Capital bonanzas
财源滚滚

Does Wall Street’s meltdown show financial globalisation itself is part of the problem?
这次华尔街的灾难意味着金融全球化本身就是问题的一部分吗？

“THANK God,” said one Latin American finance minister earlier this year. “At least this time it isn’t our fault.”

“谢天谢地，”一位拉丁美洲的财政部长在今年早些时候说，”至少这次不是我们的错。”

The meltdown of America’s financial system may look very different from the emerging-market crises that overwhelmed Thailand in 1997 or Russia in 1998. This time there has been no currency collapse, no government default. Then, there were no collateralised-debt obligations or credit-default swaps.

美国金融体系的灾难跟在1997，98年横扫泰国和俄罗斯的新兴市场危机有所不同。这次没有货币崩溃，没有政府失职。而上次却没有担保抵押债务，或者信用违约互换。

Yet the minister was justified in seeing parallels between America’s crisis and the emerging-market episodes. In all of them vast current-account deficits were financed by huge capital inflows. The afflicted countries saw housing speculation, asset bubbles and cheap loans followed by a credit crunch and the seizing up of the financial system. And Wall Street’s meltdown raises the same questions as the crises of a decade ago: what will the direct effects on emerging markets be? If the world’s richest economies are vulnerable to global financial turmoil, should developing countries not seek to insulate themselves from it?

然而上面那位财政部长将美国的金融危机和新兴市场的金融危机看作一致也是恰如其分的。所有这些国家都以大量的资本流入为经常账户赤字融资。于是这些国家便首先出现房地产投机，资产泡沫和低廉的贷款，随之而来的是信贷紧缩和金融体系的停滞。这让上述国家深受折磨、痛苦不堪。而华尔街的灾难提出了与十年前金融危机相同的问题：这场灾难将会给新兴市场带来什么直接影响？如果世界最富裕的经济体还在全球金融动荡面前还脆弱不堪，为何新兴市场不寻求与之隔绝呢？

Two recent papers* cast light on these questions. They conclude that, although financial globalisation has big costs, these can be minimised and potential gains increased by better policy. Financial globalisation itself, they imply, ought to be seen not so much as a bad thing, but as too much of a good one.

最新的两篇论文（注1）阐明了这些问题。他们的结论是，虽然金融全球化有巨大的成本，但是这些成本可以最小化而潜在的收益可以依靠政策的改善而增加。他们认为，金融全球化本身不应该看作一件坏事，而是一件好事。

Beware markets bearing gifts
当心市场带来的木马

Most emerging markets see their ability to attract foreign money as proof of good management. From this point of view, it should be a blessing that private capital flows to developing countries rose, according to the World Bank, to $1 trillion in 2007, the highest ever. Yet if the study by Carmen and Vincent Reinhart is anything to go by, this should be little cause for celebration.

绝大多数新兴市场将他们吸引外资的能力看作其良好管理的证明。基于这样的观点，根据世界银行数据，2007年流入发展中国家的资金达到有史以来最高的1万亿美元，这应该看作一件非常幸运的事了。然而如果依据Carmen和Vincent Reinhart的研究结论的话，这没什么值得庆贺的。

Taking the experience of 181 countries since 1980, the authors reckon that middle- and low-income countries had a roughly 20% chance of suffering a banking crisis and a 30% chance of a currency crisis, external-debt default or inflation spike (to more than 20% a year) if they experienced what the authors call a “capital-flow bonanza” in the three years beforehand. (They define such a bonanza as an unusual shift of the current account into the red, using that as a proxy for capital inflows since the capital and current accounts mirror each other.) These seem unenviable odds.

根据自1980年以来181个国家的经验，作者认为，如果在之前三年有作者称之为”财源滚滚涌入”（它们将财源滚滚定义为，经常账户异常变为赤字，并且以此作为资金流入的代理，因为资本和经常账户互相反应彼此）的话，中低收入国家有大约20％的可能陷入银行危机，30％的可能陷入货币危机，外债违约和通货暴涨（年度通胀率超过20％）。这显然是不值得羡慕的恩惠。

The authors point out that countries might have suffered disasters anyway, without being showered with money. That turns out to be true-but their chances were quite a bit lower: between 14% and 24% for countries that did not attract so many dollars. In other words, a foreign inflow, as well as financing good things such as public infrastructure and corporate investment, is also associated with debt defaults, inflation and currency crises.

作者指出，上述那样的国家在没有大量资金资助下，肯定会陷入不管何种方式的灾难之中。这被证明是正确的，但是发生的概率比较低–大约只有没有获得巨额外资的国家14％到24％发生灾难的概率。换句话说，外资流入一方面会资助好的项目，例如公共基础设施和公司投资，但另一方面也会与债务违约，通货膨胀和货币危机发生关系。

The authors focus on the level of capital flows, rather than their composition. Presumably, countries that attract more foreign direct investment suffer less than those that have a greater amount of footloose portfolio investment or short-term bank lending. But overall, most countries that suck in foreign money show the classic signs of an economic bubble. Using a subset of 66 countries for which there are more detailed figures, the authors show that share prices rose by more than 10% in real terms in the two years before what they call a bonanza, then fell relentlessly for four years, ending below where they started. House prices went up by more than that-15% in real terms over four years during a bonanza-before falling back.

作者更关注资金流入的数量而不是它们的构成。据估计，有大量外资直接投资的国家会比有大量自由组合投资或者短期银行贷款的国家所承受的风险要少。但是总体来说，绝大多数吸入大量外资的国家显出经济泡沫的典型特征。用66个有更多经济数据的国家作为研究对象，作者发现，在其所谓的引入”财源滚滚”之前两年，这些国家的股票按实值计算增长10％以上，但是在引入”财源滚滚”之后却会连跌四年，最后降到起始点以下。房价涨得更多，在”财源滚滚”的四年内按实际价值计算增长了15％，而之后便会回落。

So why would countries seek out foreign money at all, if its impact is so malign? The answer is that it is not so much the amount of investment that is the trouble; it is its volatility, and especially its tendency to dry up. That makes today’s climate worrying. Mansoor Dailami, the World Bank’s manager of international finance, says private inflows to emerging markets may fall from $1 trillion to only $800 billion-850 billion this year. That may be particularly troublesome because of another difference between this crisis and the Asian one: in 1997-98, more debt was sovereign. Now, much of it is corporate, taken out by Indian, Chinese and other emerging-market companies. That implies a global credit tightening could have as big an impact on emerging markets as slowing import demand in the rich world.

那么即使这么有害，为何这些国家还想积极获取外资呢？因为并不是大量投资是麻烦，而是其波动性，特别是其即将耗尽的趋势。这造成了今天忧虑的气氛。世界银行国际金融经理Mansoor Dailami说，私人资本涌入新兴市场会从1万亿美元下降到今年的8千亿到8千5百亿美元。这是非常糟糕的。因为这场金融危机与上次亚洲金融危机另一个不同之处在于，在1997到98年，更多的债务是政府所有的。而现在，这些大部分是公司所有的，会被印度，中国和其它新兴市场的公司获得。这意味着，全球信贷紧缩对新兴市场的影响与发达国家和地区进口需求放缓对新兴市场的影响一样大。

Critics of financial globalisation argue that these problems are so great that emerging markets ought to be insulating themselves through capital controls. Many have been doing so. Yet even setting aside doubts about how far this is desirable (it is hard to believe growth in India or Brazil would have reached today’s levels without foreign capital), the studies raise questions about whether capital controls are really the right response.

金融全球化的批评者认为，这些问题太大，因此新兴市场国家必须采取资本监管从而使其免遭其害。许多新兴市场国家也就是这么做的。然而即使抛开对资本监管到何种程度合适的质疑（印度和巴西如果没有外资投入的话，其增长率很难能够达到今天的水平），这两篇论文也提出了这个问题：资本监管是否是个正确的应对方法？

The second study points out that “sudden stops” of capital inflows tend to be an inverted U-shape: the poorest countries are the least vulnerable to global financial shocks; middle-income countries are the most; but, as you get richer and more integrated into global finance, your vulnerability tends to fall again-and that remains true despite the crisis in America. So it might still make sense for countries like India and Brazil to carry on liberalising. Moreover, as the Reinharts show, a big part of the problem is that capital flows are endemically boom-bust: money floods in and out. They argue that fiscal policy should be used to smooth out such cycles: governments should reduce deficits or run surpluses during bonanzas-the opposite of what they usually do. This implies something of a paradox. Capital flows are supposed to be a reward for good economic behaviour. But as Dani Rodrik, a Harvard professor, says, “these policy conclusions turn capital inflows into an imperative for even deeper reform.”

第二篇论文指出外资流入”骤停”会对不同经济体产生”倒U”型的影响：最穷的国家最不可能遭受全球金融冲击；中等收入国家最可能遭受冲击；但是随着你更富有更进一步融入全球金融体系，那么遭受冲击的可能性又会再次下降–除了美国的金融危机外，这还是正确的。因此对于像印度和巴西这样的国家来说继续施行自由化政策还是很明智的。此外，如Reinharts所示，最大的问题在于资金流动的地方性兴衰起伏：资金大量涌入、涌出。他们认为金融政策应该缓和这样的起伏周期：政府应该在”财源滚滚”时减少赤字或者增加盈余–而这些政府的做法恰好与之相反。而这却是个悖论。资金流入应该是对一个良好运行经济体的褒奖、但是如同哈佛教授Dani Rodrik所说：”那些政策却将资金流入作为深化改革的必须。”