧缩。但对一个遭受资产价格泡沫破裂的经济体实施紧缩政策往往没有效果，尽管作为一个开放的小型经济体，爱尔兰比其它脆弱的欧元区成员国更有可能依靠出口摆脱困境。

So much for the causes. Now consider the solutions. Ireland is certainly not lacking in flexibility. On the contrary, its unit labour costs have collapsed, relative to Germany’s (see chart). This gives the country a good chance of growing out of its difficulties, in the long run. But, in the short run, the fall in wages and prices worsens the overhang of euro-denominated indebtedness. Under pressure, Ireland has also imposed fiscal retrenchment. But deflating an economy suffering from the collapse of an asset price bubble often fails to work, though Ireland, as a small open economy, has a better chance of exporting its way out than other vulnerable eurozone members.遗憾的是，在爱尔兰试图这样做的时候，欧元区成员国应德国的要求，同意出台一个主权债务重组机制。实际上，德国总理安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)与法国总统尼古拉•萨科齐(Nicolas Sarkozy)在10月18日签售协议，寻求修改协定以出台此类机制，引发了希腊、爱尔兰和葡萄牙的债券抛售（见图表），进而帮助促成了新一轮的恐慌。

Unfortunately, while Ireland was trying to achieve just that, the members of the eurozone agreed to introduce a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, at the behest of Germany. In fact, the agreement on October 18 between Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, to seek a treaty revision to introduce such a mechanism triggered bond sell-offs in Greece, Ireland and Portugal (see chart). This, in turn, helped cause the renewed bout of panic.

鲁汶大学(Leuven university)的保罗•德•格劳威(Paul De Grauwe)对这些观点持激烈批评态度。他在为欧洲政策研究中心(Centre for European Policy Studies)撰写的一篇文章中指出，主权债务重组合法化肯定会造成大量投机行为。他提议创建一个大型欧洲货币基金，为必要的调整提供资金。这样做的理由在于，私人部门在上升和下降趋势中造成了自我维系的过度。从最坏处着眼，可怕后果几乎是不可避免的。这为创建此类危机银行提供了理由。债务重组并未因此被排除，但应该发生在调整不可行的情况下。然而，如果没有流动性支持，单凭紧缩常常无法扭转负面人气，因为投资者认为愈益紧缩的承诺不可信。那么违约也许就无法避免，即便在借款条款不那么苛刻的情况下，违约本来不必发生。

As Leuven University’s Paul de Grauwe, a fierce critic of these ideas, notes in a paper for the Centre for European Policy Studies, legitimation of sovereign debt restructuring is sure to create speculative runs. Instead, he recommends the creation of a large European monetary fund, to fund needed adjustment. The case for this is that the private sector creates self-sustaining excesses on the upside and the downside. By assuming the worst, it makes dire outcomes almost inevitable. This provides the case for such a crisis lender. This does not preclude debt restructuring, but that should happen only when adjustment is infeasible. Without liquidity support, however, retrenchment alone will too often fail to turn adverse sentiment round, because investors find the promise of ever harsher austerity unbelievable. Default may then be unavoidable, even if it would be unnecessary with less onerous terms on borrowing.

显然，德国关于该如何进行下去的观点，不只反映了该国精英的信念。即便公众能拿回自己的钱，但仍对“纾困”充满了敌意，再加上德国宪法法院的作用，德国必然会提出要求。然而，重要的问题在于，一个按照德国的路线运作的货币联盟能否发挥作用。

Evidently, the German view of how to proceed reflects more than the convictions of its elite. The hostility of the public to “bail-outs”, even if they were to get their money back, plus the role of its constitutional court, make its demands inevitable. The big question, however, is whether a monetary union run on German lines can work.

往好里说，对财政纪律和主权债务重组的依赖肯定会产生大量“顺周期”政策。往坏里说，它将导致欧元区成员国连续的低迷和违约。此外，这还是一个全球问题：较弱小国家强调通缩调整，可能会让整个欧元区变成一个庞大的德国，依赖于从世界其它地区进口需求。正如菲利普•怀特(Philip White)在为欧洲改革中心(Centre for European Reform)所写的文章中所指出，欧元区过于庞大，无法在世界经济中扮演这样一种角色。因此，欧元区内部失衡的问题是不可避免的，无论德国多么希望抵制这种言论。

At best, reliance on fiscal disciplines and sovereign debt restructuring is sure to generate massively pro-cyclical policy. At worst, it will generate serial depression and default among member countries. Moreover, this is also a global problem: the emphasis on deflationary adjustment in weaker countries risks turning the eurozone as a whole into a gigantic Germany, dependent on importing demand from the rest of the world. As Philip White has noted in a paper for the pro-European Centre for European Reform, the eurozone is far too large to play such a role in the world economy. Thus, the question of imbalances within the eurozone is inescapable, however much Germany may wish to resist such a discussion.

此次危机对爱尔兰是一个巨大的挑战，它的确应该将无担保银行债务转化为股权，而不是迫使民众纾困所有缺乏远见的银行。但爱尔兰的例子还表明，德国关于欧元区应如何运作的观点是错误的：财政混乱不是主要问题，财政紧缩和债务重组也不是唯一的解决办法。如果不理解这一点，人们就不能吸取历史教训。

The crisis is a huge challenge for Ireland, which should surely convert unsecured bank debt into equity rather than force its citizens to bail out all the improvident lenders. But the Irish case also shows that the German view of how the eurozone should work is mistaken: fiscal sloppiness is not the main problem and fiscal retrenchment and debt restructuring are not the sole solutions. One cannot learn from history if one does not understand it.

译者/君悦