Reviving Keynes  Keynes理論復活

 

What the world needs now is the Depression-era economist

 

Bloomberg Businessweek November 3 – November 9, 2014 

由於財政政策缺乏行動，世界各大國的央行試圖挺身而出。美聯將利率降至接近為零，即便這樣都沒用時，它又嘗試了一些新的辦法：購買債券以降低長期利率（「量化寬鬆」），並向市場發出信號，即使經濟走向復甦道路後，利率也會保持較低水平（「前瞻指引」）。這些措施效果有限，有時被歸因於凱因斯主義的失敗，但事實恰好相反。凱因斯恰恰展示了一旦利率達到零，貨幣政策就不再有效，他建議在這種情況下應該採取的政策是減稅和增加支出。

 

 

         With fiscal policy missing in action, the world’s biggest central banks tried heroically to plug the gap. The U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero, and when even that failed it tried some new tricks: buying bonds to bring down long-term interest rates (“quantitative easing”) and signaling the market that rates would stay low even after the economy was on the path to recovery (“forward guidance”). The limited effectiveness of those measures is sometimes chalked up as failure of Keynesianism, but it’s just the opposite. Keynes was the economist who demonstrated that monetary policy ceases to be effective once interest rates hit zero and whose recommended policy in those circumstances was tax cuts and spending hikes.

 

        無論經濟事實如何，全球復甦遲緩令人們對政府干預經濟的能力表示質疑。刺激在美國中期選舉中不是什麼好詞；奧巴馬今年3020億美元的基礎設施維修法案無疾而終。德國的貿易夥伴要求德國利用其經濟實力成為歐洲的增長引擎，但德國非但沒有這麼做，反而在以損害其他國觮為代價地擴張經濟。德國讓工人加班加點地經產商品和服務以供出口，同時卻不購買其他國家的商品和服務。這就解釋了為什麼德國能保持經常項目盈餘，經常項目是衡量貿易和投資收益的廣泛指標，德國的經常盈餘佔其國內產總值的7%，是主要經濟體中最高的。 

 

        Whatever the economic facts, the slowness of the global recovery soured people on governemnts’ ability to intervene for the good. Stimulus is a toxic word in the U.S. midterm elections; Obama got nowhere with his $302 billion bridges-and potholes bill this year. Germany, far from using its economic power to become an engine of growth for Europe as requested by its trading partners, is expanding at the expense of other countries. It’s keeping its workers busy by producing goods and services for export, while not buying the goods and services produced by other countries. That explains why the surplus on its current account, the broad measure of trade and investment income, equal 7 percent of its gross domestic product, the highest among major economies.