雷曼倒閉:真正改變世界的一天
Back in 2001, just after 9/11, the Economist ran a cover with the headline The Day the World Changed. It felt right at the time. But when historians come to look back at our times I wonder if, vile as it was, that will really be the event they note as the trigger for the western world changing.
回到2001年，當時9/11恐怖襲擊剛剛過去，《經濟學人》(Economist)雜誌刊登了一個封面，標題是"改變世界的一天"(The Day the World Changed)。當時這樣的斷語讓人覺得頗爲貼切。但是，儘管這一事件非常糟糕，當歷史學家們開始回顧我們所處的時代時，我揣測他們會否真的認爲那是引發西方世界改變的事件。Instead, if you look around you now you might wonder if it was instead the poster moment of the financial crisis – the fall of Lehman Brothers.
如果你觀察一下週圍，你現在可能會猜測，改變世界的事件是否是金融危機的標誌性時刻——雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的破產。After all, the crisis is clearly changing global politics as fast as it is global finance. These things are obviously complicated but you can make a case that the Arab Spring was precipitated by fast rising food prices – something you can easily blame on QE – a clear and direct result of the financial crisis.
畢竟，這場危機改變全球政治格局顯然與其改變全球金融格局的速度一樣快。這些事情顯然是複雜的，但你可以進行這樣的推定：迅速上漲的食品價格——你可以輕易將其歸咎於定量寬鬆政策——導致了阿拉伯之春(Arab Spring)，而定量寬鬆是金融危機的一個明顯而直接的結果。
The crisis has also precipitated the sovereign debt disasters across Europe and is obviously responsible for the increasingly common protests they come with. It can be blamed for China's spat with Japan: would China's leaders be any more bothered about the Senkaku islands than usual if they weren't keen to shift attention from their own export slowdown?
這場危機還導致了歐洲的主權債務危機，並顯然要對隨之而來的日益普遍的抗議負責。就連中日爭端也可以歸咎於金融危機：如果中國領導人不是因爲出口放緩而希望將注意力引開的話，他們對於尖閣諸島（Senkaku，中國稱之爲"釣魚島及其附屬島嶼"）的操心程度會否超出尋常水平？It is also responsible in part for various independence movements. Would Scotland have elected the Scottish National Party if its voters hadn't perceived Labour as being financially incompetent? And would Catalonia be making a bid to take over tax raising powers from Madrid without Spain's economic crisis?
這場危機在一定程度上解釋了各種各樣的獨立運動出現的原因。如果不是蘇格蘭選民認爲工黨(Labour)金融無能，那麼蘇格蘭民族黨(Scottish National Party)還會在選舉中勝出嗎？如果沒有西班牙的經濟危機，加泰羅尼亞還會要求接手馬德里在該區的徵稅權力嗎？Then of course there is QE itself. Printing money for too long and in too great a volume is a bad idea for many reasons, but one is that printing money eventually kills faith in money. The legendary investor Sir John Templeton liked to point out that abusing weights and measures was a pretty fast way for a government to lose the trust of an electorate. And what is QE, something that changes the value of the dollar, pound and euro in your pocket, if it is not an abuse of a measure?
當然，接下來還有定量寬鬆本身。太長時間和太大數額的印鈔從很多方面來講都是一個糟糕的想法，但其中一點是，印鈔最終會扼殺人們對金錢的信任。有傳奇色彩的投資者約翰•鄧普頓爵士(Sir John Templeton)喜歡指出，濫用度量衡是政府失去選民信任的一條捷徑。改變你口袋裏美元、英鎊和歐元價值的定量寬鬆如果不是濫用度量衡的話，又是什麼呢？You could also blame the crisis for the fact that the size of western governments is more likely to increase than decrease from here. Why? Inequality.
你還可以將這一事實歸咎於這場危機：西方國家政府的規模更有可能從現在的水平擴大，而非縮小。爲什麼？不平等。You can make a (pretty good) argument to say that rising inequality, in the form of falling real wages for the 99 per cent, left consumers with no power to consume unless they borrowed to do so – another big contributory factor in the financial crisis. But whether that is true or not doesn't really matter. Inequality has become a political big deal across the West and that means politicians of all colours, even as they fail to deal with their budget deficits, are still trying to find new ways to redistribute.
你可以提出（非常充分）的理由，稱日益加重的不平等（99%的人實際薪資下滑）讓消費者沒有能力消費，除非他們借款（這是引發金融危機的另一個重要因素）。但這點是否屬實其實並不重要。不平等已成爲西方的一件政治大事，這意味着，所有意識形態的政界人士都在尋找新的再分配方式，即便他們未能解決預算赤字問題。This is why we have to put up with the interminable arguments about the introduction of wealth taxes here (I would remind you that in stamp duty and non index linked capital gains tax, we already have two wealth taxes); why not everyone is outraged by the Lib Dem idea that those earning over £50,000 should be forced to fund a greater share of the UK's debt repayments than they have so far; and why most of France's rich have already packed their bags for a multiyear sojourn in Monaco.
這就是爲什麼我們不得不忍受無休止的有關出臺財富稅的辯論（我要提醒你，印花稅和非通脹掛鉤的資本利得稅意味着，英國已有兩項財富稅）；爲什麼並非所有人都對自由民主黨(Liberal Democrats)提出的建議感到憤怒，該黨提出，應迫使那些收入超過5萬英鎊的人承擔比目前更高的英國政府償債負擔；爲什麼多數法國富人已收拾好行李，準備在摩納哥度過多年。My point in all this is that the crisis has not just had economic effects. It has had huge political effects too. Add all these together and you can see that levels of both misery and uncertainty across the global economy are surely at something of an extreme.
我提到這一切是爲了說明，這場危機不僅造成了經濟影響，還帶來了巨大的政治影響。綜合來看，你會發現全球經濟中的苦難和不確定性都肯定處於極端水平。That doesn't necessarily matter from a purely investing point of view. The question, as Sandy Nairn and Jonathan Davis say in their new book, Templeton's Way with Money, is just "how much negativity is already being discounted in the price of shares, bonds and other financial instruments". Usually when times are as tough – and in particular as unpredictable as this – investors are compensated in the form of very low valuations and thus a strong probability of high returns in the future. Hence the idea that one should "buy when there is blood on the streets".
從單純的投資角度來看，這不一定重要。正如桑迪•奈恩(Sandy Nairn)和喬納森•戴維斯(Jonathan Davis)在二人的新書《Templeton's Way with Money》中所言，問題無非是"有多少負面因素已被計入股票、債券和其他金融工具的價格"。通常，在經濟困難時期，特別是像現在這樣的不可預測的時期，投資者可以獲得非常低的估值，從而有很大機率在未來獲得高回報，由此得到補償。因此有這樣的說法：人們應"趁街上發生流血事件時買進"。But there isn't any blood. Yes, one or two markets, especially in Europe, are cheap on the basis of long-term valuations. But, thanks to a toxic mixture of QE and delusion, the US is certainly not.
然而，現在街上一滴"血"都沒有。沒錯，從長期估值，一兩個市場（特別是在歐洲）較爲廉價。但由於定量寬鬆和錯覺的有毒組合，美國市場肯定不便宜。Strategist Andrew Smithers suggests that while US equities should be "cheap in recognition of the risks" they are instead expensive – 59 per cent overvalued on Smithers' preferred measures. These are the cyclically adjusted p/e ratio, which looks at profits over a ten-year period, and Tobin's Q, which compares share prices to the replacement value of assets. How long can that last?
策略師安德魯•史密瑟斯(Andrew Smithers)提出，儘管"考慮到風險"美國股市應變得"廉價"，但它們卻很昂貴，根據史密瑟斯青睞的衡量標準，美國股市被高估59%。這些衡量標準包括經過週期調整的市盈率（考慮10年期間的利潤）和託賓Q比率(Tobin's Q，比較股價與資產重置價值)。這能持續多久？Société Générale's Albert Edwards thinks not very long. His latest note suggested that everyone should slash their equity exposure to the bone, something he last suggested back in May 2008, on the basis that while QE might well provide the money to keep asset prices up for a while, investors will eventually lose faith and accept that Ben Bernanke's "ruinous" policies will one day or another "destroy the world". Something to bear in mind if you think your money might be safer in the US than Europe.
法國興業銀行(Société Générale)的艾伯特•愛德華斯(Albert Edwards)認爲時間不會很長。他在最新簡報中提出，所有人都應大幅削減股票投資（他上一次這樣說是在2008年5月），理由是，儘管定量寬鬆很可能產生資金洪流，在一段時間內保持資產價格高企，但投資者最終將失去信心，意識到本•伯南克(Ben Bernanke)的"毀滅性"政策終有一天會"毀滅世界"。如果你認爲，你的錢在美國可能比在歐洲更安全的話，那麼請記住這點吧。
