2010 年06月04日
寓言寻求阐释现实。我在上周讲述了有关“蚱蜢和蚂蚁”的寓言，目的是简要说明全球经济。今天我希望谈两个问题：谁受益于进口盈余的蚱蜢和出口盈余的蚂蚁之间的贸易流动？两者能够互惠共存吗？
首先，谁会受益？为了回应我给蚂蚁的这个建议“如果你希望积累长久的财富，就不要借钱给蚱蜢”，我的同事罗宾•哈丁(Robin Harding)提出了这个问题：“蚱蜢的收益会是什么？”
传统的答案是，双方都应受益于自愿交换。这包括那些“跨期交换”——蚂蚁现在向蚱蜢提供商品，以换取未来的还款。
然而这种说法假定：这些决定是明智的，市场富有弹性，合同能够执行。所有这些假定似乎都不那么可信。读者可能会争辩说，人们可能不会做出明智决定的原因之一是，有“蝗虫”之称的金融资本家愚弄了蚱蜢和蚂蚁双方。在最好的情况下，金融市场中的机构和信息问题让蚂蚁或蚱蜢难以理解发生的一切。在最坏的情况下，蝗虫利用它们的财富和知识操纵游戏，为自己谋利。
金融市场肯定会经历狂热和恐慌的周期。房地产市场在其中扮演了一个重要的角色。在市场繁荣时期，不断上涨的土地价格为举债提供了担保，还刺激了人们的冒险行为。在市场低迷时期，土地价格的暴跌可能导致大量破产，并可能压垮债务过多的金融机构。
一些经济学家质疑商品和服务贸易带来的益处，是否根本不适用于金融交易。1997-98年亚洲金融危机后，哥伦比亚大学 (Columbia University)的贾格迪什•巴格沃蒂(Jagdish Bhagwati)就这些问题写了一篇著名的文章。他在文中对其所称的“华尔街-财政部联合体”进行了谴责。*
总之，我们不能假定，跨境融资会让蚂蚁和蚱蜢就借贷和支出时机做出明智决定。蚂蚁可能会发现，它们的资金已经被消费或投资在住房等不可贸易资产的生产上。它们还可能发现，实在难以从蚱蜢窝那里获得还款。诚然，在欧元区内部，实力强大的蚂蚁国家或许能够将陷入困境的国家置于集中控制之下，尽管只是对较小的国家才有这种可能。但在面对美国这个最大的净债务国时，同样的情况将不可能发生。
这似乎意味着，蚱蜢至少应该受益于往往“无偿”的资源的流入。但如果流入的结果是不可持续的消费水平，而可贸易商品和服务的产能投资不足，这种假设就站不住脚。当资本流入停滞的时候，经济崩溃可能是非常痛苦的——如果固定汇率（或货币联盟）要求名义工资和价格在一定时期内下降，情况就更加糟糕。这种做法进而往往会提高债务的实际价值，加重负债累累的蚱蜢的苦难。
总的来说，从蚂蚁向蚱蜢的大规模债务融资净流入，似乎不太可能为任何一方带来太多好处。没错，蚂蚁的确提高了生产力，但它们也积累了低质量的资产，并变得依赖于很可能不可持续的蚱蜢需求。蚱蜢窝的经济则变得依赖于不可持续的资本流入和过度消费。当盛宴结束时，双方都会头疼无比。
这就引出了下一个问题：有办法确保蚂蚁和蚱蜢和谐共处吗？
答案肯定包括降低金融市场的不稳定性。这是监管辩论（我探讨过的话题）的焦点。这里我会加上两点：第一，对土地的出租价值征税，以求降低房地产周期的极端性；第二，在税法中消除除对举债的激励。
然而在我看来，全球体系最大的一个问题是，蚂蚁企图向蚱蜢提供如此多的“卖家融资”。最终，蚂蚁和蚱蜢都会失望。利用年长蚁巢盈余储蓄和生产力的更有成效的方法，是借钱给更年轻的蚁巢。因此一般来说，资金应该流向新兴国家，尤其是新兴国家的固定资产投资。新投资的最佳机会应该存在于后者，也正是后者最有可能产生能力，以偿还自己得到的贷款的利息与本金。
这个看似合理的建议遭遇了两个巨大的困难：第一，过去30年间，推动巨额资本净流入新兴国家的几乎所有努力，最终都导致危机；第二，结果是，新兴国家决定运行经常账户盈余，并把那些盈余投入规模越来越大的外汇储备：例如，根据国际货币基金组织(IMF)的数据，2010年，新兴国家的经常账户盈余将达到 4200亿美元，外汇储备的累积达到6300亿美元。
因此，整体上新兴国家正把经常账户盈余和私人资本净流入投向外汇储备。这些盈余几乎全部来自新兴的亚洲国家（尤其是中国），尽管这些国家拥有最好的投资机会。
只要仍然保持上述情形，发达世界的蚱蜢窝就可能仍然是资本的净接收方，而它们肯定会继续浪费这些资本。然而，由于危机本身的压力，许多昔日的蚱蜢窝正被迫变得“更像蚂蚁”。如果今天的富裕蚁巢不改变自己的行为，就可能积累起巨额盈余。要么新兴国家整体开始将这些盈余吸收进具有生产力增长空间的年轻蚁巢，要么全球将陷入需求陷阱——大家都在寻求出口盈余。
出口推动型的蚁巢向发达的蚱蜢窝的资金流动以失败告终，从年长蚁巢向年轻蚁巢的资金流动也没有成功。如果找不到办法解决这些失败，开放的全球经济本身可能会消失。
*1998年《外交事务》5/6月刊，《资本神话》(The Capital Myth)
www.foreignaffairs.com
译者/君悦
The grasshoppers and the ants – elucidating the fable
Fables seek to illuminate reality. The goal of the one I told last week – concerning “the grasshoppers and the ants” – was to provide a simplified account of the world economy. Today I wish to address two questions: who benefits from the trade flows between import-surplus grasshoppers and export-surplus ants? Can the two co-exist fruitfully?
First, who benefits? My colleague, Robin Harding, raised this question in response to my advice to ants: “If you want to accumulate enduring wealth, do not lend to grasshoppers.” He asked: what about the gains for the grasshoppers?
The traditional answer is that both sides should gain from any voluntary exchange. That includes these “inter-temporal exchanges” – in which ants offer goods to grasshoppers now in return for future repayment.
Yet this assumes that the decisions are well informed, markets are flexible and contracts are enforced. None of these assumptions seems all that plausible. A reason people may not make informed decisions is, readers argue, that what some call “locusts” (financial capitalists) fool both grasshoppers and ants. At best, agency and information problems in financial markets make it hard for ants or grasshoppers to understand what is going on. At worst, locusts use their wealth and knowledge to rig the game to their advantage.
Financial markets are certainly subject to cycles of euphoria and panic. A big role is played by the property market. In good times, rising land prices provide collateral for leverage and an incentive for risk-taking. In bad times, a collapse in land prices may lead to mass bankruptcy and threaten to destroy leveraged financial institutions.
Some economists question whether the benefits of trade in goods and services apply to trade in finance at all. Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University wrote a famous article on these lines in the wake of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. In this he decried what he called the “Wall Street-Treasury complex”.*
In sum, we cannot assume that cross-border finance allows ants and grasshoppers to make wise decisions about the timing of lending and spending. Ants are likely to find that their funds have been consumed or invested in production of non-tradeable assets, such as housing. They are also likely to find it hard indeed to extract repayment from grasshopper colonies. True, inside the eurozone, powerful ant nations may be able to put the countries in trouble under central control, though even that would only be possible with smaller countries. But the equivalent will be impossible vis-a-vis the US – the biggest net debtor.
The implication seems to be that grasshoppers should at least benefit from an inflow of often unrequited resources. But that assumption is unwarranted if the outcome is unsustainable levels of consumption and underinvestment in capacity to produce tradeable goods and services. The economic collapse, when inflows of capital halt, can be very painful – even more so if a fixed exchange rate (or currency union) demands a period of falling nominal wages and prices. That, in turn, tends to raise the real value of debt, worsening the plight of the grossly overindebted grasshoppers.
In all, large-scale net flows of debt finance from ants to grasshoppers seem unlikely to do either side much good. Ants, it is true, do build up their productive capacity. But they also accumulate poor-quality assets and become dependent on what may well be unsustainable grasshopper demand. The economies of grasshopper colonies, in turn, come to depend on unsustainable capital inflows and excessive consumption. When the glorious party ends, both sides end up with big headaches.
This leads to the next question: is there a way to ensure ants and grasshoppers coexist harmoniously?
A part of the answer must be to reduce the instability of financial markets. This is the focus of the debate on regulation – a topic I have discussed previously. I would add two points here: first, seek to reduce the extremes of the property cycle by taxing the rental value of land; second, remove incentives for leverage from the tax code.
Yet the biggest single problem of the global system, in my view, is the attempt by ants to provide so much “vendor finance” to grasshoppers. In the end, both ants and grasshoppers have ended up disappointed. A more productive use of the surplus savings and productive capacity of ageing ant nests would be to lend to younger ones. So finance should flow to emerging countries, in general, and fixed investment in emerging countries, in particular. It is in the latter that the best opportunities for new investment should exist. It is the latter that are also most likely to generate the ability to service and repay the loans they have received.
This seemingly sensible proposition runs up against two huge difficulties: the first is that almost every attempt to generate large net flows of capital to emerging countries over the past three decades has ended up in a crisis; the second is that, as a result, the emerging world has decided to run current account surpluses and recycle those surpluses into ever larger foreign exchange reserves: in 2010, for example, according to the International Monetary Fund, the current account surplus of emerging countries will be $420bn, with an accumulation of reserves of $630bn.
Thus, in aggregate, emerging countries are recycling current account surpluses, plus the net private capital inflow, into reserves. Nearly all of these surpluses are generated by emerging Asia, in general, and China, in particular, though these countries have the best investment opportunities.
So long as this remains true, the grasshopper colonies of the developed world are likely to remain net recipients of capital, which they will surely continue to waste. Yet, under the pressure of the crisis itself, many erstwhile grasshopper colonies are being forced to become more “ant-like”. If today's rich ant nests do not change their behaviour, potential surpluses will be huge. Either the emerging world as a whole starts to absorb these surpluses into potentially productive younger nests, or the world will be stuck in a demand trap, with everybody seeking export surpluses.
Flows of finance from export-driven ant nests to advanced grasshopper colonies end in tears. Flows of finance from old ant nests to young ones have not worked out either. If a way is not found to fix these failures, the open global economy itself may disappear.
* The Capital Myth, Foreign Affairs, May/June 1998, www.foreignaffairs.com
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