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Buttonwood
梧桐树 Repressed memories 被压抑的记忆 The difficulty of deciding how to invest during a time of financial repression 金融抑制期如何决定投资，难矣 Feb 25th 2012 | from the print edition SAVERS beware. Governments have huge deficits to fill and are worried about the fragile finances of banks and consumers. Policies are being designed to help borrowers, not creditors. A similar approach was followed after the second world war, when a period of “financial repression” reduced the debt burden by delivering poor returns to savers. 储户小心！政府要填补巨型赤字，还不得不担心银行和消费者脆弱的财务状况。而制定各项政策只是为了帮助借款人，而非债权人。二战后，政府也曾采取过相似的措施，虽然当时一段时期的“金融抑制”通过将槽糕的收益转给储户的确减少了债务负担。 This effect can be achieved in a number of ways. Investors can be forced into holding bonds, either by law or by regulation. Current accounting rules, solvency requirements and liquidity provisions may have already done the trick for pension funds, insurance companies and banks, respectively. 几种方式能够达成这样的效果。投资者迫于法律法规规定持有债券。目前的会计规则，偿付能力和流动性规定分别对养老金，保险公司以及银行已经产生作用。 An even simpler approach is for central banks to depress interest rates so that real returns to investors are negative. The Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have been very successful at achieving this feat over the past three years. Nominal rates are at record lows in both America and Britain. 还有更为简单的方法，中央银行一旦降低利率，投资者便只能获得负的实际收益。过去三年里，联邦贮备和英格兰银行已经成功地实现这一举措。美国和英国的名义利率在在达到历史低点。 Central banks have also held bond yields down, both directly and indirectly. The direct route is quantitative easing, which involves the purchase of government bonds from the private sector. But bond yields also in part represent the market’s forecast for the future level of short-term rates. By indicating that short-term rates will stay low until the end of 2014, the Fed is also having an effect on medium-term bond yields. 中央银行也直接或间接地下调债券收益。直接的方法是量化宽松政策，包括从私营部分购买政府债券。但债券收益也在某种程度上代表了市场对未来短期利率的预测。美联储指出到2014年底，短期利率依然会保持低迷，因而也会对中期债券收益率产生重要作用。 All this means that the risk-reward ratio for holding government bonds looks pretty skewed. Towers Watson, a consultancy which advises many a pension fund, rates government bonds as “highly unattractive” at current levels. 所有这些都意味持有政府债券的风险回报比看起来十分不平等。咨询师塔沃特森建议,许多退休基金、政府债券利率目前看来“毫无吸引力”。 At best, bond investors will earn modest returns in a Japanese-style stagnation. At worst, governments might opt for outright default: note that this week’s Greek restructuring has been designed to punish private-sector creditors, leaving official creditors untouched. Even default by the world’s largest economy is no longer unthinkable. In a series of papers for the Mercatus Centre at George Mason University in Washington, DC, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Arnold Kling argue that the American government will eventually default, if only because politicians will never agree on a serious deficit-cutting programme. 最好的情况是，债券投资人在日本式的滞涨状况下获得适中的回报。最坏的情况是，政府选择彻底违约：请注意星期希腊经济重整就是为了惩罚私营的债权人，让官方债权人不受影响。即使世界最大经济体的违约也是有可能的。在一份华盛顿特区的乔治梅森大学莫卡特斯中心进行的研究中，杰弗里?罗杰斯?赫梅尔和阿诺?克林认为美国政府最终将会违约，哪怕政治家们永远不会同意一个严重的削减赤字计划。 Financial repression would chart a middle course through these outcomes, in which the real value of holdings in government bonds was steadily eroded by inflation. The same would be true for cash. So what would be the right asset to hold in such an era? 金融抑制将通过这些结果描绘一条中庸之道,持有政府债券真实的价值会不断被通货膨胀削弱。现金也同样如此。那么，在这样一个时代，持有什么才是真正的资产? The temptation is to think that equities are the answer. After all, many analysts think shares look cheap relative to government bonds. Dividend yields are almost as high as bond yields (in some places they are higher), and equities also offer the prospect of income growth. Since equities are a claim on corporate revenues, surely they ought to be a hedge against inflation risk? 这种诱惑认为公平才是解决之道。毕竟,许多分析师认为股票比政府债券便宜。股息收益率几乎和债券收益率一样高(在某些地方甚至高于),股票也有望提供收入增长。因为股票是企业收入的体现,然而它们就应该是一种保值风险吗? But Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton of the London Business School, writing in Credit Suisse’s latest “Global Investment Returns Yearbook”, find that equity returns were negatively correlated with rising prices. Worse still, equities perform badly in periods of high inflation, and governments will need quite a lot of inflation if they are really to erode their debt burdens. Messrs Marsh, Dimson and Staunton calculate that if you divide annual inflation rates into quintiles, real equity returns in the years with the highest inflation averaged –1.7%. Real equity returns in the lowest quintile for inflation were 11.7% a year. 然而，伦敦商学院的罗伊路?迪姆森,保罗?玛莎，迈克?斯汤顿,在最新的《全球投资收益年鉴》瑞士信贷中写到,股票收益和不断上涨的物价呈负相关。更糟的是,股票在严重通货膨胀时表现并不理想,如果政府需要减少债务负担，那么他们必须承担相当多的通货膨胀。马什, 蒂姆森和斯汤顿计算得出,如果将年度通货膨胀率成五等分后,真正的股市回报平均最高为-1.7%。真正的股市回报最低的通货膨胀率是每年11.7%。 Just as surprisingly, perhaps, the professors find that returns from commercial property and residential housing are also negatively correlated with inflation. The only asset class they could find with a positive correlation was gold but the long-term real return of gold has been just 1% a year, barely better than cash. Inflation-linked bonds also offer protection but their current real yields are very low or even negative. 令人惊讶的是,教授发现,商业地产和民用住宅的回报和通货膨胀也是负相关。唯一正相关的资产只有黄金,但黄金的长期实际回报率仅为每年1%,仅仅好于现金。与通货膨胀相关的债券也能提供保护,但目前的实际收益很低甚至负增长。 If the prospects seem bleak for savers, there is at least some good news. The post-war period of financial repression occurred under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, which was marked by tight capital controls. It was very hard to escape the squeeze. 如果前景对于储户看来黯淡,那么至少有一则好消息。战后的金融抑制发生在固定汇率制度的布雷顿森林体系下,表现为紧缩资本控制。这种困境很难摆脱。 Now savers have the freedom of the globe and there are plenty of countries where real interest rates are positive and growth prospects are more attractive than in the developed world. There are risks in these places, of course, but they need to be set against the certainty that rich-world central banks are trying to make savers lose out. 现在储蓄可以在全球自由存储,有许多国家实际利率呈正增长，发展前景比发达国家更可观。当然，这些国家也存在风险,但有一点可以确定,富裕国家的中央银行正使储户蒙受损失。 |
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