成功的商人不懂宏观经济

TOKYO — The Bank of Japan, this country’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, has lately been making a big effort to end deflation, which has afflicted Japan’s economy for almost two decades. At first its efforts — which involve printing a lot of money and, even more important, trying to assure investors that it will keep printing money until inflation reaches 2 percent — seemed to be going well. But more recently the economy has lost momentum, and last week the bank announced new, even more aggressive monetary measures.

东京——日本银行(Bank of Japan)，也就是日本相当于美联储(Federal Reserve)的机构，最近做了很多努力试图终结通货紧缩，这个问题已经困扰了日本将近20年。作为日本的中央银行，它最初采取的举措似乎效果不错，包括印很多钱，更重要的是，它还试图让投资者相信，会一直继续印钱，直到通胀水平达到2%。但是最近，日本经济失去了动力，上周，日本央行又宣布了新的、更激进的货币动作。

I am, as you might guess, very much in favor of this move, although I worry that the policy might nonetheless fail thanks to fiscal mistakes. (More about that later.) While the bank did the right thing, however, it did so amid substantial internal dissent. In fact, the new stimulus was approved by only five of the bank board’s nine members, with those closest to business voting against. Which brings me to the subject of this column: the economic wisdom, or lack thereof, of business leaders.

你大概也猜到了，我非常支持这个举动，尽管我担心由于财政政策的失误，这一政策仍然可能会失败。（这一点等会儿再说。）虽然日本央行做了正确的事，但是它在这样做时，内部的反对意见相当激烈。实际上，新的刺激举措在该行的政策委员会中，只得到了九名委员中五人的支持，那些与商界关系紧密的委员都投了反对票。于是就引出了我这篇专栏的主题：商界领袖的经济智慧，或者说，其经济智慧的缺失。

Some of the people I’ve spoken to here argue that the opposition of many Japanese business leaders to the Bank of Japan’s actions shows that it’s on the wrong track. In saying this, they’re echoing a common sentiment in many countries, including America — the belief that if you want to fix an ailing economy, you should turn to people who have been successful in business, like leaders of major corporations, entrepreneurs and wealthy investors. After all, doesn’t their success with money mean that they know how the economy really works?

我在这里交谈过的一些人表示，日本许多商界领袖对央行举动的反对，显示出央行的路线是错的。他们说这番话时，与包括美国在内的许多国家的常见看法相似——以为要想挽救糟糕的经济，就需要向成功的商界人士讨教，比如大型企业的领导者、企业家和富有的投资者。说到底，他们在赚钱时取得的成功，不就意味着他们明白经济是如何运行的吗？

Actually, no. In fact, business leaders often give remarkably bad economic advice, especially in troubled times. And I think it’s important to understand why.

实际上并非如此。事实上，商界领袖给出的经济建议常常出奇地坏，尤其是在经济状况糟糕的时候。我想有必要理解一下背后的原因。

About that bad advice: Think of the hugely wealthy money managers who warned Ben Bernanke that the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy risked “currency debasement”; think of the many corporate chieftains who solemnly declared that budget deficits were the biggest threat facing America, and that fixing the debt would cause growth to soar. In Japan, business leaders played an important role in the fiscal mistakes that have undermined recent policy success, calling for a tax hike that caused growth to stall earlier this year, and a second tax hike next year that would be an even worse error.

关于不良建议：回想一下，一些异常富有的基金经理，曾警告本·伯南克(Ben Bernanke)说，美联储刺激经济的举措可能会造成“货币贬值”；再回想一下，许多企业的首席某某官都曾庄严地宣称，财政赤字是美国面临的最大威胁，解决政府负债问题，经济增长就能腾飞。在日本，财政上的失误抹杀了最近货币政策取得的成功，而商界领袖在财政政策的失误上扮演了重要角色，他们呼吁的增税在今年早些时候导致了经济增长停滞，明年的第二次增税可能会是一个更严重的错误。

And on the other side, the past few years have seen repeated vindication for policy makers who have never met a payroll, but do know a lot about economic theory and history. The Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have navigated their way through a once-in-three-generations economic crisis under the leadership of former college professors — Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Mervyn King — who, among other things, had the courage to defy all those tycoons demanding that they stop printing money. The European Central Bank brought the euro back from the brink of collapse under the leadership of Mario Draghi, who spent the bulk of his career in academia and public service.

另一方面，过去几年里的事件，却反复印证了许多政策制定者的观点，他们从来没给别人发过工资，但是对经济理论和历史却有很多了解。美联储和英国央行在前大学教授的领导下，安然度过了百年一遇的经济危机，比如本·伯南克、珍妮特·耶伦(Janet Yellen)、默文·金(Mervyn King)。他们的诸多功绩中就包括，有勇气挑战那些要求停止印钱的企业大亨。欧洲央行在马里奥·德拉吉(Mario Draghi)的领导下，把欧元从崩溃的边缘挽救了回来，而德拉吉的职业生涯中，有很长时间是在学术界和公共服务中度过的。

Obviously there are business leaders who have gotten the economic analysis right, and plenty of academics who have gotten it wrong. (Don’t get me started.) But success in business does not seem to convey any special insight into economic policy. Why?

显然有些商界领袖对经济的分析是正确的，也有很多学者搞错了，简直说都说不完。可是商业上的成功，似乎并不能表示对经济政策有什么特别的洞见。这是为什么呢？

The answer, to quote the title of a paper I published many years ago, is that a country is not a company. National economic policy, even in small countries, needs to take into account kinds of feedback that rarely matter in business life. For example, even the biggest corporations sell only a small fraction of what they make to their own workers, whereas even very small countries mostly sell goods and services to themselves.

用我很多年前发表过的一篇论文的标题来说，答案就是：国家并不是公司。国民经济政策，即使是在一个小国，也需要考虑在商业生活中常常无关紧要的某些类型的反馈。例如，即使是最大的公司，也只会把一小部分的产品卖给自己的员工，然而即使是极小的国家，大多数商品和服务也主要是卖给国内的。

So think of what happens when a successful businessperson looks at a troubled economy and tries to apply the lessons of business experience. He or (rarely) she sees the troubled economy as something like a troubled company, which needs to cut costs and become competitive. To create jobs, the businessperson thinks, wages must come down, expenses must be reduced; in general, belts must be tightened. And surely gimmicks like deficit spending or printing more money can’t solve what must be a fundamental problem.

这样一来，就可以设想一下，成功的商人对欠佳的经济运用商业经验时，会发生什么。他们或者她们（后者人数极少）看待糟糕的经济，就像是一家处境不佳的企业，需要削减成本，提升竞争力。商人会认为，要想创造就业，工资就必须下降，开支就需要削减，总而言之，要勒紧裤腰带。政府背负赤字去花钱，以及印钱这样的伎俩，肯定没办法解决问题，而问题肯定是根本性的。

In reality, however, cutting wages and spending in a depressed economy just aggravates the real problem, which is inadequate demand. Deficit spending and aggressive money-printing, on the other hand, can help a lot.

然而实际上，在经济受到抑制时，削减工资和开支只会加剧真正的问题，真正的问题是需求不足。反过来讲，政府背负赤字去花钱，以及大手笔地印钱却有很大帮助。

But how can this kind of logic be sold to business leaders, especially when it comes from pointy-headed academic types? The fate of the world economy may hinge on the answer.

然而怎么才能让商界领袖接受这种逻辑呢，况且这种建议还是那些学术界的书呆子提出的？世界经济的命运，可能都有赖于这个问题的答案。

Here in Japan, the fight against deflation is all too likely to fail if conventional notions of prudence prevail. But can unconventionality triumph over the instincts of business leaders? Stay tuned.

在日本，如果审慎的常规观念占了上风，抗击通缩的战斗就很容易失败。然而反常规的思路，能够压制住商界领袖的本能吗？请拭目以待。