dck
加入时间: 2004/04/02
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作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
汇率工具缘何遭冷遇？
英 | 大 | 中 | 小
2008年01月14日17:17
近
来关于外国投资者大规模投资美国金融机构的报导频频见诸报端，但相对于从美国企业流向海外的资金，这些外国投资不过是九牛一毛。在美元不断贬值的大环境下，美国企业纷纷求助于投资其他货币来增加资产和收益。
为了缓和金融市场动荡并防止经济降温，美国联邦储备委员会(Fed)先后采取向市场注入额外流动性、降低贴现率和累计下调联邦基金利率整整1个百分点等措施。而在准备进一步降息的同时，Fed也应该动用其最有力的工具来带动流动性回归信贷市场、平抑油价并推动经济恢复增长。这个工具就是强势美元。
现行联邦基金利率只有4.25%，这不但低于4.3%的消费者物价指数涨幅，也低于美国经济在2007年第三季度4.9%的实际增长率。在历次衰退前经济环境下进行的利率调整中，这一次更为积极主动。Fed这样做是想在糟糕的货币形势下尽力而为。实际上这种货币形势的破坏作用大部分形成于Fed在2003年被迫将基准利率降至1%，并不顾美元贬值和住房市场泡沫泛滥，直到2005年一直故意将利率压制在低水平的这段时期。
Fed在去年12月下旬宣布了一项创举──通过贴现窗口拍卖资金，其掌管的9,000亿美元国债资产最多将有7%会逐渐转移到有抵押的银行贷款上。可以说这是一套具有建设性的机制，在帮助接受存款的银行填补抵押贷款资金缺口的同时，又向市场投放了走俏的国债。
虽然有人担心各国央行在规模庞大而复杂的国际市场中正丧失其影响力，但更可能的问题却可能是央行的权力过大。是央行造就了利率和本国货币价值的大幅波动，而这种波动传递到价格层面上则表现为通货膨胀和通货紧缩。严格意义上说，央行是唯一在资产负债上不受限制的机构。这点若体现在Fed身上，那就是Fed可以根据自己的判断在市场瞬间创造或是注入多达几十亿美元的资金（通过购买国债或是取得抵押贷款相关证券的暂时控制权）。
还有一个话题是华盛顿当局一直视而不见、避而不谈的，即美元本身就是一种强有力的货币政策工具。Fed在12月11日宣布降息的公告中和11月经济预测中对美元汇率只字未提。Fed前主席格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)在最近出版的论文集和他12月12日的表态中也几乎未提及美元汇率的大幅波动，及其与先前出现通缩而如今再出现通胀之间的联系。而这却可能是过去10年来在经济领域和投资领域最重要的一个变数。
布什总统在11月份接受福克斯商业新闻频道(Fox Business News)采访时对美元贬值一事似乎并不感到尴尬。当他被问道：“即使在经济疲软时，美元也不该走强吗？”总统没有简单的回答“是的”，而是这样说道： “我能说的就是本届政府执行的是强势美元政策，政府相信市场是决定汇率的最佳场所”。在谈到他是否对目前的汇率水平满意时，布什回答称：“我所满意的是政府在执行强势美元政策，并知道该由市场来决定美元与其他货币之间的汇率”。
美国当前的货币政策把美元的走软完全归咎于市场因素。汇市的反应一向直接，它倾向于卖出那些由市场决定币值的货币。2000年欧元就曾有过类似的惨痛教训，当时欧洲央行行长德伊森贝赫(Wim Duisenberg)决定由市场根据欧洲经济的基本面来决定欧元的价值。请注意以下事实。直到接任欧洲央行行长的特里谢(Jean-Claude Trichet)实施了欧元保值政策，欧元的“自由落体运动”才告停止。特里谢的这一政策完全不考虑市场对欧元区经济基本面的看法。
无论如何都没有理由认为市场会根据经济基本面确定货币价值。上个世纪90年代初到1995年，日圆一直都极其强劲，虽然日本因此陷入了长达10年之久的通货紧缩旋涡之中。汇市以走极端、歪曲经济表现和人们的生活水平著称，它这样做没有丝毫的良心不安。
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Fed 认为即使美元走软，通货膨胀形势也会逐渐缓和。主要理由是Fed的研究显示，美元的贸易加权价值与美国的通货膨胀之间没有太大关系。上个世纪90年代末， Fed也曾试图用同样的理由说明美元走强不会引发通货紧缩。这种看法有根有据显而易见的漏洞，那就是美元的贸易加权价值既反映了美元价值的波动，也反映了其他货币价值的波动。
美元的贸易加权价值有可能因外币升值而降低，反之亦然，无论是其中的哪种情况都不会对美国的通货膨胀产生显著影响。与此相反，以金价衡量的美元价值波动与美国通货膨胀率之间有着不容忽视、显而易见的联系。
其他国家中，货币价值与通货膨胀（或通货紧缩）之间的关系也同样密切。目前中国以金价衡量的人民币价值较低，所以通货膨胀率很高，但人民币的贸易加权价值却因美元和日圆疲软而走强。上个世纪80年代末、90年代初，日圆走强使日本陷入了通货紧缩的旋涡；上个世纪90年代末美国也因为同样的问题而遭受重挫。 Fed、美国总统或是美国财政部只要想让美元走强，那么美元就能走强。政府对美元的供需前景几乎拥有绝对的控制权。其对美元需求的控制力度几乎可以与对美元供应的控制力度相媲美，在给美元定价方面能起到与利率相当的作用，甚至还要大。
但世界市场预期目前乃至未来Fed将采取较为宽松的货币政策。这就使美元丧失了对资金的吸引力。通过将美元的走强与目前急需的通货膨胀调降努力相挂钩，华盛顿方面能轻轻而易举地改变这种预期。各方协同干预汇市虽然可以向外界传达出调整货币政策的明确信号，但却不是必要之举。必要的政策调整是美国出台一项组织严密的决策，这项决策倾向于将更强劲、更稳定的美元作为美国经济增长政策的核心。
作为解决金融市场动荡的下一步，Fed和美国政府应该说他们希望美元走强，以便吸引资金，刺激美国经济的增长，同时降低通货膨胀率。现在还为时不晚。失业率还没有达到经济衰退的水平，股票价格保持在高位，出口也在快速增长。美元走软似乎还没有达到不可收拾的程度，它对美国经济的拖累作用目前只与美国人的好讼习气以及美国不利于经济增长的税法相当。
但美国经济越是想努力补救2004年“无底洞”似的流动性问题造成的美元走软，就越是迫切需要进行更多的减息。这可能会造成美元进一步走软，加剧通货膨胀。显而易见的另一项选择是首先让美元走强。
David Malpass
（编者按：本文作者现任贝尔斯登公司(Bear Stearns Cos.)首席经济学家。）
Markets And The Dollar
汉 | 大 | 中 | 小
2008年01月14日17:17
High-profile foreign investments in U.S. financial institutions have been making headlines recently. But those capital injections are a trickle when compared to the outward flood of dollars from U.S. companies seeking to increase assets and earnings in some currency other than the sinking dollar.
To fight financial market turbulence and a slowing economy, the Fed has injected extra liquidity, cut the discount rate, and cut the fed funds rate a full percent. As it prepares to hit the rate-cut panic button harder, the Fed should also try using its most powerful tool, a stronger dollar, to draw liquidity into credit markets, reduce oil prices, and restart economic growth.
At 4.25%, the fed funds rate is now below both the 4.3% consumer price inflation rate and the 4.9% third-quarter real growth rate. That's a more proactive interest rate stance than any previous pre-recession environment. The Fed is trying to make the best of a bad monetary situation. Most of the damage was done once the fed-funds rate was forced down to 1% in 2003 and held artificially low as the value of the dollar evaporated and housing bubbled through 2005.
The Fed's late-December policy innovation -- auctioning funds through the discount window -- will gradually shift as much as 7% of the Fed's $900 billion in assets from Treasury bills to collateralized bank loans. This is constructive medicine. It should help deposit-taking banks finance mortgages, and also leave sought-after Treasury bills in the market.
While some worry that central banks are losing their power due to the size and complexity of global markets, the more likely problem is too much power. Central banks cause wide swings in interest rates and the value of their currencies. With a delay, the swings penetrate the price level as inflation and deflation. Central banks are the only institutions that have a literally unlimited balance sheet -- in the case of the Fed, the ability to instantaneously create and inject into the economy as many billions of dollars as it determines useful (by buying Treasury bills or acquiring temporary control of mortgage-related securities).
The elephant in the living room -- the topic Washington won't broach -- is the dollar itself as a powerful but unused monetary policy tool. The Fed didn't mention the dollar in its Dec. 11 rate-decision communique, nor in its November economic forecasts. In his recent 500-page memoir, and his Dec. 12 opinion piece on this page, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan barely mentions the wide swings in the value of the dollar -- probably the most important economic and investing variable in the last decade -- and their causal connection to first deflation and now inflation.
President Bush showed no embarrassment over dollar weakness in a November interview with Fox Business News. He was asked: 'Even if the economy is weak, shouldn't the dollar be strong?' Rather than a simple 'yes,' the president said: 'All I can tell you is the policy of this government is a strong dollar. We believe the marketplace is the best place to set the exchange rates.' Pressed if he was satisfied with where the exchange rates are now, he replied: 'Well, I am satisfied with the fact that we have a strong-dollar policy and know that the market ought to be setting the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and other currencies.'
Current U.S. dollar policy leaves only 'the market' responsible for the dollar's collapse. Not known for deep thinking, the currency markets tend to sell currencies issued by countries which make markets responsible for currency values. The euro found this out the hard way in 2000 when Wim Duisenberg, then head of the European Central Bank, invited markets to set the value of the euro based on Europe's economic fundamentals. Look out below. The free fall didn't stop until Jean-Claude Trichet took over and installed policies to preserve the euro's value regardless of the market's view of economic fundamentals.
There's no reason to think markets set currency values based on economic fundamentals anyway. In the early 1990s, Japan's yen was super-strong through 1995 even though it pushed Japan into a decade-long deflation spiral. Currency markets are famous for going to extremes, distorting economies and people's lives without any qualm of conscience or reference to value.
One of the Fed's main explanations for its hope that inflation could moderate despite dollar weakness -- the same explanation it used in the late 1990s for claiming that dollar strength wouldn't cause deflation -- is its research showing that the 'trade-weighted' value of the dollar is not well-correlated to U.S. inflation. The obvious problem with this approach is that the trade-weighted dollar mixes together changes in the dollar's value with changes in the value of foreign currencies.
The dollar's trade-weighted value can be down due to foreign currency appreciation, and vice versa, with little impact on U.S. inflation. In contrast, the connection between gold-measured changes in the value of the dollar and the U.S. inflation rate is too clear to keep ignoring.
The relationship between currency values and inflation or deflation is equally strong in other countries. China is suffering high inflation now because the gold-measured value of the yuan is weak (even though the trade-weighted yuan is strong due to dollar and yen weakness). Yen strength in the late 1980s and early '90s drove Japan into a deflation spiral, the same process that struck the U.S. in the late '90s. By saying they want a stronger dollar, the Fed, the president or the Treasury could make it happen. Government policy makers have almost absolute control over perceptions of the future scarcity of dollars. This controls the demand for dollars almost as much as it does the supply, setting its value as much or more than rates do.
But world markets expect a dovish Fed now and in the future. This is driving capital away from the dollar. Washington can easily change this perception by linking a stronger dollar to its much-needed fight against inflation. Coordinated currency interventions are a helpful and decisive signal of a monetary policy change, but aren't required. The necessary policy change is a top-down U.S. policy decision in favor of a stronger, more stable dollar as a core U.S. growth policy.
As a next step in addressing financial-market turbulence, the Fed and the administration should say they want the dollar to strengthen in order to attract capital, spur U.S. growth and slow the inflation rate. There's still time. Jobless claims are not yet at recession levels, stock prices are high, and exports are booming. The weak dollar doesn't seem to be at a tipping point -- it's more of a constant drag on the economy, like American litigiousness and the anti-growth tax code.
But the harder the economy works to repair the weak-dollar damage from the bottomless liquidity punch bowl of 2004, the deeper the urge for the 'hair of the dog' medicine of more rate cuts. Those may weaken the dollar more, adding to inflation. The clear alternative is to strengthen the dollar first.
David Malpass
作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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汇率工具缘何遭冷遇？
