从经济危机到第三次世界大战

Nov 8, 2018 Qian Liu

发自北京——下一次经济危机比你想象的还要近。但我们更应该担心的是：在当前的社会、政治和科技大环境下，一场旷日持久的经济危机，再加上收入不平等的新高点，很可能升级为全球性的大型军事冲突。

2008~09年的全球金融危机令多国政府几近破产，并引发了系统性崩溃。政策制定者们动用了包括量化宽松政策和近零（甚至负）利率在内的大规模货币刺激措施，才成功将全球经济从悬崖边拉了回来。

但是货币刺激就像心脏停跳后注射的肾上腺素一样；它可以使心脏重新起跳，患者重新复苏，却不能治疗病态的心脏本身。而治疗病态经济需要进行一系列涵盖从金融和劳动力市场到税收制度、生育模式以及教育政策等各方面的结构性改革。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 13 in all 13 Comments on this article

jagjeet sinha Nov 28, 2018

TWO GOVERNORS - MONETARY & FISCAL
The author has brilliantly crystallized the inadequacy of One Governor.
Monetary Policy alone has limits to the heavy lifting it can guarantee.
Fiscal Initiatives need to supplement Monetary Policy.
Inequalities been bequeathed by 70 years of Economics Architecture.
Democracy will overwhelm Economics - if the Inequalities are not addressed.
The Governor that changes the Fiscal Architecture - does not exist.
Except in China - where the PBOC Governor was supplemented.
Governor Chen Yuan of CDB - is the reason China was transformed.
Growth and Development was a superbanking genius unleashed by CDB.
The PBOC Governor ensured that China's Banking system was synchronised.
Synchronized banking system enabled China to remain linked with the World.
Worldwide Financial Governance required synchronization - ensured by PBOC.

Inequalities bequeathed within the West have not been redressed.
Hence Monetary Policy alone has been heavy lifting.
The Fiscal Architecture needs fine tuning to ensure realignment.
Economics needs realignment with Democracy - otherwise Trump happens.
The West so far relies on One Governor - in command of Monetary Policy.
The West needs a Second Governor - in command of Fiscal Architecture.
Otherwise Inequalities bequeathed will not get addressed.
Unless the Chancellor of The Exchequer acts as Governor II.
Governor I must continue to ensure synchronization with the World.
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Robert O'Regan Nov 16, 2018

This is an excellent statement; I wonder if the talk about abandoning SWIFT is not a large factor in this scenario as well; what do you think?
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Per Kurowski Nov 13, 2018

Indeed, they just kicked the crisis can forward, without doing the structural changes needed.
https://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2017/08/ten-years-ago-ecb-decided-to-ignore.html
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Kurt Bayer Nov 12, 2018

While I agree that the rabalancing of monetary policy stimulus may cause problems in the financial markets - even though I do not understand why, since for years they should have "priced in" this event - the author's call for "structural policies" to prevent a third World War is vacuous, especially since she does not specify what she means by "structural policies". This is a case of Fritz Machlup's "weasel word" use of "structural". If she means flexibility-enhancing policies, this would drive populations even further into the populists' camps. If she means actively growth-enhancing policies, she might have a point. But waving the war banner is absolutely reckless.
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j. von Hettlingen Nov 11, 2018

Qian Liu is an economist, not a geopolitical analyst. Her commentary is a veiled attack on Trump’s trade war with China, highlighting the economic woes in the West, which she says could trigger a “World War III” if left unadressed. She compares the 2008 financial crisis to a disease that had only been given a palliative treatment – quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates – without being properly cured.
The author says “treating a sick economy requires structural reforms.” The world tends to overlook the deeper causes of the 2008 crisis that appear as entrenched as ever. A decade after the global financial meltdown, the underlying problems have not been fixed. Financial regulators’ first response to the debt-fuelled crisis was to pursue a “paradox of policy” – they slashed interest rates to encourage spending and to prevent recession turning to depression. The medicine was supposed to be only for short-term emergency use.
Since then banks had been transformed from the under-capitalised, over-leveraged and inadequately supervised system of 2007. It is safer and more transparent today, but cheap credit, low interest rates and mountains of debt remain the same. In fact China is grappling with similar challenges – how to handle its debt-ridden economy.
The author fears that “a prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising income inequality, could well escalate into a major global military conflict.” She illustrates how World War II started as a result of economic nationalism – a chilling reminder of Trump’s protectionist policies. President Herbert Hoover’s 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act to protect American workers and farmers from foreign competition led to the Great Depression, economic conditions that helped cause World War II.
Sharing the views of many scholars and economists, the author is right about how “high levels of inequality can play a significant role in stoking conflict.” Momentarily we are witnessing “wealth and income inequality at historically high levels.” But populists, whose rise has the “current social, political, and technological landscape” to thank for, seek to convince working-class voters that job insecurity, competition from trade and immigration, loss of culture are more treacherous than inequality. Trump’s poor supporters turn a blind eye to wealth gap, as long as they feel good about being white.
In Europe the influx of refugees and resentment against globalisation had whipped up nationalism and stoked popular dissent, plunging countries like Germany and Italy into political disarray, in which “sustaining governments now seems to take more time than actual governing.” This has deprived leaders of time and resources to pursue meaningful reforms. “All are symptoms of failed policies that could turn out to be trigger points for a future crisis.”
The author says “voters have good reason to be frustrated, but the emotionally appealing populists to whom they are increasingly giving their support are offering ill-advised solutions that will only make matters worse.” Indeed, looking at the chaos in the US and the paralysis in Europe, Chinese leaders tout that their model of governance is better than liberal democracy. Unsurprisingly most Chinese are satisfied with authoritarian rule, as long as the economy remains robust.
The leadership in Beijing benefits from multilaterialism and the world’s “unprecedented interconnectedness,” and it critises Trump’s pursuit of “unilateral, isolationist policies,” while doing little to end the proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.
The international community has been speculating about a “World War III” since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Its very name has implied its own inevitability, especially when now and then tensions rise in certain parts of the world, that could ignite an armed conflict. The Syrian war shows that a local conflict can morph into a global one, as the US and Russia are directly involved there. We have talked about a third World War not only as something that might happen, but something that will. The danger is that World War III would be more devastating, due to the potential use of nuclear weapons – no something we all wish for.
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Matheus Parmezani Nov 9, 2018

Hi, good analysys,,I agree on the economic part of it,,,lessons learnt not executed from 2008 to now...however,,,the opportunity costs today are far higher than any other period in past to have a general conflict in the world. The level of trade interconnection and the amount of international money flowing around (real money, not finance short term gambling) is at a dimension I see very hard to achieve thinking on positive economic outcomes of a new world war period.
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Niklas Monrad Nov 9, 2018

While I don't discard the possibility of another large war there is one major difference between the present and the time of the two world wars of the past: Previous wars were about grabbing land and natural resources, but doing so in modern times is far less valuable than it used to be due to the changes in a world economy far less dependent on production when we consider how ruinously costly it is to maintain occupying forces in any conquered territory.
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vivek iyer Nov 9, 2018

World War II was caused by exactly the same thing as World War I. France had no offensive doctrine. The German High Command hoped to knock them out- which they did the second time round- before turning East (where they had been unexpectedly successful the first time round). The incorrigible stupidity of the German High Command precipitated two wars. The Pacific theater was a sideshow.

The lesson of History is that Economic crises don't matter. They don't cause War at all. What causes War is the belief by the aggressor that a profit can be turned upon a thing. Lots of nukes and the means to deliver them cancels out the possibility of a World War. Proxy wars in failed states don't matter. Populist politicians don't matter. The only thing that matters, to avoid war, is to have a credible offensive doctrine. North Korea avoided War for this reason. Iraq and Libya and so forth did not. Everything depends on nukes and delivery systems. Nothing else matters.
- Mike Robinson Nov 9, 2018
  
  Whereas, I regard nuclear weapons to be 'militarily useless.' We have only fired two of them in offense, but the ground there is still poisoned. Islands where we conducted bigger tests are also uninhabitable forever. Plutonium is the most-toxic metal known, and it never decays.
  
  "World War I & II" were called "the interrupted war," because II happened as a direct result of ruinous revenge imposed after I. But, in both cases, no one permanently gained territory. The supposed objectives of the aggressors were never met. Because they lost and thus could no longer resist, territory and valuables were seized from them in Europe, but not in the Pacific, where entirely different reconstruction policies were used during the Occupation.
  
  For the World, "World War" is not an option. It was tried twice and it failed twice.
  - vivek iyer Nov 9, 2018
    
    I appreciate your sentiments but the facts bely your argument.
    You say the Second War happened as a direct result of the ruinous revenge imposed after the first. Germany scarcely lost any German speaking territory and the occupation of the Rhineland was only ruinous because Weimar politicians, very foolishly, decided to pay Rhinelanders not to cooperate with the French and resorted to the printing press, thus inflating away their currency, for that reason. The Sudeten Germans were very badly affected by the Depression and it was reasonable to carve up Czechoslovakia more particularly because Poland was happy to share in the carve up.
    
    Thus, post-Munich, Germany had no reason to start a revanchist war, or one designed to abrogate 'ruinous' treaty provisions. Why did the War happen? The answer is that France had no offensive military doctrine. This was De Gaulle's own conclusion. The Soviets realised that they'd have to do the fighting- but the Poles, very sensibly, wouldn't allow the passage over their territory. They then allied with Hitler to carve up Poland and the Baltic republics and take a bite out of Finland and so forth.
    
    If Hitler hadn't been crazy enough to declare war on the Soviets without first doing a deal with the US, France would still be a German satellite.
    
    That's what happens when you don't have an offensive doctrine. That's why the French risked offending the Americans by stealing their tech so as to have their own force de dissuasion. This was a great boon for Europe though, no doubt, the people of remote atolls paid a price.
    
    Lots of people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few in Chernobyl. Fission weapons optimised for destructive power are also less harmful to the environment than badly designed civilian nuclear reactors.
    
    I agree with you- as does the Iranian 'Supreme Leader'- that nuclear weapons are often militarily useless. This is because an exclusively Thermonuclear offensive doctrine is no doctrine at all. Al Wohlstetter, and a host of game theoreticians, convinced the top brass of this long ago in every country. That's why Israel's offensive doctrine, like its defensive doctrine, is layered and corresponds to what the greatest Game theoretician of them all- Robert Aumann (who is Israeli- American)- named 'correlated equilibrium'. When the Arabs, or other Muslim generals or diplomats look at Israel's layered approach, they have to concede that these guys want peace. They aint crazy Nordics with a melanin or messianic complex who aim at grabbing everything for themselves. Sadly, NATO can appear to be that type of agent. 'Regime change' & a new 'Rules based' International Order aren't words any sensible person ought to want to hear. Thankfully, 'deplorable' American voters don't either.
    
    The author of this essay would be at home in a super-elite Ivy League Ivory Tower where stupid (but supposedly 'noble') lies are recycled ad nauseam. But, neither the Chinese leadership, nor the current incumbent of the White House, give it the time of day.
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vivek iyer Nov 9, 2018

Treating a sick economy needs much more than structural reform. It requires a fundamental reconstitution of the hypokeimenon underlying all substance. Otherwise World World IV will occur. Incidentally, World War III must already have occurred otherwise this article is nonsense.
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Mike Robinson Nov 8, 2018

Qian, I do not fear World War. But I do fear a financial system that is stuffed with "currency units" of many different flavors which do not correspond to any real asset, product, or service. Today there are thousands of times more currency-units on Planet Earth than would be required to buy everything that can be sold. So-called "QE" simply injected more currency-units and, on paper, made-good on a mountain of frauds and other blatant financial crimes that still continue. No one went to prison.

I believe that you are correct that "the economy" is key, but "the economy" does not consist of these currency-units nor is it anymore meaningfully measured by them. I believe that you err when you champion "globalism" and decry what you call, "isolationism" or "nationalism." I would argue that what you decry, is actually the key.

Your country might be the only one that prospered from "globalism," because of its governments' ability to micro-manage millions of people's lives even to dictating the place where they must live. Would these workers, if they could speak freely, say that they feel that they also are sharing in the "prosperity" that their labors are creating for others? Would "globalism" reign if specifically your government did not possess the unique power that it has? I doubt it.

I believe that "my-country first!" should be the universally-understood mantra of every country without exception. Then each country WILL build up its own strength and manufacturing capabilities, it WILL employ its own citizens in preference to everyone else, and when negotiating with other nations it will drive a hard – but good – bargain, knowing that everyone else at that table is doing the same thing. Now, nations will only make deals that build everyone up, not those (like "globalism") that play one party against the others. The result will be sustainable, truly prosperous, resilient, and fault-tolerant ... none of which words can now be used to describe the present.

Globalism has made many glowing promises that it cannot keep. It is flawed. It insists that "my country first" is ignorant or unenlightened, but I argue that there is a critical strength inherent in it which we must not forsake, even as we trade with each other. We shall trade because we are strong and because trade we choose to engage in makes us even stronger; we do not permit trade which makes one party weak. Call it, "mutually assured self-interest." If everyone uniformly looks out for themselves, they also inevitably look out for each other.
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