美聯儲應該加息 Show steel and raise rates or the financial system will fracture

Raising interest rates is always harder than cutting them. When investors are bleeding and workers fear the chop, promises of cheap money sound like the hoofbeats of arriving cavalry. But the trauma does not end for everyone at the same time. When the rescuers depart, some complain they are being abandoned too soon.

加息總是比降息要更加困難。當投資者在“流血”而勞動者擔心飯碗不保時，低利率承諾聽起來像騎兵漸近的馬蹄聲。但每個人的創傷不會在同一時間痊癒。當救兵離開時，一些人抱怨被過早地拋棄了。

Pity the Federal Reserve, then, which is widely expected to start increasing rates by the end of the year — or had been expected to, until a fierce bout of selling began in emerging markets and spread to stock exchanges around the world. There will be calls for central banks in the US and elsewhere to delay long-flagged increases in interest rates. Yet they must not blink.

那麼，美聯儲(Fed)就可憐了。市場普遍預期（或者曾經普遍預期）美聯儲今年年底將啓動加息，直至新興市場爆發激烈拋售，並蔓延至全球股市。會有人呼籲美國及其他地區的央行推遲計劃已久的加息。然而他們必須堅定立場。

The case for waiting does not rest on market movements alone. Since there is no sign of inflation, it is argued, there is no need to raise rates. And since the recovery has always seemed fragile, there is no sense in raising them. The case for caution was being made when markets were rising. Its appeal will only Grow now markets are faltering.

認爲美聯儲應暫不加息的理由並不僅僅在於股市走勢。持這種觀點的人主張，既然沒有通脹跡象，就沒有必要加息。而且，考慮到經濟復甦似乎一直很脆弱，加息是沒道理的。過去一段時間股市上漲的時候，就有人主張加息應謹慎。如今股市搖搖欲墜，這種主張的吸引力只會變強。

Yet monetary policy cannot confine itself to reacting to the latest inflation data if it is to promote the wider goals of financial stability and sustainable economic growth. An over-reliance on extremely accommodative monetary policy may be one of the reasons why the world has not escaped from the clutches of a financial crisis that began more than eight years ago.

然而，如果貨幣政策要推動金融穩定及持續經濟增長的更大目標的話，它就不能將自身侷限於只對最新的通脹數據做出反應。過度依賴極度寬鬆的貨幣政策，可能是世界爲何仍未逃出金融危機（始於逾八年前）魔爪的原因之一。

The origins of today’s market panic relate to recent policy choices. One of the factors behind the stock market slide is the stalling of growth in China. Official data, which paint a reassuring picture of steady growth, are widely considered to be unreliable. Look at what is happening in individual industries, however, and the picture is more troubling. Chinese consumption of smartphones shrank for the first time in the second quarter of this year, according to data from Gartner. The sales projections of many western technology companies have followed suit.

如今市場恐慌的根源與近期的政策選擇相關。股市大跌背後的原因之一是中國經濟增長的停滯。中國官方數據被普遍認爲並不可靠，這些數據描繪了一幅令人放心的穩步增長景象。然而，如果看看具體行業的表現，你會發現形勢更加糟糕。研究機構高德納(Gartner)的數據顯示，今年第二季度，中國智能手機消費首次出現萎縮。許多西方科技公司的銷售預測都隨之下調。

The slowdown in the Chinese economy has its roots in decisions made far from Beijing. In the past five years, central banks in all the big advanced economies have embarked on huge quantitative easing programmes, buying financial assets with newly created cash. Because of the effect they have on exchange rates, these policies have a “beggar-thy-neighbour” quality. Growth has been shuffled from place to place — first the US, then Europe and Japan — with one country’s gains coming at the expense of another. This zero-sum game cannot launch a lasting global recovery. China is the latest loser. Last week’s renminbi devaluation brought into focus that since 2010, China’s export-driven economy has laboured under a 25 per cent appreciation of its real effective exchange rate.

中國經濟放緩的根源在於中國以外其他地區做出的決策。過去五年，所有大的發達經濟體央行都啓動了大規模量化寬鬆計劃，利用新發貨幣購買金融資產。因爲這些政策會對匯率造成影響，它們本質上是“以鄰爲壑”的政策。增長在不同國家輪換出現——首先是美國，然後是歐洲和日本——一國的收益建立在另一國的損失之上。這種零和博弈無法推動持久的全球經濟復甦。中國是最新的輸家。上週人民幣貶值讓人們注意到，自2010年以來，中國的出口驅動型經濟一直揹負着人民幣實際有效匯率升值25%的重壓艱難前行。

Exchange rates aside, long periods of accommodative monetary policy have led to a misallocation of resources. The extent of this will be impossible to measure for many years but, in the places where credit growth has been most dramatic, there are strong hints.

除去匯率不談，長期的寬鬆貨幣政策已導致資源錯誤配置。錯配程度在未來許多年都將無法衡量，但在信貸增長最爲迅猛的領域，存在強烈的資源錯配跡象。

Accommodative monetary policy was supposed to spur investment in productive activities at home. Instead, companies and banks hoarded cash. Much of the extra credit instead financed housing purchases at home, or was funnelled into loans for companies and governments in emerging markets. According to the World Bank, corporates and sovereigns in emerging economies collectively sold $1.5tn in new bonds in the five years to 2014, almost three times the rate between 2002 and 2007. Although today’s attention is on the weakness of stock markets in America, Europe and Japan, turmoil in the distant debt markets where investors from developed countries have placed their cash will be of more lasting concern.

寬鬆貨幣政策本應刺激對國內生產性活動的投資。相反，企業和銀行囤積現金。大部分額外信貸爲國內的房地產購置提供了資金，或者被用於向新興市場的企業和政府放貸。據世界銀行(World Bank)的說法，截至2014年的5年中，新興經濟體的企業和政府一共售出了1.5萬億美元的新發債券，幾乎是2002年到2007年間水平的3倍。儘管今天人們的注意力集中在美國、歐洲和日本股市的疲弱上，但發生在遙遠地區的債券市場（發達國家投資者在這裏投入了現金）上的動盪，將成爲人們更爲持久的心病。

There are two silver linings to the dark clouds. First, because of the highly concentrated flow of international credit flows, today’s crisis may come to resemble the Asian financial crisis of 1997. It was brutal and contagious, but regionally contained in comparison to the global and systemic crisis that began in 2007. Second, despite many protests, emerging markets long ago decided the international financial system is inherently unstable and built up reserves to help them weather the storm.

在陰雲之中還有兩道曙光。首先，因爲國際信貸流的高度集中，今天的危機可能會與1997年的亞洲金融危機類似。那場危機儘管慘烈，還具有傳染性，但與2007年開始的全球性系統危機相比，仍是一場地區性危機。第二，儘管遭到許多抗議，但新興市場很早之前就判斷國際金融體系存在固有的不穩定性並建立起了幫助自身抵禦風暴的儲備。

Still, that fragile and dysfunctional financial system is a serious problem. It will remain so as long as the institutions that are supposed to manage international spillover effects from monetary policy lack legitimacy, credibility and capital. And if the advanced economies continue to rely on near-zero interest rates to fuel growth, they will only make that predicament worse.

不過，脆弱和失靈的國際金融系統是一個嚴重的問題。而且，只要理應管理好貨幣政策的國際溢出效應的機構還缺乏合法性、可信度和資金，這種情況就還將持續。如果發達經濟體繼續依賴接近零的利率來刺激增長，它們只會讓困境變得更糟。