'GROW NOW, ASK QUESTIONS LATER\' FORMULA WILL END IN TEARS

'GROW NOW, ASK QUESTIONS LATER\' FORMULA WILL END IN TEARS

By Stephen Roach 2009-03-17

A crisis-torn world is in no mood for the heavy lifting of global rebalancing.

Policies are being framed with an aim towards recreating the boom. Washington wants to get credit flowing again to indebted US consumers. And exporters - especially in Asia - would like nothing better than a renewal of demand led by the world's biggest consumer.

It is a recipe for disaster.

That is not to say that the fiscal and monetary medicine being administered will not alleviate symptoms of distress. But if the policies end up perpetuating the imbalances that got the global economy into the mess, the next crisis will be worse than this one.

Lest I be accused of fearmongering, it pays to replay the tapes of a decade ago.

Then, the Asian crisis was viewed as the worst since the Great Depression. As contagion spread from Asia to Russia, Brazil and a large US hedge fund, the turmoil was dubbed the first crisis of modern globalisation. Alan Greenspan, then Federal Reserve chairman, was stunned by an unprecedented seizing up of capital markets. Sound familiar?

As appropriate as those superlatives might have seemed in the late 1990s, they ended up depicting a squall compared with the current tsunami.

That is the point. Until an unbalanced world faces up to its chronic imbalances, successive crises are likely to be increasingly destabilising.

While it is hard to believe that anything could be worse than what is happening today, I can assure you the same feeling was evident in late 1998.

Ironically, the seeds of the current crisis may have been sown by policies aimed at arresting the Asian crisis.

Then, US authorities did everything they could to ensure that the crisis would not infect the real economy. The Fed's three emergency rate cuts in late 1998 worked like a charm. The US consumer never looked back. The personal consumption share of real GDP rose from 67 per cent in the late 1990s to 72 per cent in the first half of 2007. The US antidote to the Asian crisis was the greatest consumption binge in history.

Bruised and battered Asia could not have asked for more. The bingeing US consumer was Asia's manna from heaven. It reinforced the region's conviction over its export-led formula for economic progress. Developing Asia was quick to up the ante, pushing the export share of its GDP from 36 per cent in 1997-98 to 47 per cent by 2007.

It did not stop there. An increasingly integrated Asian economy discovered the synergies of a Chinacentric supply chain. Moreover, commodity producers - especially Australia, Russia, Canada and Brazil - drew sustenance from a resource-intensive, export-led Chinese economy.

So it was in the aftermath of the Asian crisis. Imbalances became the rule, not the exception.

Yet just as the US was steeped in denial on the demand side of the global economy, a similar complacency was evident on the supply side.

That was true of the US consumption binge - accompanied by record debt burdens, zero saving rates, and a multiplicity of bubbles in asset markets (equity and property) and credit.

It was also true of Asia's export boom, which spawned ever rising current account surpluses, reservoirs of foreign exchange reserves and a mega-bubble in commodity markets.

Imbalances were a problem for another day. All that mattered then was the post-crisis fix.

That is the mindset today.

To its credit, the Obama stimulus package is framed around the imperatives of investing in infrastructure, alternative energy technologies and human capital. But the Washington subtext is far more short-term, focused on increasingly urgent efforts to jump-start personal consumption.

Towards that end, the Fed, the Treasury and the Congress are all eager to restart borrowing for over-extended consumers and prevent foreclosures of indebted homeowners. The costs of inaction are billed as prohibitive. The US body politic is perfectly prepared to ignore the debt implications of its stimulus actions.

In Asia, hopes are focused on the mirror image of this tale. The questions Asians ask these days pertain to the state of the US consumer.

Apparentlyit is too hard for Asian policymakers to establish robust social safety nets and stimulate internal private consumption. Unbalanced Asian economies are desperate for unbalanced US consumers to start spending again and spark another post-crisis recovery.

Grow now, ask questions later. That has again become the mantra for an unbalanced world in crisis.

Yet that is the biggest risk of all for global policy. The G8 failed to embrace the imperatives of global rebalancing after the Asian financial crisis. The G20 seems destined to follow the same script at its summit in early April.

What a reckless way to run the world.

Stephen Roach is chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia

美国救市的后患

作者：史蒂芬•罗奇(Stephen Roach)为英国《金融时报》撰稿 2009-03-17

这个备受危机摧残的世界，已无心承担重建全球平衡的重任。

各国目前正在制定旨在重现经济繁荣的政策。美国政府希望信贷资金再次流向负债累累的美国消费者。而出口国——尤其是亚洲出口国——最希望的，莫过于这个全球最大的消费国能够引领需求复苏。

这是一张后患无穷的处方。

这并不是说，目前采取的财政及货币政策无法缓解困境。而是说，如果这些政策最终使得搅乱全球经济的失衡长期存在下去，下一次危机会比此次更为严重。

为了避免有人说我危言耸听，有必要回顾一下十年前的那段历史。

当时，亚洲金融危机被视为大萧条(Great Depression)以来最为严重的一场危机。由于其负面影响从亚洲蔓延至俄罗斯、巴西和一只美国大型对冲基金，这场风暴也被称作是首次当代全球化危 机。时任美联储(Fed)主席的艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)，对资本市场这一前所未有的失灵深感震惊。这听起来是否有些耳熟？

但与当前的“海啸”相比，那些在上世纪90年代末似乎颇为得体的夸大之词，最终描绘的不过是一场“暴风”而已。

这正是我要谈论的问题。在这个不平衡的世界敢于直面长期失衡问题之前，接二连三的危机对于稳定性的影响可能会越来越大。

尽管人们很难相信形势还会比眼前更糟，但我可以向你保证，1998年底的时候，人们明显有着同样的感觉。

具有讽刺意味的是，当前这场危机的种子，或许就是那些旨在平息亚洲金融危机的政策所埋下的。

当时，美国政府尽其所能，以确保危机不会波及实体经济。美联储在1998年底的3次紧急降息立竿见影。从此，美国消费者就没再回头。美国个人消费在 实际国内生产总值(GDP)中所占比例，从上世纪90年代末的67%升至2007年上半年的72%。美国抵御亚洲金融危机的对策，造就了有史以来最大的一 场消费狂潮。

焦头烂额的亚洲应已别无所求。美国消费者的大手大脚，对于亚洲而言犹如天降甘露。它增强了亚洲地区对于出口驱动型增长模式的信心。亚洲发展中国家迅速加大了赌注，将出口在GDP中所占份额从1997-98年的36%，推升至2007年的47%。

事情并未就此止步。一体化程度日益提高的亚洲经济，发现了以中国为核心供应链的协同效应。此外，大宗商品生产国——尤其是澳大利亚、俄罗斯、加拿大和巴西——也依靠资源密集型、出口驱动型的中国经济维持生计。

这就是亚洲金融危机之后所发生的事情。失衡成为了常态，而非例外。

然而，在美国对全球经济需求视而不见的同时，在供应面上明显出现了类似的自满情绪。

这种情况同样适用于美国的消费狂潮——伴随着创纪录的债务负担、零储蓄率、以及资产市场（股票和地产）和信贷中形形色色的泡沫。

亚洲的出口繁荣也同样如此，这种繁荣催生了日益增长的经常账户盈余、海量的外汇储备以及大宗商品市场的超级泡沫。

当时，全球失衡是一个留待日后考虑的问题，危机之后的调整才是要紧之事。

这也正是人们目前的心态。

值得赞赏的是，奥巴马(Obama)的经济刺激计划是围绕投资基础设施、替代能源技术和人力资本的迫切需要来制定的。但是，华盛顿方面的潜在意图过于短视，把重点放在了日益紧迫、启动个人消费的努力上。

为此，美联储、财政部和国会都急欲推动举债过度的消费者重新开始借钱，并防止负债累累的房主陷入止赎境地。据说，此时无所作为的代价高得令人却步。美国人民已做好准备，罔顾其刺激行动在债务方面的影响。

在亚洲，人们的希望也都集中在同样的方面。亚洲人如今提出的问题，都与美国消费者的境况有关。

对于亚洲政策制定者而言，建立健全的社会保障网络和刺激国内私人消费显然难度太大。不平衡的亚洲经济体急切盼望不平衡的美国消费者再次开始花钱，以启动又一次危机后的复苏。

眼下先顾增长，问题留待日后。这又一次成为了危机之中失衡世界的口头禅。

但这正是全球政策所面临的最大风险。在亚洲金融危机后，八国集团(G8)未承担起重建全球平衡的使命。而在4月初召开的峰会上，20国集团(G20)似乎也注定要走上同一条道路。

这是一条多么不计后果的治世之路！

本文作者为摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)亚洲董事长

译者/汪洋