本帖最后由 武大郎 于 2012-1-27 16:42 编辑
【中文标题】中国亦是金融危机爆发之源
【原文标题】How China's Boom Caused the Financial Crisis
【登载媒体】外交政策
【来源地址】www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/17/how_china_s_boom_caused_the_financial_crisis?page=0,0
【译 者】武大郎
【翻译方式】人工
【声 明】欢迎转载，请务必注明译者和出处 bbs.m4.cn。
【译 文】
Since the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street has been the perpetual whipping boy for the ensuing recession that has rocked the global economy. In the United States, Manhattan bankers relied too heavily on subprime mortgages, the story goes, sparking the crisis -- in bureaucratic jargon, what is dubbed a "regulatory oversight failure." In Europe, the debt crisis – which struck again last week when the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's stripped France of its AAA rating -- is often blamed on the fact that Eurozone governments maintained outsized debt-to-GDP ratios, thereby breaking the rules laid down in the Stability and Growth Pact they signed when they joined the currency union. 自从08年金融危机之后，华尔街便成了世界不断衰退的替罪羔羊。在美国，曼哈顿的银行家们对于次贷抵押过度依赖，而人们认为正是次贷危机导致了这次金融危机，在官方术语中，这次金融危机被为“监管的失败”。上周，因为信贷评级机构标准普尔取消法国AAA的主权信用等级，债务危机卷土重来，在欧洲，各国政府经常因债务与GDP比值过高引发债务危机而受到指责，这也与各国加入欧盟时签订的稳定与增长公约相悖。
U.S. President Barack Obama has laid the blame at the feet of Wall Street "fat-cat bankers," and he finds himself in the company of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Even Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney criticized WallStreet for "leveraging itself far beyond historic and prudent levels" in his2010 book, blaming its "greed" for contributing to the crisis. The concept of runaway European profligacy, epitomized by 35-hour work weeks and gold-plated pension programs, is also firmly lodged in the popular imagination. 总统奥巴马也像美联储主席伯南特一样，批评了华尔街的银行家们。甚至共和党有可能成为总统候选人的罗姆尼也批评华尔街“在远超历史与审慎的水平上运营”，并因其贪婪导致了这次危机。在欧洲失控的挥霍观念也驻扎在大众意识之中，每周35小时工作时间以及镀金养老计划就是其缩影。
But these explanations for the twin crises in the United States and Europe simply ignore the facts. Subprime mortgages with exotic features accounted for less than 5 percent of new mortgages in the United States from 2000 to 2006. It is therefore highly unlikely that they were solely responsible for setting off the housing boom that ultimately went bust. The explanation offered for the crisis in the eurozone overlooks the fact that Spain and Ireland -- two of the weak links in Europe today -- were actually paragons of virtue in terms of the Stability Pact. Both countries boasted budget surpluses in the years leading up to the crisis, and both had debt-to-GDP ratios of roughly 30 percent, or only about half the level that was permitted under the Stability Pact. 但对危机的解释忽略了很多事实。在2000-2006年间，美国的次级贷款只有少于5%的新贷款来自国外。因此，它们不大可能是房产泡沫破裂的主要原因。对欧元区危机的解释也忽略了这样一个事实：西班牙和爱尔兰，这两个当今欧洲的薄弱环节，实际上是遵守稳定公约的的模范。在危机爆发的日子里，两国预算都有盈余，并且两国的债务与GDP之比大约都在30%，这个水平只有稳定公约规定比例的一半。
The immediate cause of the housing bubbles in the United States and the eurozone periphery was not regulatory oversight failure, but the precipitous drop in interest rates in the early 2000s. And the country that bears partial responsibility for depressing interest rates is a traditional punching bag in the American political arena, one that has somehow avoided most of the blame in this round: China. The ascendance of the world's most populous country in the global economy not only changed the terms of trade, but it also had a considerable impact on the world's capital markets. 美国和欧元区周边房产泡沫的直接原因并非监督不力，而是21世纪初利率的急剧下降。应为利率下降承担部分责任的便是美国一直以来的政治打击对象，同时又成功避开了大多数谴责的国家：中国。这个人口最多的国家在全球经济中占有优越的地位，不仅改变了贸易的比率，在资本市场上也有相当大的影响。
The chain of events that led to the current economic breakdown began in 2000, when the Federal Reserve began to lower the Fed funds rate, its main policy lever, to stave off a recession following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The Fed slashed the rate from 6.5 percent in late 2000 to1.75 percent in December 2001 and then down to 1 percent in June 2003. It then kept the rate at 1 percent for more than a year, even though inflation expectations were well above the Fed's implicit inflation target and the unemployment rate was down to nearly 5 percent, which is considered the natural rate of unemployment. All the while, the Federal Reserve dismissed warnings about a nationwide housing bubble, with then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan even denying that it was possible to have such a thing. 这一切都要追溯到2000年，美联储开始降低联邦基金利率时，这也是它在当时网络泡沫破裂后避免衰退的主要手段.利率从2000年的6.5%降至2001年的1.75，然后在2003年又降至1%。尽管通货膨胀预期远远高于美联储的隐含通胀目标，失业率下降到近5％（被认为是自然失业率），联邦基金利率还是在1%附近保持了一年多的时间。在此期间，美联储驳回了一个关于全国房产泡沫的警告，当时美联储主席格林斯潘甚至还对这种情况的发生予以否定。 The low interest rates initially sparked the refinancing boom -- or as commentators liked to say, Americans used their houses as ATMs. Between the first quarter of 2003 and the second quarter of2004, the time when the Federal Reserve held its main policy rate steady at 1percent, two-thirds of mortgage originations were for home refinance. Americans got themselves indebted up to their eyeballs and went on a prolific spending binge with their newly acquired cash. Spending out of home equity extraction amounted to $750 billion, or more than 4 percent of GDP, in 2005 alone. 最初，低利率引发了再融资热潮，当时的评论家说道，美国人把他们的房子当作了取款机。在2003年第一季度和2004年第二季度间，美联储将政策利率稳定在1%的这段时间内，三分之二的抵押贷款为家庭再融资。美国人债务几乎达到最大，并用获得的金钱开始了一段消费热潮。仅在2005年，房产股本提取消费达750亿美元，超过了GDP的4％。
Fed policymakers generally looked favorably upon remortgaging as a source of personal consumption expenditure. In his now infamous 2005 Sandridge lecture, Bernanke, then a Fed governor, boasted of the "depth and sophistication of the country's financial markets, which … allowed households easy access to housing wealth." 政策制定者们普遍看好次贷可以做为消费的一个来源。在伯南特05年那次臭名远洋的桑德里奇演说中，那时还是一名联邦政府官员的他吹嘘道,”本国金融市场的深度和复杂性….可以轻松使用户获得房产财富”。
The possibility that the housing boom could one day turn to bust, leaving many homeowners penniless, seemed not to have caused any sleepless nights at the Fed. On the contrary, recently released Fed transcripts show how future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner scrambled in 2006 at a Fed meeting to come up with a superlative for "terrific" to describe Greenspan's tenure. 房产繁荣突然破裂并使得很多房产拥有者瞬间一文不名的可能性并未在联邦的考虑之中。与之形成鲜明对比的是，最近发布的联邦会议抄本反映了在2006年联邦会议上，未来财长盖纳特如何用”terrific”（了不起的）的最高级形式来描述格林斯潘任期内的情况。
But it was China, not the U.S. economy, that prospered on Americans' spending binge. The world's most populous country grew at double-digit rates for much of the 2000s. And while the U.S. savings rate hovered around 15 percent of GDP, China's savings rate increased from 38 percent in 2000 to 54 percent in 2006. China's savings are heavily skewed toward risk-free assets, perhaps because the Chinese are culturally more risk-averse, but also because the country's financial markets are still underdeveloped and not fully liberalized. 但是，美国的消费热潮的根源来自中国而非美国。中国，这个世界上人口最多的国家，在21世纪初至今的大部分时间内保持着两位数的经济增长率。并且，在美国的存款比率保持在GDP的15%左右时，中国的存款比率却从2000年的38%上升至2006年的54%。中国的储蓄严重倾向于低风险存储，这是因为中国人在传统上便追求安稳，同时也是因为这个国家的金融市场仍然欠发达、不完全自由。
The large buildup of savings in China and other emerging economies (mostly oil exporters) depressed interest rates worldwide from 2004 on, as too much money was chasing U.S. Treasury bonds and other supposedly risk-free securities, driving up the price of bonds and driving down interest rates. Thus, by the time the Fed started to worry about rising inflation by mid-2004, leading the Fed to try to put the brakes on the economy, it was already too late. Although the Fed started to raise the policy rate in July 2004, long-term interest rates in the United States remained stubbornly low. While the subprime mortgages with exotic features did not help, it was these low long-term interest rates that were the most important factor in enlarging the housing bubble. 中国和其它新兴经济体（多数为石油出口国）存款的大量累积使得世界的利率从04年以来一直不振，因为大量的资金都在用来购买美国债券和其它无风险证券，使得债券价格升高而利率降低。因此，当2004年的年中美国开始为不断增加的膨胀而担忧，并试图进行经济刹车时，一切已经太晚了。尽管美联储在04年7月开始提升政策利率，但美国的长期利率仍然很低。在次级抵押贷款没能起到作用后，这些长期利率成为了扩大房产泡沫的最重要因素。
Europe's story is slightly different, but the messy conclusion is broadly similar. The establishment of a common currency in thee urozone caused interest rates on Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish government bonds to converge to the much lower rate on German government bonds. While opinions differ on what caused this convergence, the fact that exchange-rate risk disappeared significantly contributed to Northern European banks' willingness to buy Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish bonds. It was, after all, only prudent for banks to invest in assets that were denominated in the same currency as their future financial liabilities. 欧洲的情况略有不同，但大致相似。欧元区统一货币的建立使得希腊、爱尔兰、意大利、葡萄牙和西班牙政府的债券利率趋近于比它们更低的德国政府债券利率。尽管对于这种趋势的原因众说纷纭，但汇率风险的明显减少使得北欧银行愿意购买这些国家的政府债券。毕竟，投资同一货币计价的资产风险性要小。
As a result, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain saw interest rates fall from a level of about 13 percent in the late 1990s to only 3 percent in 2005. The same excess of savings in China and other emerging economies that depressed long-term interest rates in the United States played a role here, too. 因此，希腊、爱尔兰、意大利、葡萄牙和西班牙的利率从20世纪90年代末的13%降到了2005年的3%。中国和其它新兴经济体的大量存款不仅使得美国长期利率降低，还在欧洲利率降低的过程中产生了影响。
The sharp fall in interest rates had a significant impact on the housing market in the eurozone's periphery. Year after year, housing prices in Ireland and Spain rose by 10 to 20 percent. That in turn resulted in exuberant consumer spending and borrowing, driving up wages as well. While labor costs in Germany rose a modest 18 percent from 2000 to 2008, labor costs in Spain and Ireland increased by 41 and 45 percent, respectively, and by 78percent in Greece. 利率的急剧下降对欧元区周边产生了巨大的影响。爱尔兰和西班牙房价的增长率在每年10%-20%间。这导致了活跃的消费和借贷状况，也抬高了工资水平。2000年至2008年，德国的劳动力成本上涨18%，还算较为正常，但西班牙和爱尔兰劳动力成本分别上涨41%和45%，希腊则上涨78%。
The low interest rates also led to excessive government borrowing in Greece, which has now effectively driven the country into bankruptcy. And though Italy was running a budget deficit below the 3percent threshold of the Stability Pact for many years, low interest rates allowed it to run a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 100 percent of GDP. Portugal found itself in the reverse situation, running budget deficits beyond 3 percent without exceeding the proscribed 60 percent debt-to-GDP ratio much of the time. 低利率也导致了希腊政府的过度借贷，最终使得国家破产。尽管意大利赤字预算长期保持在3%的“稳定条约”标准线以下，但低利率却能使其债务与GDP比率达到100%。葡萄牙也处在衰退之中，大部分时间只能把债务与GDP之比维持在不超过60%的水平。
Now that the Western housing bubbles have burst and banks have been brought to the brink of collapse, investors have suddenly realized that government debt might not be a risk-free investment after all. The mechanism that initially drove down interest rates in the eurozone's periphery has gone into reverse. Not only have banks in the northern eurozone countries withdrawn funds, but investors from the periphery have shifted their purchases to government debt in Europe's "core" countries -- driving up interest rates in the periphery while simultaneously driving down interest rates in countries like Germany and the Netherlands, where interest rates have gone negative. Despite all the acrimony in Europe about northern eurozone governments' bailing out the periphery, the actual costs of the bailouts are low if you take into account the windfall that Germany and the Netherlands have reaped due to lower borrowing costs. 看到西方房产泡沫破裂，银行濒临破产，投资者们突然意识到这些政府的债券可能不是一种低风险的投资。当初促使欧元区外围利率降低的制度正在起着反作用。不仅有欧元区北部的银行撤资，很多欧元区周边的投资者也已经把资金转移到欧洲的核心国家上，使得周边的利率上升同时使得像德国、荷兰等国家的利率下降，而这些地区的利率状况本就不容乐观。尽管北欧元区对周边的援助已找来很多批评，但若你考虑到德国和荷兰由于低借贷成本而发的横财，你会发现这些救助的成本实际很低。
If one looks back, it's fair to criticize the eurozone's architects for not sufficiently thinking through the initial fallout of monetary integration. The speculative bubbles, especially in Ireland and Spain,could easily have been avoided if strict lending restrictions had been imposed in time. The same goes for the housing bubble in the United States, where more than a quarter of residential mortgages are still "underwater" -- in other words, a home mortgage loan that exceeds the value of the underlying property. 回顾往事，对欧元区的设计者没有充分考虑货币统一的初始影响提出批评无可厚非。如果及时实施严格的贷款限制，投机泡沫（尤其是爱尔兰和西班牙的）本可以轻松避免。美国的房产泡沫亦是如此，现在美国四分之一的住宅按揭贷款仍在“水下”，换句话说，有四分之一的贷款是超出实际财产价值的部分。
The economic cataclysms in the United States and Europe may seem driven by their own peculiar circumstances at first glance, but both would have been much less severe without China's ascendance. Without China as a major economic player, the low interest rates at the start of the millennium would have been more effective in kick-starting the U.S. economy, and the Fed would have begun raising the Fed funds rate much sooner, with the European Central Bank (ECB) following suit. Part of the manufacturing that took place in China would have been preserved for the United States and Europe, aiding economic growth in these regions and lessening the need for low interest rates. And without China's rise, inflation in the early 2000s would have been higher, propelling the Fed and the ECB into action. But more importantly, China and other emerging economies' savings would not have depressed long-term interest rates worldwide. 乍一看，欧美的经济灾难是由其特殊情况所导致的，但若无中国权势，两者会好过的多。没有中国最为一个主要的经济参与者，在世纪的开始阶段低利率将会更有效的刺激美国经济，同时美联储也会更早的提升联邦基金利率，然后欧洲央行也会紧随而行。部分在中国的制造业也会出现在欧美，促进欧美经济增长并削弱对低利率的需求。没有中国经济的发展，在本世纪初的通货膨胀就会更加严重，进而促使美联储和欧洲央行做出行动。但更重要的是，中国和其它新兴经济体的储蓄将不会使世界长期利率下降。
But all is not lost. One consolation is that the past decade of loose living in the United States and Europe has done much to lift hundreds of millions of people in China and India out of poverty. No development aid program can stake a similar claim. 但并非一切都是坏消息。值得安慰的是，过去十年里欧美的宽松生活使得中国和印度有亿万人得以脱贫。没有哪个发展援助项目敢说做到了这一点。
Another consolation of sorts is that economic growth in the emerging economies will likely go a long way toward buoying the global economy this decade. Apple recently experienced firsthand how ferocious Asian consumers' appetite can be when near riots broke out at its flagship store in Beijing after it postponed the launch of the iPhone 4S due to crowd size. 另外的安慰还包括，这些新兴的经济体在振兴全球经济前，其发展可能会持续很久。苹果宣布推迟iPhone 4S的发布差点儿在北京旗舰店引起骚乱，这让苹果亲身体会到了亚洲消费者的巨大胃口。
Other U.S. businesses are also eyeing Asian markets as a source of demand for their products and services. As China's economy continues to mature, it may just be the economic engine that the United States and Europe need to dig themselves out from under their mountain of debt. 其它的美国公司也在对准亚洲市场。随着中国经济的不断成熟，它可能成为欧美从债务中自救的经济助力。
评论：
Mayan Calendar 2012 Deep thinker. Who kept a tight economic structure for years, China. Who has been the lowly manufacturers of everyday products... China. So China is at fault. But you forgot that the Mayan Calendar predicted 2012 as the end of the world and the same type of connection could be made with your loose logic. The end of the world must have a turning point a bit earlier. So 2008 seems very logical because it is there. 玛雅日历的2012 思考的很深.是谁保持了一个紧缩的经济结构？谁是日常产品的生产者？中国。 因此，中国难辞其咎。 但你忘记了玛雅日历预测2012是世界末日，用一些不严密的逻辑也可推出同样的关联（指在经济方面）。世界末日发生前一定会有一个转折点，因此从逻辑上，2008看起来就是那个转折点。 Terrible Article This type of analysis is really quite sad. Short on facts, long on baseless claims. Actually, 5% of Subprime is enough to cause a crash. Especially, when no mention is made of how these mortgages were leveraged. Secondly, Alt-A is not mentioned either. When both are taken together, they represent roughly 15% of the US mortgage market. Secondly, the idea that Chinese surplus capital led to an excess supply of money is so weak, that it is mind boggling that someone would even suggest this. China only holds 7% of total US debt. Each country mentioned had a housing crisis, Ireland, Spain, and the US. Yet, to gain notoriety this Assistant Professor decides to come out with a crazy explanation that is very weak. 扯淡的文章 这种分析实在是太扯淡了. 缺乏事实，全是毫无根据的乱扯。 实际上，次级贷款的5%就足以引起危机，尤其是在这些贷款如何利用都未提及的时候。第二，准优级贷款此文也未提到，这些也代表了美国次级抵押市场的15%。 另外，中国剩余资本导致金钱过剩的观点根本站不住脚，甚至有人会这样想都让人不可思议。中国只持有美国国债的7%。文中提到的每个国家都有房产危机，包括爱尔兰、西班牙和美国。但是，为了拉眼球，这个作者给出这样疯狂的解释真是太让人蛋疼了。 completely agree I don't think the author of this article understands leverage...when you're leveraged 30 to 40 times of your capital...a 5% loss could easily bring down the economy. Certainly some of the points made are valid, in a sense...abundance of capital from China was basically an enabler for the US. However, in the end, the fundamental problem is that people took on mortgages they couldn't afford, and all the leverage was build on a house of cards (securities based on subprime mortgages that were falsely rated as triple-A assets). 完全赞同 我认为这篇文章的作者不懂杠杆原理….当你的杠杆臂长是被翘起财产的30到40倍时，5%的损失就足矣击垮经济。在一定意义上，这篇文章的某些观点是有道理的….来自中国的大量资金对于美国来说是一个助推器。然而，最后的基本问题是人们持有了偿还不起的贷款，杠杆被架在了房卡之上。 Agreed 100% Weak article... We are always looking to blame others for our problems, when in fact we are still living them today. We spend twice as much as what we make. That my friends is the crux of the problem. It is called: living beyond your means. And: artificial government intervention with free markets. Both are a pure recipe for disaster. George insurance agents 100%同意 糟糕的文章…我们总是把我们的问题归咎于别人,但事实是我们仍在用着别人的东西。我们的开销是我们所挣的两倍。 我的朋友们是问题的症结所在。（没看懂他说的这句神马意思） 这就是：生活水平超出你的能力所及。 并且：单纯的政府干预和自由市场都是灾难之源。 乔治 保险代理人 You're right, 5% is enough to cause a crash 你是正确的，5%已足以引起经济崩溃(评论的题目已经很概要，内容过长不翻了)
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