仅靠一点央行的货币政策，日本经济无法走出通缩的泥潭
Covid-19 Brings Japan’s ‘Peter Pan Economy’ Down To Earth
日本经济的复苏梦想在新冠疫情中破灭
作者：William Pesek
Ask folks in Tokyo why Japan’s best expansion since the 1980s flopped and they’ll blame one of two things: the trade war or Covid-19. Some, of course, might guilt both.
如果你询问东京人，为什么日本错过了1980年代以来最好的一次发展机遇，他们会将此失败归咎于贸易战或新冠疫情。当然，他们中的某些人会同时加罪于两者。
But let’s be honest about the real culprit. It’s Peter Pan.
但让我们坦诚地面对真正的罪魁祸首吧，它就是彼得·潘。
Don’t fault me for dragging J.M. Barrie's beloved character into Japan’s deflation mess. None other than Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda did that in 2015 when he explained how he planned to reanimate Asia’s second-biggest economy.
不要指责我将J.M. Barrie创作的受人喜爱的角色来充当日本经济通缩的元凶。除了日本央行行长黑田东彦在2015年解释他将如何使亚洲第二大经济体恢复活力 时用 过彼得潘这个概念之外，还没有其他人这么做过。
Kuroda argued the key to the BOJ’s historic easing boosting demand was for tens of millions of Japanese to, essentially, believe in a little magic. “I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, 'the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.'"
黑田试图说服大众的理论是，历史上宽松政策所提升消费的原因，主要是千万日本群众发自内心地相信一点点小魔法。“我相信你们中的大多数都对彼得潘的故事感到熟悉。在这个故事中有则谚语，‘当你们怀疑自己是否真的可以飞翔的时候，你们就永远不能再起飞了。’“
Five years on, the plan isn’t flying. Sure, President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China have been quite the subplot. And the coronavirus shock is surely upending Kuroda’s economy—and the global one, more broadly—in unpredictable ways.
五年过去了，黑田的计划也并没有起飞。当然，特朗普总统对于中国所征收的关税影响了日本的计划。新冠疫情的发生也一定扰乱了黑田的经济学－也搅乱了全球的，更广范围的经济－而且是以不可预知的方式来进行的。
But Kuroda’s magic act wasn’t fooling us even before Trump began taxing steel, aluminum and more than $500 billion of Chinese goods. Neither wages nor inflation were rising markedly in the five years between 2013 and 2018, when Kuroda’s BOJ was firing his monetary “bazooka” in all directions.
但是，黑田的魔法伎俩即使在特朗普还没有针对中国的钢铁和多于5千亿美元的中国商品启动税收*器武**之前，也并没有使我们上当。在2013年至2018年的5年时间内，日本的工资和通胀率都没有表现出明显的上涨态势，而与此同时，黑田的日本央行正在用货币政策的“火箭炮“向日本经济全面开炮。
The economy cratered 7.3% in the October-December period—well before Japanese businesses and consumers ever heard of Covid-19. Turns out, getting 126 million people to suspend disbelief requires more than talk. It requires more than adding conventional credit to an aging and uncompetitive economy.
去年10至12月这段时间内，日本经济萎缩了7.3％-此时日本的企业和消费者还没有听说过新冠疫情。这证明，仅靠语言是无法让1.26亿人恢复信心的。重启一个处于老化阶段并且丧失了竞争力的经济体，所需要的不仅仅是常规的增加信贷的刺激方式。
This realization finally hit Kuroda, who in recent days appears to have dropped the act. Last week, Kuroda for the first time since assuming the BOJ governorship in 2013 dispensed with the fairy-tale talk. He talked realistically about slowing growth to come.
这份领悟最终刺激了黑田，他在近期的表现显示出他已经放弃了魔法表演。上周，他自2013年出任央行行长并发表童话故事般的讲话以来首次丢弃了这种思维，他第一次现实地谈到日本的经济增长将会放缓。
Just as important, he flipped the script from which the BOJ has been reading under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. All along, the focus has been on meeting a 2% inflation target. To get there, Kuroda’s team hoarded half of all government bonds, cornered the stock market via exchange-traded funds and pushed into any number of other assets.
同等重要的是，他也抛开了日本央行在首相安倍晋三任期内所参照演出的剧本。一直以来，央行的焦点都是放在完成2%通胀率的目标之上。黑田的团队为了达成这个目标，积敛了半数的政府债券，通过交易所交易基金ETF把持了股市，并且持有了所有其他种类的资产。
These efforts warped bond trading and propped up stocks, but didn’t catalyze the virtuous cycle Abe and Kuroda previewed. Trickle-down economics, in other words, failed us again. What’s missing is the structural reform big bang Abe promised in 2012.
这些努力歪曲了债市交易并且支撑了股票市场，但是却没能促成安倍和黑田所预期的良性循环。安倍在2012年所允诺的结构性的经济大改革并未到来。
Abe pledged to loosen labor markets, incentivize innovation, cut bureaucracy, empower women, raise productivity and internationalize corporate governance. He slow-walked these and other upgrades. The absence of clear change left Japan Inc. CEOs reluctant to share corporate profits with workers.
安倍曾承诺会放开人力市场，激励创新，削减官僚主义，赋能女性，提高生产率并且使得公司治理更为国际化。但他却将这些措施和其他的提升措施的速度一起放缓了。由于缺乏明确可见的转变，日本公司的CEO们都不愿意和员工们分享企业利润。
Tokyo has been involved in a staring contest. Abe and Kuroda believed epic BOJ stimulus and weaker a yen would shock the system. CEOs saw it as a nice opening, but what’s next? Turns out, CEOs are skeptical of an Abe-Kuroda reform team that never really grew up.
东京被卷入了一场炫目的测试之中。安倍和黑田曾相信宏大的央行货币刺激和日元贬值可以冲击整个经济体系。CEO们将这些举措视为良好的开端，但是随后而来的是什么呢？事实证明，CEO们对于始终没有成长的安倍黑田改革团队，抱持了一如既往的怀疑态度。
Kurodanomics needs a sequel, and a splashy one at that. The BOJ can produce one by expanding asset purchases to other assets. It could recalibrate government bond purchases to help banks, particularly regional ones, increase credit growth. It could buy mountains of local-government debt to give municipalities greater fiscal space to invest in job creation.
黑田经济学在这个阶段需要的是一个引人注目的续集。日本央行只能通过扩张资产购买到包含不同的资产包，来制造出其中一个有看点的刺激措施。它可以重新调整政府债券的购买力，用以支持银行，尤其是那些地方银行，来增加信用刺激。它也可以大量地购买地方政府的债券，让基层政权有条件创造更多的工作机会。
The BOJ could ask lawmakers to empower it to engage in a quid pro quo with large companies: the central bank could buy debt from companies pledging not to lay off workers. And make even bigger purchases from companies willing to raise wages.
日本央行可以向议员们提出要求，使其得到和大型公司进行交易的权利：例如央行可以购买那些承诺不会裁员的公司的债券，甚至可以加量购买那些愿意给员工加工资的公司的债券。
Kuroda’s team could work with the Ministry of Finance to devise ways to get more cash into consumers’ hands. The specifics of Abe’s $2.2 trillion of public spending are opaque and focused on corporate giants. Why not allow the BOJ to spearhead a temporary universal basic income scheme?
黑田的团队可以和财务省一起合作，设计出更多的把现金输送到消费者手中的方法。安倍的2.2万亿日元的公共财政支出计划是不透明的，并且帮助的对象主要是企业界巨头们。为什么不允许日本央行带头做出一份临时的全民基本收入计划呢？
The time of trying to bamboozle the masses with theatrics and Disney-level happy thoughts has passed. With inflation seen average -0.5% relative to the 1% gain the BOJ previewed in January. A Reuters poll of economists expects a 27.2% drop in annualized gross domestic product in the April-June quarter.
试图以喜剧效果和迪士尼水平的娱乐方式来麻醉大众的时代已经成为了过去时。相较于一月的时候央行做出的1%的预期，今年的平均通胀率实际上为－0.5%。一个路透社的经济学家们的调查表明，经济学家们预计4-6月的季度内，GDP会减少27.2%。
It’s clear what Kuroda had been trying to do. There’s a bit of hocus pocus to the central banking game. That’s doubly so when you’re trying to alter a “deflationary mindset” decades in the making. Yet Japan’s $5 trillion economy put too much faith in happy talk. At some point, Kuroda must examine why Japan is still grappling with deflationary pressures—and recalibrate accordingly.
黑田一直致力的事项是显而易见的，他运用了一点点中央银行的戏法手段。考虑到日本在这十年里一直都在调整“通货紧缩的心理状态”的十年里，他使用这些戏法的可能性就更大了。但是，日本的5万亿经济将太多的信仰投入到了愉快的话术当中。在某些时刻，黑田必须自省为什么日本仍然被通缩的压力所绑缚－并且也该思考究竟该如何重新调准增长的靶心。
There’s still scope for the BOJ to do just that. To change the script and wow investors, businesspeople and Japanese households, Kuroda must recalibrate his policy mix and get more creative. At the moment, though, Kuroda and his team seem stuck in, well. Neverland.
对于日本央行来说，仍然有达成经济增长目标的可操作空间。为了改写剧本，并且使投资人，企业家和日本民众感到眼前一亮，黑田需要重新校对他的政策组合并且需要更多的创意。只不过现在这个阶段，黑田和他的团队看上去仍然被困在梦幻岛之内。
翻译：杨赛
本文来自微 信 公众号“财经十一人”（ID：caijingEleven）