[克魯曼專欄]歐My God! 歐洲混亂之源 (原文載於10/02/15)

Lately, financial news has been dominated by reports from Greece and other nations on the European
periphery. And rightly so.


近來的財經新聞，幾乎被希臘和其他歐洲邊緣國家的消息所淹沒，其實也沒啥好意外的。


But I’ve been troubled by reporting that focuses almost exclusively on European debts and deficits,
conveying the impression that it’s all about government profligacy — and feeding into the narrative of our
own deficit hawks, who want to slash spending even in the face of mass unemployment, and hold Greece
up as an object lesson of what will happen if we don’t.


不過有件事讓我困擾，就是所有報導幾乎都只專注在歐洲的借款與赤字問題上，因此予人一種都是政府揮金如土的印象，而這印象又被我們的赤字之鷹加以應用。這些人即便大量失業問題迫在眉睫，還是堅持要大砍支出。赤字之鷹拿希臘當活生生的例子，表示若我們不加以節制支出，下場便是如此。


For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles
— not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid its irresponsibility with
creative accounting).


但事實上，歐洲麻煩的源頭不是在缺乏財政紀律，這點連主要問題都稱不上。即便不負責如希臘政府(還藉由創意會計手段來掩飾不負責咧)都不是。


No, the real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites
— specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the
continent was ready for such an experiment.


真正造成歐洲混亂的罪魁禍首，不是政府揮霍，而是精英階層的自以為是。確切的說，是那些在歐洲根本還沒準備好之前，就貿然推動單一貨幣實驗的政策精英。


Consider the case of Spain, which on the eve of the crisis appeared to be a model fiscal citizen. Its debts
were low — 43 percent of G.D.P. in 2007, compared with 66 percent in Germany. It was running budget
surpluses. And it had exemplary bank regulation.


想想看西班牙，在這次危機發生之初，其表現宛如模範生。負債率低，2007年負債只佔了國內生產毛額的43%，同期的德國則是66%。有充分的預算盈餘，還有堪稱模範的銀行監管體系。


But with its warm weather and beaches, Spain was also the Florida of Europe — and like Florida, it
experienced a huge housing boom. The financing for this boom came largely from outside the country:
there were giant inflows of capital from the rest of Europe, Germany in particular.


然而擁有溫暖宜人的氣候和美麗宜人的海灘，使西班牙就像歐洲的佛羅里達──而且一如佛州，西班牙也經歷了巨大的房市泡沫。泡沫由於海外資金而不斷擴大，龐大資金從以德國為主的其他歐洲國家源源不絕流入。


The result was rapid growth combined with significant inflation: between 2000 and 2008, the prices of
goods and services produced in Spain rose by 35 percent, compared with a rise of only 10 percent in
Germany. Thanks to rising costs, Spanish exports became increasingly uncompetitive, but job growth
stayed strong thanks to the housing boom.


其結果就是快速的經濟成長，以及伴隨而來的明顯通貨膨脹。2000年到2008年間，商品及服務的生產價格攀升了35%，而德國只有10%的漲幅。由於成本提升之故，西班牙的出口業越來越失去競爭力，不過拜房市泡沫之賜，就業市場仍得以強勢成長。


Then the bubble burst. Spanish unemployment soared, and the budget went into deep deficit. But the flood
of red ink — which was caused partly by the way the slump depressed revenues and partly by emergency
spending to limit the slump’s human costs — was a result, not a cause, of Spain’s problems.


接著，泡沫破滅了。西班牙失業率飆升，預算也深陷赤字。然而赤字氾濫一部分是因為蕭條減少了稅收，一部分是因為緊急支出來限制人力成本。這些都是西班牙問題的果，不是因。


And there’s not much that Spain’s government can do to make things better. The nation’s core economic
problem is that costs and prices have gotten out of line with those in the rest of Europe. If Spain still had
its old currency, the peseta, it could remedy that problem quickly through devaluation — by, say, reducing
the value of a peseta by 20 percent against other European currencies. But Spain no longer has its own
money, which means that it can regain competitiveness only through a slow, grinding process of deflation.


在此情形下，西班牙政府無力可回天。整個國家經濟問題的核心，在於成本與價格都遠超出其他歐洲國家。若西班牙繼續用舊貨幣比塞塔，則可貶值幣值大約20%來抗衡其他歐洲貨幣。可是西班牙已經沒有自己的貨幣了，意味著只能透過緩慢、沒完沒了的通貨緊縮來重新取得競爭力。


Now, if Spain were an American state rather than a European country, things wouldn’t be so bad. For one
thing, costs and prices wouldn’t have gotten so far out of line: Florida, which among other things was
freely able to attract workers from other states and keep labor costs down, never experienced anything
like Spain’s relative inflation. For another, Spain would be receiving a lot of automatic support in the crisis:
Florida’s housing boom has gone bust, but Washington keeps sending the Social Security and Medicare
checks.


如果西班牙是美國的一州而不是個歐洲國家的話，情況可能不會那麼糟。比方說，成本和費用不會超出標準那麼多。佛羅里達州可以自由吸引其他州的勞工，使勞工成本維持低廉，永遠不會經歷西班牙最近的通膨。又比方說，西班牙可以從危機中自動得到許多補助。佛州房市泡沫也破過，不過華府持續提供社會保險與老年保健醫療的支票。


But Spain isn’t an American state, and as a result it’s in deep trouble. Greece, of course, is in even deeper
trouble, because the Greeks, unlike the Spaniards, actually were fiscally irresponsible. Greece, however,
has a small economy, whose troubles matter mainly because they’re spilling over to much bigger
economies, like Spain’s. So the inflexibility of the euro, not deficit spending, lies at the heart of the crisis.


但西班牙畢竟不是美國的一州，所以現在被災難所吞噬。當然，希臘情況更是糟到無以復加，因為希臘人不比西班牙人，對財政毫不負責。但再怎麼說，希臘只是個小經濟體，之所以為人關注，主要是擔心問題會蔓延到較大的經濟體如西班牙上。總之危機的關鍵在於歐元的僵固性，而非赤字支出。


None of this should come as a big surprise. Long before the euro came into being, economists warned
that Europe wasn’t ready for a single currency. But these warnings were ignored, and the crisis came.


這結果也沒什麼好讓人訝異的，遠在歐元實行前，經濟學家就警告歐洲還沒有準備好接受單一貨幣。不過這些警告被視而不見，最終危機就上門來了。


Now what? A breakup of the euro is very nearly unthinkable, as a sheer matter of practicality. As
Berkeley’s Barry Eichengreen puts it, an attempt to reintroduce a national currency would trigger “the
mother of all financial crises.” So the only way out is forward: to make the euro work, Europe needs to
move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American
states.


現在該怎麼辦呢？以現況而言，終止歐元是難以想像的。如柏克萊大學的艾森格林所言，再次試圖採用原本國家的貨幣，會引發「所有金融危機之母」。那麼想讓歐元持續的唯一辦法，就是歐洲成立一個比現在更緊密的政治聯盟，讓歐洲各國運作的更像美國的州。


But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. What we’ll probably see over the next few years is a painful
process of muddling through: bailouts accompanied by demands for savage austerity, all against a
background of very high unemployment, perpetuated by the grinding deflation I already mentioned.


可是這件事短期內不會發生，於是在接下來數年間我們大概會目擊一連串痛苦的病急亂投醫過程：有著嚴格限制的財政援助，違反了隱藏背後的高失業問題之解決之道，還有我先前提過幾乎會永存的通貨緊縮。


It’s an ugly picture. But it’s important to understand the nature of Europe’s fatal flaw. Yes, some
governments were irresponsible; but the fundamental problem was hubris, the arrogant belief that Europe
could make a single currency work despite strong reasons to believe that it wasn’t ready.


真是慘不忍睹的景象，但了解歐洲致命缺陷的本質十分重要。沒錯，是有些政府沒有責任感，可是根本問題仍是源於傲慢：自認為單一貨幣政策可行，完全無視有種種強烈理由的否定意見。