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2021-09-06

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Jerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔对经济稳定的追求正在破坏稳定</blockquote>

When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no d

Jerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔对经济稳定的追求正在破坏稳定</blockquote>

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{"i18n":{"language":"zh_CN"},"data":{"magic":2,"id":817685467,"tweetId":"817685467","gmtCreate":1630941647559,"gmtModify":1631890984672,"author":{"id":3580699893311710,"idStr":"3580699893311710","authorId":3580699893311710,"authorIdStr":"3580699893311710","name":"Avester","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/fc17dd0c5da2587e7a887802bef82983","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":24,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Comment</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Comment</body></html>","text":"Comment","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/817685467","repostId":1138372877,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1138372877","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1630932732,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1138372877?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-06 20:52","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Jerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔对经济稳定的追求正在破坏稳定</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1138372877","media":"zerohedge","summary":"When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no d","content":"When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no different with Jerome Powell’s virtual address to the annual meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What they got is what Harry Truman complained about when hearing from his economic advisors:“On the one hand, ‘this,’ but on the other hand, ‘that’.”Truman said that he desperately wanted a one-handed economist.<blockquote>当美联储主席发表讲话时，金融市场都会倾听，这与杰罗姆·鲍威尔在怀俄明州杰克逊霍尔举行的央行行长年会上的虚拟讲话没有什么不同。他们得到的是哈里·杜鲁门在听取他的经济顾问的意见时所抱怨的：“一方面是‘这个’，另一方面是‘那个’。”杜鲁门说，他非常想要一个单手经济学家。</blockquote> After a decade of general economic calm most of the time, with modest to reasonable growth, relatively low price inflation, and, at the beginning of 2020 before the Coronavirus lockdowns, unemployment at its lowest level in half a century,everyone is now worried about what to expect from the Federal Reserve in terms of monetary and interest rate policy in the months and years ahead in the face of all that has been happening for the last year and a half.<blockquote>在经历了十年大部分时间经济总体平静、适度至合理的增长、相对较低的物价通胀，以及在2020年初冠状病毒封锁之前，失业率处于半个世纪以来的最低水平，面对过去一年半发生的一切，每个人现在都在担心美联储在未来几个月和几年的货币和利率政策方面会发生什么。</blockquote> Whipsaw GDP and Huge Government Expenditures<blockquote>大幅增长的GDP和巨额政府支出</blockquote> After a staggering decline in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from $19.2 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $17.2 trillion in the second quarter of 2020, or a 9 percent decrease of real GDP in a matter of a few months, the latest revised estimate by the&nbsp;Bureau of Economic Analysis&nbsp;(BEA) for the second quarter of 2021 is that real GDP reached $19.36 trillion. This was a 12.5 percent increase over its 2020 low, and a level now above its pre-Coronavirus high.<blockquote>在实际国内生产总值（GDP）从2019年第四季度的19.2万亿美元惊人下降到2020年第二季度的17.2万亿美元，即实际GDP在几个月内下降了9%之后，经济分析局（BEA）对2021年第二季度的最新修订估计为实际GDP达到19.36万亿美元。这比2020年的低点增长了12.5%，目前高于冠状病毒爆发前的高点。</blockquote> It is worth keeping in mind, however, that all of these numbers are exaggerated in terms of real private sector vibrancy because in 2019, federal government&nbsp;expenditures&nbsp;came to $4.45 trillion, or 23 percent of that $19.2 trillion GDP total.By the end of 2020, due to the relaxing of the federal and state lockdown and shutdown mandates over much of the U.S. economy in the second half of last year, real GDP had recovered to $18.76 trillion, but federal government expenditures came to $6.6 trillion, or 35 percent of that total GDP. And just in the first half of 2021, out of that $19.36 trillion GDP, federal spending has already been $5.86 trillion of that total, or 30.2 percent.<blockquote>然而，值得记住的是，就私营部门的实际活力而言，所有这些数字都被夸大了，因为2019年，联邦政府支出达到4.45万亿美元，占19.2万亿美元GDP总额的23%。到2020年底，由于去年下半年联邦和州对美国经济大部分地区的封锁和关闭命令放松，实际GDP已恢复至18.76万亿美元，但联邦政府支出达到6.6万亿美元，占GDP总量的35%。就在2021年上半年，在19.36万亿美元的GDP中，联邦支出已经占了5.86万亿美元，占30.2%。</blockquote> If government spending is even partly discounted from GDP as a false indicator of the economic “health” of the U.S., since Uncle Sam has nothing to spend other than what it either first taxes away from the private sector or has borrowed from the financial markets, the private economy is far from doing as well as the GDP numbers suggest.<blockquote>如果政府支出甚至部分从GDP中扣除，作为美国经济“健康”的错误指标，因为山姆大叔除了首先从私营部门征税或从金融市场借款之外没有什么可花的，私营经济远没有GDP数据显示的那么好。</blockquote> Lagging Unemployment and Rising Price Inflation<blockquote>滞后的失业和不断上升的物价通胀</blockquote> After unemployment had reached a low of 3.5 percent of the labor force at the start of 2020, it rose to almost 15 percent in April of last year, due to the government-commanded halt of a huge amount of economic activity. In&nbsp;July 2021, unemployment had declined to 5.4 percent of the labor force; but this still left it almost 55 percent above its low at the beginning of 2020.<blockquote>在2020年初达到劳动力3.5%的低点后，由于政府下令停止大量经济活动，失业率在去年4月升至近15%。2021年7月，失业率已降至劳动力的5.4%；但这仍使其比2020年初的低点高出近55%。</blockquote> After the&nbsp;Consumer Price Index&nbsp;(CPI) mostly fluctuated in a relatively narrow range of between one and two percent, annually, over the last ten years, 2021 has seen the CPI increase to 5.4 percent in July of this year. Certain subgroups, such as energy and used car automotive sectors increased in double digit ranges on an annualized basis.<blockquote>在过去十年中，消费者价格指数（CPI）每年大多在1%至2%的相对狭窄范围内波动后，2021年CPI在今年7月上涨至5.4%。某些子组，例如能源和二手车汽车行业，年化增长幅度达到两位数。</blockquote> With unemployment still considered high, with the CPI increasing noticeably above the decade-long annual average, and question marks concerning how GDP will grow for the remainder of this year, given continuing supply-chain disruptions and uncertainties about the impact of variations and new mutations of the Coronavirus, all eyes and ears turned to Jerome Powell’s pronouncements about the future direction of Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy.<blockquote>由于失业率仍然很高，CPI涨幅明显高于十年来的年平均水平，鉴于供应链持续中断以及变异和新变异影响的不确定性，今年剩余时间GDP将如何增长也存在问号冠状病毒，所有的眼睛和耳朵都转向了杰罗姆·鲍威尔关于美联储货币和利率政策未来方向的声明。</blockquote> Powell’s Maybe This, Maybe That, Policy Pronouncement<blockquote>鲍威尔的政策声明也许是这个，也许是那个</blockquote> And what he said was that the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has not decided what to do!<blockquote>而他说的是，美联储理事会还没有决定该怎么做！</blockquote> On the one hand, the economy is improving so, perhaps, before the end of the year, the Fed will reduce its current&nbsp;monthly purchase&nbsp;of $120 billion worth of assets – $80 billion of U.S. government securities, and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. And it may decide that it is time to no longer use its policy tools to keep key interest rates close to zero.<blockquote>一方面，经济正在改善，因此，也许在今年年底之前，美联储将减少目前每月购买价值1200亿美元的资产——800亿美元的美国政府证券和400亿美元的抵押贷款支持证券。它可能会决定，是时候不再使用其政策工具将关键利率保持在接近零的水平了。</blockquote> On the other hand, recent price inflation may only be a transitory spurt due to supply-side problems, so the concern about accelerating price increases may be misplaced. Therefore, it may be premature to reduce asset purchases too quickly and certainly it is necessary to be cautious in any nudging up of interest rates that might cut short the national economic recovery before unemployment has been reduced, once again, to a level closer to standard benchmarks of “full employment.”<blockquote>另一方面，近期的价格通胀可能只是供给侧问题造成的短暂井喷，因此对价格加速上涨的担忧可能是错位的。因此，过快减少资产购买可能还为时过早，当然，在失业率再次降至更接近“充分就业”标准基准的水平之前，任何可能缩短国民经济复苏的加息都需要谨慎。</blockquote> On the one hand, the worst of the Coronavirus may have passed, so there may be no new shutdown hurdles in the way of continuing improvement as reflected in the usual macroeconomic measurements. On the other hand, virus variants may prevent a smooth path to a fully restored and growing economy. So, it may be too soon to really specify when and by how much asset purchases will be reduced or by how much those interest rates will be raised from their current near zero levels.<blockquote>一方面，冠状病毒最糟糕的时期可能已经过去，因此在持续改善的道路上可能不会出现新的停工障碍，正如通常的宏观经济指标所反映的那样。另一方面，病毒变种可能会阻碍通往全面恢复和增长的经济的顺利道路。因此，现在真正确定何时减少资产购买以及减少多少，或者这些利率将从目前接近零的水平上调多少，可能还为时过早。</blockquote> The Fed Chairman also said that, on the one hand, the Fed leadership has plenty of experience and policy tools to keep the economy on a sound and even path. On the other hand, such things as the impact of the Coronavirus and the threats facing the world from global warming are unique, making charting the Fed policy course a distinct challenge.<blockquote>这位美联储主席还表示，一方面，美联储领导层拥有丰富的经验和政策工具，可以让经济保持在稳健、平稳的道路上。另一方面，冠状病毒的影响和全球变暖对世界的威胁是独特的，这使得制定美联储的政策路线成为一个明显的挑战。</blockquote> Powell’s Reticence and the Political Business Cycle<blockquote>鲍威尔的沉默与政治商业周期</blockquote> In other words, Jerome Powell evaded any straightforward policy program, and therefore offered something for almost everyone, in terms of easing fears and concerns that either the policy foot will stay too long where it is on the accelerator or will start putting on the brakes too quickly.Either he is being reticent due to honest doubts about what he thinks is ahead for the economy, or he knows how to play to the audience in the White House and in Congress who will decide whether or not he is appointed for a second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. After all, you don’t want to seem to be planning any clear policy moves that might threaten the reelection of Senators or Congressmen in the 2022 elections, or antagonize a president who does not want to lose his thin majority in the national legislature.<blockquote>换句话说，杰罗姆·鲍威尔回避了任何直截了当的政策计划，因此为几乎所有人提供了一些东西，缓解了人们的恐惧和担忧，即政策要么会在油门上停留太久，要么会开始踩刹车太快。要么他是因为对他认为的经济前景的诚实怀疑而保持沉默，要么他知道如何迎合白宫和国会的观众，他们将决定他是否被任命为美联储系统理事会主席的第二个任期。毕竟，你不想看起来正在计划任何可能威胁参议员或众议员在2022年选举中连任的明确政策举措，或者激怒一位不想失去在国家立法机构中微弱多数的总统。</blockquote> That politicians and central bankers are sensitive to the phases of the business cycle as they may impact the political electoral cycle in thinking about their policy decisions and directions has been understood by some economists at least since Johan Akerman’s (1896-1982) analysis of the&nbsp;“Political Economic Cycle”&nbsp;(Kyklos, May 1947), in which he traced out observed changes in those running governments in democratic societies resulting from the phases in the business cycle, and how those in government attempt to manage public policy to maintain their political positions.<blockquote>至少自约翰·阿克曼（Johan Akerman，1896-1982）对“政治经济周期”（基克洛斯在这篇文章中，他追溯了在民主社会中由商业周期的各个阶段引起的政府管理者的变化，以及政府中的那些人如何试图管理公共政策以维持他们的政治地位。</blockquote> Historically, Akerman said, looking over the period from the mid-19th&nbsp;century to 1945 in countries like Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Sweden, the result of the analysis could be summarized in the following way: “All general economic depressions in England . . . lead to cabinet crises and a change of the party in power . . . In the United States the presidential elections as a rule involve a change in party control when votes are cast during a depression and a maintenance of the party in office when the votes are cast during periods of prosperity,” in sixteen of the twenty elections between 1865 and 1945.<blockquote>阿克曼说，从历史上看，纵观19世纪中期至1945年期间的英国、美国、德国和瑞典等国家，分析结果可以总结如下：“英国所有普遍的经济萧条……都会导致内阁危机和执政党的更迭……在美国，总统选举通常涉及在萧条时期投票时改变政党控制，在繁荣时期投票时维持政党执政”，在1865年至1945年的20次选举中有16次。</blockquote> Governments, Akerman also pointed out, try “to stabilize financial and economic conditions, and for a brief period may succeed in doing so.” While not pursuing it in his article, the fact is that the underlying circumstances that create “booms” that result in “busts” are usually of the government’s own policy. making. The “good times” monetary and fiscal policies finally create the economic crises that threaten the political policy-makers’ positions in authority. Hence, a government’s frequent demise in the next election when a recession or depression finally occurs. (p. 107)<blockquote>阿克曼还指出，各国政府试图“稳定金融和经济状况，在短时间内可能会成功。”虽然他的文章没有追究这一点，但事实是，造成“繁荣”导致“萧条”的潜在环境通常是政府自己的政策。制作。“好时代”的货币和财政政策最终造成了经济危机，威胁到政治决策者的权威地位。因此，当经济衰退或萧条最终发生时，政府往往会在下一次选举中垮台。（第107页）</blockquote> Interest Rates Should Coordinate Savings and Investment<blockquote>利率应协调储蓄和投资</blockquote> But this gets to the real essence of the dilemma in Jerome Powell’s statement of Federal Reserve policy and its possible future direction. The underlying presumption is that a central bank can and should be attempting to manage the monetary system and the level of interest rates in the financial markets and, therefore, trying to macro-manage the society as a whole.<blockquote>但这触及了杰罗姆·鲍威尔美联储政策声明中困境的真正本质及其未来可能的方向。潜在的假设是，中央银行可以也应该试图管理货币体系和金融市场的利率水平，因此，试图对整个社会进行宏观管理。</blockquote> Let us start with interest rates. The role of market prices is to bring into coordinated balance the two sides of demand and supply. Prices do so by effectively informing those needing to know on the supply side what is it that demanders want and the value they place upon it in terms of what they are willing to pay to get it; prices, at the same time, inform demanders what suppliers can and are willing to produce and offer for sale, and at what price reflecting the producer’s opportunity costs of bringing a particular good or service to market. The competitive interaction of those two sides of the market brings about the balance between them.<blockquote>让我们从利率开始。市场价格的作用是使供求双方达到协调平衡。价格通过有效地告知那些在供应方需要知道需求者想要什么以及他们愿意支付什么来获得它的价值来做到这一点；与此同时，价格告诉需求者供应商能够并且愿意生产和出售什么，以及以什么价格反映了生产者将特定商品或服务推向市场的机会成本。市场双方的竞争互动带来了它们之间的平衡。</blockquote> The role of interest rates is to do the same for borrowers and lenders. It is the trading of the use of resources across time between those who are interested and willing to defer the more immediate use of resources (expressed in money) in their possession or under their control, in return for a premium in the future from those interested in more immediate uses of those resources beyond their own capacity in exchange for paying such a premium in the future. That premium is the rate of interest, which may vary with the duration of the loan and risk elements in extending it.<blockquote>利率的作用是为借款人和贷款人做同样的事情。它是那些有兴趣并愿意推迟更直接地使用其拥有或控制的资源（以货币表示）的人之间对资源使用的交易，以换取那些有兴趣更直接地使用超出其自身能力的资源的人在未来支付这种溢价。该溢价就是利率，它可能会随着贷款期限和延长贷款的风险因素而变化。</blockquote> The role of the rate of interest is to coordinate the willingness of savers with the desires of borrowers. Any rate of interest above or below this results in, respectively, an excess of savings over investment demand or an excess of investment demand over available savings.<blockquote>利率的作用是协调储户的意愿和借款人的意愿。高于或低于这一利率的任何利率分别导致储蓄超过投资需求或投资需求超过可用储蓄。</blockquote> Manipulating Interests Rates Distorts Markets<blockquote>操纵利率扭曲市场</blockquote> The crucial difference between a price, say, for hats that is set below the market-clearing, or coordinating, level is that a shortage results with some willing buyers leaving the market empty-handed; but when the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, wishes to manipulate interest rates below the market coordinating level, it fills the gap with newly created money with which loans may be extended in excess of actual savings in the economy.<blockquote>比如说，低于市场清算或协调水平的帽子价格之间的关键区别在于，短缺会导致一些有意愿的买家空手离开市场；但是，当美联储或任何中央银行希望将利率操纵到市场协调水平以下时，它就会用新创造的货币来填补缺口，这些货币可以用来发放超过经济实际储蓄的贷款。</blockquote> This not only results in an increase in the number of units of the medium of exchange through which buyers can express their greater demand for desired goods and services, tending, in general, to place upward pressure on overall market prices. It also influences the structure of relative prices and wages, since increases in the supply of money can only enter the economy through the increased demand for the particular goods, resources, and services those borrowers of that new money wish to purchase and use. But the money is then passed to another group of hands; that is, those who have sold those goods, resources and services to the borrowers. This second group, in turn, spends the new money that they have received from sales on other goods, resources and services for which they wish to increase their demand.<blockquote>这不仅导致交换媒介单位数量的增加，购买者可以通过这种媒介表达他们对所需商品和服务的更大需求，通常倾向于对总体市场价格施加上行压力。它还影响相对价格和工资的结构，因为货币供应量的增加只能通过对新货币的借款人希望购买和使用的特定商品、资源和服务的需求增加而进入经济。但是这些钱随后被传递到另一组人手中；即那些向借款人出售这些商品、资源和服务的人。反过来，第二组人将他们从销售中获得的新钱花在他们希望增加需求的其他商品、资源和服务上。</blockquote> Step-by-step, in a patterned sequence through time, the newly created money increases the demands and the prices of one set of goods and services, and then another, and then another, until, finally, in principle, all prices for finished goods and the factors of production will have been impacted to one degree or another, at different times in the sequence, with changes in relative profit margins and employment opportunities for as long as the monetary inflationary process continues.<blockquote>随着时间的推移，新创造的货币一步一步地增加了一套商品和服务的需求和价格，然后是另一套，然后是另一套，直到最后，原则上，成品和生产要素的所有价格都会在序列的不同时间受到某种程度的影响，只要货币通货膨胀过程继续，相对利润率和就业机会就会发生变化。</blockquote> This also means that whenever the monetary expansion stops or slows down, or even, perhaps, fails to accelerate, the resulting patterned use of labor, resources, and capital equipment brought into existence due to the way the money has entered into the economy and is being spent, period-after-period, begins to fall apart. This precipitates a readjustment process during which it is discovered that labor, capital and resources have been directed into allocated and applied for uses that are unsustainable once the inflationary process comes to an end.<blockquote>这也意味着，每当货币扩张停止或放缓，甚至可能未能加速时，由于货币进入经济和支出的方式而产生的劳动力、资源和资本设备的模式使用就开始分崩离析。这引发了一个重新调整过程，在此过程中，人们发现，一旦通货膨胀过程结束，劳动力、资本和资源已被分配和应用于不可持续的用途。</blockquote> The Fed’s Monetary Expansion and Bank Reserve Tricks<blockquote>美联储的货币扩张和银行准备金技巧</blockquote> For over ten years, since the financial and housing crisis of 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has been dramatically expanding the money supply. In January 2008, the&nbsp;Monetary Base&nbsp;(loanable reserves in the banking system plus currency in general circulation) equaled $837 billion; by August 2014, the Monetary Base had been expanded to over $4 trillion. In February 2020, just before the Coronavirus crisis impacted the U.S. in terms of the government mandated lockdowns and shutdowns, it still was historically high at $3.45 trillion; but by July 2021, the Monetary Base stood at $6.13 trillion, or a nearly 78 percent increase just in the last year and a half.<blockquote>自2008-2009年金融和房地产危机以来的十多年里，美联储一直在大幅扩大货币供应。2008年1月，货币基础（银行体系可供借贷储备加上一般流通货币）为8,370亿元；到2014年8月，货币基础已扩大到超过4万亿美元。2020年2月，就在冠状病毒危机影响美国政府强制封锁和停工之前，仍处于3.45万亿美元的历史高位；但到2021年7月，基础货币为6.13万亿美元，仅在过去一年半内就增长了近78%。</blockquote> Why has there not been the expected general price inflation from such a huge increase in the money supply through the banking system? Because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks not to fully lend the loanable reserves at their disposal.As a result, as of&nbsp;July 2021, banks were holding “excess reserves,” (that is, reserves above the minimum Federal Reserve rules require banks to hold against possible cash withdrawals by their depositors), of around $3.9 trillion, upon which the Federal Reserve&nbsp;pays&nbsp;those banks an interest rate of 0.15 percent. In other words, 63 percent of the Monetary Base is being held off the active loan market.<blockquote>为什么通过银行系统如此巨大的货币供应增加没有出现预期的普遍价格通胀？因为美联储一直在付钱给银行，让他们不要完全借出他们可以支配的可贷准备金。因此，截至2021年7月，银行持有约3.9万亿美元的“超额准备金”（即高于美联储规则要求银行为储户可能提取现金而持有的最低准备金），美联储向这些银行支付0.15%的利率。换句话说，63%的基础货币被活跃的贷款市场拒之门外。</blockquote> Given that real GDP in the United States has increased by over 25 percent since 2010, and the velocity of circulation of money (number of times money turns over in transactions per period of time), has decreased by almost 40 percent over the last ten years or so, it is not too surprising that prices in general have not been rising more, or more rapidly, given these countervailing factors, plus the Federal Reserve’s “trick” of paying banks to not lend all the huge amount of bank reserves their open market operations have created during the past decade.<blockquote>鉴于美国的实际GDP自2010年以来增长了25%以上，而货币流通速度（每段时间内货币在交易中周转的次数）在过去十年左右下降了近40%，鉴于这些抵消因素，再加上美联储付钱给银行不要将其公开市场操作在过去十年中创造的所有巨额银行准备金放贷的“伎俩”，价格总体上没有上涨更多或更快也就不足为奇了。</blockquote> Markets Still Distorted, Even with Low Price Inflation<blockquote>即使价格通胀较低，市场仍然扭曲</blockquote> It is nonetheless the case, that through its continuing large purchases of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, market interest rates have been artificially pushed significantly below any rates of interest that would prevail on financial markets not manipulated in this manner.<blockquote>然而，事实是，通过持续大量购买美国国债和抵押贷款支持证券，市场利率被人为地大幅推低到不以这种方式操纵的金融市场的任何利率以下。</blockquote> It is not unreasonable to ask what informational role market interest rates have been even playing about the real underlying savings and investment borrowing relationship in the economy in such a setting. Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy has undermined any reasonably accurate intertemporal price to coordinate saving with borrowing.<blockquote>在这种情况下，人们不禁要问，市场利率在经济中真正的潜在储蓄和投资借贷关系中发挥了什么信息作用。美联储的货币和利率政策破坏了任何合理准确的跨期价格来协调储蓄和借贷。</blockquote> Another way of saying this is that the Federal Reserve’s monetary central planning has virtually abolished a market-based pricing system for the allocation and use of resources across time. How can anyone easily know what real savings is available to fund investment and other loan uses in a way that is not throwing the economy out of serious balance?<blockquote>另一种说法是，美联储的货币中央计划实际上废除了跨时间资源分配和使用的基于市场的定价体系。任何人怎么能轻易地知道有哪些真正的储蓄可以用来为投资和其他贷款用途提供资金，而不会使经济严重失衡？</blockquote> In the name of trying to steer the economic “ship” to assure growing GDP, moderate price inflation, and “full employment” of the labor force, Jerome Powell and his fellow Fed Board members are, in fact, setting the stage for an eventual economic downturn by distorting a series of interconnected “microeconomic” relationships in the name of “macroeconomic” stability.<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔（Jerome Powell）和他的美联储董事会成员以试图驾驭经济“船”以确保GDP增长、温和的价格通胀和劳动力“充分就业”的名义，实际上是在通过以“宏观经济”稳定的名义扭曲一系列相互关联的“微观经济”关系，为最终的经济衰退埋下伏笔。</blockquote> When the Fed chairman cautiously suggests that the American central bankers are not sure what they are going to do, it is because they cannot do what they say they want to do.By trying to pursue their declared goals through the monetary and interest rate policy tools at their disposal, they are, in fact, continuing to imbalance and wrongly “twist” the real economy in ways that will result in the instability, and the eventual recession and likely price inflation they say they wish to prevent.<blockquote>当美联储主席谨慎地暗示美国央行行长们不确定他们要做什么时，那是因为他们不能做他们说想做的事情。通过试图通过他们所掌握的货币和利率政策工具来追求他们宣称的目标，他们实际上是在继续失衡和错误地“扭曲”实体经济，从而导致不稳定、最终的衰退和他们所说的他们希望防止的可能的价格通胀。</blockquote>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Jerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔对经济稳定的追求正在破坏稳定</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nJerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔对经济稳定的追求正在破坏稳定</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nzerohedge2021-09-06 20:52\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nWhen the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no different with Jerome Powell’s virtual address to the annual meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What they got is what Harry Truman complained about when hearing from his economic advisors:“On the one hand, ‘this,’ but on the other hand, ‘that’.”Truman said that he desperately wanted a one-handed economist.<blockquote>当美联储主席发表讲话时，金融市场都会倾听，这与杰罗姆·鲍威尔在怀俄明州杰克逊霍尔举行的央行行长年会上的虚拟讲话没有什么不同。他们得到的是哈里·杜鲁门在听取他的经济顾问的意见时所抱怨的：“一方面是‘这个’，另一方面是‘那个’。”杜鲁门说，他非常想要一个单手经济学家。</blockquote> After a decade of general economic calm most of the time, with modest to reasonable growth, relatively low price inflation, and, at the beginning of 2020 before the Coronavirus lockdowns, unemployment at its lowest level in half a century,everyone is now worried about what to expect from the Federal Reserve in terms of monetary and interest rate policy in the months and years ahead in the face of all that has been happening for the last year and a half.<blockquote>在经历了十年大部分时间经济总体平静、适度至合理的增长、相对较低的物价通胀，以及在2020年初冠状病毒封锁之前，失业率处于半个世纪以来的最低水平，面对过去一年半发生的一切，每个人现在都在担心美联储在未来几个月和几年的货币和利率政策方面会发生什么。</blockquote> Whipsaw GDP and Huge Government Expenditures<blockquote>大幅增长的GDP和巨额政府支出</blockquote> After a staggering decline in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from $19.2 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $17.2 trillion in the second quarter of 2020, or a 9 percent decrease of real GDP in a matter of a few months, the latest revised estimate by the&nbsp;Bureau of Economic Analysis&nbsp;(BEA) for the second quarter of 2021 is that real GDP reached $19.36 trillion. This was a 12.5 percent increase over its 2020 low, and a level now above its pre-Coronavirus high.<blockquote>在实际国内生产总值（GDP）从2019年第四季度的19.2万亿美元惊人下降到2020年第二季度的17.2万亿美元，即实际GDP在几个月内下降了9%之后，经济分析局（BEA）对2021年第二季度的最新修订估计为实际GDP达到19.36万亿美元。这比2020年的低点增长了12.5%，目前高于冠状病毒爆发前的高点。</blockquote> It is worth keeping in mind, however, that all of these numbers are exaggerated in terms of real private sector vibrancy because in 2019, federal government&nbsp;expenditures&nbsp;came to $4.45 trillion, or 23 percent of that $19.2 trillion GDP total.By the end of 2020, due to the relaxing of the federal and state lockdown and shutdown mandates over much of the U.S. economy in the second half of last year, real GDP had recovered to $18.76 trillion, but federal government expenditures came to $6.6 trillion, or 35 percent of that total GDP. And just in the first half of 2021, out of that $19.36 trillion GDP, federal spending has already been $5.86 trillion of that total, or 30.2 percent.<blockquote>然而，值得记住的是，就私营部门的实际活力而言，所有这些数字都被夸大了，因为2019年，联邦政府支出达到4.45万亿美元，占19.2万亿美元GDP总额的23%。到2020年底，由于去年下半年联邦和州对美国经济大部分地区的封锁和关闭命令放松，实际GDP已恢复至18.76万亿美元，但联邦政府支出达到6.6万亿美元，占GDP总量的35%。就在2021年上半年，在19.36万亿美元的GDP中，联邦支出已经占了5.86万亿美元，占30.2%。</blockquote> If government spending is even partly discounted from GDP as a false indicator of the economic “health” of the U.S., since Uncle Sam has nothing to spend other than what it either first taxes away from the private sector or has borrowed from the financial markets, the private economy is far from doing as well as the GDP numbers suggest.<blockquote>如果政府支出甚至部分从GDP中扣除，作为美国经济“健康”的错误指标，因为山姆大叔除了首先从私营部门征税或从金融市场借款之外没有什么可花的，私营经济远没有GDP数据显示的那么好。</blockquote> Lagging Unemployment and Rising Price Inflation<blockquote>滞后的失业和不断上升的物价通胀</blockquote> After unemployment had reached a low of 3.5 percent of the labor force at the start of 2020, it rose to almost 15 percent in April of last year, due to the government-commanded halt of a huge amount of economic activity. In&nbsp;July 2021, unemployment had declined to 5.4 percent of the labor force; but this still left it almost 55 percent above its low at the beginning of 2020.<blockquote>在2020年初达到劳动力3.5%的低点后，由于政府下令停止大量经济活动，失业率在去年4月升至近15%。2021年7月，失业率已降至劳动力的5.4%；但这仍使其比2020年初的低点高出近55%。</blockquote> After the&nbsp;Consumer Price Index&nbsp;(CPI) mostly fluctuated in a relatively narrow range of between one and two percent, annually, over the last ten years, 2021 has seen the CPI increase to 5.4 percent in July of this year. Certain subgroups, such as energy and used car automotive sectors increased in double digit ranges on an annualized basis.<blockquote>在过去十年中，消费者价格指数（CPI）每年大多在1%至2%的相对狭窄范围内波动后，2021年CPI在今年7月上涨至5.4%。某些子组，例如能源和二手车汽车行业，年化增长幅度达到两位数。</blockquote> With unemployment still considered high, with the CPI increasing noticeably above the decade-long annual average, and question marks concerning how GDP will grow for the remainder of this year, given continuing supply-chain disruptions and uncertainties about the impact of variations and new mutations of the Coronavirus, all eyes and ears turned to Jerome Powell’s pronouncements about the future direction of Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy.<blockquote>由于失业率仍然很高，CPI涨幅明显高于十年来的年平均水平，鉴于供应链持续中断以及变异和新变异影响的不确定性，今年剩余时间GDP将如何增长也存在问号冠状病毒，所有的眼睛和耳朵都转向了杰罗姆·鲍威尔关于美联储货币和利率政策未来方向的声明。</blockquote> Powell’s Maybe This, Maybe That, Policy Pronouncement<blockquote>鲍威尔的政策声明也许是这个，也许是那个</blockquote> And what he said was that the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has not decided what to do!<blockquote>而他说的是，美联储理事会还没有决定该怎么做！</blockquote> On the one hand, the economy is improving so, perhaps, before the end of the year, the Fed will reduce its current&nbsp;monthly purchase&nbsp;of $120 billion worth of assets – $80 billion of U.S. government securities, and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. And it may decide that it is time to no longer use its policy tools to keep key interest rates close to zero.<blockquote>一方面，经济正在改善，因此，也许在今年年底之前，美联储将减少目前每月购买价值1200亿美元的资产——800亿美元的美国政府证券和400亿美元的抵押贷款支持证券。它可能会决定，是时候不再使用其政策工具将关键利率保持在接近零的水平了。</blockquote> On the other hand, recent price inflation may only be a transitory spurt due to supply-side problems, so the concern about accelerating price increases may be misplaced. Therefore, it may be premature to reduce asset purchases too quickly and certainly it is necessary to be cautious in any nudging up of interest rates that might cut short the national economic recovery before unemployment has been reduced, once again, to a level closer to standard benchmarks of “full employment.”<blockquote>另一方面，近期的价格通胀可能只是供给侧问题造成的短暂井喷，因此对价格加速上涨的担忧可能是错位的。因此，过快减少资产购买可能还为时过早，当然，在失业率再次降至更接近“充分就业”标准基准的水平之前，任何可能缩短国民经济复苏的加息都需要谨慎。</blockquote> On the one hand, the worst of the Coronavirus may have passed, so there may be no new shutdown hurdles in the way of continuing improvement as reflected in the usual macroeconomic measurements. On the other hand, virus variants may prevent a smooth path to a fully restored and growing economy. So, it may be too soon to really specify when and by how much asset purchases will be reduced or by how much those interest rates will be raised from their current near zero levels.<blockquote>一方面，冠状病毒最糟糕的时期可能已经过去，因此在持续改善的道路上可能不会出现新的停工障碍，正如通常的宏观经济指标所反映的那样。另一方面，病毒变种可能会阻碍通往全面恢复和增长的经济的顺利道路。因此，现在真正确定何时减少资产购买以及减少多少，或者这些利率将从目前接近零的水平上调多少，可能还为时过早。</blockquote> The Fed Chairman also said that, on the one hand, the Fed leadership has plenty of experience and policy tools to keep the economy on a sound and even path. On the other hand, such things as the impact of the Coronavirus and the threats facing the world from global warming are unique, making charting the Fed policy course a distinct challenge.<blockquote>这位美联储主席还表示，一方面，美联储领导层拥有丰富的经验和政策工具，可以让经济保持在稳健、平稳的道路上。另一方面，冠状病毒的影响和全球变暖对世界的威胁是独特的，这使得制定美联储的政策路线成为一个明显的挑战。</blockquote> Powell’s Reticence and the Political Business Cycle<blockquote>鲍威尔的沉默与政治商业周期</blockquote> In other words, Jerome Powell evaded any straightforward policy program, and therefore offered something for almost everyone, in terms of easing fears and concerns that either the policy foot will stay too long where it is on the accelerator or will start putting on the brakes too quickly.Either he is being reticent due to honest doubts about what he thinks is ahead for the economy, or he knows how to play to the audience in the White House and in Congress who will decide whether or not he is appointed for a second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. After all, you don’t want to seem to be planning any clear policy moves that might threaten the reelection of Senators or Congressmen in the 2022 elections, or antagonize a president who does not want to lose his thin majority in the national legislature.<blockquote>换句话说，杰罗姆·鲍威尔回避了任何直截了当的政策计划，因此为几乎所有人提供了一些东西，缓解了人们的恐惧和担忧，即政策要么会在油门上停留太久，要么会开始踩刹车太快。要么他是因为对他认为的经济前景的诚实怀疑而保持沉默，要么他知道如何迎合白宫和国会的观众，他们将决定他是否被任命为美联储系统理事会主席的第二个任期。毕竟，你不想看起来正在计划任何可能威胁参议员或众议员在2022年选举中连任的明确政策举措，或者激怒一位不想失去在国家立法机构中微弱多数的总统。</blockquote> That politicians and central bankers are sensitive to the phases of the business cycle as they may impact the political electoral cycle in thinking about their policy decisions and directions has been understood by some economists at least since Johan Akerman’s (1896-1982) analysis of the&nbsp;“Political Economic Cycle”&nbsp;(Kyklos, May 1947), in which he traced out observed changes in those running governments in democratic societies resulting from the phases in the business cycle, and how those in government attempt to manage public policy to maintain their political positions.<blockquote>至少自约翰·阿克曼（Johan Akerman，1896-1982）对“政治经济周期”（基克洛斯在这篇文章中，他追溯了在民主社会中由商业周期的各个阶段引起的政府管理者的变化，以及政府中的那些人如何试图管理公共政策以维持他们的政治地位。</blockquote> Historically, Akerman said, looking over the period from the mid-19th&nbsp;century to 1945 in countries like Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Sweden, the result of the analysis could be summarized in the following way: “All general economic depressions in England . . . lead to cabinet crises and a change of the party in power . . . In the United States the presidential elections as a rule involve a change in party control when votes are cast during a depression and a maintenance of the party in office when the votes are cast during periods of prosperity,” in sixteen of the twenty elections between 1865 and 1945.<blockquote>阿克曼说，从历史上看，纵观19世纪中期至1945年期间的英国、美国、德国和瑞典等国家，分析结果可以总结如下：“英国所有普遍的经济萧条……都会导致内阁危机和执政党的更迭……在美国，总统选举通常涉及在萧条时期投票时改变政党控制，在繁荣时期投票时维持政党执政”，在1865年至1945年的20次选举中有16次。</blockquote> Governments, Akerman also pointed out, try “to stabilize financial and economic conditions, and for a brief period may succeed in doing so.” While not pursuing it in his article, the fact is that the underlying circumstances that create “booms” that result in “busts” are usually of the government’s own policy. making. The “good times” monetary and fiscal policies finally create the economic crises that threaten the political policy-makers’ positions in authority. Hence, a government’s frequent demise in the next election when a recession or depression finally occurs. (p. 107)<blockquote>阿克曼还指出，各国政府试图“稳定金融和经济状况，在短时间内可能会成功。”虽然他的文章没有追究这一点，但事实是，造成“繁荣”导致“萧条”的潜在环境通常是政府自己的政策。制作。“好时代”的货币和财政政策最终造成了经济危机，威胁到政治决策者的权威地位。因此，当经济衰退或萧条最终发生时，政府往往会在下一次选举中垮台。（第107页）</blockquote> Interest Rates Should Coordinate Savings and Investment<blockquote>利率应协调储蓄和投资</blockquote> But this gets to the real essence of the dilemma in Jerome Powell’s statement of Federal Reserve policy and its possible future direction. The underlying presumption is that a central bank can and should be attempting to manage the monetary system and the level of interest rates in the financial markets and, therefore, trying to macro-manage the society as a whole.<blockquote>但这触及了杰罗姆·鲍威尔美联储政策声明中困境的真正本质及其未来可能的方向。潜在的假设是，中央银行可以也应该试图管理货币体系和金融市场的利率水平，因此，试图对整个社会进行宏观管理。</blockquote> Let us start with interest rates. The role of market prices is to bring into coordinated balance the two sides of demand and supply. Prices do so by effectively informing those needing to know on the supply side what is it that demanders want and the value they place upon it in terms of what they are willing to pay to get it; prices, at the same time, inform demanders what suppliers can and are willing to produce and offer for sale, and at what price reflecting the producer’s opportunity costs of bringing a particular good or service to market. The competitive interaction of those two sides of the market brings about the balance between them.<blockquote>让我们从利率开始。市场价格的作用是使供求双方达到协调平衡。价格通过有效地告知那些在供应方需要知道需求者想要什么以及他们愿意支付什么来获得它的价值来做到这一点；与此同时，价格告诉需求者供应商能够并且愿意生产和出售什么，以及以什么价格反映了生产者将特定商品或服务推向市场的机会成本。市场双方的竞争互动带来了它们之间的平衡。</blockquote> The role of interest rates is to do the same for borrowers and lenders. It is the trading of the use of resources across time between those who are interested and willing to defer the more immediate use of resources (expressed in money) in their possession or under their control, in return for a premium in the future from those interested in more immediate uses of those resources beyond their own capacity in exchange for paying such a premium in the future. That premium is the rate of interest, which may vary with the duration of the loan and risk elements in extending it.<blockquote>利率的作用是为借款人和贷款人做同样的事情。它是那些有兴趣并愿意推迟更直接地使用其拥有或控制的资源（以货币表示）的人之间对资源使用的交易，以换取那些有兴趣更直接地使用超出其自身能力的资源的人在未来支付这种溢价。该溢价就是利率，它可能会随着贷款期限和延长贷款的风险因素而变化。</blockquote> The role of the rate of interest is to coordinate the willingness of savers with the desires of borrowers. Any rate of interest above or below this results in, respectively, an excess of savings over investment demand or an excess of investment demand over available savings.<blockquote>利率的作用是协调储户的意愿和借款人的意愿。高于或低于这一利率的任何利率分别导致储蓄超过投资需求或投资需求超过可用储蓄。</blockquote> Manipulating Interests Rates Distorts Markets<blockquote>操纵利率扭曲市场</blockquote> The crucial difference between a price, say, for hats that is set below the market-clearing, or coordinating, level is that a shortage results with some willing buyers leaving the market empty-handed; but when the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, wishes to manipulate interest rates below the market coordinating level, it fills the gap with newly created money with which loans may be extended in excess of actual savings in the economy.<blockquote>比如说，低于市场清算或协调水平的帽子价格之间的关键区别在于，短缺会导致一些有意愿的买家空手离开市场；但是，当美联储或任何中央银行希望将利率操纵到市场协调水平以下时，它就会用新创造的货币来填补缺口，这些货币可以用来发放超过经济实际储蓄的贷款。</blockquote> This not only results in an increase in the number of units of the medium of exchange through which buyers can express their greater demand for desired goods and services, tending, in general, to place upward pressure on overall market prices. It also influences the structure of relative prices and wages, since increases in the supply of money can only enter the economy through the increased demand for the particular goods, resources, and services those borrowers of that new money wish to purchase and use. But the money is then passed to another group of hands; that is, those who have sold those goods, resources and services to the borrowers. This second group, in turn, spends the new money that they have received from sales on other goods, resources and services for which they wish to increase their demand.<blockquote>这不仅导致交换媒介单位数量的增加，购买者可以通过这种媒介表达他们对所需商品和服务的更大需求，通常倾向于对总体市场价格施加上行压力。它还影响相对价格和工资的结构，因为货币供应量的增加只能通过对新货币的借款人希望购买和使用的特定商品、资源和服务的需求增加而进入经济。但是这些钱随后被传递到另一组人手中；即那些向借款人出售这些商品、资源和服务的人。反过来，第二组人将他们从销售中获得的新钱花在他们希望增加需求的其他商品、资源和服务上。</blockquote> Step-by-step, in a patterned sequence through time, the newly created money increases the demands and the prices of one set of goods and services, and then another, and then another, until, finally, in principle, all prices for finished goods and the factors of production will have been impacted to one degree or another, at different times in the sequence, with changes in relative profit margins and employment opportunities for as long as the monetary inflationary process continues.<blockquote>随着时间的推移，新创造的货币一步一步地增加了一套商品和服务的需求和价格，然后是另一套，然后是另一套，直到最后，原则上，成品和生产要素的所有价格都会在序列的不同时间受到某种程度的影响，只要货币通货膨胀过程继续，相对利润率和就业机会就会发生变化。</blockquote> This also means that whenever the monetary expansion stops or slows down, or even, perhaps, fails to accelerate, the resulting patterned use of labor, resources, and capital equipment brought into existence due to the way the money has entered into the economy and is being spent, period-after-period, begins to fall apart. This precipitates a readjustment process during which it is discovered that labor, capital and resources have been directed into allocated and applied for uses that are unsustainable once the inflationary process comes to an end.<blockquote>这也意味着，每当货币扩张停止或放缓，甚至可能未能加速时，由于货币进入经济和支出的方式而产生的劳动力、资源和资本设备的模式使用就开始分崩离析。这引发了一个重新调整过程，在此过程中，人们发现，一旦通货膨胀过程结束，劳动力、资本和资源已被分配和应用于不可持续的用途。</blockquote> The Fed’s Monetary Expansion and Bank Reserve Tricks<blockquote>美联储的货币扩张和银行准备金技巧</blockquote> For over ten years, since the financial and housing crisis of 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has been dramatically expanding the money supply. In January 2008, the&nbsp;Monetary Base&nbsp;(loanable reserves in the banking system plus currency in general circulation) equaled $837 billion; by August 2014, the Monetary Base had been expanded to over $4 trillion. In February 2020, just before the Coronavirus crisis impacted the U.S. in terms of the government mandated lockdowns and shutdowns, it still was historically high at $3.45 trillion; but by July 2021, the Monetary Base stood at $6.13 trillion, or a nearly 78 percent increase just in the last year and a half.<blockquote>自2008-2009年金融和房地产危机以来的十多年里，美联储一直在大幅扩大货币供应。2008年1月，货币基础（银行体系可供借贷储备加上一般流通货币）为8,370亿元；到2014年8月，货币基础已扩大到超过4万亿美元。2020年2月，就在冠状病毒危机影响美国政府强制封锁和停工之前，仍处于3.45万亿美元的历史高位；但到2021年7月，基础货币为6.13万亿美元，仅在过去一年半内就增长了近78%。</blockquote> Why has there not been the expected general price inflation from such a huge increase in the money supply through the banking system? Because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks not to fully lend the loanable reserves at their disposal.As a result, as of&nbsp;July 2021, banks were holding “excess reserves,” (that is, reserves above the minimum Federal Reserve rules require banks to hold against possible cash withdrawals by their depositors), of around $3.9 trillion, upon which the Federal Reserve&nbsp;pays&nbsp;those banks an interest rate of 0.15 percent. In other words, 63 percent of the Monetary Base is being held off the active loan market.<blockquote>为什么通过银行系统如此巨大的货币供应增加没有出现预期的普遍价格通胀？因为美联储一直在付钱给银行，让他们不要完全借出他们可以支配的可贷准备金。因此，截至2021年7月，银行持有约3.9万亿美元的“超额准备金”（即高于美联储规则要求银行为储户可能提取现金而持有的最低准备金），美联储向这些银行支付0.15%的利率。换句话说，63%的基础货币被活跃的贷款市场拒之门外。</blockquote> Given that real GDP in the United States has increased by over 25 percent since 2010, and the velocity of circulation of money (number of times money turns over in transactions per period of time), has decreased by almost 40 percent over the last ten years or so, it is not too surprising that prices in general have not been rising more, or more rapidly, given these countervailing factors, plus the Federal Reserve’s “trick” of paying banks to not lend all the huge amount of bank reserves their open market operations have created during the past decade.<blockquote>鉴于美国的实际GDP自2010年以来增长了25%以上，而货币流通速度（每段时间内货币在交易中周转的次数）在过去十年左右下降了近40%，鉴于这些抵消因素，再加上美联储付钱给银行不要将其公开市场操作在过去十年中创造的所有巨额银行准备金放贷的“伎俩”，价格总体上没有上涨更多或更快也就不足为奇了。</blockquote> Markets Still Distorted, Even with Low Price Inflation<blockquote>即使价格通胀较低，市场仍然扭曲</blockquote> It is nonetheless the case, that through its continuing large purchases of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, market interest rates have been artificially pushed significantly below any rates of interest that would prevail on financial markets not manipulated in this manner.<blockquote>然而，事实是，通过持续大量购买美国国债和抵押贷款支持证券，市场利率被人为地大幅推低到不以这种方式操纵的金融市场的任何利率以下。</blockquote> It is not unreasonable to ask what informational role market interest rates have been even playing about the real underlying savings and investment borrowing relationship in the economy in such a setting. Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy has undermined any reasonably accurate intertemporal price to coordinate saving with borrowing.<blockquote>在这种情况下，人们不禁要问，市场利率在经济中真正的潜在储蓄和投资借贷关系中发挥了什么信息作用。美联储的货币和利率政策破坏了任何合理准确的跨期价格来协调储蓄和借贷。</blockquote> Another way of saying this is that the Federal Reserve’s monetary central planning has virtually abolished a market-based pricing system for the allocation and use of resources across time. How can anyone easily know what real savings is available to fund investment and other loan uses in a way that is not throwing the economy out of serious balance?<blockquote>另一种说法是，美联储的货币中央计划实际上废除了跨时间资源分配和使用的基于市场的定价体系。任何人怎么能轻易地知道有哪些真正的储蓄可以用来为投资和其他贷款用途提供资金，而不会使经济严重失衡？</blockquote> In the name of trying to steer the economic “ship” to assure growing GDP, moderate price inflation, and “full employment” of the labor force, Jerome Powell and his fellow Fed Board members are, in fact, setting the stage for an eventual economic downturn by distorting a series of interconnected “microeconomic” relationships in the name of “macroeconomic” stability.<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔（Jerome Powell）和他的美联储董事会成员以试图驾驭经济“船”以确保GDP增长、温和的价格通胀和劳动力“充分就业”的名义，实际上是在通过以“宏观经济”稳定的名义扭曲一系列相互关联的“微观经济”关系，为最终的经济衰退埋下伏笔。</blockquote> When the Fed chairman cautiously suggests that the American central bankers are not sure what they are going to do, it is because they cannot do what they say they want to do.By trying to pursue their declared goals through the monetary and interest rate policy tools at their disposal, they are, in fact, continuing to imbalance and wrongly “twist” the real economy in ways that will result in the instability, and the eventual recession and likely price inflation they say they wish to prevent.<blockquote>当美联储主席谨慎地暗示美国央行行长们不确定他们要做什么时，那是因为他们不能做他们说想做的事情。通过试图通过他们所掌握的货币和利率政策工具来追求他们宣称的目标，他们实际上是在继续失衡和错误地“扭曲”实体经济，从而导致不稳定、最终的衰退和他们所说的他们希望防止的可能的价格通胀。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/jerome-powells-quest-economic-stability-destabilizing\">zerohedge</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"SPY":"标普500ETF",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index",".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/jerome-powells-quest-economic-stability-destabilizing","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1138372877","content_text":"When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no different with Jerome Powell’s virtual address to the annual meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What they got is what Harry Truman complained about when hearing from his economic advisors:“On the one hand, ‘this,’ but on the other hand, ‘that’.”Truman said that he desperately wanted a one-handed economist.\nAfter a decade of general economic calm most of the time, with modest to reasonable growth, relatively low price inflation, and, at the beginning of 2020 before the Coronavirus lockdowns, unemployment at its lowest level in half a century,everyone is now worried about what to expect from the Federal Reserve in terms of monetary and interest rate policy in the months and years ahead in the face of all that has been happening for the last year and a half.\nWhipsaw GDP and Huge Government Expenditures\nAfter a staggering decline in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from $19.2 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $17.2 trillion in the second quarter of 2020, or a 9 percent decrease of real GDP in a matter of a few months, the latest revised estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) for the second quarter of 2021 is that real GDP reached $19.36 trillion. This was a 12.5 percent increase over its 2020 low, and a level now above its pre-Coronavirus high.\nIt is worth keeping in mind, however, that all of these numbers are exaggerated in terms of real private sector vibrancy because in 2019, federal government expenditures came to $4.45 trillion, or 23 percent of that $19.2 trillion GDP total.By the end of 2020, due to the relaxing of the federal and state lockdown and shutdown mandates over much of the U.S. economy in the second half of last year, real GDP had recovered to $18.76 trillion, but federal government expenditures came to $6.6 trillion, or 35 percent of that total GDP. And just in the first half of 2021, out of that $19.36 trillion GDP, federal spending has already been $5.86 trillion of that total, or 30.2 percent.\nIf government spending is even partly discounted from GDP as a false indicator of the economic “health” of the U.S., since Uncle Sam has nothing to spend other than what it either first taxes away from the private sector or has borrowed from the financial markets, the private economy is far from doing as well as the GDP numbers suggest.\nLagging Unemployment and Rising Price Inflation\nAfter unemployment had reached a low of 3.5 percent of the labor force at the start of 2020, it rose to almost 15 percent in April of last year, due to the government-commanded halt of a huge amount of economic activity. In July 2021, unemployment had declined to 5.4 percent of the labor force; but this still left it almost 55 percent above its low at the beginning of 2020.\nAfter the Consumer Price Index (CPI) mostly fluctuated in a relatively narrow range of between one and two percent, annually, over the last ten years, 2021 has seen the CPI increase to 5.4 percent in July of this year. Certain subgroups, such as energy and used car automotive sectors increased in double digit ranges on an annualized basis.\nWith unemployment still considered high, with the CPI increasing noticeably above the decade-long annual average, and question marks concerning how GDP will grow for the remainder of this year, given continuing supply-chain disruptions and uncertainties about the impact of variations and new mutations of the Coronavirus, all eyes and ears turned to Jerome Powell’s pronouncements about the future direction of Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy.\nPowell’s Maybe This, Maybe That, Policy Pronouncement\nAnd what he said was that the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has not decided what to do!\nOn the one hand, the economy is improving so, perhaps, before the end of the year, the Fed will reduce its current monthly purchase of $120 billion worth of assets – $80 billion of U.S. government securities, and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. And it may decide that it is time to no longer use its policy tools to keep key interest rates close to zero.\nOn the other hand, recent price inflation may only be a transitory spurt due to supply-side problems, so the concern about accelerating price increases may be misplaced. Therefore, it may be premature to reduce asset purchases too quickly and certainly it is necessary to be cautious in any nudging up of interest rates that might cut short the national economic recovery before unemployment has been reduced, once again, to a level closer to standard benchmarks of “full employment.”\nOn the one hand, the worst of the Coronavirus may have passed, so there may be no new shutdown hurdles in the way of continuing improvement as reflected in the usual macroeconomic measurements. On the other hand, virus variants may prevent a smooth path to a fully restored and growing economy. So, it may be too soon to really specify when and by how much asset purchases will be reduced or by how much those interest rates will be raised from their current near zero levels.\nThe Fed Chairman also said that, on the one hand, the Fed leadership has plenty of experience and policy tools to keep the economy on a sound and even path. On the other hand, such things as the impact of the Coronavirus and the threats facing the world from global warming are unique, making charting the Fed policy course a distinct challenge.\nPowell’s Reticence and the Political Business Cycle\nIn other words, Jerome Powell evaded any straightforward policy program, and therefore offered something for almost everyone, in terms of easing fears and concerns that either the policy foot will stay too long where it is on the accelerator or will start putting on the brakes too quickly.Either he is being reticent due to honest doubts about what he thinks is ahead for the economy, or he knows how to play to the audience in the White House and in Congress who will decide whether or not he is appointed for a second term as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. After all, you don’t want to seem to be planning any clear policy moves that might threaten the reelection of Senators or Congressmen in the 2022 elections, or antagonize a president who does not want to lose his thin majority in the national legislature.\nThat politicians and central bankers are sensitive to the phases of the business cycle as they may impact the political electoral cycle in thinking about their policy decisions and directions has been understood by some economists at least since Johan Akerman’s (1896-1982) analysis of the “Political Economic Cycle” (Kyklos, May 1947), in which he traced out observed changes in those running governments in democratic societies resulting from the phases in the business cycle, and how those in government attempt to manage public policy to maintain their political positions.\nHistorically, Akerman said, looking over the period from the mid-19th century to 1945 in countries like Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Sweden, the result of the analysis could be summarized in the following way: “All general economic depressions in England . . . lead to cabinet crises and a change of the party in power . . . In the United States the presidential elections as a rule involve a change in party control when votes are cast during a depression and a maintenance of the party in office when the votes are cast during periods of prosperity,” in sixteen of the twenty elections between 1865 and 1945.\nGovernments, Akerman also pointed out, try “to stabilize financial and economic conditions, and for a brief period may succeed in doing so.” While not pursuing it in his article, the fact is that the underlying circumstances that create “booms” that result in “busts” are usually of the government’s own policy. making. The “good times” monetary and fiscal policies finally create the economic crises that threaten the political policy-makers’ positions in authority. Hence, a government’s frequent demise in the next election when a recession or depression finally occurs. (p. 107)\nInterest Rates Should Coordinate Savings and Investment\nBut this gets to the real essence of the dilemma in Jerome Powell’s statement of Federal Reserve policy and its possible future direction. The underlying presumption is that a central bank can and should be attempting to manage the monetary system and the level of interest rates in the financial markets and, therefore, trying to macro-manage the society as a whole.\nLet us start with interest rates. The role of market prices is to bring into coordinated balance the two sides of demand and supply. Prices do so by effectively informing those needing to know on the supply side what is it that demanders want and the value they place upon it in terms of what they are willing to pay to get it; prices, at the same time, inform demanders what suppliers can and are willing to produce and offer for sale, and at what price reflecting the producer’s opportunity costs of bringing a particular good or service to market. The competitive interaction of those two sides of the market brings about the balance between them.\nThe role of interest rates is to do the same for borrowers and lenders. It is the trading of the use of resources across time between those who are interested and willing to defer the more immediate use of resources (expressed in money) in their possession or under their control, in return for a premium in the future from those interested in more immediate uses of those resources beyond their own capacity in exchange for paying such a premium in the future. That premium is the rate of interest, which may vary with the duration of the loan and risk elements in extending it.\nThe role of the rate of interest is to coordinate the willingness of savers with the desires of borrowers. Any rate of interest above or below this results in, respectively, an excess of savings over investment demand or an excess of investment demand over available savings.\nManipulating Interests Rates Distorts Markets\nThe crucial difference between a price, say, for hats that is set below the market-clearing, or coordinating, level is that a shortage results with some willing buyers leaving the market empty-handed; but when the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, wishes to manipulate interest rates below the market coordinating level, it fills the gap with newly created money with which loans may be extended in excess of actual savings in the economy.\nThis not only results in an increase in the number of units of the medium of exchange through which buyers can express their greater demand for desired goods and services, tending, in general, to place upward pressure on overall market prices. It also influences the structure of relative prices and wages, since increases in the supply of money can only enter the economy through the increased demand for the particular goods, resources, and services those borrowers of that new money wish to purchase and use. But the money is then passed to another group of hands; that is, those who have sold those goods, resources and services to the borrowers. This second group, in turn, spends the new money that they have received from sales on other goods, resources and services for which they wish to increase their demand.\nStep-by-step, in a patterned sequence through time, the newly created money increases the demands and the prices of one set of goods and services, and then another, and then another, until, finally, in principle, all prices for finished goods and the factors of production will have been impacted to one degree or another, at different times in the sequence, with changes in relative profit margins and employment opportunities for as long as the monetary inflationary process continues.\nThis also means that whenever the monetary expansion stops or slows down, or even, perhaps, fails to accelerate, the resulting patterned use of labor, resources, and capital equipment brought into existence due to the way the money has entered into the economy and is being spent, period-after-period, begins to fall apart. This precipitates a readjustment process during which it is discovered that labor, capital and resources have been directed into allocated and applied for uses that are unsustainable once the inflationary process comes to an end.\nThe Fed’s Monetary Expansion and Bank Reserve Tricks\nFor over ten years, since the financial and housing crisis of 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve has been dramatically expanding the money supply. In January 2008, the Monetary Base (loanable reserves in the banking system plus currency in general circulation) equaled $837 billion; by August 2014, the Monetary Base had been expanded to over $4 trillion. In February 2020, just before the Coronavirus crisis impacted the U.S. in terms of the government mandated lockdowns and shutdowns, it still was historically high at $3.45 trillion; but by July 2021, the Monetary Base stood at $6.13 trillion, or a nearly 78 percent increase just in the last year and a half.\nWhy has there not been the expected general price inflation from such a huge increase in the money supply through the banking system? Because the Federal Reserve has been paying banks not to fully lend the loanable reserves at their disposal.As a result, as of July 2021, banks were holding “excess reserves,” (that is, reserves above the minimum Federal Reserve rules require banks to hold against possible cash withdrawals by their depositors), of around $3.9 trillion, upon which the Federal Reserve pays those banks an interest rate of 0.15 percent. In other words, 63 percent of the Monetary Base is being held off the active loan market.\nGiven that real GDP in the United States has increased by over 25 percent since 2010, and the velocity of circulation of money (number of times money turns over in transactions per period of time), has decreased by almost 40 percent over the last ten years or so, it is not too surprising that prices in general have not been rising more, or more rapidly, given these countervailing factors, plus the Federal Reserve’s “trick” of paying banks to not lend all the huge amount of bank reserves their open market operations have created during the past decade.\nMarkets Still Distorted, Even with Low Price Inflation\nIt is nonetheless the case, that through its continuing large purchases of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, market interest rates have been artificially pushed significantly below any rates of interest that would prevail on financial markets not manipulated in this manner.\nIt is not unreasonable to ask what informational role market interest rates have been even playing about the real underlying savings and investment borrowing relationship in the economy in such a setting. Federal Reserve monetary and interest rate policy has undermined any reasonably accurate intertemporal price to coordinate saving with borrowing.\nAnother way of saying this is that the Federal Reserve’s monetary central planning has virtually abolished a market-based pricing system for the allocation and use of resources across time. How can anyone easily know what real savings is available to fund investment and other loan uses in a way that is not throwing the economy out of serious balance?\nIn the name of trying to steer the economic “ship” to assure growing GDP, moderate price inflation, and “full employment” of the labor force, Jerome Powell and his fellow Fed Board members are, in fact, setting the stage for an eventual economic downturn by distorting a series of interconnected “microeconomic” relationships in the name of “macroeconomic” stability.\nWhen the Fed chairman cautiously suggests that the American central bankers are not sure what they are going to do, it is because they cannot do what they say they want to do.By trying to pursue their declared goals through the monetary and interest rate policy tools at their disposal, they are, in fact, continuing to imbalance and wrongly “twist” the real economy in ways that will result in the instability, and the eventual recession and likely price inflation they say they wish to prevent.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{".SPX":0.9,".DJI":0.9,"SPY":0.9,".IXIC":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":960,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":7,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}

Jerome Powell's Quest For Economic Stability Is Destabilizing<blockquote>杰罗姆·鲍威尔对经济稳定的追求正在破坏稳定</blockquote>

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