12.22｜經濟學人閱讀｜扉頁文章 Will inflation return?
經濟學人The Economist是一份英國的英文新聞周報，分八個版本於每周五向全球發行，編輯部位於倫敦，創辦於1843年9月。
經濟學人是一本綜合性新聞評論刊物，有商業、國家和地區、經濟和金融、科學和技術五大類。其中文章文風緊湊且嚴謹，對語言精準運用，展現出一種克制的風趣幽默，常運用雙關語調侃。
經濟學人對於英語考試的重要性不言而喻，其文章常常出現在雅思託福、SAT、GRE、GMAT、考研英語、四六級、MTI和CATTI的閱讀理解真題中。
今天羚羊君（公眾：aa-acad）給大家分享的是經濟學人2020年12月12日期刊中扉頁文章的第一篇：Will inflation return?
這篇文章討論了疫情之下通貨膨脹發生的可能性以及各國應該採取的措施。
想要閱讀往期內容，可以在公眾號右下角點擊"更多資訊-長文閱讀"進入專欄。
01
Will inflation return?
通貨膨脹會重演嗎
Economists love to disagree, but almost all of them will tell you that ination is dead. The premise of low ination is baked into economic policies and nancial markets. It is why central banks can cut interest rates to around zero and buy up mountains of government bonds. It explains how governments have been able to go on an epic spending and borrowing binge in order to save the economy from the ravages of the pandemic and why rich-world public debt of 125% of gdp barely raises an eyebrow. The search for yield has propelled the s&p 500 index of shares to new highs even as the number of Americans in hospital with covid-19 has surpassed 100,000. The only way to justify such a blistering-hot stockmarket is if you expect a strong but inationless economic rebound in 2021and beyond.
經濟學家雖然不太同意這個觀點，但幾乎所有經濟學家又都會說，通貨膨脹已經消失了。低通脹前提已被納入經濟政策和金融市場。這就是中央銀行可以將利率降至零左右併購買大量政府債券的原因。它解釋了政府如何能夠幾乎史無前例的支出和瘋狂借貸，以使經濟免遭受疫情的破壞；也解釋了為何富裕國家公共債務達到GDP的125％，卻幾乎沒有引起人們的關注。對收益率的追求將標準普爾500指數的股票推升至新高，儘管在醫院接受covid-19治療的美國人人數已超過100,000。這種股市熱潮的唯一解釋就是：人們期望2021年及以後的經濟會有強勢且沒有通脹影響的反彈。
02
Yet as we explain this week (see Brieng), an increasingly vocal band of dissenters thinks that the world could emerge from the pandemic into an era of higher ination. Their arguments are hardly overwhelming, but neither are they empty. Even a small probability of having to deal with a surge in ination is worrying, because the stock of debt is so large and central-bank balance-sheets are swollen. Rather than ignore the risk, governments should take action now to insure themselves against it.
然而，正如我們在本周（見簡報）所作的解釋一樣，越來越多持不同政見的人認為世界可能會從疫情時代進入到通貨膨脹率更高的時代。他們的論點幾乎無法壓倒一切，但他們的觀點也不完全是空洞的。即使人們只有很小的概率必須應對通貨膨脹，這仍是令人擔憂的，因為債務如此之大，且中央銀行的資產負債已經膨脹。政府應該立即採取行動以確保自己免受風險的威脅，而不是忽略風險。
03
In the decades since Margaret Thatcher warned of a vicious cycle of prices and wages that threatened to 「destroy」 society, the rich world has come to take low ination for granted. Before the pandemic even an ultratight jobs market could not jolt prices upwards, and now armies of people are unemployed. Many economists think the West, and especially the euro zone, is heading the way of Japan, which fell into deation in the 1990s and has since struggled to lift price rises far above zero.
Predicting the end of this trend is a kind of apostasy. After the nancial crisis some hawks warned that bond buying by central banks (known as quantitative easing, or qe) would reignite ination.
自從瑪格麗特·柴契爾警告價格和工資的惡性循環會威脅甚至「毀滅」社會，這幾十年來，富裕國家已將通貨膨脹率低視為理所當然。在疫情之前，及時非常緊張的就業形勢也不會使物價上漲。現在，許多人都失業了。許多經濟學家認為，西方國家，尤其是歐元區國家，正在走日本的老路。日本在1990年代陷入了經濟低迷，此後一直在努力將價格上漲幅度提升。
預測這種趨勢的結束是一種變節。金融危機後，一些鷹派人士警告說，央行購買債券（稱為量化寬鬆，簡寫為qe）將重新引發通貨膨脹。
04
Today the inationistas』 arguments are stronger. One risk is of a temporary burst of ination next year. In contrast to the period after the nancial crisis, broad measures of the rich-world money supply have shot up in 2020, because banks have been lending freely. Stuck at home, people have been unable to spend all their money and their bank-balances have swelled. But once they are vaccinated and liberated from the tyranny of Zoom, exuberant consumers may go on a spending spree that outpaces the ability of rms to restore and expand their capacity, causing prices to rise. The global economy already shows signs of suering from bottlenecks. The price of copper, for example, is 25% higher than at the start of 2020.
現在，通貨膨脹論者們的論點更加強有力。風險之一是明年可能出現暫時性的通貨膨脹。與金融危機後的時期相比，由於銀行一直在自由放貸，因此到2020年，對富裕國家貨幣供應量的普適性的衡量標準已經飆升。宅在家裡，人們無法花光所有的錢，銀行的餘額也膨脹了。但是，一旦人們接種疫苗並從zoom中"解放"出來後，旺盛的消費者可能會大舉消費，這會超過公司恢復和擴大產能的能力，從而導致價格上漲。全球經濟已經顯示出遭受瓶頸困擾的跡象。例如，銅的價格比2020年初高出了25％。
05
The world should be able to manage such a temporary burst of ination. But the second inationista argument is that more persistent price pressures will also emerge, as structural disinationary forces go into reverse. In the West and in Asia many societies are ageing, creating shortages of workers. For years globalisation lowered ination by creating a more ecient market for goods and labour. Now globalisation is in retreat.
Their third argument is that politicians and ocials are complacent. The Federal Reserve says it wants ination to overshoot its 2% target to make up for lost ground; the European Central Bank, which was expected to announce more stimulus after we went to press, may yet follow suit. Weighed down by the need to pay for an ageing population and health care, politicians will increasingly favour big budget decits.
世界應該能夠應對這種短暫的通貨膨脹。但是，通貨膨脹論者們的第二個論點是：隨著結構化的去通脹的力量倒退，還會出現更持久的價格壓力。在西方和亞洲，許多社會正在老齡化，這造成了工人短缺。多年以來，經濟全球化通過建立更有效的商品和勞動力市場來降低通貨膨脹。而現在全球化正在縮小。
他們的第三個論點是，政客和官員是剛愎自用的。美聯儲表示，它希望通貨膨脹超過其2％的目標，以彌補經濟上的失地。歐洲中央銀行可能會緊隨其後，在我們這篇文章發表不久後，歐洲中央銀行就可能會宣布更多的刺激經濟的措施。由於需要為老齡化的人口和醫療服務付費，政治家將越來越傾向於龐大的預算赤字。
06
Might these arguments prove correct? A temporary rebound in ination next year is perfectly possible. At rst it would be welcome—a sign economies were recovering from the pandemic. It would inate away a modest amount of debt. Policymakers might even breathe a sigh of relief, especially in Japan and the euro zone, where prices are falling (though rapid changes in the pattern of consumer spending may have muddied the statistics).
這些論點的正確性可以被證實嗎？明年通脹可能會暫時反彈。首先，這是受歡迎的，這是經濟從疫情中恢復的跡象。這樣也會增加少量的債務。政策制定者甚至可以鬆一口氣，尤其是在日本和歐元區，那裡的物價正在下跌（儘管消費者支出方式的快速變化可能使統計數存在不準確性）。
07
The odds of a more sustained period of ination remain low. But if central banks had to raise interest rates to stop price rises getting out of hand, the consequences would be serious. Markets would tumble and indebted rms would falter. More important, the full cost of the state’s vastly expanded balance-sheet—both governments』 debt and the central banks』 liabilities—would become alarmingly apparent. To understand why requires peering, for a moment, into how they are organised.
持續通貨膨脹的機率仍然很低。但是，如果央行不得不提高利率以阻止物價一發不可收拾般地上漲，後果將是嚴重的。市場將崩塌，負債企業將步履蹣跚。更重要的是，龐大的資產負債表的全部成本（包括政府債務和中央銀行的債務）將變得非常明顯。要理解為什麼，就需要了解它們的組織方式。
08
For all the talk about 「locking in」 today’s low long-term interest rates, governments』 dirty secret is that they have been doing the opposite, issuing short-term debt in a bet that short-term interest rates will remain low. The average maturity of American Treasuries, for example, has fallen from 70 months to 63. Central banks have been making a similar wager. Because the reserves they create to buy bonds carry a oating interest rate, they are comparable to short-term borrowing. In November Britain’s scal watchdog warned that a combination of new issuance and qe had left the state’s debt-service costs twice as sensitive to short-term rates as they were at the start of the year, and nearly three times as much as in 2012.
對於所有關於「鎖定」當今長期的低利率的說法，各國政府的骯髒秘密是：他們一直在做相反的事情——發行短期債務以押注短期利率將保持在低水平。例如，美國國債的平均到期日從70個月下降至63個月。各國央行一直在進行類似的賭注。由於他們為購買債券而建立的準備金具有浮動利率，因此可以與短期借款相提並論。在11月，英國財政監督機構警告說，新發行債券和量化寬鬆政策的結合使該國對短期債務償還成本的敏感度是年初的兩倍，是2012年的近三倍。
09
So while the probability of an ination scare may have risen only slightly, its consequences would be worse. Countries need to insure themselves against this tail risk by reorganising their liabilities. Governments should fund scal stimulus by issuing long-term debt. Most central banks should start an orderly reversal of qe and instead loosen monetary policy by taking shortterm interest rates negative. Finance ministries should incorporate risks taken by the central bank into their budgeting (and the euro zone should nd a better tool than qe for mutualising the debts of its member states). Shortening the maturity of the state’s balance-sheet—as in 2020—must only ever be a last resort, and should not become the main tool of economic policy.
因此，儘管通貨膨脹恐慌的可能性可能僅增加了一點點，但其後果將更糟。各國需要通過重組債務來確保自己免受這種風險的影響。各國政府應通過發行長期債務為財政刺激計劃提供資金。大多數中央銀行應開始有序地扭轉量化寬鬆政策，並且應通過使短期利率為負來放鬆貨幣政策。財政部應將中央銀行承擔的風險納入其預算中（歐元區應找到比量化寬鬆更好的工具來使成員國的債務相互抵消。） 像在2020年所做的那樣，縮短資產負債表的到期日，只能是不得已而為之，並且不應成為經濟政策的主要工具。
經濟學人一般目錄大綱：
The world this week：簡單梳理本周的時事Leaders：社論，對本周熱點事件進行評論Briefing：簡報，對一個特定熱點話題深度討論Letter：讀者來信，對往期文章的評論Sections：各大洲及中美英三國的本周熱點事件報導Business：商業新聞Finances and economics：財經新聞Science and technology：科技新聞Books and arts：文化書籍，書評和文化現象討論Economic and financial indicators：商業及財經指數
Buttonwood：金融專欄Schumpeter：商業專欄Bartleby：職場專欄Bagehot：英國專欄Charlemagne：歐洲專欄Lexington：美國專欄Banyan：亞洲專欄