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《你相信貨幣政策有魔力嗎？》讀後
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瀏覽885 ｜回應3｜推薦1 |
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從這篇文章可以看出克魯格門教授的幽默(尖刻？)文風和經濟學功力(請見本欄第二篇文章)。我以前有兩篇拙作提到他(克魯格門1 – 此文0.-5)小段、克魯格門2)；請參考。幽默和尖刻文風的例子如，他半開玩笑說：
… it was fairly amazing that people could persuade other people to give them goods and services in return for green pieces of paper with no intrinsic value.
green pieces of paper指「美鈔」，此處泛指「貨幣」。
但我們知道：「貨幣」的「價值」來自一個國家的黃金庫存、經濟活力、和(政府)信用保證。一旦三者之一亮紅燈，「幣值」就會下跌。
以及這一段：
In a way, then, it’s not surprising that people often imagine that introducing a new currency and reciting the correct incantations can solve a nation’s economic problems.
reciting the correct incantations：「唸咒」、「起乩」、「唸唸有詞」。
以及這個評論：
At that point there was nothing left to do besides invade the Falkland Islands.
invade the Falkland Islands：福克蘭戰爭
以及他引用伏爾泰下面的話：
“certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of sheep, if administered with a sufficient portion of arsenic.”
「如果跟夠多的砒霜一起使用，某些語言和儀式的確可以搞死一群羊。」(我的翻譯；請與下一個評論合看。)
經濟學功力的例子如，他一再強調：
So introducing a new currency can successfully curb inflation if accompanied by other policy reforms, although in that case it’s unclear how much the currency mattered.
如果和其它有效政策一起實施，改變貨幣的確可以幫助控制通貨膨脹。但在這種情況下(指附帶其它「有效政策」)，我不認為「貨幣政策」在「控制通膨」上能起多大的作用(我的翻譯)。
本文於 修改第 2 次
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你認為這段翻譯有問題？還是你對原作者的觀點有意見？還是 ...？
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果和其它有效政策一起實施，改變貨幣的確可以幫助控制通貨膨脹。但在這種情況下(指附帶其它「有效政策」)，我不認為「貨幣政策」在「控制通膨」上能起多大的作用(我的翻譯)。
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你相信貨幣政策有魔力嗎？ -- Paul Krugman
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Do You Believe in Monetary Magic?
Some dangerous magical thinking in monetary policy
Paul Krugman, 12/12/23
Three weeks ago Argentina elected Javier Milei as its new president. Milei ran on a radical libertarian platform, whose most notable proposal called for eliminating Argentina’s currency, the peso, and replacing it with the U.S. dollar.
At this point it’s unclear whether Milei will actually follow through on that promise, or how radical a break he will actually make with previous policies in general; I don’t pretend to understand what’s currently happening in Argentine politics. But the fact that many people apparently believed that dollarization would solve Argentina’s problems was just the latest example of the enduring power of magical monetary thinking.
To be fair, money — and monetary policy — can sometimes seem like magic. Even before the rise of information technology, it was fairly amazing that people could persuade other people to give them goods and services in return for green pieces of paper with no intrinsic value. Now we can do business with smartphones and contactless debit cards that offer nothing but digital representations of worthless green paper.
Yet money exists, and it works; indeed, it tends to emerge in some form even without any kind of official support. Sam Bankman-Fried temporarily convinced investors that elaborate math could conjure an alternative to dollars out of thin air; now he’s confined to a prison, and that prison has reportedly evolved a rudimentary internal economy based on the exchange of packets of mackerel. (Consider all jokes about there being something fishy about this already made.)
In a way, then, it’s not surprising that people often imagine that introducing a new currency and reciting the correct incantations can solve a nation’s economic problems. It’s a bit more surprising that Argentines would buy into this kind of thinking. After all, they’ve been here before.
True, Argentina has never fully dollarized. But in 1991 it tried to tame inflation with a law that was supposed to establish a permanent exchange rate of one peso for one dollar, a commitment backed by a “currency board” that was advertised as holding a dollar in reserves for every peso in circulation. The truth was that pesos were never 100 percent dollar-backed, but this incomplete backing wasn’t the reason the system collapsed. The problem, instead, was that having eliminated the possibility of using monetary policy to boost the economy when necessary, Argentina found itself stuck in a prolonged, grueling recession. Also, the currency board didn’t solve the nation’s persistent problem of budget deficits.
And there was one more problem: Why peg to the dollar? Argentina is a long way from the United States. It actually does more trade with both China and the European Union than it does with America. Yet when the dollar went up and down, for reasons that had nothing to do with Argentina, Argentina’s currency followed its fluctuations. There was a big run-up in the value of the dollar during the late 1990s, probably reflecting optimism over the technology boom of the time:
(請至原網頁查看統計圖)
And Argentina, having pegged itself to the dollar, found its currency rising in value on world markets, making its exports increasingly uncompetitive and deepening its recession. And of course abandoning the peso entirely for dollars would have the same problem: Argentina would in effect tie its economic policy to that of a nation that has very different issues and isn’t even its main trading partner.
By the way, if El Salvador — which has been trying to promote the use of Bitcoin — were to succeed in, um, Bitcoinizing its economy, it would have the same kind of problem, but on a much greater scale, effectively tying its economic policy to an asset with wildly fluctuating value. Fortunately, even with government promotion, Bitcoin doesn’t seem to be getting much traction as actual money.
Anyway, Argentina’s currency board collapsed, messily, at the beginning of 2002. The government eventually declared that many debts specified in dollars would be declared after the fact to really be in pesos, which was more or less necessary to avoid a catastrophic wave of bankruptcies. The Argentine economy, freed from the dollar peg, boomed for a while:
(請至原網頁查看統計圖)
Unfortunately, the old problem of intractable budget deficits never went away, and inflation eventually came roaring back.
But wait. Argentina’s first attempt to control inflation using monetary magic goes even farther back. In the late 1970s the military regime that ruled the country at the time tried to use a pre-announced series of gradually slowing mini-devaluations — the tablita — to slow inflation. (You probably don’t want to know the details.) As in later episodes, this monetary strategy wasn’t backed by adequate reform of other policies and ended up in a balance of payments crisis and resurgent inflation. At that point there was nothing left to do besides invade the Falkland Islands.
Does this mean that monetary reform never works? No, it can succeed if backed by major reforms elsewhere. In the early 1990s, Brazil, which has also had its problems with inflation, replaced its old currency, the cruzeiro, with the real. Now, you may not be used to thinking of Brazil as an economic role model, but the Brazilians did manage to fix enough of their underlying problems that the nation did bring inflation way down, durably:
(請至原網頁查看統計圖)
So introducing a new currency can successfully curb inflation if accompanied by other policy reforms, although in that case it’s unclear how much the currency mattered. To quote Voltaire, which we do all too rarely in economics, “certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of sheep, if administered with a sufficient portion of arsenic.”
Anyway, the important thing to realize is that while there is something a bit magical about monetary economics, changing your currency rarely has magical effects. And it’s especially important, given the enthusiasms of cryptocurrency types and others, that while America has many problems, there’s basically nothing wrong with our money. Yes, we recently had a bout of inflation, but it wasn’t caused by problems with our currency, and we seem to have more or less ended that inflation bump without paying any major price in unemployment. Lots of things are problematic these days, but the dollar is doing OK.
Quick Hits
Normalizing inflation expectations.
Real wages continue to rise.
The limits of fiscal space.
How Israel ended its hyperinflation.
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