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 [转帖]America Will Remain The Superpower |
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作者：游客 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
2008年10月15日17:26
Bret Stephens
Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and decline. It took two world wars, a global depression and the onset of the Cold War to lay the British Empire low.
So it's a safe bet that the era of American dominance will not be brought to a close by credit default swaps, mark-to-market accounting or (even) Barney Frank.
Not that there's a shortage of invitations to believe otherwise. Almost in unison, Germany's finance minister, Russia's prime minister and Iran's president predict the end of U.S. 'hegemony,' financial and/or otherwise. The New York Times weighs in with meditations on 'A Power That May Not Stay So Super.' Der Spiegel gives us 'The End of Hubris.' Guardian columnist John Gray sees 'A Shattering Moment in America's Fall From Power.'
Much of this is said, or written, with ill-disguised glee. But when the tide laps at Gulliver's waistline, it usually means the Lilliputians are already 10 feet under. Before yesterday's surge, the Dow had dropped 25% in three months. But that only means it had outperformed nearly every single major foreign stock exchange, including Germany's XETRADAX (down 28%) China's Shanghai exchange (down 30%), Japan's NIKK225 (down 37%), Brazil's BOVESPA (down 41%) and Russia RTSI (down 61%). These contrasts are a useful demonstration that America's financial woes are nobody else's gain.
On the other hand, global economic distress doesn't invariably work at cross-purposes with American interests. Hugo Chavez's nosedive toward bankruptcy begins when oil dips below $80 a barrel, the price where it hovers now. An identical logic, if perhaps at a different price, applies to the petrodictatorships in Moscow and Tehran, which already are heavily saddled with inflationary and investor-confidence concerns. Russia will also likely burn through its $550 billion in foreign-currency reserves faster than anticipated -- a pleasing if roundabout comeuppance for last summer's Georgian adventure.
Nor does the U.S. seem all that badly off, comparatively speaking, when it comes to its ability to finance a bailout. Last month's $700 billion bailout package seems staggeringly large, but it amounts to a little more than 5% of U.S. gross domestic product. Compare that to Germany's $400 billion to $536 billion rescue package (between 12% and 16% of its GDP), or Britain's $835 billion plan (30%).
Of course it may require considerably more than $700 billion to clean out our Augean Stables. But here it helps that the ratio of government debt to GDP in the U.S. runs to about 62%. For the eurozone, it's 75%; for Japan, 180%.
It also helps that the U.S. continues to have the world's largest inflows of foreign direct investment; that it ranks third in the world (after Singapore and New Zealand) for ease of doing business, according to the World Bank; and that its demographic trends aren't headed toward a tall and steep cliff -- as they are in the EU, Russia, Japan and China.
Above all, the U.S. remains biased toward financial transparency. I am agnostic as to whether mark-to-market accounting is a good idea; last month's temporary ban on short-selling financials seemed a bad one.
But a system that demands timely and accurate financial disclosure and doesn't interfere with price discovery will invariably prove more resilient over time than a system that does not make such demands. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were financial time bombs of one kind, then surely China's state-owned enterprises are time bombs of another. Can anyone determine with even approximate confidence the extent of their liabilities?
This isn't to say that the abrupt failure of the SOEs would be in anyone's interests, including the U.S.'s. But one of the unremarked ironies of the present crisis is that America's financial vulnerabilities came fully into view months before Europe's (or the rest of the world's) did. That's one reason the dollar has rallied in recent months. It's also why the U.S. is likely to come through the crisis much more quickly than, say, Japan, which spent the better part of the 1990s hiding its own banking crisis from itself.
Exactly how -- and how quickly -- the U.S. does come through is anyone's guess. Recessions are periodic facts of economic life that tend to last anywhere between six and 16 months. Severe recessions or depressions are fundamentally political events that can last a decade or longer -- however long economic policy remains bad.
If the next administration is wise, it will do what it can to help the markets clear, let the recession take its course, and do what it can to preserve intact a financial system that has served us splendidly. If it is unwise, it will embark on several years of grandiose social experimentation. Either way, the United States will eventually regain its economic footing and maintain its place.
美国将保住超级大国地位
2008年10月15日17:26
Bret Stephens
在两个世纪的退却和衰落之后，东罗马帝国首都君士坦丁堡落入了奥斯曼帝国之手。大英帝国则是在两次世界大战、一场全球性大萧条以及冷战的打击下才轰然倒地。
因此，可以相当肯定地说，美国的霸主时代不会因信用违约掉期(CDS)、“以市值计价”会计准则或（甚至）巴尼•弗兰克(Barney Frank)议员而落幕。
当然也不乏驳斥这一观点的论调。德国财政部长、俄罗斯总理和伊朗总统几乎是异口同声地预测说，美国将失去其在金融及/或其他领域中的霸主地位。美国《纽约时报》(New York Times)也加入进来，发表了一篇名为《一个可能无法保持超级大国地位的大国》(A Power That May Not Stay So Super)的文章。德国《明镜周刊》(Der Spiegel)则撰写了《狂妄自大的终结》(The End of Hubris)一文。英国《卫报》(Guardian)专栏作家约翰•格雷(John Gray)看到的是《美国从权力跌落途中的破碎一刻》(A Shattering Moment in America's Fall From Power)。
上述言论大都带有掩饰不住的幸灾乐祸。不过当潮水拍击格列佛的腰部时，通常意味着小人国的居民们已经遭遇灭顶之灾了。在周一的强劲反弹之前，道琼斯指数在3个月中暴跌了25%。不过即便如此，也只能说美国股市几乎比其他任何外国股市跌幅都要小。德国XETRADAX指数跌了28%、中国上证综合指数跌了30%、日本日经指数的跌幅是 37%，而巴西BOVESPA指数和俄罗斯RTSI指数的同期跌幅分别是41%和61%。这些都有力地证明，没有哪个国家能从美国的金融危机中讨到便宜。
另一方面，全球经济低迷并非总是与美国的利益相悖。当油价跌破每桶80美元时，也就是委内瑞拉总统查韦斯(Hugo Chavez)迅速迈向破产的开始，目前的油价就在这个水平上下波动。这个逻辑同样也适用于莫斯科和德黑兰的石油霸主们，只是或许在不同的价位上而已；这些国家通货膨胀形势严峻，对投资者信心的担忧情绪四处蔓延。俄罗斯消耗掉5,500亿美元外汇储备的“烧钱”速度也很可能比预期的要快，这也算是对该国今年夏天在格鲁吉亚冒险行动令人欣慰的间接报应。
而且考虑到美国仍有能力为救助计划提供资金，相对而言美国似乎还未到穷困潦倒的地步。上个月的7,000亿美元救助计划看上去规模惊人，但是也只占了美国国内生产总值(GDP)的5%多一点儿。不妨把这和德国4,000亿至5,360亿美元（占该国GDP的12%-16%）的救助计划或是英国8,350亿美元（GDP的30%）的计划比较一下。
当然，可能需要比7,000亿美元多很多的资金来收拾我们的烂摊子。但是美国的政府负债与GDP之比约为62%，这说明了问题。欧元区是75%，日本是180%。
同样可以作为证据的是，美国获得的外国直接投资仍居世界首位；据世界银行(World Bank)的数据，美国的经商环境位居世界第三位（仅次于新加坡和新西兰）；而且与欧盟、俄罗斯、日本和中国不同，美国的人口趋势也没有朝着严重的老龄化发展。
最重要的是，美国仍倾向于金融透明性。我不知道按市值计价的会计准则是否是个好主意；但上个月实施的临时限制卖空金融类股的禁令似乎是个坏主意。
事实将表明，一个要求及时准确地披露金融信息、并且不会干涉价格的系统长期来看总是比没有这类要求的系统更加坚韧。如果房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)是一种金融定时炸弹的话，那么中国的国有企业无疑是另一种形式的定时炸弹。有谁能确定它们的债务规模呢，即使没有十成把握？
这并不是说国有企业的突然倒闭会对谁有好处，包括美国在内。不过眼下这场危机中未被注意的一个讽刺之处是，美国的金融脆弱性比欧洲（或世界其他地方）早暴露了好几个月。这也是美元在近几个月走强的原因之一。同时也说明了美国为什么很可能会比某些国家更快渡过危机，比如日本；上世纪90年代很长一段时间，日本面对银行业危机都采取了自欺欺人的态度。
美国到底如何以及何时能渡过难关，在这一点上众说纷纭。衰退是经济周期中的一部分，这是个无庸置疑的事实，而衰退持续的时间从6个月到16个月不等。严重衰退或萧条从根本上讲是政治事件，能持续10年甚至更长时间──无论糟糕的经济政策持续多久。
如果下届政府聪明的话，它会尽全力帮助市场清晰起来，任衰退自然发展，尽己所能保持这个曾为我们造福的金融体系毫发无损。如果政府不够聪明的话，它将会开始数年浮华的社会尝试。无论明智与否，美国最终都将重获其经济立足点，保住自己的地位。
作者：游客 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 [转帖]America Will Remain The Superpower -- tahiti - (6941 Byte) 2008-10-17 周五, 14:34 (1624 reads)
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