日本央行警告或出現暫時通縮
TOKYO — Over the last two years, the Japanese central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, has accomplished what a string of more cautious predecessors had failed to do: reverse a prolonged and damaging slide in the price of goods and services in Japan.
東京——過去兩年，日本中央銀行行長黑田東彥(Haruhiko Kuroda)做到了他的一連串更爲謹慎的前任未能做到的事：逆轉了日本商品和服務價格那頗具破壞性的長期下滑。But on Tuesday, Kuroda acknowledged that his aggressive campaign to create inflation — seen as crucial to rekindling growth in the world's third-largest economy — had stalled.
但週二，黑田東彥承認，他製造通脹的積極行動——被認爲對於刺激這個世界第三大經濟體的增長至關重要——已陷入停滯。
At a news conference after the central bank's latest monetary policy meeting, Kuroda said prices might turn “slightly negative,” meaning a return to deflation, or broadly falling prices, with which Japan has struggled since the late 1990s.
在日本央行最新的貨幣政策會議之後召開的一場新聞發佈會上，黑田東彥稱，物價可能會“小幅下降”，即回到通縮或價格普遍下降的狀態。自上世紀90年代末以來，日本一直受到通貨緊縮的困擾。
His comment followed an official assessment by the Bank of Japan that consumer prices would most likely stop rising “for the time being.”
黑田東彥發表上述評論之前，日本銀行進行了官方評估，稱消費者價格極有可能“暫時”停止增長。It was the first time that Kuroda or his institution had formally acknowledged that prices were leveling off, although the bank's preferred measure of inflation has been declining for about a year.
這是黑田東彥及其所在機構首次正式承認物價正陷入停滯，不過，這家銀行首選的通脹指標在過去一年左右的時間裏一直在下降。The bank predicted the lull in inflation would be temporary, however. It said in its assessment that prices would eventually start rising, spurred by low unemployment and rising incomes, though it did not say when that might happen. It chose not to modify the expansive bond-buying program it has been using to encourage inflation, keeping its target for purchases of government debt at 80 trillion yen, or about $660 billion, a year.
但是，日本央行預計通脹率增長停滯是暫時現象。這家銀行表示，根據該機構的評估，受到低失業率和不斷上升的收入水平的刺激，物價終將上漲，不過它沒有表示會在何時上漲。這家央行決定不去修改它一直用來推動通脹的大規模債券購買計劃，將繼續保持一年購買80萬億日元（約合4萬億元人民幣）政府債券的目標。Kuroda was appointed Bank of Japan governor by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2013, with a mandate to pull Japan out of deflation by whatever means necessary. He immediately ordered a sharp increase in the bank's bond buying, then expanded it again late last year.
黑田東彥2013年被任命爲日本銀行行長，受命採取一切必要手段讓日本擺脫通貨緊縮的漩渦。他上任後立即下令大幅增加央行的債券購買規模，並於去年年末再次擴大了購債規模。Kuroda and his supporters argue that a “deflationary mindset” is behind many of Japan's economic woes. Weak consumer spending and a reluctance by investors and businesses to take financial risks are evidence of that, they say.
黑田東彥及其支持者稱，“通縮思維”是日本許多經濟問題背後的原因。他們說，疲弱的消費者支出，以及投資者和企業不願承受金融風險就是證據。Changing that mind-set has proved difficult. Kuroda's goal of achieving 2 percent inflation by the middle of this year is looking impossible. The consumer price index, or CPI, rose by just 0.2 percent in January.
事實證明，這種思維很難改變。黑田東彥設定的在今年中期通脹率達到2%的目標似乎已經無法實現。消費者價格指數，或CPI，在1月僅上漲了0.2%。The main culprit has been the decline in oil prices that began last summer. It has had a paradoxical effect on Japan: Because the country relies heavily on imported energy, most economists agree the fall has helped the economy as a whole. Yet making gasoline and other mainstay energy-related items cheaper has made Kuroda's inflationary mission more difficult.
而其中的主要原因是從去年夏天開始的油價下跌。它在日本產生了相互矛盾的效果：由於該國嚴重依賴進口能源，多數經濟學家認爲，油價下跌總體而言對經濟有益。然而汽油和其他主要能源相關產品價格下降，讓黑田東彥的通脹目標更加難以實現。
