经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 Will（inflation return）

12.22｜经济学人阅读｜扉页文章 Will inflation return?

经济学人The Economist是一份英国的英文新闻周报，分八个版本于每周五向全球发行，编辑部位于伦敦，创办于1843年9月。

经济学人是一本综合性新闻评论刊物，有商业、国家和地区、经济和金融、科学和技术五大类。其中文章文风紧凑且严谨，对语言精准运用，展现出一种克制的风趣幽默，常运用双关语调侃。

经济学人对于英语考试的重要性不言而喻，其文章常常出现在雅思托福、SAT、GRE、GMAT、考研英语、四六级、MTI和CATTI的阅读理解真题中。

今天羚羊君（公众：aa-acad）给大家分享的是经济学人2020年12月12日期刊中扉页文章的第一篇：Will inflation return?

这篇文章讨论了疫情之下通货膨胀发生的可能性以及各国应该采取的措施。

想要阅读往期内容，可以在公众号右下角点击"更多资讯-长文阅读"进入专栏。

01

Will inflation return?

通货膨胀会重演吗

Economists love to disagree, but almost all of them will tell you that ination is dead. The premise of low ination is baked into economic policies and nancial markets. It is why central banks can cut interest rates to around zero and buy up mountains of government bonds. It explains how governments have been able to go on an epic spending and borrowing binge in order to save the economy from the ravages of the pandemic and why rich-world public debt of 125% of gdp barely raises an eyebrow. The search for yield has propelled the s&p 500 index of shares to new highs even as the number of Americans in hospital with covid-19 has surpassed 100,000. The only way to justify such a blistering-hot stockmarket is if you expect a strong but inationless economic rebound in 2021and beyond.

经济学家虽然不太同意这个观点，但几乎所有经济学家又都会说，通货膨胀已经消失了。低通胀前提已被纳入经济政策和金融市场。这就是中央银行可以将利率降至零左右并购买大量政府债券的原因。它解释了政府如何能够几乎史无前例的支出和疯狂借贷，以使经济免遭受疫情的破坏；也解释了为何富裕国家公共债务达到GDP的125％，却几乎没有引起人们的关注。对收益率的追求将标准普尔500指数的股票推升至新高，尽管在医院接受covid-19治疗的美国人人数已超过100,000。这种股市热潮的唯一解释就是：人们期望2021年及以后的经济会有强势且没有通胀影响的反弹。

02

Yet as we explain this week (see Brieng), an increasingly vocal band of dissenters thinks that the world could emerge from the pandemic into an era of higher ination. Their arguments are hardly overwhelming, but neither are they empty. Even a small probability of having to deal with a surge in ination is worrying, because the stock of debt is so large and central-bank balance-sheets are swollen. Rather than ignore the risk, governments should take action now to insure themselves against it.

然而，正如我们在本周（见简报）所作的解释一样，越来越多持不同政见的人认为世界可能会从疫情时代进入到通货膨胀率更高的时代。他们的论点几乎无法压倒一切，但他们的观点也不完全是空洞的。即使人们只有很小的概率必须应对通货膨胀，这仍是令人担忧的，因为债务如此之大，且中央银行的资产负债已经膨胀。政府应该立即采取行动以确保自己免受风险的威胁，而不是忽略风险。

03

In the decades since Margaret Thatcher warned of a vicious cycle of prices and wages that threatened to “destroy” society, the rich world has come to take low ination for granted. Before the pandemic even an ultratight jobs market could not jolt prices upwards, and now armies of people are unemployed. Many economists think the West, and especially the euro zone, is heading the way of Japan, which fell into deation in the 1990s and has since struggled to lift price rises far above zero.

Predicting the end of this trend is a kind of apostasy. After the nancial crisis some hawks warned that bond buying by central banks (known as quantitative easing, or qe) would reignite ination.

自从玛格丽特·撒切尔警告价格和工资的恶性循环会威胁甚至“毁灭”社会，这几十年来，富裕国家已将通货膨胀率低视为理所当然。在疫情之前，及时非常紧张的就业形势也不会使物价上涨。现在，许多人都失业了。许多经济学家认为，西方国家，尤其是欧元区国家，正在走日本的老路。日本在1990年代陷入了经济低迷，此后一直在努力将价格上涨幅度提升。

预测这种趋势的结束是一种变节。金融危机后，一些鹰派人士警告说，央行购买债券（称为量化宽松，简写为qe）将重新引发通货膨胀。

04

Today the inationistas’ arguments are stronger. One risk is of a temporary burst of ination next year. In contrast to the period after the nancial crisis, broad measures of the rich-world money supply have shot up in 2020, because banks have been lending freely. Stuck at home, people have been unable to spend all their money and their bank-balances have swelled. But once they are vaccinated and liberated from the tyranny of Zoom, exuberant consumers may go on a spending spree that outpaces the ability of rms to restore and expand their capacity, causing prices to rise. The global economy already shows signs of suering from bottlenecks. The price of copper, for example, is 25% higher than at the start of 2020.

现在，通货膨胀论者们的论点更加强有力。风险之一是明年可能出现暂时性的通货膨胀。与金融危机后的时期相比，由于银行一直在自由放贷，因此到2020年，对富裕国家货币供应量的普适性的衡量标准已经飙升。宅在家里，人们无法花光所有的钱，银行的余额也膨胀了。但是，一旦人们接种疫苗并从zoom中"解放"出来后，旺盛的消费者可能会大举消费，这会超过公司恢复和扩大产能的能力，从而导致价格上涨。全球经济已经显示出遭受瓶颈困扰的迹象。例如，铜的价格比2020年初高出了25％。

05

The world should be able to manage such a temporary burst of ination. But the second inationista argument is that more persistent price pressures will also emerge, as structural disinationary forces go into reverse. In the West and in Asia many societies are ageing, creating shortages of workers. For years globalisation lowered ination by creating a more ecient market for goods and labour. Now globalisation is in retreat.

Their third argument is that politicians and ocials are complacent. The Federal Reserve says it wants ination to overshoot its 2% target to make up for lost ground; the European Central Bank, which was expected to announce more stimulus after we went to press, may yet follow suit. Weighed down by the need to pay for an ageing population and health care, politicians will increasingly favour big budget decits.

世界应该能够应对这种短暂的通货膨胀。但是，通货膨胀论者们的第二个论点是：随着结构化的去通胀的力量倒退，还会出现更持久的价格压力。在西方和亚洲，许多社会正在老龄化，这造成了工人短缺。多年以来，经济全球化通过建立更有效的商品和劳动力市场来降低通货膨胀。而现在全球化正在缩小。

他们的第三个论点是，政客和官员是刚愎自用的。美联储表示，它希望通货膨胀超过其2％的目标，以弥补经济上的失地。欧洲中央银行可能会紧随其后，在我们这篇文章发表不久后，欧洲中央银行就可能会宣布更多的刺激经济的措施。由于需要为老龄化的人口和医疗服务付费，政治家将越来越倾向于庞大的预算赤字。

06

Might these arguments prove correct? A temporary rebound in ination next year is perfectly possible. At rst it would be welcome—a sign economies were recovering from the pandemic. It would inate away a modest amount of debt. Policymakers might even breathe a sigh of relief, especially in Japan and the euro zone, where prices are falling (though rapid changes in the pattern of consumer spending may have muddied the statistics).

这些论点的正确性可以被证实吗？明年通胀可能会暂时反弹。首先，这是受欢迎的，这是经济从疫情中恢复的迹象。这样也会增加少量的债务。政策制定者甚至可以松一口气，尤其是在日本和欧元区，那里的物价正在下跌（尽管消费者支出方式的快速变化可能使统计数存在不准确性）。

07

The odds of a more sustained period of ination remain low. But if central banks had to raise interest rates to stop price rises getting out of hand, the consequences would be serious. Markets would tumble and indebted rms would falter. More important, the full cost of the state’s vastly expanded balance-sheet—both governments’ debt and the central banks’ liabilities—would become alarmingly apparent. To understand why requires peering, for a moment, into how they are organised.

持续通货膨胀的几率仍然很低。但是，如果央行不得不提高利率以阻止物价一发不可收拾般地上涨，后果将是严重的。市场将崩塌，负债企业将步履蹒跚。更重要的是，庞大的资产负债表的全部成本（包括政府债务和中央银行的债务）将变得非常明显。要理解为什么，就需要了解它们的组织方式。

08

For all the talk about “locking in” today’s low long-term interest rates, governments’ dirty secret is that they have been doing the opposite, issuing short-term debt in a bet that short-term interest rates will remain low. The average maturity of American Treasuries, for example, has fallen from 70 months to 63. Central banks have been making a similar wager. Because the reserves they create to buy bonds carry a oating interest rate, they are comparable to short-term borrowing. In November Britain’s scal watchdog warned that a combination of new issuance and qe had left the state’s debt-service costs twice as sensitive to short-term rates as they were at the start of the year, and nearly three times as much as in 2012.

对于所有关于“锁定”当今长期的低利率的说法，各国政府的肮脏秘密是：他们一直在做相反的事情——发行短期债务以押注短期利率将保持在低水平。例如，美国国债的平均到期日从70个月下降至63个月。各国央行一直在进行类似的赌注。由于他们为购买债券而建立的准备金具有浮动利率，因此可以与短期借款相提并论。在11月，英国财政监督机构警告说，新发行债券和量化宽松政策的结合使该国对短期债务偿还成本的敏感度是年初的两倍，是2012年的近三倍。

09

So while the probability of an ination scare may have risen only slightly, its consequences would be worse. Countries need to insure themselves against this tail risk by reorganising their liabilities. Governments should fund scal stimulus by issuing long-term debt. Most central banks should start an orderly reversal of qe and instead loosen monetary policy by taking shortterm interest rates negative. Finance ministries should incorporate risks taken by the central bank into their budgeting (and the euro zone should nd a better tool than qe for mutualising the debts of its member states). Shortening the maturity of the state’s balance-sheet—as in 2020—must only ever be a last resort, and should not become the main tool of economic policy.

因此，尽管通货膨胀恐慌的可能性可能仅增加了一点点，但其后果将更糟。各国需要通过重组债务来确保自己免受这种风险的影响。各国政府应通过发行长期债务为财政刺激计划提供资金。大多数中央银行应开始有序地扭转量化宽松政策，并且应通过使短期利率为负来放松货币政策。财政部应将中央银行承担的风险纳入其预算中（欧元区应找到比量化宽松更好的工具来使成员国的债务相互抵消。） 像在2020年所做的那样，缩短资产负债表的到期日，只能是不得已而为之，并且不应成为经济政策的主要工具。

经济学人一般目录大纲：

The world this week：简单梳理本周的时事Leaders：社论，对本周热点事件进行评论Briefing：简报，对一个特定热点话题深度讨论Letter：读者来信，对往期文章的评论Sections：各大洲及中美英三国的本周热点事件报道Business：商业新闻Finances and economics：财经新闻Science and technology：科技新闻Books and arts：文化书籍，书评和文化现象讨论Economic and financial indicators：商业及财经指数

Buttonwood：金融专栏Schumpeter：商业专栏Bartleby：职场专栏Bagehot：英国专栏Charlemagne：欧洲专栏Lexington：美国专栏Banyan：亚洲专栏