We Need to Talk About Inflation — the warning signs are still there


Stephen D King’s timely book should be essential reading for economic policymakers everywhere. 6park.com
斯蒂芬•D•金的《我们需要谈谈通胀》回顾了两千年的通胀史，为经济政策制定者认识当前通胀提供了及时的启发。



Economic history is rarely taught in universities these days. This is a pity, since it is a better guide to policymaking than Nobel Prize winning theses in economic theory. As a result, every two generations or so we are destined to repeat serious policy mistakes. In Britain the Truss government failed to study the Barber Boom of 1972-73 and arguably the world’s central banks too have failed to learn from the oil price shocks of 1973 and 1980. 6park.com
大学现在已经很少教经济史了。这实在有些遗憾，因为它比那些获得诺贝尔奖的经济学理论论文能更好地指导政策制定。于是这导致我们每两代人左右就必定会重复严重的政策错误。在英国，特拉斯(Truss)政府未能研究1972-73年的“巴伯荣景”(Barber Boom)，而世界各国央行可以说也未能从1973年和1980年的油价冲击中吸取教训。 6park.com
   
Stephen D King’s highly readable and informative book provides a welcome antidote. Its title is spot on. We should talk about inflation, not least because of its arbitrary incidence. It penalises thrift and rewards profligacy. It makes planning difficult. And it enables government through sleight of hand to impose stealth taxes through freezing tax thresholds and to cut real wage cuts on its employees. 6park.com
斯蒂芬•D•金(Stephen D King)这本可读性强、信息量大的书提供了一剂受欢迎的解药。它的标题很应景。我们的确该谈谈通货膨胀，尤其因为它的发生是任意的。它惩罚节俭，奖励挥霍。它使规划变得困难。它使政府能够耍花招，通过冻结起征点来征收隐形税，并对其雇员进行实际减薪。 6park.com
   
King’s canter through 2,000 years of inflationary history — from Emperor Diocletian’s debasement of the coinage through to the Federal Reserve’s decision in 2021 to allow inflation to run at above the 2 per cent “central target” — is instructive. Money matters. Print too much and inflation generally follows. But sadly the quantity of money and inflation is not so correlated as to make monetarism — the strict control of supply — an effective policy guide. 6park.com
金回顾了两千年的通胀史——从罗马皇帝戴克里先(Emperor Diocletian)降低货币成色使之贬值，到美联储(Fed)在2021年决定允许通胀在一段时间内超过2%的“核心目标”——是有启发意义的。货币很重要。货币印得太多，往往就会发生通胀。但遗憾的是，货币数量与通胀的相关性并没有高到使货币主义——严格控制货币供给——成为一种有效的政策指导。 6park.com
   
Confidence in a currency matters too. Lose it and trust in institutions diminishes. You only have to look at the experience of Argentina and Brazil. But the history of institutions in mature economies also contains lessons. During the 19th century, the high water mark of the gold standard, the purchasing power of sterling increased by 48 per cent. During the 20th century, when both the gold standard and the post-1945 Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rate collapsed, sterling’s purchasing power fell by 98 per cent. 6park.com
对货币的信心也很重要。失去它，对制度的信任就会减少。你只要看阿根廷和巴西的经历就知道了。但成熟经济体的制度史也包含了教训。19世纪是金本位制的鼎盛时期，英镑的购买力增长了48%。20世纪期间，当金本位制和1945年后的布雷顿森林体系(Bretton Woods)下的固定汇率制双双崩溃，英镑的购买力下降了98%。 6park.com
   
When inflation is rising, governments invariably blame external factors. And we should be in no doubt that the supply chain problems arising from the pandemic, and the energy price increases generated by the war in Ukraine, have been a major factor in the recent upsurge in inflation. But the ease with which inflation took root must also reflect the excessively loose monetary policy of recent years. 6park.com
当通胀上升时，政府总是归咎于外部因素。我们也确实不该怀疑疫情引起的供应链问题以及乌克兰战争导致的能源价格上涨是近期通胀飙升的主要因素。但是，通胀如此轻易地扎根，必然也反映了近年来过度宽松的货币政策。 6park.com
   
King concedes in We Need to Talk About Inflation that “the big challenge regarding inflation is to work out which of its many instances are temporary — the Korean war, for example — and which are likely to persist”. The answer, he writes, lies in four tests. 6park.com
金在《我们需要谈谈通胀》(We Need to Talk About Inflation)一书中承认，“关于通胀的最大挑战是，要搞清楚在众多次通胀中，哪些是暂时的——比如朝鲜战争时——哪些是可能会持续的”。他写道，问四个问题，就能得到答案。 6park.com
   
First, have there been institutional changes suggesting an increased bias in favour of inflation? King argues that central banks’ bias against deflation during the past decade may have created a bias in favour of inflation. He adds that by distorting the bond market, quantitative easing removed a key early warning indicator available to central banks to gauge inflationary risks: freely moving prices in government paper. Quantitative easing — the lowering of market interest rates through the large-scale buying of government bonds — also muddied the relationship between finance ministries and central banks, sucking the latter into the corrosive orbit of fiscal decision making. 6park.com
首先，是否出现了制度上的变化，表明对通胀的偏好有所增加？金认为，在过去十年中，各央行不喜欢通缩，这可能导致了对通胀的偏好。他补充称，量化宽松扭曲了债券市场，使央行丧失了一个衡量通胀风险的关键预警指标：政府债券自由波动的价格。量化宽松——通过大规模购买政府债券来降低市场利率——也搅浑了财政部与央行之间的关系，将后者拖入了财政决策的有害轨道。 6park.com
   
Second, are there signs of monetary excess that indicate heightened inflationary risk? Here, King points to the rate of US monetary expansion during the pandemic. 6park.com
其次，是否存在货币过剩的迹象表明通胀风险加剧？在这里，金提到了美国在疫情期间的货币扩张速度。 6park.com
   
Third, are inflationary risks trivialised or excused? It took 2.5 years for the annual rate of UK inflation to rise from 0.3 per cent to 10 per cent: yet, throughout that period, the Bank of England persistently forecast that inflation would return to the 2 per cent target within two years. 6park.com
第三，通胀风险是否被忽视，或是找理由容忍？英国的年通胀率用了两年半就从0.3%升至10%，然而在这整个期间，英国央行(Bank of England)一直预测通胀率将在两年内回到2%的目标。 6park.com
   
Finally, have supply conditions changed for the worse? The supply chain problems of the pandemic may be receding, but trade barriers — often mis-sold as greater national resilience — remain on the increase. And whatever the benefits of Brexit in terms of “taking back control”, all the signs are that it has damaged the British economy’s ability to grow. 6park.com
最后，供应状况是否已经恶化？疫情相关供应链问题可能正在消退，但贸易壁垒——往往被误认为会提高国家韧性——仍在增加。无论英国脱欧在“夺回控制权”方面有什么好处，所有迹象都表明它损害了英国经济的增长能力。 6park.com
   
Arguably, King’s tests are retrofitted to give one answer: that inflation would rise and persist. But it doesn’t mean he’s wrong. As inflation begins to fall through this year, it will be tempting to think that it will inexorably return to target. That appears to be the view of the central banks and the markets. 6park.com
可以说，金的这四个问题设置成只会给出一个答案：通胀将会上升并持续下去。但这并不意味着他是错的。随着通胀在今年开始下降，人们很容易认为通胀将不可动摇地回到目标水平。这似乎是各国央行和市场的看法。 6park.com
   
But the warning signs are still there. Economies are still close to full employment. Vacancies remain elevated. 6park.com
但警示信号依然存在。各经济体仍然接近充分就业。职位空缺依然居高不下。 6park.com
   
Real interest rates remain negative. Quantitative tightening may have begun. But the central banks still own eye-watering quantities of government bonds suggesting monetary conditions remain loose. 6park.com
实际利率仍为负。量化紧缩可能已经开始。但各国央行仍持有数量惊人的政府债券，这表明货币环境仍然宽松。 6park.com
   
King fears that central banks’ missions have become too wide. As he puts it, “financial stability, full employment, green finance, and, in the European Central Bank’s case, preservation of the euro may all have been worthy objectives but there was no guarantee that they could all be met simultaneously.” The resulting trade-offs forced central banks “to make choices that they were politically ill-equipped to carry out”. The recent banking crisis has certainly underlined the very real tension between monetary policy and regulatory responsibilities. 6park.com
金担心央行的任务已经变得过于宽泛。正如他所言，“金融稳定、充分就业、绿色金融，以及欧洲央行(ECB)还要维护欧元，这些或许都是有价值的目标，但无法保证它们都能同时实现。”央行因此必须做出取舍，这迫使它们“做出在政治上不具备执行条件的选择”。最近的银行业危机无疑突显了货币政策与监管责任之间的真实紧张关系。 6park.com
   
Perhaps, central bankers have spent too much time in the company of politicians: they don’t want to be blamed for higher unemployment. They may be legally independent. But they are no longer the detached philosopher kings of legend, immune to the social consequences of their actions in the inexorable pursuit of low inflation. 6park.com
或许，央行官员们花了太多时间与政客为伴：他们不想因为失业率上升而受到指责。他们可能在法律上是独立的。但他们不再是传说中超脱的哲人王，能够在无情地追求低通胀的过程中，不受其行为所造成的社会后果的影响。 6park.com
   
In one sense, this is desirable. We want central bankers to care about the society they serve. But it’s a further sign of a bias in favour of inflation. And King’s timely book should be essential reading for economic policymakers everywhere. 6park.com
从某种意义上说，这也不错。我们希望央行官员关心他们所服务的社会。但这也是有通胀偏好的进一步迹象。金这本及时的着作应该成为世界各地经济政策制定者的必读之作。 6park.com