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It’s often said that asset markets are driven by greed and fear. Professor Robert Shiller is in no doubt which of the two is in control right now. The Nobel laureate and best-selling author thinks the credit crisis, rising inequality and the relentless march of technology are making investors around the world nervous.
人们常说，资产市场受到贪婪和恐惧的驱动。罗伯特•席勒(Robert Shiller)教授非常确定现在是哪一种情绪在控制局面。这位诺贝尔(Nobel)经济学奖得主和畅销作家认为，此次信贷危机、日益加剧的不平等状况以及技术的不断进步让全球投资者感到不安。
“People are fundamentally worried about what kind of income they will have — or that their children will have — in 30 or 40 years,” he says.
他表示：“从本质上来说，人们担心的是，30年或40年后，他们（或者他们的子女）的收入会处于何种水平。”
This is in marked contrast to what he calls “the millennium boom” — the run-up in markets in the late 1990s — and the “ownership society boom” that ran from about 2000 to 2007.
这与他所说的“千年之交繁荣”（millennium boom，指上世纪90年代末各种市场的繁荣）以及从大约2000年持续到2007年的“业主社会繁荣”(ownership society boom)形成鲜明对比。
“They were both driven by some kind of enthusiasm and excitement about investing. This time it seems to be more about fear. It’s technology again, but it’s fear about technology, rather than elation about the opportunities.”
“那两次繁荣都受到某种对投资的热情和兴奋的驱动。这一次，似乎更多的是出于恐惧。这一次又与技术有关，不过是对技术的担忧，而不是对机遇的兴奋。”
As if to prove the point, he pulls a smartphone from his pocket and speaks slowly into it. “What is the Treasury bill rate today?” It takes a couple of attempts, but the phone dutifully displays a page full of T-bill prices and yields.
好像是为了证明这点，他从口袋里掏出一部智能手机，对着它一字一句地说道：“今日国债价格是多少？”他试了几次，终于手机不辱使命地显示了一个列满国债价格和收益率的页面。
“Where will this be in 20 or 30 years? That’s the scary thing. I think people are spooked by that.”
“20年或30年后这个页面会是怎样的？可怕的是这个。我认为，人们被这件事吓住了。”
The response has been to bid up the price of safe assets. “They’re bidding up bonds, they’re bidding up stocks too. There aren’t enough safe assets.”
人们的回应一直是抬高安全资产价格。“他们在抬高债券价格，还在抬高股票价格。市场上没有足够多的安全资产。”
Prof Shiller has built much of his reputation frompricking asset bubbles. The first edition of Irrational Exuberance — its title was borrowed from a famous Alan Greenspan speech — questioned valuations in the dotcom stocks era. The second did the same for US real estate. A third edition has just been published and calls the end to the long bull market in government debt.
席勒教授的声誉在很大程度上来自戳破资产泡沫。他的第一版《非理性繁荣》(Irrational Exuberance)（题目借用了艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)在一次著名演讲中说的话）对互联网股票时代的股票估值提出质疑。第二版是对美国房地产估值提出质疑。第三版刚刚出版，呼吁结束政府债券的长期牛市。
“The US bond yield [which moves inversely to bond prices] has been going down for 35 years. It’s not a crisis phenomenon. It can’t keep going down.”
“美国国债收益率（与债券价格成反比）已下行了35年。这并非一种危机现象。它不可能持续下行。”
But isn’t everything else just as expensive? The US is aspricey as ever, but Prof Shiller is increasingly interested in the divergence in valuations between the US market and Europe. Based on the “cyclically adjusted price/earnings ratio” (Cape) he helped develop — which compares a 10-year average of earnings to current share prices — Europe looks attractive.
但其他所有资产不是一样昂贵吗？美国仍一如既往地昂贵，但席勒教授对于美国市场与欧洲市场之间估值的差异越来越感兴趣。根据他帮助开发的“经周期调整的市盈率”（Cape，将10年盈利均值与目前的股价相比），欧洲看上去颇具吸引力。
“If you look at Cape ratios across countries, there are low-Cape countries, notably Greece which is under four.”
“如果你看看各国的Cape值，你会发现，一些国家的Cape值较低，特别是希腊，低于4倍。”
“And then there is Russia, in the sevens, then Hungary, Portugal and Italy. They are all well below average.”
“接下来是俄罗斯（7倍）、然后是匈牙利、葡萄牙和意大利。它们都远远低于平均水平。”
Greece is a tough sell right now, though. Has he put his own money there? “No, but maybe I would. But the trouble is it sounds like a flaky thing to do, even if it comes out well. This is the problem of groupthink.”
不过，希腊国债眼下无人问津。他有没有将自己的钱投入希腊国债？“没有，不过我可能会投。但问题是，即便最后结果不错，这么做似乎也有点不靠谱。这就是群体思维(groupthink)的问题所在。”
“I did put money into Italy, though.”
“不过，我倒是真投了意大利国债。”
Cheapness matters to Prof Shiller because he asserts that it is a predictor of future returns. He points to a famous chart in the original edition of Irrational Exuberance, showing the market’s p/e ratio in January on one axis and the real returns in the following 10 years on the other. There are exceptions, but in general, low p/e ratios are accompanied by high returns and vice versa. The chart was used in testimony to the Federal Reserve’s board of governors just a day before Mr Greenspan’s famous remark.
对于席勒教授而言，廉价至关重要，因为他主张，这预示着未来的收益情况。他谈到第一版《非理性繁荣》(Irrational Exuberance)中的一个著名图表，一个坐标轴代表市场1月的市盈率，另一个坐标轴显示接下来10年的实际收益率。其中存在例外，但总体而言，低市盈率伴随着高收益，反之亦然。就在格林斯潘发表那次著名讲话的前一天，席勒曾用这张图表在美联储(Fed)作证。
I counter that most “cheap” markets are cheap because they are risky, perhaps too risky for most people — and that waiting for “expensive” markets to revert to the mean isn’t an option for people with children to educate and retirements to finance.
我反驳说，多数“廉价”市场之所以廉价是因为他们有风险，这种风险对于多数人来说或许太高了，而等待“昂贵”市场回归中值，不是家里有孩子上学以及需要退休金养老的人们的选择。
He agrees, but says the solution goes beyond the market. “People are not saving enough. Not just individuals, but defined benefit pension plans are not putting enough in to support their promised benefits.”
他同意我的看法，但他表示，解决方案在市场以外。“人们储蓄得不够多。不仅是个人，固定收益养老计划也没有投入足够多的资金来支持他们承诺的福利。”
Isn’t that mostly because they can’t afford to? Quite possibly. A solution is to make much more use of insurance. “We need livelihood insurance. Human capital is not protected at all. You can’t insure against changes in incomes in your occupation,” he says, thinking of all those workers whose salaries have been driven lower, first by globalisation and now by automation.
这难道不是主要因为他们承受不起这样做吗？很有可能是的。一个解决办法是大大增加对保险的利用。他表示：“我们需要职业保险(livelihood insurance)。人力资本根本没有得到保护。你不能为职业收入发生变化上保险。”他想到所有那些薪资先是被全球化、眼下又被自动化压低的劳动者。
He also thinks that society will need to revisit its social welfare provisions — “there could be a bad time coming because of these low returns” — and and create better incentives for the financial services industry to service lower net worth clients.
他还认为，社会需要重新评估其社会福利保障（“由于收益低，未来可能会出现一个艰难时期”），并采取措施让金融服务业更有动力去为那些资产净值较低的客户服务。
I point out that in the UK at least, the solution to many of the issues with stock and bond markets is property. I’m intrigued to know what someone who has made a career writing about asset bubbles and the crowd psychology that helps create them makes of the real estate market.
我指出，至少在英国，解决股市与债市很多问题的方法是房地产。我很想知道，整个职业生涯都在撰文分析资产泡沫以及帮助制造泡沫的群众心理学(crowd psychology)的他，是如何看待房地产市场的。
He is not concerned about the US, where there was a sharp correction in values after the subprime crisis. “The US property bust brought prices almost right back down to where they were. Overall they’re nowhere near the peak they reached in 2006.”
他并不担心美国，在次贷危机后，美国房价出现大幅下调。“美国房地产市场崩盘导致房价几乎回到原点。总体而言，房价距离2006年的峰值水平还差得很远。”
But north of the border, where Bank of England governor Mark Carney once held sway, there’s a problem.
然而，在美国以北的加拿大（英国央行(Bank of England)行长马克•卡尼(Mark Carney)曾经担任加拿大央行行长），问题已经出现。
“I think there is a housing bubble in Canada. If you look at Vancouver right now, it looks as bubbly as San Francisco ever got.”
“我认为，加拿大存在房地产泡沫。如果你看看现在的温哥华，你会发现那里的泡沫严重程度达到了旧金山历史最高水平。”
What about the UK? There is “plausibly” a bubble here, he says, when I inform him that prices in London are now well above their 2007 peak. Certainly, many of the “bubble factors” he writes of are present: advantageous tax reforms, demographic factors, uncritical extrapolation of past returns into the future and saturation media coverage.
英国怎么样？当我告诉他伦敦房价现在远高于2007年的峰值，他表示“貌似”存在泡沫。当然，他写到的很多“泡沫因素”是存在的：有利的税收改革、人口条件因素、根据过去收益推导未来的盲目预期、以及媒体铺天盖地的报道。
“In the UK, you have [the television series] Property Ladder. In the US, we had Flip That House. The difference is that Property Ladder turned intoProperty Snakes and Ladders whereas Flip That House just disappeared.” The final episode was broadcast in 2008.
“在英国，有一部（电视剧）叫《房地产阶梯》(Property Ladder)，在美国，我们也曾有一部《卖掉那栋房子》(Flip That House)。区别是，《房地产阶梯》现已更名为《房地产、蛇和阶梯》(Property Snakes and Ladders)，而《卖掉那栋房子》却停播了。”最后一集是2008年播出的。
Home ownership rates in the US are nevertheless declining, just as UK ones are, a development that exacerbates growing financial inequality. I ask aboutCapital in the 21st century, the landmark book by French economist Thomas Piketty.
然而，美国的住房拥有率正在下滑，就像英国那样，这一变化加剧了日益严重的金融不平等状况。我问到，他对法国经济学家托马斯•皮凯蒂(Thomas Piketty)的里程碑式著作《21世纪的资本》(Capital in the 21st century)有何看法。
“I think he [Piketty] is focusing on the wrong aspects of inequality. His solution is a global wealth tax. But a lot of inequality is caused by different savings rates.”
“我认为，（皮凯蒂）对不平等的关注没有关注到点子上。他的解决方案是征收全球财富税。但不平等很大程度上是不同的储蓄率造成的。”
Prof Shiller outlined many of his prescriptions for addressing inequality in Finance and the Good Society, published in 2012 (and described as “priestly” by an FT review at the time). It called for a “democratisation and humanisation of the financial infrastructure”, including government subsidy for financial advisers who sign an oath of loyalty to their customers and “continuous workout mortgages” that effectively insure against house price falls.
席勒教授在2012年出版的著作《金融与美好社会》（Finance and the Good Society，当时英国《金融时报》的一篇书评称这是一本带有“牧师口吻”的书）中列出了解决不平等的很多方法。它呼吁“金融基础设施民主化和人性化”，包括对那些签署忠实于客户承诺书的顾问提供政府补贴，以及提供有效对抗房价下跌风险的“滚动调整的抵押贷款”。
“The stock market is not the answer to everything,” he adds. “Only a minority of the population is naturally interested in investing. We don’t want to encourage people to go contrary to their personal predilections.”
“股市不是万能的，”他补充称，“只有少数人天生对投资感兴趣。我们不想鼓励人们违背他们的个人偏好。”
CV — Robert Shiller
罗伯特•席勒简历
Born: Detroit, 1946
出生年份和出生地：1946年，底特律
Education: BA from University of Michigan in 1967, followed by PhD at MIT. Currently Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University
教育经历：1967年获得密歇根大学(University of Michigan)学士学位，后在麻省理工学院(MIT)取得博士学位。目前是耶鲁大学(Yale University)斯特林经济学教授(Sterling Professor of Economics)
Career: Created the Cape ratio with John Campbell in 1988, and the Case-Shiller house price index with Karl Case in 1991. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 2013, jointly with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen
职业成就：1988年与约翰•坎贝尔(John Campbell)共同编制Cape，1991年与卡尔•凯斯(Karl Case)共同编制凯斯•席勒(Case-Shiller)房价指数。2013年与尤金•法马(Eugene Fama)和拉尔斯•彼得•汉森(Lars Peter Hansen)共同荣获诺贝尔经济学奖(Nobel Prize in Economic Science)
