美国经济衰退会持续多久？（2）

读了“Fortune”杂志的文章“How long will the recession last?”之后，我对作者的观点表示疑问。我感觉，这次美国的经济衰退比2001年dot com泡沫引起的衰退要严重的多。 这一次由次级贷为导火索引起的经济危机，已经造成了金融机构和银行的破产，倒闭以及重组。造成了红火了近十年的房地产价格的下降。全球经济一体化使得不少美国的加工，制造产业，转移到了包括中国在内的发展中国家。 甚至高科技行业也部分外包到劳动成本低的国家了。伊拉克战争进一步增加了政府巨额财政赤字， 美国老百姓拿自己的住房当提款机，靠信用卡欠债过的日子已经走到了尽头。 一但金融业萎缩，还有什么行业能撑的起美国的经济呢？ 银行收紧信贷，必然会造成各个行业流动资金周转的困难，造成经济规模的收缩，以及失业率增加的连锁反应。 这一过程才刚刚开始，我不相信在今后的六个月里衰退就能结束。 即使在经济概念上衰退结束了，但从个人方面，可能很长时间都不会感觉到经济的增长和生活水平的提高的影响。

也许这次的经济衰退不至于达到1929年大萧条的严重程度，但是我认为，走出衰退的过程有多长还是可以参照过去的历史经验的。带着这个疑问，我给一个美国朋友Bob写了封email，以了解他对于此次美国经济衰退的看法。 Bob曾经对我提起过他刚读了一本关于1929年经济大萧条的书。 下面是我的问题和Bob的回信。 Bob的回信中所提到1929年大萧条的起因与我们当前所面临的经济衰退有许多相似之处，也提到这两次经济危机的不同的地方，对我很有启发。 Bob还谈到，在那个年代没有人雇佣40岁以上的人 …但愿这种情形在今天不至于重演。

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Hi, Bob,
How are you doing? Here is an article “How long will the recession last?” from Fortune magazine.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/03/news/economy/karydakis.recession.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008120312

It says that the 1929 recession lasted 43 months. I remember you told me that only the war (the Second World War) dug the US out of the slump （1929 Depression）. What do you think about this article? According to what you have read, what happened between 1933 (the end of the Depression) to 1939 in terms of economy and people’s lives?

Thanks

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Dear xxq,

I have been reading about the Great Depression, two thick books –

Robert S. McElvaine: The Great Depression: America , 1929-1941
David M. Kennedy: Freedom From Fear : the American People in Depression and war
two of the best history books I have ever read. They are each very long, and when you finish them you wish they had been longer.

Then I read a book on popular culture during the period:

The Nickel and Dime Decade, American Popular Culture During the 1930s by Gary Dean Best (1993)

and a number of articles on the subject. I have also listened to many of the “Fireside Chats”, which were radio programs delivered by Roosevelt during the period. These are on the internet.

Also on the internet are interviews by a Chicago journalist Studs Terkel, interviews with ordinary people about their experiences. Some of these will make you want to cry. One thing which interested me was how articulate many of these ordinary people were. There is an interview with a coal miner, who spent 16 hours a day on his knees digging coal 200 feet below the earth. But his language was fluent, precise, genuine.

The article in Fortune you sent me by Anthony Karydakis seems reasonable to me, as a guess based on the length of other recessions. Hopefully he is right, the economy will stop contracting by next year. But no one knows. He is right that there is much different about this situation compared with the depression; bank failures will not affect people as they did last time. And we know how to solve the problem, by government spending, as we did in World War II. The level of unemployment came down to its 1929 level only in the middle of the war, 1943. Although it was not his intention, Roosevelt brought us out of the depression by deficit spending on boats, planes and tanks. While most people in the world were starving and dying in wars, Americans were enjoying great prosperity, except for the men actually fighting.

According to one author (McElvaine), the root cause of the depression was inequality. In the 1920s Americans began consuming all kinds of new goods. But because the wealth was so unequal—as a result of government by Republicans for most of the century—there was a limit to how much we as a whole could consume. It was only a matter of time before consumption would fall, and the economy begin contracting. That time was postponed by borrowing (one of the financial innovations of the 1920s was the “installment plan”) but eventually the inevitable time came, and consumer demand fell.

Although McElvaine’s book was written in the 1980s, this cause of the first depression as he saw it seems very much like the situation now. Reagan and his successors increased income inequality, shamefully in my opinion, and demand has been maintained only by bubbles and borrowing. Americans are now so much in debt that I wonder if we can really begin spending again next year. People will have to save more—many have lost more than half of their retirement savings in stocks—and too much saving will delay recovery (although making recovery stronger when it comes). Karydakis does not mention housing, the value of which which continues to fall, and continues to wipe out individual savings. He says banks will have to eliminate toxic assets, that is, reduce debt, but consumers will have to as well. Can this really be resolved in a year? I hope so, but I am not hopeful.

One of the authors I read said that while older people were devastated by the depression--no one would hire a 40 year old—young people (like my father who was 15 in 1929) learned toughness and determination from their experiences.

Best wishes,

Bob