如何修复全球经济
作者：约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨 2006 年 10 月 3 日
上个月在新加坡举行的国际货币基金组织会议正值人们对全球金融失衡的可持续性日益担忧之际：全球经济能够忍受美国的巨额贸易赤字（美国每天借债近 30 亿美元）或中国的巨额贸易赤字能持续多久？ 贸易顺差每天增长近5亿美元？
这些不平衡不可能永远持续下去。 好消息是，人们对此达成了越来越多的共识。 坏消息是，没有一个国家认为其政策是罪魁祸首。 美国将矛头指向人民币汇率被低估，而世界其他国家则将矛头指向美国巨额财政和贸易赤字。
值得赞扬的是，国际货币基金组织在专注于发展和转型 15 年后，开始关注这一问题。 然而遗憾的是，该基金组织的做法是监控每个国家的经济政策，这一策略可能会只解决症状而不面对更大的系统性问题。
治疗症状实际上可能会让事情变得更糟，至少在短期内是这样。 以中国被低估的汇率和由此产生的顺差问题为例，美国财政部认为这是问题的核心。 即使中国人民币兑美元升值并消除每年1140亿美元的对美贸易顺差，即使这立即转化为美国多边贸易逆差的减少，美国仍将借入超过2美元的债务。 每天十亿：是一种进步，但并不是解决方案。
当然，更有可能的是，美国的多边贸易逆差根本不会发生重大变化。 美国只会减少从中国购买纺织品，而更多地从孟加拉国、柬埔寨和其他发展中国家购买纺织品。
与此同时，由于人民币升值将使进口的美国食品在中国变得更便宜，最贫穷的中国人——农民——将看到他们的收入随着国内农产品价格下跌而下降。 中国可能会选择将工业发展急需的资金转用于对农民的补贴，以应对美国巨额农业补贴的抑制作用。 中国的增长可能会相应放缓，从而导致全球增长放缓。
然而，事实上，中国很清楚其与美国的秘密“交易”的条款：中国通过用其出口所得的钱购买国债来帮助弥补美国的赤字。 如果不这样做，美元将进一步贬值，这将降低中国美元储备的价值（到今年年底，这些储备将超过1万亿美元）。 任何可能从中国出口市场份额丧失中受益的国家都会将其资金投入欧元等强势货币，而不是不稳定且疲软的美元，或者可能会选择将资金投资于国内，而不是持有更多外汇储备。 简而言之，美国将发现为其赤字融资变得越来越困难，而整个世界可能面临更大而不是更少的不稳定。
除非美国解决自己的问题，否则无法对这些全球失衡采取任何重大行动。 没有人认真建议企业省钱而不是投资扩大生产，只是为了纠正贸易逆差问题； 尽管可能有很多关于为什么美国人应该储蓄更多的说教——当然比去年家庭储蓄的负数还要多——但两个政党中都没有人设计出一种万无一失的方法来确保他们这样做。 布什的减税政策并没有起到作用。 扩大储蓄激励措施并没有起到作用。
事实上，大多数计算表明，这些实际上减少了国民储蓄，因为政府收入损失的成本大于家庭储蓄增加的成本。 普遍的看法是，只有一种选择：减少政府赤字。
想象一下，布什政府突然信奉宗教（至少是财政责任的宗教）并削减开支。 假设对于一直主张进一步减税的政府来说，增税是不可能的。 支出削减本身将导致美国和全球经济疲软。 美联储可能会尝试通过降低利率来抵消这一影响，而这可能会保护美国经济——鼓励负债累累的美国家庭尝试从房屋净值贷款中提取更多资金来支付支出。 但这将使美国的未来更加不稳定。
有一种方法可以打破这种看似僵局：削减支出，同时增加对高收入美国人的税收和减少对低收入美国人的税收。 当然，削减支出本身就会减少支出，但因为贫困个人由于普通人比富人消费了更大比例的收入，税收的“转变”本身就会增加支出。 如果设计得当，这样的组合可以同时维持美国经济并减少赤字。
毫不奇怪，这些建议并非来自国际货币基金组织在新加坡举行的会议。 美国保留了该基金的否决权，因此该基金不太可能推荐美国政府不喜欢的政策。
当前失衡的背后是全球储备体系的根本性结构性问题。 约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯在四分之三个世纪前就呼吁人们关注这些问题。 他关于如何改革全球货币体系的想法，包括创建一个基于新国际货币的新储备体系，只需做一点工作，就可以适应当今的经济。 在我们解决结构性问题之前，世界可能会继续受到威胁金融稳定和所有人经济福祉的失衡的困扰。
约瑟夫·E·斯蒂格利茨 (Joseph E. Stiglitz) 是哥伦比亚大学经济学教授，最近出版了《让全球化发挥作用》一书，并于 2001 年荣获诺贝尔经济学奖。
How to Fix the Global Economy
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ Oct. 3, 2006
THE International Monetary Fund meeting in Singapore last month came at a time of increasing worry about the sustainability of global financial imbalances: For how long can the global economy endure America’s enormous trade deficits — the United States borrows close to $3 billion a day — or China’s growing trade surplus of almost $500 million a day?
These imbalances simply can’t go on forever. The good news is that there is a growing consensus to this effect. The bad news is that no country believes its policies are to blame. The United States points its finger at China’s undervalued currency, while the rest of the world singles out the huge American fiscal and trade deficits.
To its credit, the International Monetary Fund has started to focus on this issue after 15 years of preoccupation with development and transition. Regrettably, however, the fund’s approach has been to monitor every country’s economic policies, a strategy that risks addressing symptoms without confronting the larger systemic problem.
Treating the symptoms could actually make matters worse, at least in the short run. Take, for instance, the question of China’s undervalued exchange rate and the country’s resulting surplus, which the United States Treasury suggests is at the core of the problem. Even if China strengthened its yuan relative to the dollar and eliminated its $114 billion a year trade surplus with the United States, and even if that immediately translated into a reduction in the American multilateral trade deficit, the United States would still be borrowing more than $2 billion a day: an improvement, but hardly a solution.
Of course, it is even more likely that there would be no significant change in America’s multilateral trade deficit at all. The United States would simply buy fewer textiles from China and more from Bangladesh, Cambodia and other developing countries.
Meanwhile, because a stronger yuan would make imported American food cheaper in China, the poorest Chinese — the farmers — would see their incomes fall as domestic prices for agriculture dipped. China might choose to counter the depressing effect of America’s huge agricultural subsidies by diverting money badly needed for industrial development into subsidies for its farmers. China’s growth might accordingly be slowed, which would slow growth globally.
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Credit...Thomas Fuchs
As it is, however, China knows well the terms of its hidden “deal” with the United States: China helps finance the American deficits by buying treasury bonds with the money it gets from its exports. If it doesn’t, the dollar will weaken further, which will lower the value of China’s dollar reserves (by the end of the year, these will exceed $1 trillion). Any country that might benefit from China’s loss of export market share would put its money into a strong currency, like the euro, rather than the unstable and weakening dollar — or it might choose to invest the money at home, rather than holding more reserves. In short, the United States would find it increasingly difficult to finance its deficits, and the world as a whole might face greater, not less, instability.
Nothing significant can be done about these global imbalances unless the United States attacks its own problems. No one seriously proposes that businesses save money instead of investing in expanding production simply to correct the problem of the trade deficit; and while there may be sermons aplenty about why Americans should save more — certainly more than the negative amount households saved last year — no one in either political party has devised a fail-proof way of ensuring that they do so. The Bush tax cuts didn’t do it. Expanded incentives for saving didn’t do it.
Indeed, most calculations show that these actually reduce national savings, since the cost to the government in lost revenue is greater than the increased household savings. The common wisdom is that there is but one alternative: reducing the government’s deficit.
Imagine that the Bush administration suddenly got religion (at least, the religion of fiscal responsibility) and cut expenditures. Assume that raising taxes is unlikely for an administration that has been arguing for further tax cuts. The expenditure cuts by themselves would lead to a weakening of the American and global economy. The Federal Reserve might try to offset this by lowering interest rates, and this might protect the American economy — by encouraging debt-ridden American households to try to take even more money out of their home-equity loans to pay for spending. But that would make America’s future even more precarious.
There is one way out of this seeming impasse: expenditure cuts combined with an increase in taxes on upper-income Americans and a reduction in taxes on lower-income Americans. The expenditure cuts would, of course, by themselves reduce spending, but because poor individuals consume a larger fraction of their income than the rich, the “switch” in taxes would, by itself, increase spending. If appropriately designed, such a combination could simultaneously sustain the American economy and reduce the deficit.
Not surprisingly, these recommendations did not emerge from the International Monetary Fund meetings in Singapore. The United States retains a veto there, making it unlikely that the fund will recommend policies that aren’t to the liking of the American administration.
Underlying the current imbalances are fundamental structural problems with the global reserve system. John Maynard Keynes called attention to these problems three-quarters of a century ago. His ideas on how to reform the global monetary system, including creating a new reserve system based on a new international currency, can, with a little work, be adapted to today’s economy. Until we attack the structural problems, the world is likely to continue to be plagued by imbalances that threaten the financial stability and economic well-being of us all.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia and the author, most recently, of “Making Globalization Work,” was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2001.
