"遠見"攪亂歐洲 How 'vision' messed up Europe

One gloomy February evening in 1998 I was writing the FT’s currency market report. Nothing had happened that day, and I was 150 words short. In desperation, I leafed through the pile of bank faxes buried under the fax machine. I found one from Goldman Sachs that quoted their economist Jim O’Neill savaging the humble Greek drachma. O’Neill was the god of the currency market so I stuck his pronouncements at the end of my column and went home. The lowest-paid journalist in the building didn’t stay late.

1998年2月一個陰鬱的晚上，我正在寫英國《金融時報》的匯市報告。當天沒什麼事值得一提，我還差150詞。絕望之下，我快速翻看着一堆被壓在傳真機底下的銀行傳真。我發現其中一份來自高盛(Goldman Sachs)傳真，文中援引了其經濟學家吉姆•奧尼爾(Jim O'Neill)抨擊弱勢的希臘貨幣德拉馬克的言論。奧尼爾當時是匯市之神，於是我把他的話貼在了那篇專欄的結尾，然後就回家了。報社大樓裏收入最低的記者不會呆到很晚。

Like most people in the market, I then forgot the drachma again. But, some days later, I noticed that it was under sustained attack. The Greek central bank blamed my article. The attacks continued. One Friday that March, Greece suddenly decided to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism — the entry gate to the euro. Traders were astonished. True, recent Greek official economic stats had shown mysterious improvements but Greece still met none of the criteria for joining the currency. Regardless, in 2001 Greece joined. I sometimes imagine the headline over my obituary: “Helped get Greece into euro.”

正如市場多數人一樣，之後我就再次遺忘了德拉馬克。但是，幾天後我發現德拉馬克遭到了持續攻擊。希臘央行把罪責歸咎於我的文章。攻擊仍在持續。在3月的一個週五，希臘突然決定加入歐洲匯率機制(ERM)——進入歐元區的門戶。交易員們震驚了。沒錯，不久前希臘官方經濟統計表現出不可思議的起色，但是希臘仍然未達到加入單一貨幣的任何一條標準。儘管如此，2001年希臘正式加入了歐元區。有時我會想象自己的訃告標題是：“爲希臘加入歐元起到了推波助瀾的作用。”

Having witnessed the genesis of this mess, I have a sense of how Europe might avoid similar mistakes in future.

在見證了這個爛攤子的源起後，我想到了歐洲怎樣纔可能在未來避免類似的錯誤。

Policy makers had been pondering a European currency for decades. But the project only took off in 1989, in the confusing emotional weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. Germans wanted reunification. The French president François Mitterrand said he’d agree if they backed his pet project: the euro. In late 1989, writes David Marsh in The Euro, Mitterrand and West Germany’s chancellor Helmut Kohl did “the essential deal that launched Europe on to the Maastricht monetary union path”.

之前幾十年，政策制定者一直在考慮建立一種歐洲貨幣。但是，該項目直到1989年柏林牆被推倒後、在各種情緒交織的令人困惑的那幾周才啓動。德國人希望重新統一。時任法國總統的弗朗索瓦•密特朗(François Mitterrand)稱，如果他們支持他所鍾情的歐元項目，他就會支持德國統一。正如戴維•馬什(David Marsh)在《歐元》(The Euro)中所記敘的，密特朗和時任西德總理赫爾穆特•科爾(Helmut Kohl)在1989年末達成了“推動歐洲最終結成馬斯特裏赫特貨幣聯盟的前期協議。”（《歐洲聯盟條約》於1991年在荷蘭馬斯特裏赫特(Maastricht)簽訂——譯者注）

The two leaders weren’t driven by economic motives. Karl Otto Pöhl, Bundesbank president in 1989, once told the FT that Kohl understood nothing of economics. Rather, Mitterrand and Kohl cared about history. Kohl wanted to be the chancellor of German unity; Mitterrand, to forge a French-led Europe. They saw economists as people standing in the way of history, bleating jargon.

兩位領導人並非受經濟動機驅使。1989年時擔任德國央行(Bundesbank)行長的卡爾•奧托•波爾(Karl Otto Pöhl)曾向英國《金融時報》透露，科爾對經濟一竅不通。相反，密特朗和科爾關心的是歷史。科爾希望成爲見證德國統一的總理；而密特朗想要打造一個由法國主導的歐洲。他們把經濟學家視爲阻擋歷史潮流的人，用專業術語胡說八道。

When I became FT currency columnist in 1996, Mitterrand was already dead. Lesser fathers of the euro had moved on too: even bureaucrats rarely last more than five years at the top. A new set of wonks was implementing the grand design.

當我在1996年成爲英國《金融時報》的匯市專欄作家時，密特朗已經去世了。較爲次要的歐元之父們也已經離開：就連公務員也很少能在高層呆5年以上。新的一批官僚在實施這個宏偉計劃。

But most people sleepwalked into this project. Even the currency markets were bored by European monetary union. I spent the years 1996-98 swivelling around in my office chair, having lunch with bankers, and trying to fill my column. This was tricky: 1996 was perhaps the slowest year in currencies since 1973. One particularly dead day, Nick Parsons at Paribas told me: “The only thing we’re not waiting for is Godot.”

但是，多數人是迷迷糊糊地加入這個項目的。連匯市也被歐洲貨幣聯盟搞煩了。1996-98年期間，我常常坐在辦公室的轉椅上旋轉思考，與銀行界人士共享午餐，試着填滿我的專欄篇幅。這很棘手：1996年或許是自1973年以來匯市最平靜的一年。在一個特別無聊的日子，法國巴黎銀行(BNP Paribas)的尼克•帕森斯(Nick Parsons)跟我說：“我們唯一沒在等待的就是戈多。（《等待戈多》是一出荒誕劇——譯者注）”

My stuff usually appeared on page 33. The boredom hardly lifted when improbable countries such as Greece and Italy entered the ERM. Greece’s entry didn’t even get me on to the front page. The Greeks joined partly just to solve a short-term problem: entering the ERM helped fix the drachma’s rate against other European currencies, and thus stopped the market’s attack. Most traders scarcely noticed. They weren’t paid to think about little Greece. They saw it as merely an amusing subplot: the Greeks had lucked into the euro and would now be fine.

我的文章通常刊登在報紙第33版。當希臘和意大利等不太像樣的國家加入ERM時，這種無聊感也沒能消散。希臘的加入甚至都沒能讓我的文章進入頭版。希臘加入的部分原因只是爲了解決一個短期問題：加入ERM有助於修復德拉馬克兌其他歐洲貨幣的匯率，從而遏止市場攻擊。多數交易員幾乎都沒留意到。他們的職責不是惦記小小的希臘。他們只是把這看作一個好玩的小情節：希臘人走運加入歐元，現在沒事了。

“Greece’s economy is too small for any other country to care much about the price of the drachma”, I wrote. Nobody then imagined (or perhaps cared) that Greek entry into the euro would one day produce Europe’s biggest headache. Few in the markets in 1998 asked: “Will the euro work?” They considered that an issue for the long run, when they would all be dead or, with luck, growing wine on their own estates in Tuscany. Instead, traders asked questions like: “Will Greek ERM entry tomorrow move the Deutschmark?”

“希臘經濟太小了，不足以讓其他國家過多考慮德拉馬克的幣值，”我當時寫道。當時沒人能想到（或者在意）希臘加入歐元區有一天會成爲歐洲最大的麻煩。1998年市場上幾乎沒人問：“歐元能行嗎？”他們把這視爲一個長期問題，出問題時他們可能都去世了，或者運氣夠好的話，在托斯卡納他們自己的莊園釀造葡萄酒。交易員的問題是這樣的：“希臘明日加入ERM會影響德國馬克的匯率嗎？”

Politicians barely noticed such technicalities at all. They tended to see the euro as a political project: “building Europe”. We now know the euro did the opposite: it ended the construction of Europe that had begun in Messina in 1955. Today the European project consists of trying to digest the euro.

政客們根本不管這類技術問題。他們傾向於把歐元視爲一個政治項目——“打造歐洲”。我們現在知道歐元起到的作用恰好其反：它終結了1955年在意大利墨西拿(Messina)起步的歐洲建設。如今這個歐洲項目的內涵是試着消化歐元。

The euro was a visionary project. The key lesson for politicians: beware of vision. The future will probably mess up your vision. Instead of taking giant irreversible leaps, be backward-looking and evidence-based: what boring complex policy worked somewhere before? Given that Europe in 1989 was coming off the best 40 years in its blood-soaked history, the bias should have been to leave well alone instead of inventing a currency.

歐元是個有遠見的項目。政客們應該學到的關鍵教訓是：當心遠見。未來很可能攪亂你的遠見。與其跳躍式邁出不可逆轉的巨大步伐，不如回顧過去，採取循證的分析方式：以前有什麼枯燥複雜的政策在其他地方奏效過？鑑於1989年的歐洲剛剛經歷了其血腥歷史中最美好的40年，各方本應該打消創造一種新貨幣的念頭。

“Vision” is particularly dangerous at confusing emotional moments such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. The west’s next great confusing emotional moment, the attacks of 9/11, produced blunders including the Iraq war, limitless spying and Guantánamo. Quite likely the frantic weeks after Lehman Brothers’ collapse in 2008 spawned the next generation’s headaches. Much better when possible to wait out crises, as Angela Merkel tries to do. Today’s politicians take a lot of stick, but at least they don’t have any vision.

在柏林牆被推倒後那段各種情緒交織的令人困惑的時期，“遠見”格外危險。西方遭遇的下一個這樣的時刻——9/11恐怖襲擊，帶來了伊拉克戰爭、不受限制的間諜活動以及關塔那摩等重大失策。這與2008年雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破產後的瘋狂幾周釀成下一代人的大麻煩十分相似。在可能的情況下，靜候危機結束會好得多，正如安格拉•默克爾(Angela Merkel)試着去做的那樣。當今這一代政客招致諸多批評，但至少他們沒有任何遠見。