Five Surprising Economic Trends in 2014 and What They Mean for 2015
By Neil Irwin

It was a confounding year in global financial markets. Not because it was a disaster for most investors; American stocks and bonds both rose in value. It was confounding because of some major moves that defied expert consensus this time a year ago — not only what was predicted, but what was even thought plausible.

But by understanding what the biggest market moves were, you can also understand the forces that will shape the global economy in 2015.

There was an epic collapse in oil prices.

It’s not that the price of oil has never moved as far and as fast as it did in 2014. It’s just that usually when that happens, it occurs against the backdrop of much more global volatility, like in a worldwide recession at the end of 2008 and early 2009.

What’s remarkable about the roughly 50 percent decline in the price of oil in the second half of the year is that it occurred amid such stability; nothing radical changed in that time about either the global economic outlook or even the supply and demand picture for oil itself.

Rather, years of effort to increase drilling in the United States, paired with a continued tepid world economy and with decisions by Saudi Arabia and other oil producers not to pull back on production to defend high prices, created a stunning sell-off.

We’ve already started to see some of the geopolitical consequences of this shift, including the collapse in value of the ruble and new pressure on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. But that is probably only the beginning. The budgets of major oil producers, from Venezuela to Indonesia to Texas, will be stretched. Meanwhile, there will be a nice tailwind to growth around the world as cheaper fuel means higher real incomes for consumers.

This was the year when oil prices plunged, but 2015 is the year when we will truly start to understand the consequences.

Long-term interest rates kept falling.

If there was one thing Wall Street forecasters could agree upon at the end of 2013, it was that 2014 would be a year of rising long-term interest rates in the United States. The economy was finally gaining momentum, after all, the Federal Reserve was winding down its program of buying bonds, and the day of interest rate increases was coming nearer.

That narrative was exactly right when it came to the economy and policy. The job market has strengthened, and the Fed has moved to end its interventions in the economy as planned. But the result for bond markets has been the opposite of the conventional wisdom.

The yield on United States Treasury bonds fell significantly over the course of the year; the government can borrow money for 30 years for a mere 2.8 percent, down from 4 percent at the end of 2013. These lower costs have translated into cheaper home mortgages and lower borrowing costs for businesses, and higher bond prices (but lower future returns) for investors.

As for 2015 implications, the remarkably low long-term interest rates would seem to signal a return to a predicament facing the American economy in the middle of the last decade. Alan Greenspan called it a “conundrum” — that the Fed’s power to influence longer-term interest rates was weak, perhaps because of very strong global demand for safe securities like United States Treasury bonds.

Regardless of the cause, it raises the prospect that even as the economy continues to strengthen and the Fed raises rates in 2015, cheap longer-term rates will be here to stay.

The U.S. stock market kept cruising.

The stock market had a remarkable rally in 2013, and some were skeptical that it could continue the run in 2014.

It did. But only in the United States.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 11.4 percent in 2014, not quite the 30 percent return of 2013 but not shabby by any measure. But while 2013 featured a broad rise among all the major global stock markets, the United States was a major outperformer in 2014.

The core reason is that the American economy has performed better than its counterparts in much of the rest of the world, with Europe and Japan facing stagnant growth and emerging markets slowing their once-gangbuster pace. A related factor is that the dollar has appreciated compared with other currencies, so the dollars that American companies make are becoming relatively more valuable.

Yet another year of stock prices that rise faster than corporate earnings certainly increases the risk of a sharp correction or a period of subpar returns. But in the meantime, Americans can take comfort in the fact that the referendum of global financial markets is that the United States will continue to be the driver of global economic recovery.

The dollar soared.

The same fundamentals that helped American stocks log another year of impressive returns drove up the dollar versus virtually all other major currencies — but a solid year for United States economic growth wasn’t the entirety of the story.

A schism has opened up between the Federal Reserve and its counterparts overseas. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan are trying to stimulate growth and fight deflation in their countries (the B.O.J. has already expanded its easing programs, and the E.C.B. appears on the verge of undertaking a form of bond-buying of its own). But the Fed has been signaling higher rates and tighter money.

That has made the dollar more attractive, as has the sense that it is a beacon of economic strength in a troubled world economy. Those factors explain the 12 percent drop in the euro against the dollar and the 14 percent drop in the Japanese yen.

But the strengthening dollar has implications for 2015 far beyond the finances of Americans thinking of visiting Paris this spring.

The dollar is sufficiently enmeshed in the infrastructure of the global economy that a stronger dollar means, in effect, a tightening of global financial conditions, as Hyun Song Shin of the Bank for International Settlements has argued.

If you are a company doing business in Mexico or South Korea, for example, and borrow money in dollars, a rising dollar makes repaying your debts more onerous and has the same effect as a hike in interest rates, potentially squeezing your cash flows or even leading to bankruptcy. Look for those ripple effects of a strong dollar across the globe in 2015.

The outlook for inflation fell.

Global investors are betting on very, very low inflation, for many years to come. That is the implication, anyway, of the relative prices of inflation-adjusted bonds and regular bonds in the United States and almost every other major economy.

Part of this is easy to explain. The decline in oil and other commodity prices will put downward pressure on prices in 2015. But a broader shift in sentiment happened in recent months. Investors seem to think that very low inflation will persist even after the oil price declines of the last few months fully spread through other consumer prices. Bond prices currently imply that inflation from 2019 to 2024 will be 2.14 percent a year, down from 2.65 percent a year ago.

Investor expectations suggest that the Fed may have more leeway than it had seemed a few months ago to keep interest rates low, especially if they see continued weakness in the economy.

And given that similar trends are visible across the advanced world, it implies that one of the foremost challenges for policy is finding a way to get the world’s major economies humming enough that deflation is no longer a concern.

去年，專家看走眼的5大經濟趨勢

對金融市場來說，去年是充滿困惑的一年：大多數投資人鎩羽而歸，專家對走勢的預測失靈。紐約時報整理出令人驚訝的五大經濟趨勢，以及五大趨勢如何影響今年的局勢。

首先是油價大跌。去年下半年，國際油價重跌近五成。過去油價大跌都和國際情勢劇烈變化有關，以2008年底、09年初那次來說，肇因於球金融海嘯，去年卻是風平浪靜。油價走跌後，沙烏地阿拉伯為首的石油輸出國家組織一反常態，拒絕減產，以量制價；美國開採頁岩油的腳步也沒放慢。油價大跌對地緣政治的衝擊浮現，俄國盧布大貶、委內瑞拉、印尼預算編列必須緊縮。油價在去年大跌，但世人要等到今年才能體會真正的影響。

其次是長期利率持續下跌。2013年底，華爾街分析師咸認美國的長期利率會上揚，依據是美國經濟恢復動能、就業市場好轉、聯準會逐漸讓第三波量化寬鬆退場。結果，美國政府卅年公債的殖利率卻從百分之四降到百分之二點八，公債價格上揚，顯示全球投資人還是青睞買美國公債來保值。聯準會今年就算升息，長期利率仍會偏低。

再者是美國股市持續攀高。美股前年走勢就很強勁，許多人懷疑去年能否延續氣勢，結果仍舊強勁，而且傲視各國。美股飆漲的主因是優秀的經濟表現，讓歐洲和日本相形見絀；新興市場的走勢也減緩。美國人可以放心了，因為美國仍將擔任全球經濟復甦的火車頭。

美元升值是美股持續走高的重要因素。美元對所有主要貨幣幾乎都升值，賺美金的美國企業市值跟著水漲船高。聯準會準備中止寬鬆貨幣政策，歐洲和日本央行還在努力對抗通貨緊縮。

不過，由於美元是國際通用貨幣，強勢美元等於縮緊全球金融條件。例如，外國企業借美元融資，美元升值等於借款升息，擠壓現金流量，搞不好會破產。強勢美元在各地引發的漣漪效應將在今年浮現。

最後則是對通膨的預期降低。油價下跌可望帶動物價調降，但油價開始下跌時，投資人已普遍預期通膨率不會變高。債券價格顯示2019至2024年美國的年通膨率是百分之二點一四，一年前的預期是百分之二點六五。這讓聯準會有維持低利率的更多餘地。如果通縮不再是問題，接下來的主要挑戰就是如何讓主要經濟體火力全開了。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/upshot/five-surprising-economic-trends-in-2014-and-what-they-mean-for-2015.html

2015-01-02．聯合報．A15．國際/兩岸．編譯張佑生