赫尔曼·戴利论美国金融危机
2008年10月7日
摘自：http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4617
目前的金融危机实在不是人们相信的那种"流动性"的危机。这是一场由金融资产相对真实财富过度增长的危机——和缺乏流动性正好相反。持续增长的金融资产已数倍于真实经济——购买货币的货币交易已超出购买真实商品的货币交易的二十倍。用不着奇怪，如果用真实财富来衡量，极度膨胀的金融资产已经贬值。真实的财富是有形的，而金融资产则是一种抽象物——一种以真实财富保有置留权的未来债务。目前的真实财富已经不能继续担当保证未来债务无限膨胀的置留物，所以未来债务相对于目前的真实财富就会贬值。在这种情况下，哪怕有再高的利息，也没有人愿意用既已存在真实财富和抽象的债务进行交换。引发目前危机的真正原因是债务的贬值，而不是没有足够的货币或信用，或像那些媒体评论员所说的"银行无法相互借贷"所致。
那么，经济能够增长得更快些来偿还急剧膨胀的债务吗？答案是不行。如弗雷德里克·索迪（1926年诺贝尔化学奖获得者，兼"地下"经济学者）很久以前就指出的，"你不可能永远拿人类创造出的鬼把戏，比如自动的债务增长（以复利计算）去和由自然法则支配的自动的财富缩减（熵）进行对抗。"负猪"（债务）的数量可以无限增加，因为那只是个数字而已；"正猪"（真实财富）的数量则会受到客观世界的钳制。虽然没有人公开承认索迪所说的简单常识是正确的，但一旦意识到这一点就理解了潜藏于危机之下的根本原因。我们面临的问题不是流动性太差，而是有增长太快的"负猪"，而且大大超过了受到消化能力、生育周期和圈养空间限制的"正猪"的数量。此外，华尔街充斥着太多的两条腿的猪也是个问题。
美国的真实财富增长受到自然资源日益匮乏的限制，这种限制是两端的，即源头一端（石油开采）和废物排放一端（大气二氧化碳的吸收能力）。而且，因为这个世界已经被填得很满，腾出空间把旧东西换成新东西所付出的代价也日益高昂。越来越严重的收入分配不均也打击大多数人购买新东西的意愿——除非他们依靠赊购（也就是更多的债务）。增长的边际成本现在已经超过了边际收益，所以真实的物质增长让我们其实变得更穷而不是更富（喂养一头新猪的费用已经超过了它能带来的效益）。为了维系"愈增长愈富有"的幻觉，我们于是通过无休止地创造金融资本来延缓对损耗的支付，但轻易地忘记了这些所谓的财富是需要整个社会用未来真实的物质增长来偿还的债务。在未来的真实增长无法保证的情况下，对之预期的索求也会贬值，不论其流动性如何。
金融资产是怎样如此偏离基本的真实财富的？首先，我们没有实物货币，只有不兑现货币。实物货币（黄金）尽管有许多不利之处，但其价值毕竟受到实际生产成本的牵系。其次，我们的部分储备金体系让银行货币（活期储蓄）叠置于政府发行的不兑现货币之上。再次，凭保证金额度购买的股票债券或一些"衍生物"又被叠置于已膨胀数倍的货币供给之上。此外，信用卡债务，以及其他所谓的金融"发明"进一步扩张了准货币的供给。创造这些"钱"的目的就是规避那些为保护公共利益而对商业银行和货币供给进行的管制。我不赞成回到实物货币时代，但我主张银行的储备率必须达到100％（可以逐步实现），并放弃凭保证金额度购买股票债券的制度。所有的银行只能成为将其实际借款再次贷出的中介，而不是凭空制造货币并将其贷出赚取利息的机器。如果重新投资的每一块钱能够代表曾经存入的一块钱，我们就可以回复到古典经济学家所描述的投资与存储相平衡的状态。在存储不得不优先于投资的情况下，愚蠢和病态的投资者就一定会少些。当然，增长经济学家们肯定会咆哮：那会把GDP增长拖慢！我会说：那就让它慢些吧——根据我们现在的边际测算结果，增长已经不经济。
把一大堆异质的保证物捆在一个混乱不清的大包里进行买卖的做法也应该被法律禁止。有效市场（价格合理）的一个基本假设就是存在同质产品。例如，我们拥有二号玉米的市场和相应的价格——而不存在把不同谷物随机混同的市场和价格。同样，只有那些不懂市场或故意进行欺诈的人才会把一堆乱七八糟的"负猪"混在一块进行买卖。然而，正是华尔街那帮擅长"聚合运算"的巫师们在这么干，但现在让人惊奇的是，他们自己好像也无法为这些愚蠢的"资产"给予准确的定价。
引发危机的另一个很重要因素是贸易赤字平衡。这种平衡让我们可以继续消费，好像增长一直能够延续而不曾有过负债似的。目前，对我们有贸易盈余的国家一直希望通过购买我们的短期国库券来把从我们身上赚到的钱回借给我们——于是产生了以更多的还未曾出现的财富作为留置物"保证"的债务。毫无疑问，他们也购买真实资产及其在未来产生收益的能力。与此同时，一些经济天才们继续宣扬要去除对金融业和国际商务（例如："自由贸易"）的管制。但我们中的许多人也一直指出这种做法是不明智、不可持续、不爱国的，同时也可能是犯罪行径。也许我们是正确的。这个国家下一只要扔掉的鞋就是和无法偿付的债务脱离，为实现这一点，或者通过银行破产和将其没收，或者直接经历通货膨胀。
[毛达 译]
〔英文原文〕
Herman Daly on the Credit Crisis,
Financial Assets, and Real Wealth
Oct 7, 2008
The current financial debacle is really not a "liquidity" crisis as it is often euphemistically called. It is a crisis of overgrowth of financial assets relative to growth of real wealth—pretty much the opposite of too little liquidity. Financial assets have grown by a large multiple of the real economy—paper exchanging for paper is now 20 times greater than exchanges of paper for real commodities. It should be no surprise that the relative value of the vastly more abundant financial assets has fallen in terms of real assets. Real wealth is concrete; financial assets are abstractions—existing real wealth carries a lien on it in the amount of future debt. The value of present real wealth is no longer sufficient to serve as a lien to guarantee the exploding debt. Consequently the debt is being devalued in terms of existing wealth. No one any longer is eager to trade real present wealth for debt even at high interest rates. This is because the debt is worth much less, not because there is not enough money or credit, or because "banks are not lending to each other" as commentators often say.
Can the economy grow fast enough in real terms to redeem the massive increase in debt? In a word, no. As Frederick Soddy (1926 Nobel Laureate chemist and underground economist) pointed out long ago, "you cannot permanently pit an absurd human convention, such as the spontaneous increment of debt [compound interest] against the natural law of the spontaneous decrement of wealth [entropy]". The population of "negative pigs" (debt) can grow without limit since it is merely a number; the population of "positive pigs" (real wealth) faces severe physical constraints. The dawning realization that Soddy's common sense was right, even though no one publicly admits it, is what underlies the crisis. The problem is not too little liquidity, but too many negative pigs growing too fast relative to the limited number of positive pigs whose growth is constrained by their digestive tracts, their gestation period, and places to put pigpens. Also there are too many two‐legged Wall Street pigs, but that is another matter.
Growth in US real wealth is restrained by increasing scarcity of natural resources, both at the source end (oil depletion), and the sink end (absorptive capacity of the atmosphere for CO2). Further, spatial displacement of old stuff to make room for new stuff is increasingly costly as the world becomes more full, and increasing inequality of distribution of income prevents most people from buying much of the new stuff—except on credit (more debt). Marginal costs of growth now likely exceed marginal benefits, so that real physical growth makes us poorer, not richer (the cost of feeding and caring for the extra pigs is greater than the extra benefit). To keep up the illusion that growth is making us richer we deferred costs by issuing financial assets almost without limit, conveniently forgetting that these so‐called assets are, for society as a whole, debts to be paid back out of future real growth. That future real growth is very doubtful and consequently claims on it are devalued, regardless of liquidity.
What allowed symbolic financial assets to become so disconnected from underlying real assets? First, there is the fact that we have fiat money, not commodity money. For all its disadvantages, commodity money (gold) was at least tethered to reality by a real cost of production. Second, our fractional reserve banking system allows pyramiding of bank money (demand deposits) on top of the fiat government‐issued currency. Third, buying stocks and "derivatives" on margin allows a further pyramiding of financial assets on top the already multiplied money supply. In addition, credit card debt expands the supply of quasi‐money as do other financial "innovations" that were designed to circumvent the public‐interest regulation of commercial banks and the money supply. I would not advocate a return to commodity money, but would certainly advocate 100% reserve requirements for banks (approached gradually), as well as an end to the practice of buying stocks on the margin. All banks should be financial intermediaries that lend depositors' money, not engines for creating money out of nothing and lending it at interest. If every dollar invested represented a dollar previously saved we would restore the classical economists' balance between investment and abstinence. Fewer stupid or crooked investments would be tolerated if abstinence had to precede investment. Of course the growth economists will howl that this would slow the growth of GDP. So be it—growth has become uneconomic at the present margin as we currently measure it.
The agglomerating of mortgages of differing quality into opaque and shuffled bundles should be outlawed. One of the basic assumptions of an efficient market with a meaningful price is a homogeneous product. For example, we have the market and corresponding price for number 2 corn—not a market and price for miscellaneous randomly aggregated grains. Only people who have no understanding of markets, or who are consciously perpetrating fraud, could have either sold or bought these negative pigs‐in‐a‐poke. Yet the aggregating mathematical wizards of Wall Street did it, and now seem surprised at their inability to correctly price these idiotic "assets".
And very important in all this is our balance of trade deficit that has allowed us to consume as if we were really growing instead of accumulating debt. So far our surplus trading partners have been willing to lend the dollars they earned back to us by buying treasury bills—more debt "guaranteed" by liens on yet‐to‐exist wealth. Of course they also buy real assets and their future earning capacity. Our brilliant economic gurus meanwhile continue to preach deregulation of both the financial sector and of international commerce (i.e. "free trade"). Some of us have for a long time been saying that this behavior was unwise, unsustainable, unpatriotic, and probably criminal. Maybe we were right. The next shoe to drop will be repudiation of unredeemable debt either directly by bankruptcy and confiscation, or indirectly by inflation.
[广告] 金秋最关注楼盘-房不胜房
[广告] 金秋最关注楼盘-房不胜房
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
★★北京忆通律师事务所（李劲松律师，李苏滨律师）http://www.bj580.com/
★★伯阳法律援助网（常伯阳律师）http://www.by148.com
★★《权利》电子邮件网络非常鼓励具有行动力的文章供大家分享和引起支持！
1，所有帖子没有注明"不可转载"的，一律可以转载；转发本邮件成员文章，请注明"转自《权利》http://groups.google.com/group/ChinaRights"。
2，《权利》公共发言，请发电子邮件到 ChinaRights@googlegroups.com
3，订阅：https://groups.google.com/group/ChinaRights/subscribe
4，要退订此论坛，请发邮件至 ChinaRights-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
5，群发邮件，慎重发言，文明用语，切忌只言片语不明不确！
6，备份查询：http://chinarightsgroup.blogspot.com/
7，联系：gongchangbeijing@gmail.com
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
没有评论:
发表评论