談危機錯在政府

這篇的論點很簡單   
它假設政府刺激消費的效率是100%的. 其實它可能不到30% ( 請思考台灣的道路水利建設的種種弊病  以及消費券之無效率    它又不計可能的副作用)  且看這一輪的安倍Abe政府之刺激方案的長期效果
所以政府的確本身就可能是危機之源.

Gordon Tullock 和 James Buchanan

危機錯在政府，不在經濟學

保羅·克魯格曼 2013年01月09日

聖迭戈 /聖地牙哥
又到了這個時候：一年一度的美國經濟學會(American Economic Association)系列會議召開。它就像一個中世紀的集市，成為各種人才（那些找工作的應屆博士畢業生）、書籍和觀點交換的市場。而和往年一樣，今 年的會議也有一個討論主題：當前的經濟危機。

按圖放大

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

保羅·克魯格曼

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• 歐洲財政緊縮過猶不及
• 美國需要更多赤字

可情況本不應該是這樣。如果你在三年前問參加這個會議的經濟學家，他們中的大多數人肯定會預測，今年我們會討論大衰退是如何終止的，而不是它為什麼仍在繼續。
那麼究竟是什麼地方出了錯？主要的原因，是壞主意得了勢。
最近幾年經濟上的失敗，很容易讓我們得出結論，經濟學家太沒用。但是真相實際上更糟：事實上，主流經濟學提供了很好的答案，但是政治領導人——以及太多的經濟學家——選擇了忘記或者忽視他們本應該知道的東西。
走到這一步，問題已經很清楚了。金融危機通過多種渠道導致了個人消費的銳減：隨着房地產泡沫破滅，住房投資大幅下降；泡沫製造的財富幻象消逝，而同時住房抵押貸款仍然存在，消費者開始增加儲蓄。而個人消費的大幅縮減，不可避免地導致了全球經濟大衰退。
因為宏觀經濟不同於家庭。一個家庭可以決定要減少開支，同時努力增加收入。但是在宏觀經濟中，收入和支出是不可分的：我的開支就是你的收入；而你的開支就是我的收入。如果所有人都同時削減開支，收入就會減少——失業率就會飆升。
那麼應該怎麼辦呢？小型金融震蕩，如20世紀90年代出現的互聯網泡沫，可以通過降低利率來解決。但是2008年危機的規模要大得多，即便把利率降到零也遠遠不夠。
這個時候，各國政府應該介入，加大支出支持經濟振興，同時讓私營部門恢復元氣。在一定程度上，政府確實是這麼做的：在經濟衰退期，政府收入大幅下 降，但是隨着失業保險等項目的覆蓋範圍擴大以及臨時經濟刺激計劃生效，開支在實際上出現了增長。預算赤字增加了，但這實際上是件好事，它可能是大蕭條沒有 全面重演的最重要原因。
然而，2010年，一切都開始朝着錯誤的方向發展。希臘的危機被錯誤地當成所有政府都應該立即削減開支、降低赤字的信號。財政緊縮成為當下的要務， 那些本應有更好想法的所謂專家也推波助瀾；而一些（但不夠多）經濟學家發出的緊縮將斷送經濟復蘇的警告則遭到忽視。比如，歐洲央行(European Central Bank)行長就自以為是地斷言，“稱緊縮措施將引發經濟停滯的說法是錯誤的。”
的確有人是錯誤的。
在美國經濟學會會議上提交的所有論文中，最引人注目的可能就是來自國際貨幣基金組織（International Monetary Fund，簡稱IMF）的奧利維爾·布蘭乍得(Olivier Blanchard)和丹尼爾·利(Daniel Leigh)的文章。表面上，該文章僅帶代表作者的觀點；但是IMF的首席經濟學家布蘭乍得並非一個普通的研究者，人們普遍認為，該文章表明，IMF已認 真全面地對經濟政策進行了重新思考。
因為文章的結論不僅僅是緊縮將使脆弱的經濟進一步衰退，它還發現，緊縮的負面影響比之前人們認為的還要大得多。事實證明，過早採取緊縮政策是一個嚴重的錯誤。
我看過一些報道，說那篇文章表明，IMF承認了它不知道自己在做什麼。這樣的說法沒有抓住重點；事實上，和其他主要機構相比，IMF對緊縮政策並沒 有那麼積極。儘管它承認自己錯了，它同時也指出，其他人（除了那些提出質疑的經濟學家）錯得更離譜。而且IMF願意在證據面前重新思考自己的立場，這一點 就值得肯定。
而真正的壞消息是，其他機構還沒有這麼做。歐洲的領導者在債務國國內製造了類似於大蕭條的經濟衰退，卻沒有恢復金融上的信心，他們仍堅稱，解決問題 的答案在於更加忍痛緊縮。現在的英國政府曾因轉向緊縮政策而扼殺了該國經濟復蘇的希望，現在它也完全拒不承認自己有可能犯了錯誤。
而在美國，共和黨人也堅持表示，他們將通過反對提高債務上限——這種行為本身就極為不合理——來要求政府縮減開支，而這將把我們再度拖入衰退。
事實是，我們剛剛經歷了一次重大的經濟失敗——而太多應該為其負責的人仍然掌權，並拒絕從中吸取教訓。

翻譯：谷菁璐

The Big Fail

By PAUL KRUGMAN January 09, 2013 

 

San Diego
It’s that time again: the annual meeting of the American Economic Association and affiliates, a sort of medieval fair that serves as a marketplace for bodies (newly minted Ph.D.’s in search of jobs), books and ideas. And this year, as in past meetings, there is one theme dominating discussion: the ongoing economic crisis.

This isn’t how things were supposed to be. If you had polled the economists attending this meeting three years ago, most of them would surely have predicted that by now we’d be talking about how the great slump ended, not why it still continues.
So what went wrong? The answer, mainly, is the triumph of bad ideas.
It’s tempting to argue that the economic failures of recent years prove that economists don’t have the answers. But the truth is actually worse: in reality, standard economics offered good answers, but political leaders — and all too many economists — chose to forget or ignore what they should have known.
The story, at this point, is fairly straightforward. The financial crisis led, through several channels, to a sharp fall in private spending: residential investment plunged as the housing bubble burst; consumers began saving more as the illusory wealth created by the bubble vanished, while the mortgage debt remained. And this fall in private spending led, inevitably, to a global recession.
For an economy is not like a household. A family can decide to spend less and try to earn more. But in the economy as a whole, spending and earning go together: my spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone tries to slash spending at the same time, incomes will fall — and unemployment will soar.
So what can be done? A smaller financial shock, like the dot-com bust at the end of the 1990s, can be met by cutting interest rates. But the crisis of 2008 was far bigger, and even cutting rates all the way to zero wasn’t nearly enough.
At that point governments needed to step in, spending to support their economies while the private sector regained its balance. And to some extent that did happen: revenue dropped sharply in the slump, but spending actually rose as programs like unemployment insurance expanded and temporary economic stimulus went into effect. Budget deficits rose, but this was actually a good thing, probably the most important reason we didn’t have a full replay of the Great Depression.
But it all went wrong in 2010. The crisis in Greece was taken, wrongly, as a sign that all governments had better slash spending and deficits right away. Austerity became the order of the day, and supposed experts who should have known better cheered the process on, while the warnings of some (but not enough) economists that austerity would derail recovery were ignored. For example, the president of the European Central Bank confidently asserted that “the idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect.”
Well, someone was incorrect, all right.
Of the papers presented at this meeting, probably the biggest flash came from one by Olivier Blanchard and Daniel Leigh of the International Monetary Fund. Formally, the paper only represents the views of the authors; but Mr. Blanchard, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, isn’t an ordinary researcher, and the paper has been widely taken as a sign that the fund has had a major rethinking of economic policy.
For what the paper concludes is not just that austerity has a depressing effect on weak economies, but that the adverse effect is much stronger than previously believed. The premature turn to austerity, it turns out, was a terrible mistake.
I’ve seen some reporting describing the paper as an admission from the I.M.F. that it doesn’t know what it’s doing. That misses the point; the fund was actually less enthusiastic about austerity than other major players. To the extent that it says it was wrong, it’s also saying that everyone else (except those skeptical economists) was even more wrong. And it deserves credit for being willing to rethink its position in the light of evidence.
The really bad news is how few other players are doing the same. European leaders, having created Depression-level suffering in debtor countries without restoring financial confidence, still insist that the answer is even more pain. The current British government, which killed a promising recovery by turning to austerity, completely refuses to consider the possibility that it made a mistake.
And here in America, Republicans insist that they’ll use a confrontation over the debt ceiling — a deeply illegitimate action in itself — to demand spending cuts that would drive us back into recession.
The truth is that we’ve just experienced a colossal failure of economic policy — and far too many of those responsible for that failure both retain power and refuse to learn from experience.