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Economics

那种回到1970年代的感觉

Mar 2, 2020 Kenneth Rogoff

发自剑桥—现在预测新型冠状病毒疫情的长期发展轨迹还为时过早，但意识到下一次全球衰退可能即将降临就已经不算太早了——而且这次的衰退看似与2001年和2008年开始的那两次大有不同。

首先，下一次衰退很可能发端于中国，而且事实上可能已经在发生了。作为一个杠杆率很高的经济体，中国无法像高速增长的1980年代日本那样承受长期的经济停摆，因为个人，企业和市政当局都需要资金来偿还其超额债务。而严重不利的人口结构状况，技术追赶差距的缩窄以及周期性刺激计划所导致的大量房屋过剩（更别提日益集权化的决策过程）已经预示着未来十年中国的经济增长将会显著放缓。

此外，与本世纪前两次全球性经济衰退不同，2019新型冠状病毒疫情同时引发了供给和需求两端的冲击。事实上上次出现同等规模的冲击还得追溯到1970年代中期的石油供应危机。虽然对传染的忧虑将打击航空公司和全球旅游业需求，同时预防性储蓄也会增加。但当数以千万计的人（出于封锁或是恐惧）无法上班，全球价值链崩溃，边界被封锁，世界贸易也因各国不信任彼此的健康统计数据而出现萎缩之时，供给侧也会受到同样巨大的损害。

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Kenneth Rogoff

Writing for PS since 2002
232 Commentaries

Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University and recipient of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, was the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003. He is co-author of This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, 2011) and author of The Curse of Cash (Princeton University Press, 2016).

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 19 Comments on this article

Alan Luchetti Mar 9, 2020

Just to be clear. Selective austerity may be part of a response to a supply shock, as for example targeted rationing in war time, but widespread austerity was never a sane response to a demand shock - no matter how confidence-inspiring to economic actors exhibiting a rarefied train of thought.
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Denis Tossan Mar 8, 2020

Isn't it xenophobia to say China will most likely be the powder cag for the next recession? China has the largest savings for a rainy day; it has the most responsive organized system for mobilizing the masses to deal with calamity and economic challenges; it's government has a win-win attitude and is keenly reaching out to other countries for trade and economic development.
In contrast, the US is the the diametric opposite. It has no savings and indeed has the largest debt, while still wildly printing money to hasten it's future depravity; the US is the most selfish egotistical nation - with schemes of I win you lose; the US is systematically losing the tech race while it's capitalistic owners deny investing in R&D and indeed have been for decades expediently buying from low cost producers offshore instead which hollowed out the US middle class. The US military defense establishment's track record of regime change and military exports is only bent on self profit at the expense of funding for education, healthcare and social programs for US citizens.
Sorry to see Rogoff as just another biased ugly American.
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John Alexander Mar 8, 2020

"A global recession is a time for cooperation, not isolation." Agreeably incisive, but who will take Rogoff seriously on this? From childhood onward we have been encouraged to be competitive, not to be cooperative. Einstein was right: the world will not be a civilized place until the obsession with competitiveness is abandoned.
- Barry Rosenfeld Mar 8, 2020
  
  Hawking talked about greed and stupidity. Maybe we should pay more attention to physicists and less to economists.
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Ralph Musgrave Mar 8, 2020

Rogoff says "....open-ended deficit spending during booms is dangerous." So who advocates that? No one!!

The group which is perhaps keenest on deficit spending, i.e. MMTers, do not advocate "open-ended" spending: they advocate enough to bring full employment without excess inflation. That's it.

It really is pathetically easy to find blunders in Rogoff's articles.
- Curtis Carpenter Mar 8, 2020
  
  I guess you could say that the Trump administration has not "advocated" open-ended deficit spending -- they have simply indulged in it, running up debt on the national credit card like drunken sailors on the assumption that they will all be gone when the bill comes due.
  - Ralph Musgrave Mar 9, 2020
    
    Fair enough point. What I mean when I asked who advocates open ended deficit spending was what group of qualified economists advocates that. The answer is "none". In contrast there will of course always be politicians doing something daft, as you suggest, though so far the Trump deficit has not done any harm - in the form of excess inflation or excessive interest rate rises.
    - Curtis Carpenter Mar 9, 2020
      
      I think what you mean to say here is "so far the Trump deficit has not done any harm TO US." The question becomes: will "so far" be far enough?
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  - Alan Luchetti Mar 9, 2020
    
    The bill became instantly due in the form of share buybacks and increasing inequality, given the targeting of the Trump deficit's benefits. The mythological long term bill (future higher taxes, around-the-corner inflation) will not become due while ever federal spending doesn't compete with the private sector for scarce resources, notably labor.
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- Joaquín Requena Mar 8, 2020
  
  It's not advocating but practising it. Latin American governments did procyclical fiscal policies during the commodity boom and later where left with nothing. See Argentina and Brazil.
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Per Kurowski Mar 8, 2020

Indeed, the current fake-boom, put on steroids by huge central bank liquidity injections, low interest rates, and Basel Committee’s pro-cyclical risk weighted bank capital requirements, will end in a horrific Minsky moment bust, equally put on steroids.
http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2019/07/risk-weights-are-to-access-to-credit.html
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hans goessl Mar 3, 2020

I do not agree that the Fear of a Pandemic leads to inflation as today, I think people compensate with home office and online shopping
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Sukh Hayre Mar 2, 2020

Sukh’s Thoughts: Any supply shortage will be temporary, as we live in a much more service-based economy and with overcapacity being a greater problem than scarcity.

At least, that is the reality in the developed world, with the U.S. and Canada being a lot better positioned than Europe and Japan because they have much more in the way of natural resource wealth per capita.

China will have a massive financial crisis, but it will come out of it as the leader of a new developing-world globalization.
- David Altman Mar 4, 2020
  
  We have been hearing this tune for some decades now. Remember when a surging Soviet Union (from 1945-1970s) was supposed to overtake the West--and the U.S. in partivular)? Or Asia was going to overtake the West based on Japan's example (1960-1980s)(which was funny since post-Meiji Japan always preferred the company of the West to any Asian powers) or the Asian Tigers (1990s) or China (2004-2019)? And we have lately heard that India is really going to crash all the gates (2012-present)? In the age of global capitalism, its easy to "catch-up" but very very hard to overtake the leader.
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- Michael Public Mar 3, 2020
  
  Of course, but what is the longest you have ever gone with food? If you are elderly, how long can you go without medicine? A day is a problem, a week is terrible, a month is a catastrophe. Remember that those with foresight stockpile and opportunists buy up entire stocks, seeking to resell them for double, doubling the effect of shortages, especially for those without savings.
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