国际经济与贸易-英文文献

Thinking about the Subprime Crisis

Over the past decade, China and other emerging markets accumulated foreign currency reserves to insure against the economic and political vagaries of financial globalization. They were wise to do so. Countries with larger reserves are weathering the storm relatively better than those who have bought less insurance.

Although purchasing insurance policy might have been sensible from the perspective of each country, collectively these currency interventions prepared the ground for the global crisis. Emerging markets, most notably China, helped to create the macroeconomic backdrop for the current financial crisis by subsidizing interest rates and consumption in the US. Niall Ferguson and I coined the term “Chimerica” to describe this historically unique financial symbiosis that had developed between China and America.

This paradox could mark the end of another attempt to make the world safe for global finance; just as the Asian crisis marked the end of financial globalization 2.0 (financial globalization 1.0 took place in the late 19th century).

Financial globalization 2.0 started in the 1980s and lasted to 1997-1998. It was based on the idea that removing restrictions on capital account transactions would enable emerging markets to tap into the pool of global savings and import much-needed capital for development. Financial globalization 2.0 ended painfully with the Asian crisis when it became clear that private capital flows were volatile and could seriously complicate economic management in difficult times.

What followed was financial globalization 3.0. Emerging markets heeded Martin Feldstein’s advice and took out an insurance policy against the vagaries of financial globalization. By running current account surpluses, intervening in foreign exchange markets and building up currency reserves, Asian and other emerging economies were sustaining export led growth and buying insurance against future financial instability.

These policies turned developing markets into net capital exporters to the developed world, mainly to the US. Between 1990 and 1998, during what I have termed financial globalization 2.0, emerging and developing economies (according to the International Monetary Fund classification) were running an average current account deficit of about 1.7 per cent of their gross domestic product. Between 1999 and 2008, during financial globalization 3.0, this deficit turned into a surplus of 2.5 per cent of GDP.

Just like its predecessor, financial globalization 3.0 seemed a success story for a while, generating financial stability and high rates of economic growth. Yet the accumulation of large war chests of foreign reserves through currency intervention carried negative externalities.

The arrangement opened a Pandora’s Box of financial distortions that eventually came to haunt the global economy. The glut of savings from emerging markets has been a key factor in the decline in US and global real-long term interest rates, despite the parallel decline in US savings.

Lower interest rates in turn have enabled American households to increase consumption levels and worsened the imbalance between savings and investment. And because foreign savings were predominantly channeled through government (or central bank) hands into safe assets such as treasuries, private investors turned elsewhere to look for higher yields. This led to a reprising of financial risks and unleashed the ingenuity of financial engineers who developed new financial products for the low interest rate world, such as securitized debt instruments.

This is not to say that reserve accumulation was the only cause for the current crisis. Yet the core issue remained the Chinese willingness to fund America’s consumption and borrowing habit. Without this support, interest rates in the US would almost certainly have been substantially higher, acting as a circuit breaker for the developing debt-consumption bubble.

Beijing and others cannot be blamed for reckless lending into the housing bubble or leverage in western financial institutions, but it is clear that a vast amount of capital was flowing from a developing country with a per capita income of one tenth of the western world to one of the richest economies in the world. Water was flowing uphill in unprecedented amounts.

Individual policies meant to insure against financial instability and sustain export-led growth have collectively distorted global interest rates, helped to sustain excess demand and contributed to the misprision of financial risks. Moreover, it is unlikely that emerging markets’ behavior will change.

From the perspective of emerging markets, the academic debate as to whether reserve levels have grown excessive has been answered almost overnight in the current crisis. It is clear to policy makers from Buenos Aires to Budapest and Beijing that one can’t have too many reserves in a world of volatile capital flows. Emerging markets are as unlikely today as they were during the past decade to embrace the instability of global capital flows and accept large swings in exchange rates.

Have we therefore come to a crossroads for financial globalization 3.0 There were many economic reasons to doubt that a financial globalization model premised on large scale capital flows from poor to rich economies was a fundamentally smart idea.

Moreover, the past years have shown that capital outflows from emerging markets, including China’s reserves accumulation within the constellation we called Chimerica, have themselves contributed to the build-up of macroeconomic imbalances and financial risks that brought the global economy to its knees.

After the dust has settled, members of the economics profession will have to think hard about what the right policy advice drawn from financial globalizations 2.0 and 3.0 should be.

对金融危机的思考

在过去十年间，中国和其他新兴市场积累的大量外汇储备保证了全球金融全球化不发

生经济和政治上的异常，这些国家也乐意这么做。拥有着大量外汇储备的国家显然更容易度过难关，外汇储备就是一种保险。

虽然外汇储备政策对于每个国家的远景来说都是明智的，但是全部使用这些外汇储备则会使全球的经济危机更为加剧。以中国为代表的新兴市场通过对美国利息和消费的补贴有助于为当前的金融危机建立宏观的经济背景。Niall Ferguson 和我为了描述这种中美之间历史上第一无二的金融互利关系，创造了一个新词“Chimerica”。

这种矛盾可能使得又一次试图使得全球金融更加安全的尝试失败，正如亚洲金融危机结束了第二次金融全球化。（第一次金融全球化发生在19世纪末期）

第二次金融全球化开始于二十世纪八十年代，结束于97、98年的亚洲金融危机。其基本思想力求消除资本转移的限制，以帮助新兴市场国家利用全球的闲置储蓄和引进更多发展所需的资本。伴随着亚洲金融危机的剧痛，第二次金融全球化就此终结，由此得出的启示就是私人资本流动可能造成恶果，由于私人资本的易变性，在危急时刻更加重了经济管理的复杂性。

随之而来的是第三次金融全球化，新兴市场国家听从了Martin Feldstein 的建议并采取了更为保险的政策以应对金融全球化异变。通过国际收支顺差、干预外汇市场、建立外汇储备，亚洲和其他的新兴经济体维持了稳定的出口和外汇增长以应对未来的交融不稳定。

这些政策使得发展中国家相对于发达国家（特别是美国）转成为了净出口国。在1990年到1998年间（也就是被我称为第二次金融全球化期间），据国际货币基金组织的统计，新兴经济体和发展中的经济体平均都有相当于其GDP1.7%的财政赤字。但是到了第三次金融全球化时期，也就是1999到2008年度，赤字变成了相当于GDP 2.5%的盈余。

和前两次一样，第三次金融全球化在一段时间内看起来相当成功，金融稳定经济高速增长。但是外汇储备干预的竞争导致了很多负面影响。

这就打开了金融失调的潘多拉魔盒并最终笼罩在全球经济的上空。新兴市场储蓄过剩是美国乃至全球长期利率下降的主因，尽管同时期美国储蓄在下降。

低利率使得美国家庭提高了消费水平并使得投资和储蓄的不平衡更加恶化。由于外国储蓄经美国政府和银行之手变成了安全的资产，财政部、私人投资者就投入资金去得到高产出。这势必提高金融风险，并释放了金融工程师的才智开发出了新的金融工具例如大名鼎鼎的证券化债务工具（次债危机的导火索）。

这并不是说外汇储备的积累是金融危机的唯一原因，但是核心任是中国养成了美国消费和借款的习惯。如果没有中国的支持，美国的利率可能会维持在一个很高的水平上，高利率可以阻止经济泡沫的形成。

美国的房地产泡沫和西方金融体系的恶化不能归责于中国或其他国家，但是很显然大量的资本从只拥有西方国家十分之一人均收入的发展中国家流入美国。

个别国家为了应对金融不稳定而维持大量出口的政策完全破坏了全球的利率，并导致了过度需求和金融风险的提高。而且，新兴市场的政策将持续下去。

从新兴市场的立场看，关于储蓄水平是否过度已经在一夜之间被当前的危机回答了。对于北京、匈牙利等新兴市场国家的政策制定者来说，显然在这个资本自由流动的世界一个国家不要拥有太过的储蓄。新兴市场国家不可能像过去十年一样接受全球资本流动的不稳定性和汇率的动荡。

因此，是否我们已经来到了第三次金融全球化的十字路口上了?很大程度上建立在资本从穷国流向富国的金融全球化模式在经济学上是值得怀疑的。而且，过去几年显示，资本从新兴市场流入发达国家已经导致了全球经济的失衡并提高了诱发经济危机的金融风险。尘埃落定，经济学家们将不得不重新考虑从第二次第三次金融全球化得出的合理建议。