约翰逊：通往财政危机之路
西蒙·约翰逊，前国际货币基金组织（IMF）首席经济学家，现为著名经济学博客http://BaselineScenario.com的共同创始人，麻省理工斯隆学院教授，彼得森国际经济研究所资深研究员
华盛顿特区——
华盛顿圈内人士之间流行一种时尚——民主党和共和党都不能免俗——就是摊开手表示无奈，当众宣称：我们美国终将遭受大规模预算危机，特别是如今 医疗保险费用攀升，增加了医疗保障方案财政负担的情况下。但也是同一伙人通常笑着指出，他国投资人仍愿意借给美国大量的钱，保持较低的远期利率，并在可预 见的将来允许美国拥有巨额赤字。
这一观点漏洞百出。它认为只要美元是世界首要的储备货币，并且美国为冒进的投资人提供最佳避难港，美国就能把这个问题一直拖延下去。按此逻辑， 到2015年，政治家将不会增税，也几乎不用缩减开支，所以美国将还有约一万亿的预算赤字，其中大部分将以向外国人销售政府债券的方式融资。到2050 年，无疑将出现财政问题——但即便如此，现在还是有足够的时间可以无视它。
美联储压低所有利率的明确意图，支撑着这一理论，表明美国基准利率——比如10年期国库券——在近期将维持在4%以下（甚至可能是3.5%以 下）。本周，这一政府债券的利率是3.2%，从历史标准看也是十分低了。如果“华盛顿财政共识”是正确的，则基准利率最终开始上行时，也将速度缓慢。
但这一共识忽略了重要的一点：美国以及全球的财政部门在近几十年里已经变得更加动荡不安，而且从2008年金融危机以来，没有一项改革措施能让其稳定下来。
人们有时候会提到“系统风险”，就像它是系统与生俱来的属性一样。但现代财政的历史，包括新兴市场的历史，明显表明事实并非如此。当银行和其他金融机构遭遇困境时，私营部门的损失将明确或暗中转移到政府的资产负债表上。危险的金融系统将有巨大的财政风险。
阐明这一问题的三人中，有两人是全球著名央行的行长。本·伯南克出任美联储委员会主席之前，曾以研究大萧条的学术成就而闻名，其研究表明在正确 （或错误）的条件下，金融部门是如何在实体经济（非金融）的发展中起到加速作用的。美联储过去三年试图稳定银行和其他金融部门，无疑很大程度上是由于这种 见解。
斯坦福商学院教授阿纳德·阿玛蒂则十分关注银行资本——特别是银行为高杠杆率（几无资产净值，却有大量的债务）的行为融资的动机。我认为，她的网页是当今整个互联网中最重要的一个(http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/admati.etal.mediamentions.html)，其中既有她自己、彼得·德马佐、马丁·黑尔维希和保罗·法德雷的研究，也有他们多次涉足的政治辩论。
阿玛蒂和她的同事的见解简单而有力。高杠杆率让银行家挣更多钱，但对股东来说很可能变得多余——因为这使得银行在金融崩溃中更易受到波及——并 且对纳税人和全体公民来说也很糟糕，因为他们要承担大幅的负面成本。在美国，这一成本包括自2007年以来损失的超过八百万工作岗位，政府债务对GPD比 率的40%增幅（主要由于税收损失），以及更多。
默文·金曾是一名学者，现任英格兰银行行长，他和他的同事对导致这种结果的毒酒有个生动的名字：“毁灭循环”。因为每次财政系统出了问题，就会收到央行和政府预算上的大量支持。这样就减少了股东的损失，并完全保护了几乎所有的债权人。
结果是，银行有了更强烈的动机继续进行大额借贷（阿玛迪这样认为），并且随着资产价格促进了正在恢复期的经济，它们就能借到更多的钱（伯南克对 此很清楚）。但这最终导致冒更大的险，通常是以无规章，无管制的方式——并且在银行自身中没有有效的管理（阿玛蒂再次解释为什么银行主管喜欢这样做）。
“伯南克-阿玛蒂-金”观点表明，华盛顿财政共识缺陷重重。美国和世界经济会恢复，确实。但这种恢复只是“繁荣-崩溃-救济”循环中的另一阶段罢了。
美国“大到不能倒”的银行就快变得“大到没有救”了。等到拯救大银行，保护债权人，稳定经济这些行为将让美国政府深陷债务之中，其主权出现危机，利率飞涨，财政危机爆发的时候，这些银行就真的“大到没有救”了。
换言之，“毁灭循环”其实并不是一个循环。它最终确实有个终结，就像冰岛、爱尔兰和希腊一样（这才开了个头）。
西蒙·约翰逊，前国际货币基金组织（IMF）首席经济学家，现为著名经济学博客http://BaselineScenario.com的共同创始人，麻省理工斯隆学院教授，彼得森国际经济研究所资深研究员
The Road to Fiscal Crisis
03-24 17:04 Caijing
The financial sector in the US and globally has become much more unstable in recent decades, and there is nothing in any of the reform efforts undertaken since the near-meltdown in 2008 that will make it safer.
By Simon Johnson
WASHINGTON, DC – It has become fashionable among Washington insiders – Democrats and Republicans alike – to throw up their hands and say: We ultimately face a major budget crisis in the United States, particularly as rising health-care costs increase the fiscal burden of entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. But then the same people typically smile and point out that investors from other parts of the world still want to lend the US vast amounts of money, keeping long-term interest rates low and allowing the country to run big deficits for the foreseeable future.
This view is seriously flawed. It implies that the US can kick the can down the road as long as the dollar remains the world’s preeminent reserve currency, and America offers the best safe haven for skittish capital owners. By 2015, according to this logic, politicians will have done nothing to raise taxes and very little to cut expenditure, so the US will still have a budget deficit of around $1 trillion, and will finance a substantial portion of it by selling government bonds to foreigners. By 2050, there will undoubtedly be a fiscal problem – but, again, there is plenty of time to ignore it.
This logic, supported by the clear intention of the Federal Reserve to keep all interest rates low, suggests that benchmark US interest rates – for example, on the 10-year Treasury – will remain below 4% (and perhaps under 3.5%) in the near term. This week, such government debt paid around 3.2%, which is very low by historical standards. If the “Washington Fiscal Consensus” proves correct, when benchmark rates eventually edge upwards, they will move slowly.
But this consensus misses an important point: the financial sector in the US and globally has become much more unstable in recent decades, and there is nothing in any of the reform efforts undertaken since the near-meltdown in 2008 that will make it safer.
People sometimes talk about “systemic risk” as if it were intrinsic to the financial system. But modern financial history, including in emerging markets, strongly indicates otherwise. When banks and other financial institutions get into trouble, private losses are transferred – explicitly or implicitly – to the government’s balance sheet. Dangerous financial systems pose big fiscal risks.
The three people who have articulated this problem most clearly include two of the world’s leading central bankers. Before Ben Bernanke became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he was rightly renowned for his academic work on the Great Depression, which showed how, under the right (or wrong) conditions, the financial sector could act as a form of accelerant for developments in the real (nonfinancial) economy. The Fed’s efforts in the past three years to stabilize banks and other parts of finance have no doubt been motivated in large part by this insight.
Anat Admati, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, focuses on bank capital – specifically, the incentives that banks have to fund their activities with very high leverage – little equity and a great deal of debt. In my view, she has the single most important page on the Web today (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/admati.etal.mediamentions.html), containing both original research by her, Peter deMarzo, Martin Hellwig, and Paul Pfleiderer and their many interventions in the policy debate.
The insight of Admati and her collaborators is simple and very powerful. Higher leverage allows bankers to earn more money, but it can easily become excessive for shareholders – because it makes the banks more vulnerable to collapse – and it is terrible for taxpayers and all citizens, as they face massive downside costs. In the US, the costs include more than eight million jobs lost since 2007, an increase in government debt relative to GDP of around 40% (mostly due to lost tax revenue), and much more.
Mervyn King, a former academic who is currently Governor of the Bank of England, and his colleagues have a vivid name for the toxic cocktail that results: “doom loop.” The idea is that every time the financial system is in trouble, it receives a great deal of support from central banks and government budgets. This limits losses to stockholders and completely protects almost all creditors.
As a result, banks have even stronger incentives to resume heavy borrowing (as Admati argues), and, as rising asset prices lift the economy in the recovery phase, it becomes possible for them to borrow even more (as Bernanke knows). But what this really amounts to is taking on more risk, typically in an unregulated, unsupervised way – and with very little effective governance within the banks themselves (again, Admati explains why bank executives like it this way).
The Bernanke-Admati-King view suggests that the Washington Fiscal Consensus is seriously deficient. The US and global economy will recover, to be sure. But that recovery will be just another phase in the boom-bust-bailout cycle.
America’s too-big-to-fail banks are well on their way to becoming too big to save. That point will be reached when saving the big banks, protecting their creditors, and stabilizing the economy plunges the US government so deeply into debt that its solvency is called into question, interest rates rise sharply, and a fiscal crisis erupts.
In other words, the “doom loop” isn’t really a loop at all. It does end eventually, as it has – just for starters – in Iceland, Ireland, and Greece.
Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a leading economics blog, http://BaselineScenario.com, a professor at MIT Sloan, and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His book, 13 Bankers, co-authored with James Kwak, is now available in paperback.
