开动印钞机Think the unthinkable and start printing again

It is the policy that dare not speak its name: the printing press. The time has come to employ this nuclear option on a grand scale. The alternative is likely to be a lost decade. The waste is more than unnecessary; it is cruel. Sadists seem to revel in that cruelty. Sane people should reject it. It is wrong, intellectually and morally.

这是一种不敢声张的政策：印钞。是时候大规模动用这种“核武器”了。不然结果可能会是“失去的十年”。浪费十年时光不仅没有必要，也十分残忍。虐待狂似乎乐在其中。神志清醒的人则应抵制这种做法。无论是从理性、还是从道德上讲，这样做都是错误的。

A recession looms close in the UK and other high-income countries, less than four years after the start of the last one. This would be a disaster for those who would lose their jobs or the young, who would find their hopes of work further postponed.

在英国和其它高收入国家，一场衰退正在眼前迫近，此时距上一轮衰退的发生还不到4年。对那些将要失业的人、以及那些就业希望变得更加渺茫的青年人来说，这将是一场灾难。

A big danger for the UK is a sharp fall in house prices, which would threaten the finances of households and banks. A new recession would also shatter fragile business confidence, which would reduce real business investment, still 20 per cent lower in early 2011 than before the crisis. That would further delay the structural shifts on which sustained recovery depend. With UK gross domestic product still 4 per cent below its pre-crisis peak, this depression would be longer and costlier, in terms of lost output, than the Great Depression of the 1930s, as I noted four weeks ago.

英国面临的一大危险是房价急剧下滑，这将威胁家庭和银行的财务状况。一场新的衰退也将击碎脆弱 的企业信心，那将导致企业实际投资下降（2011年初，企业实际投资仍比危机前的水平低20%）。这种状况，将导致经济持续复苏所依赖的结构性改革进一步 被拖延。当前，英国GDP仍比危机前的峰值水平低4%，因而，这场衰退将比上世纪30年代的“大萧条”更加漫长，代价也将更加高昂（从产出减少的角度而 言）。我在一个月前就阐明了这一观点。

What is to be done? The first task is to abandon what Adam Posen, an outside member of the monetary policy committee, calls “policy defeatism”. As he argued in a new speech: “Throughout modern economic history . . . every major financial crisis-driven downturn has been followed by premature abandonment – if not reversal – of the . . . stimulus policies that are necessary to sustained recovery. Every time, this was due to unduly influential voices claiming some combination of the destructiveness of further policy stimulus, the ineffectiveness of further policy stimulus, or the political corruption from further stimulus.”

怎么办呢？头一项任务是摒弃货币政策委员会外部成员亚当?波森(Adam Posen)所说的“政策无用论”。正如他在近期的一场演讲中所言：“纵观现代经济史……每当金融危机引发大衰退之后，都会出现过早放弃——乃至逆转—— 刺激政策的情形，而这些政策是经济持续复苏所必需的。每一次，都是因为反对进一步采取刺激政策的言论产生了过大的影响。此类言论认为，进一步采取刺激政策 将造成破坏性后果、本身毫无效果或者会助长政治腐败。”

Up pops Spencer Dale, the Bank of England’s chief economist, as if on cue, with arguments that the UK’s sharp productivity slowdown indicates a permanent reduction in potential output and its growth. He also suggests that part of the recent productivity shortfall is due to reduced innovation by financially constrained smaller businesses. He offers no evidence for this theory. The striking fact, as Bill Martin at the Centre for Business Research in Cambridge has noted in an important paper, is that productivity slowdowns and output declines have occurred across the board. This makes it likely that the poor productivity reflects weak demand.

英国央行(BoE)首席经济学家斯宾塞?戴尔(Spencer Dale)似乎紧跟着就提出了这样的观点：英国生产力急剧放缓，表明潜在产出及其增长受到了永久性削弱。他还表示，近期生产力减弱，部分原因在于资金紧绌 的中小企业减少了创新。他没有为自己这套理论提供任何证据。而剑桥大学(Cambridge)商业研究中心的比尔?马丁(Bill Martin)则在一篇重要的论文中指出了一个令人瞩目的事实：生产力放缓和产出下滑的现象遍及各行各业。因此，生产力疲弱有可能是对需求不振的反映。

It is vital, then, to sustain demand. With fiscal policy set on kamikaze tightening and conventional monetary policy almost exhausted, that leaves “quantitative easing”. Mr Posen recommends a great deal more of it, starting with “a minimum of ￡50bn in gilt purchases in secondary markets” though he now boldly recommends something closer to ￡75bn or ￡100bn, in light of the dire external environment. Lowering long-term interest rates would surely provide at least some benefit. But Mr Posen recommends two institutional innovations, as well, aimed at enhancing supply: a public bank or authority for lending to small businesses and an institution for securitising loans made to small and medium enterprises. An alternative would be for a new agency to take the tail risk on normal bank lending to SMEs. That would be a far more sensible way for the government to promote credit to small business than general guarantees to banks.

所以，重要的是让需求保持旺盛。而既然财政政策开启了“自杀式”紧缩模式，常规货币政策几乎已 山穷水尽，那么剩下的就只有“定量宽松”了。波森建议继续大力推行定量宽松。他最早提议“在二级市场购买至少500亿英镑国债”，但他现在则大胆建言，认 为外部环境过于恶劣，应该购买750亿至1000亿英镑国债。降低长期利率起码会有一些好处。但波森还提出了两个机构创新意见，以增加供给：一家向中小企 业放贷的公共银行或政府机构；一家对中小企业贷款进行证券化的机构。还有一个办法是成立一家专门的机构，以承担常规中小企业贷款的尾部风险。政府推动向中 小企业贷款，比笼统地为银行提供担保要明智得多。

Personally, I would favour the “helicopter money”, recommended by that radical economist, Milton Friedman. This would be a quasi-fiscal operation. Central bank money could pass via the government to the public at large. Alternatively, the government could fund itself from the central bank, directly. Better still, the government could increase its deficits, perhaps by slashing taxes, and taking needed funds from the central bank. Under any of these alternatives, the central bank would be behaving like any other bank, creating money in the act of lending.

我个人较为青睐的，是观点激进的经济学家米尔顿?弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)建议采取的“直升机撒钱”方案。这将是一种准财政的操作。中央银行发行的货币通过政府广泛地发放给公众。或者，政府也可以直接由中央银 行为自己融资。而更好的办法是：政府还可以增加赤字，或许通过大幅削减税收的方式，之后再从中央银行获得所需的资金。在以上任何一种情形下，中央银行的行 为方式都会像其他银行一样，通过发放贷款制造货币。

In current circumstances, a policy of direct financing of government by the central bank should recommend itself to monetarists and Keynesians. The former have to be worried by the fact that UK broad money (M4) shrank by 1.1 per cent in the year to July 2011. The latter would have to be pleased that governments could run still bigger deficits without increasing their debt to the public.

在当前情况下，货币主义者和凯恩斯学派经济学家应该都会想到由中央银行直接向政府注资的政策。前者一定在担忧，2011年截至7月为止，英国广义货币(M4)总量缩减了1.1%。而如果政府能够在不增加公共债务的情况下，制造更多的赤字，后者肯定会感到欣慰。

Some will argue that a policy of direct financing by the central bank must be inflationary. This is wrong. No automatic link exists between central bank money and the overall money supply. Above all, the policy would be inflationary only if it led to chronic excess demand. So long as the central bank retains the right to call a halt, that need be no serious danger.

有人会辩称，由中央银行直接提供资金的政策一定会引发通胀。这种说法是错误的。中央银行发行的货币与总体货币供应量之间并不存在自然而然的关联。说到底，一项政策只有造成长期需求过剩时，才会造成通胀。只要中央银行保留“叫停”的权利，应该就不会造成严重的危险。

A far greater threat is that a prolonged period of feeble demand would undermine supply, impoverish the country and bequeath a legacy of huge public debts. The big risk, in short, is now of a lost decade. Act now. That must not happen.

远为严峻的威胁是：长时期的需求不振，可能会损害供应，令英国陷入贫穷，并遗留下巨额的公共债务。简而言之，“失去的十年”是眼下面临的重大风险。让我们立即行动起来，坚决避免这种情况出现。