中國將抑制通脹作為第二季度工作重心
中
國經濟規劃機構週二表示﹐第二季度將加大對通貨膨脹的調控力度﹐但異常旺盛的能源需求將使物價調控任務變得艱巨。中 國國家發展和改革委員會(National Development and Reform Commission, 簡稱﹕國家發改委)經濟運行局巡視員許之敏在介紹第一季度宏觀經濟運行情況的新聞發佈會上表示﹐據有關部門預測﹐今年夏天全國的氣溫比常年要偏高﹐這可能 會導致電煤供應緊張。但他補充說﹐消費者價格指數(CPI)的漲幅仍然偏高﹐今年價格調控的目標任務也很艱巨﹐政府在實施能源價格改革時有必要將這些因素 納入考慮範圍。
中國之所以要限制電價﹐部分原因是為了幫助緩解通貨膨脹壓力。中國第一季度CPI較上年同期上升8.0%﹐政府已承諾將抑制通貨膨脹作為首要任務。
不過﹐能源價格受控使得電力企業無法將不斷增加的煤炭成本完全轉嫁給消費者﹐不得不通過減少煤炭庫存來削減成本﹐因此電力企業極易受到潛在的供應中斷的影響。
中國已經建立了煤電價格聯動機制﹐不過﹐考慮到通貨膨脹因素﹐政府自2006年以來就沒有上調過電價。若政府進一步推遲電價上調時間﹐可能還會帶動部分高耗能行業的增長。
國家發改委經濟運行局副局長朱宏任表示﹐部分高耗能行業還存在投資加快增長的傾向﹐使得政府的節能減排工作面臨嚴峻考驗。
朱宏任補充說﹐全球經濟增長放緩、金融市場動蕩、貿易摩擦增多、大宗商品價格持續上漲等因素將進一步對中國經濟產生不利影響。
許之敏表示﹐國家發改委與政府其他部門已開始研究能源價格改革﹐但尚未敲定最終方案。許之敏稱﹐什麼時間以及如何實施煤電價格聯動機制都要取決於經濟形勢和物價走勢。
他指出﹐用電高峰期即將來臨﹐政府正在抓緊時間研究這一問題。6月至9月通常是中國能源需求的高峰期。
One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn't Like What He Sees
Peter Bernstein has witnessed just about every financial crisis of the past century.
As a boy, he watched his father, a money manager, navigate the Depression. As a financial manager, consultant and financial historian, he personally dealt with the recession of 1958, the bear markets of the 1970s, the 1987 crash, the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s and the 2000-2002 bear market that followed the tech-stock bubble.
Today's trouble, the 89-year-old Mr. Bernstein says, is worse than he has seen since the Depression and threatens to roil markets into 2009 and beyond -- longer than many people expect.
Mr. Bernstein, whose books include 'Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,' sees two culprits. One is the abuse of securitization -- the trend for banks to hold fewer loans on their books and instead turn them into securities that were sold to other investors. The other is simply years of overborrowing by financial institutions and consumers alike.
Mr. Bernstein is hopeful that Federal Reserve intervention will prevent deflation and depression, but he says there is no guarantee.
Excerpts of a recent interview:
WSJ: Aside from securitization, what were the main causes of the problem?
Mr. Bernstein: You don't get into a mess without too much borrowing. It was sparked primarily by the hedge funds, which were both unregulated by government and in many ways unregulated by their owners, who gave their managers a very broad set of marching orders. It was a real delusion. It was like [former New York Gov. Eliot] Spitzer: 'I am doing something dangerous, but because of who I am, and how smart I am, it is not going to come back to haunt me.'
When you think about how all of this will work out in the long run, we are going to have an extremely risk-averse economy for a long time. The lesson has painfully been learned. That's part of the problem going forward. You don't have a high-growth exit from this, as you've had from other kinds of crises. We won't have a powerful start, where the business cycle looks like a V. Here, the shape of the business cycle is like an L, where it goes down and doesn't turn up. Or like a U, a flat U. The reason for that is that people aren't going to get caught in this bind again. They will tell themselves, 'I'm too smart to do that again.' And everyone else is going to be saying the same thing. It is, in fact, going to be a wonderful environment in which to take risk, because there aren't going to be any excesses.
I'm a child of the Depression, and I am thinking about what the early years were like after World War II. It took a very long time to get the memory of the Depression out of business decisions, and certainly banking decisions. I think this is going to be the same. The Fed, too, is going to be less decisive and is going to feel that what it should do is less clear. One of the things that gave people a sense that they could afford to take risks was the sense that the central bankers more or less know what they are doing. But I don't think we are going to feel that way going forward.
WSJ: You said that it could turn out that the smart thing to do is to take more risk, because everyone will be so risk-averse. What kinds of investments do you see as the big winners coming out of this?
Mr. Bernstein: You could say: the things that have been beaten down the most, which would be real estate. But I think real estate is going to be under a cloud for so long, and you can't buy real estate with cash, it is too much money. I think you should go with the stock market. If things are better, the stock market will go up, and if things are awful, the stock market is going to be way down. But it is a place where, if you want to take risks, you've got a wide range of choices. This is why I own stocks [in addition to other investments], because I don't know where the bottom is going to come, and I want to be exposed to every kind of possibility I can think of. And, at least, if you pick the stock market and you are wrong, you can change your mind. There is some liquidity there. Stocks never became cheap, but they didn't become crazy, the way other assets were.
WSJ: How long do you think this whole process will take, before we get back to normal?
Mr. Bernstein: Longer than people think. The people who think we will have turned in 2009 are wrong. There has to be a respite along the way. Nothing goes in one direction forever. But it will take longer than people think. If that weren't the case, I would be talking entirely differently. I would be saying, 'What an opportunity we have got.' And I just can't believe that the opportunity is here yet. There is too much to unwind.
WSJ: Can you explain the reason you think it will take a long time?
Mr. Bernstein: We have to go back to a moment when people have the courage to borrow and lenders have the courage to lend. Until credit is going up instead of down, you can't have growth. Housing has got to be a very important part of that; it always has been. You have to reach a point where somebody says, 'This house is cheap, I am going to buy it,' or where some businessman says, 'This is a great opportunity for us to expand our business. Everything is available to us.'
If China goes into a recession, God knows. The Iraq war and the whole situation with terrorism, we really don't know where that is going to come out. There are so many things that have got to get buttoned down before you say that the future looks good enough to take a risk.
WSJ: What kind of indications are you looking for as signs that the economy is about to get better and that the stock market and the investment world are about to turn the corner?
Mr. Bernstein: Somehow, the housing trouble has to at least flatten out. As long as that is going on, I think the pressure on the credit system is going to persist. It is kind of the leading indicator. It is where the trouble started. We have to underpin the consumer. That is why this is different. That is why this is like nothing we have had before.
Before, it was investment that made the V at the bottom of the business cycle. I don't see real investment turning enough without some sign from the consumer side. Maybe the foreign countries will do it for us. That is a substitute for consumption here. Maybe. But I think that they won't do enough for us, and maybe will be too infected by us to do it. But maybe growth in Asia will help us. The Asian thing is tremendously exciting.
E.s. Browning
As a boy, he watched his father, a money manager, navigate the Depression. As a financial manager, consultant and financial historian, he personally dealt with the recession of 1958, the bear markets of the 1970s, the 1987 crash, the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s and the 2000-2002 bear market that followed the tech-stock bubble.
Today's trouble, the 89-year-old Mr. Bernstein says, is worse than he has seen since the Depression and threatens to roil markets into 2009 and beyond -- longer than many people expect.
Mr. Bernstein, whose books include 'Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk,' sees two culprits. One is the abuse of securitization -- the trend for banks to hold fewer loans on their books and instead turn them into securities that were sold to other investors. The other is simply years of overborrowing by financial institutions and consumers alike.
Mr. Bernstein is hopeful that Federal Reserve intervention will prevent deflation and depression, but he says there is no guarantee.
Excerpts of a recent interview:
WSJ: Aside from securitization, what were the main causes of the problem?
Mr. Bernstein: You don't get into a mess without too much borrowing. It was sparked primarily by the hedge funds, which were both unregulated by government and in many ways unregulated by their owners, who gave their managers a very broad set of marching orders. It was a real delusion. It was like [former New York Gov. Eliot] Spitzer: 'I am doing something dangerous, but because of who I am, and how smart I am, it is not going to come back to haunt me.'
When you think about how all of this will work out in the long run, we are going to have an extremely risk-averse economy for a long time. The lesson has painfully been learned. That's part of the problem going forward. You don't have a high-growth exit from this, as you've had from other kinds of crises. We won't have a powerful start, where the business cycle looks like a V. Here, the shape of the business cycle is like an L, where it goes down and doesn't turn up. Or like a U, a flat U. The reason for that is that people aren't going to get caught in this bind again. They will tell themselves, 'I'm too smart to do that again.' And everyone else is going to be saying the same thing. It is, in fact, going to be a wonderful environment in which to take risk, because there aren't going to be any excesses.
I'm a child of the Depression, and I am thinking about what the early years were like after World War II. It took a very long time to get the memory of the Depression out of business decisions, and certainly banking decisions. I think this is going to be the same. The Fed, too, is going to be less decisive and is going to feel that what it should do is less clear. One of the things that gave people a sense that they could afford to take risks was the sense that the central bankers more or less know what they are doing. But I don't think we are going to feel that way going forward.
WSJ: You said that it could turn out that the smart thing to do is to take more risk, because everyone will be so risk-averse. What kinds of investments do you see as the big winners coming out of this?
Mr. Bernstein: You could say: the things that have been beaten down the most, which would be real estate. But I think real estate is going to be under a cloud for so long, and you can't buy real estate with cash, it is too much money. I think you should go with the stock market. If things are better, the stock market will go up, and if things are awful, the stock market is going to be way down. But it is a place where, if you want to take risks, you've got a wide range of choices. This is why I own stocks [in addition to other investments], because I don't know where the bottom is going to come, and I want to be exposed to every kind of possibility I can think of. And, at least, if you pick the stock market and you are wrong, you can change your mind. There is some liquidity there. Stocks never became cheap, but they didn't become crazy, the way other assets were.
WSJ: How long do you think this whole process will take, before we get back to normal?
Mr. Bernstein: Longer than people think. The people who think we will have turned in 2009 are wrong. There has to be a respite along the way. Nothing goes in one direction forever. But it will take longer than people think. If that weren't the case, I would be talking entirely differently. I would be saying, 'What an opportunity we have got.' And I just can't believe that the opportunity is here yet. There is too much to unwind.
WSJ: Can you explain the reason you think it will take a long time?
Mr. Bernstein: We have to go back to a moment when people have the courage to borrow and lenders have the courage to lend. Until credit is going up instead of down, you can't have growth. Housing has got to be a very important part of that; it always has been. You have to reach a point where somebody says, 'This house is cheap, I am going to buy it,' or where some businessman says, 'This is a great opportunity for us to expand our business. Everything is available to us.'
If China goes into a recession, God knows. The Iraq war and the whole situation with terrorism, we really don't know where that is going to come out. There are so many things that have got to get buttoned down before you say that the future looks good enough to take a risk.
WSJ: What kind of indications are you looking for as signs that the economy is about to get better and that the stock market and the investment world are about to turn the corner?
Mr. Bernstein: Somehow, the housing trouble has to at least flatten out. As long as that is going on, I think the pressure on the credit system is going to persist. It is kind of the leading indicator. It is where the trouble started. We have to underpin the consumer. That is why this is different. That is why this is like nothing we have had before.
Before, it was investment that made the V at the bottom of the business cycle. I don't see real investment turning enough without some sign from the consumer side. Maybe the foreign countries will do it for us. That is a substitute for consumption here. Maybe. But I think that they won't do enough for us, and maybe will be too infected by us to do it. But maybe growth in Asia will help us. The Asian thing is tremendously exciting.
E.s. Browning
伯恩斯坦：眼下危機百年罕見
彼
得•伯恩斯坦(Peter Bernstein)見證了過去一個世紀里的幾乎每一場金融危機。當 他還是個孩子的時候﹐他看到的是身為投資經理的父親在大蕭條中小心度日。而在伯恩斯坦後來成為財務經理、咨詢師以及金融歷史學家期間﹐他又親身經歷了 1958年的經濟衰退、70年代的熊市、1987年的股市崩盤、80年代末的存貸款危機、2000-2002年科技股泡沫破裂後的熊市。
伯恩斯坦所擔心的一個問題便是中國是否會陷入衰退
曾 撰寫了《與天為敵：風險探索傳奇》(Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk)等書籍的伯恩斯坦認為危機背後有兩大元兇：一是資產證券化操作的濫用（銀行為減少帳面貸款金額而將這些資產打包成為可出售給其他投資者的證券） ﹔另一個則是多年以來金融機構和消費者都習以為常的過度借貸模式。
伯恩斯坦希望美國聯邦儲備委員會(Fed)的干預能防範通縮和蕭條的發生﹐但他認為沒人能打保票。
以下為一次近期採訪的節選：
《華爾街日報》（以下簡稱WSJ）：除了資產證券化之外﹐你認為造成當前危機的主要原因還有什麼？
伯恩斯坦： 如果你不借那麼多錢的話就根本不會讓自己那麼狼狽。眼下的麻煩最初是由對沖基金所引起的﹐政府不去監管這些基金﹐在很多方面其所有人也不去管理﹐只是給自 己的基金經理們下達泛泛的“沖鋒令”。這裡面存在一個錯覺﹐就像招妓門主角－－前紐約州州長斯皮策(Spitzer)所想：我確實在做危險的事﹐但我是誰 啊﹐我多聰明啊﹐所以這些事不會反過來傷害我。
只要想到所有這一切需要經過很長的時間 才能最終得到解決﹐我們的經濟就將長期保持高度的避險意識。我們痛苦地吸取了這個教訓。而這將成為日後麻煩的一部分。我們無法通過快速增長來擺脫當前危機 ﹐就像以前從其他類型的危機中全身而退那樣。我們沒有一個強有力的開始﹐那樣需要一個看起來像是“V”字形的經濟週期﹐而當前的週期看起來像是一個向下沒 有反轉的“L”形﹐或一個平坦的“U”形。原因是人們不會讓自己重蹈覆轍了。他們會告誡自己﹐我是個聰明人﹐不能一錯再錯了。其他所有人也會這麼想。而事 實上﹐這倒成了一個冒險的好機會﹐因為市場上不會存在過度的風險了。
大蕭條時期我還是個孩子﹐我現在還在想二戰後頭幾年的日子是怎麼樣 的。過了很長時間﹐有關大蕭條的記憶才不再影響人們的商業決策、特別是銀行業的決策。我認為眼下這一幕又要重演了。Fed也將變得不再那麼果斷﹐而是覺得 自己應該做的就是不要太過明確。有一個因素促使大家感覺自己可以冒險為之﹐那就是央行官員多少總能知道他們在幹些什麼。但我想大家以後不會再這麼以為了。
WSJ：你剛才說願意承擔更多風險將成為明智之舉﹐因為大家的避險意願將非常強烈。那麼你認為屆時哪種投資會成為大贏家呢？
伯恩斯坦： 你可以說﹐受到最沉重打擊的是地產業﹔但我認為地產業還將在陰雲下籠罩很長一段時間﹐而且你也不能用現金買房產﹐那實在是很大一筆錢。我覺得你應該投資股 市。如果情況好轉﹐股市將開始上揚﹐反之則將下挫。但股市是這樣一個地方﹐只要你願意承受風險﹐那麼你總有很寬泛的選擇。這就是為什麼我在其他投資之外選 擇股市的原因﹐因為我不知道市場何時見底﹐而且我希望自己擁有各種各樣的可能性。至少﹐如果你選錯了股票的話﹐你還可以改主意。這裡面存在一定的流動性。 目前的股價不算低﹐但它們也未曾像其他資產那樣瘋狂。
WSJ：：您認為市場回歸常態要多長時間？
伯恩斯坦： 比人們想像的要長。那些以為2009年就能恢復元氣的人錯了。市場在復原期間肯定要有停頓。沒有什麼東西能永遠朝一個方向前進。如果要不是眼下這個局面我 可能會用一種完全不同的方式來談論這個問題﹐我可能會說“這是一個機會”﹐但我認為現在還談不上什麼機會。要解決的問題實在太多。
WSJ：：您能解釋一下為什麼要花這麼長時間才能恢復正常嗎？
伯恩斯坦： 我們必須要等到人們有勇氣借貸、而銀行也有勇氣放貸之時。直到信貸出現增長而非萎縮時我們才能實現增長。房地產市場是一個非常重要的組成部分﹐它一直都 是。市場有望恢復時一定會有人說：房產很便宜﹐我要出手買進了﹔或者你會聽到一些商界人士說：現在正好是擴展業務的良機﹐每一樣事情對我們都很合適。
如果中國陷入衰退﹐只有天知道會造成什麼樣的結果。伊拉克戰爭以及反恐形勢讓我們真的不知道結果會如何。事實上﹐在你可以放心地說未來很光明、可以去冒險之前﹐還有很多事情需要搞清楚。
WSJ：：您覺得出現什麼跡象就能表明經濟將出現好轉﹐股市和整個投資界即將轉危為安了？
伯恩斯坦：起碼住房市場的問題至少不再惡化。我認為﹐只要房產市場的危機繼續存在﹐信貸系統所承受的壓力就不會得到緩解。住房市場能起到領先指標的作用﹐它也是麻煩的源頭所在。我們必須要給消費者以支持。這就是這次危機不一樣的地方﹐它和我們之前經歷過的不一樣。
從 前﹐是投資行為使商業週期在底部展開“V”形反轉。現在我認為在消費領域出現改善之前﹐實際投資都不會出現明顯好轉。或許其他國家可以給我們幫這個忙。那 會對本土的消費帶來替代作用。可能會是這樣。但是我認為它們的幫助可能會“力道”不夠﹐或許還受到我們的影響。但亞洲的增長可能會對我們有所裨益﹐亞洲的 形勢非常鼓舞人心。
E.s. Browning
沒有留言:
張貼留言