美联储应该加息 Show steel and raise rates or the financial system will fracture

Raising interest rates is Always harder than cutting them. When investors are bleeding and workers fear the chop, promises of cheap money sound like the hoofbeats of arriving cavalry. But the trauma does not end for everyone at the same time. When the rescuers depart, some complain they are being abandoned too soon.

加息总是比降息要更加困难。当投资者在“流血”而劳动者担心饭碗不保时，低利率承诺听起来像骑兵渐近的马蹄声。但每个人的创伤不会在同一时间痊愈。当救兵离开时，一些人抱怨被过早地抛弃了。

Pity the Federal Reserve, then, which is widely expected to start increasing rates by the end of the year — or had been expected to, until a fierce bout of selling began in emerging markets and spread to stock exchanges around the world. There will be calls for central banks in the US and elsewhere to delay long-flagged increases in interest rates. Yet they must not blink.

那么，美联储(Fed)就可怜了。市场普遍预期（或者曾经普遍预期）美联储今年年底将启动加息，直至新兴市场爆发激烈抛售，并蔓延至全球股市。会有人呼吁美国及其他地区的央行推迟计划已久的加息。然而他们必须坚定立场。

The case for waiting does not rest on market movements alone. Since there is no sign of inflation, it is argued, there is no need to raise rates. And since the recovery has always seemed fragile, there is no sense in raising them. The case for caution was being made when markets were rising. Its appeal will only grow now markets are faltering.

认为美联储应暂不加息的理由并不仅仅在于股市走势。持这种观点的人主张，既然没有通胀迹象，就没有必要加息。而且，考虑到经济复苏似乎一直很脆弱，加息是没道理的。过去一段时间股市上涨的时候，就有人主张加息应谨慎。如今股市摇摇欲坠，这种主张的吸引力只会变强。

Yet monetary policy cannot confine itself to reacting to the latest inflation data if it is to promote the wider goals of financial stability and sustainable economic growth. An over-reliance on extremely accommodative monetary policy may be one of the reasons why the world has not escaped from the clutches of a financial crisis that began more than eight years ago.

然而，如果货币政策要推动金融稳定及持续经济增长的更大目标的话，它就不能将自身局限于只对最新的通胀数据做出反应。过度依赖极度宽松的货币政策，可能是世界为何仍未逃出金融危机（始于逾八年前）魔爪的原因之一。

The origins of today’s market panic relate to recent policy choices. One of the factors behind the stock market slide is the stalling of growth in China. Official data, which paint a reassuring picture of steady growth, are widely considered to be unreliable. Look at what is happening in individual industries, however, and the picture is more troubling. Chinese consumption of smartphones shrank for the first time in the second quarter of this year, according to data from Gartner. The sales projections of many western technology companies have followed suit.

如今市场恐慌的根源与近期的政策选择相关。股市大跌背后的原因之一是中国经济增长的停滞。中国官方数据被普遍认为并不可靠，这些数据描绘了一幅令人放心的稳步增长景象。然而，如果看看具体行业的表现，你会发现形势更加糟糕。研究机构高德纳(Gartner)的数据显示，今年第二季度，中国智能手机消费首次出现萎缩。许多西方科技公司的销售预测都随之下调。

The slowdown in the Chinese economy has its roots in decisions made far from Beijing. In the past five years, central banks in all the big advanced economies have embarked on huge quantitative easing programmes, buying financial assets with newly created cash. Because of the effect they have on exchange rates, these policies have a “beggar-thy-neighbour” quality. Growth has been shuffled from place to place — first the US, then Europe and Japan — with one country’s gains coming at the expense of another. This zero-sum game cannot launch a lasting global recovery. China is the latest loser. Last week’s renminbi devaluation brought into focus that since 2010, China’s export-driven economy has laboured under a 25 per cent appreciation of its real effective exchange rate.

中国经济放缓的根源在于中国以外其他地区做出的决策。过去五年，所有大的发达经济体央行都启动了大规模量化宽松计划，利用新发货币购买金融资产。因为这些政策会对汇率造成影响，它们本质上是“以邻为壑”的政策。增长在不同国家轮换出现——首先是美国，然后是欧洲和日本——一国的收益建立在另一国的损失之上。这种零和博弈无法推动持久的全球经济复苏。中国是最新的输家。上周人民币贬值让人们注意到，自2010年以来，中国的出口驱动型经济一直背负着人民币实际有效汇率升值25%的重压艰难前行。

Exchange rates aside, long periods of accommodative monetary policy have led to a misallocation of resources. The extent of this will be impossible to measure for many years but, in the places where credit growth has been most dramatic, there are strong hints.

除去汇率不谈，长期的宽松货币政策已导致资源错误配置。错配程度在未来许多年都将无法衡量，但在信贷增长最为迅猛的领域，存在强烈的资源错配迹象。

Accommodative monetary policy was supposed to spur investment in productive activities at home. Instead, companies and banks hoarded cash. Much of the extra credit instead financed housing purchases at home, or was funnelled into loans for companies and governments in emerging markets. According to the World Bank, corporates and sovereigns in emerging economies collectively sold $1.5tn in new bonds in the five years to 2014, almost three times the rate between 2002 and 2007. Although today’s attention is on the weakness of stock markets in America, Europe and Japan, turmoil in the distant debt markets where investors from developed countries have placed their cash will be of more lasting concern.

宽松货币政策本应刺激对国内生产性活动的投资。相反，企业和银行囤积现金。大部分额外信贷为国内的房地产购置提供了资金，或者被用于向新兴市场的企业和政府放贷。据世界银行(World Bank)的说法，截至2014年的5年中，新兴经济体的企业和政府一共售出了1.5万亿美元的新发债券，几乎是2002年到2007年间水平的3倍。尽管今天人们的注意力集中在美国、欧洲和日本股市的疲弱上，但发生在遥远地区的债券市场（发达国家投资者在这里投入了现金）上的动荡，将成为人们更为持久的心病。

There are two silver linings to the dark clouds. First, because of the highly concentrated flow of international credit flows, today’s crisis may come to resemble the Asian financial crisis of 1997. It was brutal and contagious, but regionally contained in comparison to the global and systemic crisis that began in 2007. Second, despite many protests, emerging markets long ago decided the international financial system is inherently unstable and built up reserves to help them weather the storm.

在阴云之中还有两道曙光。首先，因为国际信贷流的高度集中，今天的危机可能会与1997年的亚洲金融危机类似。那场危机尽管惨烈，还具有传染性，但与2007年开始的全球性系统危机相比，仍是一场地区性危机。第二，尽管遭到许多抗议，但新兴市场很早之前就判断国际金融体系存在固有的不稳定性并建立起了帮助自身抵御风暴的储备。

Still, that fragile and dysfunctional financial system is a serious problem. It will remain so as long as the institutions that are supposed to manage international spillover effects from monetary policy lack legitimacy, credibility and capital. And if the advanced economies continue to rely on near-zero interest rates to fuel growth, they will only make that predicament worse.

不过，脆弱和失灵的国际金融系统是一个严重的问题。而且，只要理应管理好货币政策的国际溢出效应的机构还缺乏合法性、可信度和资金，这种情况就还将持续。如果发达经济体继续依赖接近零的利率来刺激增长，它们只会让困境变得更糟。