What Ails Europe?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Lisbon

Things are terrible here, as unemployment soars past 13 percent. Things are even worse in Greece, Ireland, and arguably in Spain, and Europe as a whole appears to be sliding back into recession.

Why has Europe become the sick man of the world economy? Everyone knows the answer. Unfortunately, most of what people know isn’t true — and false stories about European woes are warping our economic discourse.

Read an opinion piece about Europe — or, all too often, a supposedly factual news report — and you’ll probably encounter one of two stories, which I think of as the Republican narrative and the German narrative. Neither story fits the facts.

The Republican story — it’s one of the central themes of Mitt Romney’s campaign — is that Europe is in trouble because it has done too much to help the poor and unlucky, that we’re watching the death throes of the welfare state. This story is, by the way, a perennial right-wing favorite: back in 1991, when Sweden was suffering from a banking crisis brought on by deregulation (sound familiar?), the Cato Institute published a triumphant report on how this proved the failure of the whole welfare state model.

Did I mention that Sweden, which still has a very generous welfare state, is currently a star performer, with economic growth faster than that of any other wealthy nation?

But let’s do this systematically. Look at the 15 European nations currently using the euro (leaving Malta and Cyprus aside), and rank them by the percentage of G.D.P. they spent on social programs before the crisis. Do the troubled GIPSI nations (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy) stand out for having unusually large welfare states? No, they don’t; only Italy was in the top five, and even so its welfare state was smaller than Germany’s.

So excessively large welfare states didn’t cause the troubles.

Next up, the German story, which is that it’s all about fiscal irresponsibility. This story seems to fit Greece, but nobody else. Italy ran deficits in the years before the crisis, but they were only slightly larger than Germany’s (Italy’s large debt is a legacy from irresponsible policies many years ago). Portugal’s deficits were significantly smaller, while Spain and Ireland actually ran surpluses.

Oh, and countries that aren’t on the euro seem able to run large deficits and carry large debts without facing any crises. Britain and the United States can borrow long-term at interest rates of around 2 percent; Japan, which is far more deeply in debt than any country in Europe, Greece included, pays only 1 percent.

In other words, the Hellenization of our economic discourse, in which we’re all just a year or two of deficits from becoming another Greece, is completely off base.

So what does ail Europe? The truth is that the story is mostly monetary. By introducing a single currency without the institutions needed to make that currency work, Europe effectively reinvented the defects of the gold standard — defects that played a major role in causing and perpetuating the Great Depression.

More specifically, the creation of the euro fostered a false sense of security among private investors, unleashing huge, unsustainable flows of capital into nations all around Europe’s periphery. As a consequence of these inflows, costs and prices rose, manufacturing became uncompetitive, and nations that had roughly balanced trade in 1999 began running large trade deficits instead. Then the music stopped.

If the peripheral nations still had their own currencies, they could and would use devaluation to quickly restore competitiveness. But they don’t, which means that they are in for a long period of mass unemployment and slow, grinding deflation. Their debt crises are mainly a byproduct of this sad prospect, because depressed economies lead to budget deficits and deflation magnifies the burden of debt.

Now, understanding the nature of Europe’s troubles offers only limited benefits to the Europeans themselves. The afflicted nations, in particular, have nothing but bad choices: either they suffer the pains of deflation or they take the drastic step of leaving the euro, which won’t be politically feasible until or unless all else fails (a point Greece seems to be approaching). Germany could help by reversing its own austerity policies and accepting higher inflation, but it won’t.

For the rest of us, however, getting Europe right makes a huge difference, because false stories about Europe are being used to push policies that would be cruel, destructive, or both. The next time you hear people invoking the European example to demand that we destroy our social safety net or slash spending in the face of a deeply depressed economy, here’s what you need to know: they have no idea what they’re talking about.

歐債危機都是單一貨幣害的

萄葡牙的局面非常嚴重，因為失業率已經超過13%。希臘、愛爾蘭甚至西班牙的情況更糟。整個歐洲似乎已經再度陷入衰退。

為什麼歐洲已經淪為全球經濟的病夫？答案似乎人盡皆知，遺憾的是人們知道的大多不是實情，而有關歐洲問題的不實說法正在扭曲我們的經濟討論。

試閱讀有關歐洲問題的討論文章，或者一篇看似符合事實的報導，則會看到兩種說法中的一種。我暫且稱之為共和黨人與德國的敘述。兩者均與事實不符。

共和黨的說法是羅姆尼競選的主軸之一。這種說法聲稱，歐洲因為對窮人伸援太多而麻煩上身；這是福利國死前的掙扎。這是右派陣營始終偏好的論點之一。1991年，瑞典因為放寬管制而面臨金融危機（似曾相識吧？）時，卡托研究所發表一項報告，聲稱這足以證明整個福利國模式行不通。

然而，仍然保留福利國制度的瑞典目前表現亮眼，經濟成長優於其他富裕國家。

我們不妨有系統評論，逐一檢視目前使用歐元的15個歐洲國家（排除馬爾他與塞浦路斯），並根據危機出現前，各國用於各種社會施政方案的預算占GDP之比予以排名。希臘、愛爾蘭、葡葡牙、西班牙、義大利是否因為福利制度過於細緻而顯得與眾不同？沒有。只有義大利可列入前五名，即使如此，它的福利制度規模仍不及德國。

換言之，龐大的福利制度並不是問題的肇因。

接下來談德國的論述，亦即把問題主要歸咎於財政不負責任。這種論調似乎與希臘的情況相符，而且也僅止於此。義大利在危機發生前數年即已出現赤字，規模卻僅略大於德國（義大利的龐大赤字主要源自多年前不負責任的政策）。葡萄牙的赤字小很多，西班牙與愛爾蘭則享有盈餘。

噢，還有。部分不是歐元國的國家似乎也能夠在未面臨任何危機的情況下，揹負龐大的赤字與債務。英國與美國可以大約2%的低利率長期舉債；日本揹負的債務遠大於含希臘在內的任何歐洲國家，利率只有1%。

換言之，「希臘化」的經濟論辯毫無事實根據。

如此說來，歐洲的問題究竟何在？真相是，問題大多與貨幣有關。歐洲國家推出單一貨幣，卻缺少確保該貨幣運作無礙所需的配套機構，無形中等於再次創造金本位制的缺失。這些缺點曾經在大蕭條形成的過程中扮演重要角色。

更確切的說，歐元使民間投資人產生虛假的安全感，並導致資金大舉湧向歐洲各邊緣國，相對又導致成本與價格大漲，製造業失去競爭力，1999年貿易大致平衡的各國並開始出現龐大的貿易赤字。音樂突然中止。

如果這些邊緣國家仍然使用個別貨幣，極可能以貨幣貶值的手段迅速恢復競爭力。然而它們現在沒有自己的貨幣，意味它們勢必承受失業長期嚴重、通縮代價痛苦的後果。它們的債務危機主要是此一不幸癥結產生的副作用，因為經濟萎縮產生預算赤字，通縮則足以使債務負擔更加沉重。

如今，瞭解歐洲問題的本質只能為歐洲人帶來有限的益處。尤其是受到嚴重衝擊的各國，只能選擇不好的選項：承受通縮的煎熬，或者脫離歐元區。除非其他國家藥石罔效（希臘似乎正一步步淪入這種境地），這在政治上不可行。德國適時伸援的具體做法是，放棄自己的撙節政策，接受比較高的通膨。可是德國不願意。

對我們而言，協助歐洲重回正軌可以產生明顯的差異，因為有心人正在利用有關歐洲的不實論述鼓吹殘酷甚至後果無法收拾的政策。如果你下一次聽到有人以歐洲的例子主張廢棄我們的社會安全網或緊縮開支，謹記：他們不知自己在說什麼。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/opinion/krugman-what-ails-europe.html

2012-02-28/經濟日報/A5版/國際焦點陳世欽譯