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The unveiling by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s new prime minister, of “Abenomics” – with its pillars of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reform – has apparently impressed the markets so much that the yen has fallen against leading currencies and Japanese stocks have moved sharply higher.
日本新任首相安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)倡导的“安倍经济学”(Abenomics)包括三大支柱：货币宽松、财政刺激和结构改革。市场显然大受激励，日元兑主要货币走低，日本股市大幅攀升。
Of the three pillars, expectations are high that aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan will pull the economy out of its deflationary spiral.
在这三大支柱中，人们寄予厚望的是，日本央行(BoJ)激进的宽松货币政策将推动经济走出通缩螺旋。
But the fact that the market has moved so much without a single shot being fired by either the central bank or the government begs the question: how much of this is hype and how much is justified?
然而，不管是日本央行还是日本政府都尚未射出一颗子弹，市场变动却如此巨大，这让人质疑：这里面有多少夸大其词的成分，又有多少合理之处？
The greatest cause of both the deflation and economic weakness of the past two decades is a lack of private sector borrowers. The bursting of the country’s debt-financed bubble in 1990 left the private sector with a huge debt overhang. To restore its financial health and escape negative equity, the private sector as a whole had no choice but to pay down debt or increase savings levels, even at zero interest rates. Although most private sector balance sheets were repaired by 2005, a serious aversion to debt remains.
过去20年间，导致通缩和经济疲软的最主要因素是私人部门借贷者匮乏。1990年日本债务融资泡沫的破裂让私人部门债台高筑。要使日本金融业恢复健康，避免出现负资产，私人部门别无选择，只能偿付债务，或者提高储蓄水平，即便利率为零。尽管私人部门到2005年已经修复了大部分资产负债表，但依然存在严重的债务厌恶情绪。
Today, the private sector is saving 9 per cent of gross domestic product at zero interest rates, a shockingly high number. The same figure for the US is 7 per cent; for the UK, 4 per cent; and for Spain, 8 per cent, All have record-low interest rates. These numbers suggest the private sectors of all these countries are still strengthening their balance sheets instead of maximising profits.
目前，在零利率水平下，私人部门储蓄仍占到国内生产总值(GDP)的9%，这一数字之高令人震惊。美国的储蓄率是7%，英国是4%，西班牙是8%，这几个国家的利率都处于最低纪录水平。这些数字表明，所有这些国家的私人部门仍在增强资产负债表，而不是追逐利润最大化。
While repairing balance sheets is the right and responsible thing to do, if everybody tries to do it at the same time the result is a deflationary spiral known as balance sheet recession. The shift to debt minimisation is the main reason the US lost 46 per cent of its GDP and 30 per cent of its money supply – which is made up mostly of bank deposits – during the Great Depression, the last full-blown balance sheet recession before Japan fell into one in 1990. It is also the reason near-zero interest rates and massive quantitative easing by the BoJ since 1995 – and by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank since 2008 – have failed to produce the expected recoveries.
尽管修复资产负债表是正确之举，也是应尽之事，但如果所有人同时这么做，结果就是一场通缩螺旋，即所谓的“资产负债表衰退”。追求债务最小化是美国在大萧条期间GDP下降46%、货币供应量（主要由银行存款构成）减少30%的主要原因，在这次全面的资产负债表衰退之后，日本于1990年也陷入了类似的衰退。这也是日本央行自1995年以来——以及美联储(Federal Reserve)和欧洲央行(ECB)自2008年以来——实行近零利率和大规模量化宽松，却没有产生预期经济复苏的原因。
With the private sector having no choice but to repair its balance sheet, the only way to keep both the GDP and money supply from shrinking is for the government – the last borrower standing – to step in and borrow the unborrowed savings and spend them in the private sector.
由于私人部门别无选择，只能修复其资产负债表，要阻止GDP与货币供给萎缩，唯一的方法是由“最后的借款人”政府实施干预，借入银行体系中存留的储蓄，在私人领域支出。
By taking this route since the onset of the 1990 recession, Japan has managed to keep both its GDP and money supply above the bubble peak, in spite of private sector deleveraging and an 87 per cent decline in commercial property values. The rapid GDP and money supply growth in the US from 1933 onwards – despite the fact that private sector borrowing did not increase at all during this period – were also made possible by increased government borrowing under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
自1990年衰退开始以后，通过采取这种方法，日本把GDP与货币供应量保持在了泡沫时期的峰值之上，尽管私人部门实行去杠杆化、商业地产价值下跌了87%。美国从1933年以后GDP和货币供应量迅速增长——尽管在此期间私人部门借贷未见增长——也是由于在总统富兰克林??罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)“新政”推动下政府借贷增加所致。
Although one cannot expect too much from the BoJ’s monetary easing, Abenomics further addresses the problem of the lack of borrowers by making fiscal stimulus and structural reform its second and third pillars.
我们不能对日本央行的货币宽松抱有太高期望，但“安倍经济学”把财政刺激和结构改革当成第二和第三支柱，进一步解决了借贷者匮乏的问题。
For growth to become self-sustaining, the private sector must replace the public sector as the provider of final demand. The fiscal pillar in Abenomics is expected to address this challenge by introducing an investment tax credit and other tax incentives to borrow and invest, in order to help the private sector recover from the aversion to debt caused by the deleveraging that began in 1990 and lasted 15 years. The fact that it took the US 30 years, until 1959, to bring interest rates back to the average level of the 1920s suggests that the task of overcoming this trauma is a big one, but it must start somewhere.
要保证增长可以自我持续，私人部门必须取代公共部门，成为最终需求的提供者。通过推出一项投资税收优惠以及其他旨在扩大借款和投资的税收激励措施，“安倍经济学”的财政支柱预计将可解决这一挑战，以期帮助私人部门摆脱从1990年开始、持续15年的去杠杆化引起的债务厌恶心理。美国花费了30年时间，直到1959年才使利率回归上世纪20年代的平均水平，就说明治疗这种创伤是一项巨大任务，但也必须从某处开始着手。
The third pillar, structural reform, is needed because Japan is a mature economy. For such an economy to grow, deregulation and measures to open up markets are necessary to expand investment frontiers. The fact that Mr Abe has decided to join negotiations for the trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which will involve far-reaching market opening measures – and the fact that he has surrounded himself with senior bureaucrats from the ministry of economy, trade and industry rather than, as is traditionally the case, the ministry of finance – suggests he is serious. This is because structural reform relates to microeconomics, and only those directly involved with industry can offer detailed advice on meaningful measures.
作为第三条支柱的结构改革是必要的，因为日本是成熟经济体，要推动这样的经济体发展，就必须放松监管，采取开放市场的措施，以扩大投资范围。安倍决定参与泛太平洋伙伴关系贸易协定的谈判（这将涉及深远的市场开放措施），而且围绕在他身边的是通商产业省的高级官员，而不是传统的大藏省官员，这些事实表明，安倍是认真的。这是因为结构改革与微观经济有关，只有直接与行业打交道的人士才能为切实的举措提供详细建议。
Taken together, the three pillars of Abenomics make sense. Market infatuation with the BoJ is overplayed – but if the measures announced for the second and third pillars are broad enough to address the challenges at hand, Japan may indeed succeed in escaping its balance sheet recession.
“安倍经济学”的三大支柱放在一起很有意义。市场对日本央行的迷恋被夸大了，但如果所宣布的有关第二和第三支柱的措施足够宽泛，可以解决眼前的挑战，日本或可成功避开资产负债表衰退。
The writer is chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute
本文作者是野村综合研究所(Nomura Research Institute)首席经济学家
