成功的商人不懂宏觀經濟大綱

TOKYO — The Bank of Japan, this country’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, has lately been making a big effort to end deflation, which has afflicted Japan’s economy for almost two decades. At first its efforts — which involve printing a lot of money and, even more important, trying to assure investors that it will keep printing money until inflation reaches 2 percent — seemed to be going well. But more recently the economy has lost momentum, and last week the bank announced new, even more aggressive monetary measures.
東京——日本銀行(Bank of Japan)，也就是日本相當於美聯儲(Federal Reserve)的機構，最近做了很多努力試圖終結通貨緊縮，這個問題已經困擾了日本將近20年。作爲日本的中央銀行，它最初採取的舉措似乎效果不錯，包括印很多錢，更重要的是，它還試圖讓投資者相信，會一直繼續印錢，直到通脹水平達到2%。但是最近，日本經濟失去了動力，上週，日本央行又宣佈了新的、更激進的貨幣動作。

I am, as you might guess, very much in favor of this move, although I worry that the policy might nonetheless fail thanks to fiscal mistakes. (More about that later.) While the bank did the right thing, however, it did so amid substantial internal dissent. In fact, the new stimulus was approved by only five of the bank board’s nine members, with those closest to business voting against. Which brings me to the subject of this column: the economic wisdom, or lack thereof, of business leaders.
你大概也猜到了，我非常支持這個舉動，儘管我擔心由於財政政策的失誤，這一政策仍然可能會失敗。（這一點等會兒再說。）雖然日本央行做了正確的事，但是它在這樣做時，內部的反對意見相當激烈。實際上，新的刺激舉措在該行的政策委員會中，只得到了九名委員中五人的支持，那些與商界關係緊密的委員都投了反對票。於是就引出了我這篇專欄的主題：商界領袖的經濟智慧，或者說，其經濟智慧的缺失。

Some of the people I’ve spoken to here argue that the opposition of many Japanese business leaders to the Bank of Japan’s actions shows that it’s on the wrong track. In saying this, they’re echoing a common sentiment in many countries, including America — the belief that if you want to fix an ailing economy, you should turn to people who have been successful in business, like leaders of major corporations, entrepreneurs and wealthy investors. After all, doesn’t their success with money mean that they know how the economy really works?
我在這裏交談過的一些人表示，日本許多商界領袖對央行舉動的反對，顯示出央行的路線是錯的。他們說這番話時，與包括美國在內的許多國家的常見看法相似——以爲要想挽救糟糕的經濟，就需要向成功的商界人士討教，比如大型企業的領導者、企業家和富有的投資者。說到底，他們在賺錢時取得的成功，不就意味着他們明白經濟是如何運行的嗎？

Actually, no. In fact, business leaders often give remarkably bad economic advice, especially in troubled times. And I think it’s important to understand why.
實際上並非如此。事實上，商界領袖給出的經濟建議常常出奇地壞，尤其是在經濟狀況糟糕的時候。我想有必要理解一下背後的原因。

About that bad advice: Think of the hugely wealthy money managers who warned Ben Bernanke that the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy risked “currency debasement”; think of the many corporate chieftains who solemnly declared that budget deficits were the biggest threat facing America, and that fixing the debt would cause growth to soar. In Japan, business leaders played an important role in the fiscal mistakes that have undermined recent policy success, calling for a tax hike that caused growth to stall earlier this year, and a second tax hike next year that would be an even worse error.
關於不良建議：回想一下，一些異常富有的基金經理，曾警告本·伯南克(Ben Bernanke)說，美聯儲刺激經濟的舉措可能會造成“貨幣貶值”；再回想一下，許多企業的首席某某官都曾莊嚴地宣稱，財政赤字是美國面臨的最大威脅，解決政府負債問題，經濟增長就能騰飛。在日本，財政上的失誤抹殺了最近貨幣政策取得的成功，而商界領袖在財政政策的失誤上扮演了重要角色，他們呼籲的增稅在今年早些時候導致了經濟增長停滯，明年的第二次增稅可能會是一個更嚴重的錯誤。

And on the other side, the past few years have seen repeated vindication for policy makers who have never met a payroll, but do know a lot about economic theory and history. The Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have navigated their way through a once-in-three-generations economic crisis under the leadership of former college professors — Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Mervyn King — who, among other things, had the courage to defy all those tycoons demanding that they stop printing money. The European Central Bank brought the euro back from the brink of collapse under the leadership of Mario Draghi, who spent the bulk of his career in academia and public service.
另一方面，過去幾年裏的事件，卻反覆印證了許多政策制定者的觀點，他們從來沒給別人發過工資，但是對經濟理論和歷史卻有很多瞭解。美聯儲和英國央行在前大學教授的領導下，安然度過了百年一遇的經濟危機，比如本·伯南克、珍妮特·耶倫(Janet Yellen)、默文·金(Mervyn King)。他們的諸多功績中就包括，有勇氣挑戰那些要求停止印錢的企業大亨。歐洲央行在馬里奧·德拉吉(Mario Draghi)的領導下，把歐元從崩潰的邊緣挽救了回來，而德拉吉的職業生涯中，有很長時間是在學術界和公共服務中度過的。

Obviously there are business leaders who have gotten the economic analysis right, and plenty of academics who have gotten it wrong. (Don’t get me started.) But success in business does not seem to convey any special insight into economic policy. Why?
顯然有些商界領袖對經濟的分析是正確的，也有很多學者搞錯了，簡直說都說不完。可是商業上的成功，似乎並不能表示對經濟政策有什麼特別的洞見。這是爲什麼呢？The answer, to quote the title of a paper I published many years ago, is that a country is not a company. National economic policy, even in small countries, needs to take into account kinds of feedback that rarely matter in business life. For example, even the biggest corporations sell only a small fraction of what they make to their own workers, whereas even very small countries mostly sell goods and services to themselves.
用我很多年前發表過的一篇論文的標題來說，答案就是：國家並不是公司。國民經濟政策，即使是在一個小國，也需要考慮在商業生活中常常無關緊要的某些類型的反饋。例如，即使是最大的公司，也只會把一小部分的產品賣給自己的員工，然而即使是極小的國家，大多數商品和服務也主要是賣給國內的。

So think of what happens when a successful businessperson looks at a troubled economy and tries to apply the lessons of business experience. He or (rarely) she sees the troubled economy as something like a troubled company, which needs to cut costs and become competitive. To create jobs, the businessperson thinks, wages must come down, expenses must be reduced; in general, belts must be tightened. And surely gimmicks like deficit spending or printing more money can’t solve what must be a fundamental problem.
這樣一來，就可以設想一下，成功的商人對欠佳的經濟運用商業經驗時，會發生什麼。他們或者她們（後者人數極少）看待糟糕的經濟，就像是一家處境不佳的企業，需要削減成本，提升競爭力。商人會認爲，要想創造就業，工資就必須下降，開支就需要削減，總而言之，要勒緊褲腰帶。政府揹負赤字去花錢，以及印錢這樣的伎倆，肯定沒辦法解決問題，而問題肯定是根本性的。

In reality, however, cutting wages and spending in a depressed economy just aggravates the real problem, which is inadequate demand. Deficit spending and aggressive money-printing, on the other hand, can help a lot.
然而實際上，在經濟受到抑制時，削減工資和開支只會加劇真正的問題，真正的問題是需求不足。反過來講，政府揹負赤字去花錢，以及大手筆地印錢卻有很大幫助。

But how can this kind of logic be sold to business leaders, especially when it comes from pointy-headed academic types? The fate of the world economy may hinge on the answer.
然而怎麼才能讓商界領袖接受這種邏輯呢，況且這種建議還是那些學術界的書呆子提出的？世界經濟的命運，可能都有賴於這個問題的答案。

Here in Japan, the fight against deflation is all too likely to fail if conventional notions of prudence prevail. But can unconventionality triumph over the instincts of business leaders? Stay tuned.
在日本，如果審慎的常規觀念佔了上風，抗擊通縮的戰鬥就很容易失敗。然而反常規的思路，能夠壓制住商界領袖的本能嗎？請拭目以待。