欧元区真有理由乐观吗？

The acute phase of the crisis is clearly over – for now. There are some signs of a normalisation in the inter-banking market. Sovereign spreads have come down. Italy and Spain will both manage to fund their fiscal deficits until next year. The European Central Bank’s longer-term refinancing operations have propped up the banks. The new Outright Monetary Transactions programme, if it is ever activated, will prop up the sovereigns. If you thought of the lethal interaction between banks and sovereign as two drunks in a pub propping each other up, the ECB has given them separate crutches. They can walk. Does this mean that the crisis is over?

此次危机的急性发作阶段显然已经过去——就目前而言是如此。一些迹象表明，银行间市场已趋于正常。主权债务息差已缩窄。从现在到明年，意大利和西班牙都会成功为财政赤字融资。欧洲央行(ECB)的较长期再融资操作已经起到扶持银行的作用。新的直接货币交易(Outright Monetary Transactions, OMT)计划若得到启用，将扶持相关主权国家政府。如果你把银行与主权国家之间的致命联系想成两个在酒吧里相互搀扶的醉汉，那么现在欧洲央行给了他们一人一根拐杖。他们能走了。但这是否意味着这场危机已结束？

If you step back from the latest events and consider the bigger picture, you always come back to the same questions. Is this a liquidity crisis only – in which case the measures taken should be sufficient? Or is it a solvency crisis?

如果你从最新事件退后一步，考虑一下宏观局面，你总是会回到同一些问题。这仅仅是一场流动性危机吗？若是，那么现已采取的措施应该足够了。或者，这是否是一场偿付能力危机？

The ECB’s support cannot help in the latter case because the central bank is not allowed, by its own legal definition, to write off or participate in a restructuring of any debt it holds. In case of a disorderly default, the country would lose access to the ECB and would probably have to leave the eurozone. The ECB’s programmes are premised on the idea that this is not going to happen.

在后一种情况下，欧洲央行的支持不可能有所裨益，因为根据其自己的法律定义，欧洲央行不得注销所持任何债务，或参与这些债务的重组。在无序违约的情况下，相关国家将失去欧洲央行的支持，很可能不得不离开欧元区。欧洲央行计划的前提设想是，这种情况不会发生。

Yet, as the preliminary report of the troika – International Monetary Fund, European Commission and ECB – shows, Greece’s debt is clearly not sustainable, even under optimistic assumptions. Portugal is about to fall into a black hole and so will Spain if the Spanish government continues trying to fix a private sector debt problem through public sector austerity. With a total fiscal correction of close to 10 per cent of gross domestic product (to be achieved over several years) and a fiscal multiplier of 1.5, you are looking at a decline of at least 15 per cent in GDP. In Spain’s case it would probably be higher, as the banking sector’s losses would be much higher in a depression – and there is no additional loss absorption left.

然而，就像“三驾马车——国际货币基金组织(IMF)、欧盟委员会(European Commission)以及欧洲央行——的初步报告所显示的那样，希腊的债务显然是不可持续的，即便根据乐观的假设也是如此。葡萄牙即将坠入一个黑洞，如果西班牙政府继续试图通过公共部门紧缩来解决私营部门债务问题的话，西班牙也将迎来同样的命运。整个财政修正的规模达到国内生产总值(GDP)的近10%（将在几年里实现），假定财政乘数为1.5倍，你会看到GDP至少缩水15%。就西班牙而言，这一比例可能更高，因为在萧条状况下，银行业的亏损要严重的多，而且几乎没有任何额外亏损吸收能力。

To those of us who look at this as a solvency crisis, nothing much has really changed in the past six months, except that the ECB has taken away the small risk of an immediate accident. To pick up on last year’s most overused metaphor: with the OMT, the ECB has increased the size of the can we are kicking down the road. But we are still kicking.

对于我们当中将此视为一场偿付能力危机的人来说，过去6个月没有发生多少真正的变化，只不过欧洲央行消除了眼下出现意外的小风险。如果我们重温一下去年被滥用最多的一个比喻：有了直接货币交易，欧洲央行把我们踢到未来的那个破罐子变大了。但我们仍在踢。

Eurozone governments’ determination to stop the liquidity crisis is matched only by their refusal to recognise the solvency crisis. The ECB and member states may be infinitely patient in rolling over debt, but unwilling to recognise losses, for example on Greek sovereign and on Spanish banking debt. I was reminded of that when I read that Germany was now ready to accept a two-year extension of the Greek programme, but there would be no new money, leaving Greece itself to fund the gap – something that is simply not going to happen.

可以与欧元区政府制止流动性危机的决心相媲美的，只有他们拒绝承认这是一场偿付能力危机。欧洲央行和成员国可能会在债务展期方面保持无止境的耐心，但他们不愿承认亏损，例如在希腊主权债务和西班牙银行业债务上的亏损。当我读到德国现在准备接受将希腊计划延长两年的报道时，我想起了这些，但问题是不会有新的资金，希腊将需要自行弥补资金缺口——而这肯定不会发生。

The refusal to let the European Stability Mechanism fund Spanish banks directly falls into the same category. Debt that has arisen in Spain will remain debt of the Spanish state as ultimate guarantor.

拒绝让欧洲稳定机制(European Stability Mechanism)为西班牙银行融资也属于这一类。在西班牙产生的债务，仍将成为西班牙政府这个最后担保人的债务。

Resolution means policies to assure a return to solvency. Solvency is an analytical concept, which itself depends on your assumptions about interest rates and economic growth and, of course, the total burden of debt. If you make unrealistically optimistic assumptions about the size of the fiscal multiplier, the global economy and the impact of structural reform on growth, you can make any debt disappear on paper. This can go on until these assumptions are falsified. But it cannot go on for ever.

危机解决意味着制定确保回归偿付能力的政策。偿付能力是一个分析概念，其本身取决于你对利率、经济增长以及整体债务负担的假设。如果你对财政乘数的规模、全球经济以及结构改革对增长的影响做出乐观得不切实际的假设，你可以让所有债务在账面上消失。在这些假设被证明虚假之前，这可以一直持续下去。但它不可能永远持续下去。

The latest dreadful confidence surveys are in line with my expectation that austerity will have a very significant negative effect on growth in 2013. The recession in southern Europe, including Greece, will probably continue at least until 2014, at which time debt to GDP ratios are likely to be similar to today’s. If you keep piling austerity programme on austerity programme for a sufficiently large number of years, then the policy might eventually work. But that’s a politically unrealistic proposition. Portugal, for example, is already cutting subsistence payments for very poor people to meet the agreed deficit targets.

最新信心调查的可怕结果与我的预测相符：紧缩将对明年的增长造成非常严重的负面影响。包括希腊在内的南欧的衰退很可能至少延续到2014年，那时，债务与GDP的比率可能与现在类似。如果你在相当长的年份里推行一个接一个紧缩计划，那么这项政策最终可能奏效。但这在政治上是一种不切实际的主张。例如，葡萄牙为达到既定的赤字目标，已在削减针对穷人的生活补助费。

I believe therefore that crisis resolution still has to happen, but I see no evidence that we are getting there, not even in small steps. I do not expect any change in this situation even after the German elections. Since the crisis is not going to resolve itself, I cannot see any fundamental change in the situation – except that the ECB has removed the risk of accidents in the short term.

因此我认为，危机解决必须出现，但我看不到任何证据证明，我们正在接近这个目标，甚至连小的进展也没有。即便在德国选举之后，我也不指望形势会出现任何改观。因为这场危机不会自己解决，我看不到形势发生了任何根本变化——除了欧洲央行消除了短期出现意外的风险之外。

To put it another way: if you are optimistic, then surely you must treat this as a liquidity crisis. And then, surely, you must have believed this six months ago. I think this is wrong, but at least it would be an internally consistent position.

换句话说：如果你乐观，那么你肯定必须将此视为一场流动性危机。当然，6个月前你肯定也是这样认为的。我认为这是错的，但至少这将是一种内部一贯的立常

What I cannot get into my head is why anybody would be optimistic now when they were pessimistic a few months earlier. Could someone explain this to me?

我不明白的是，为什么几个月前还是悲观的人们现在却变得乐观起来。有人能给我解释一下吗？