時事新聞:美國經濟已對刺激計劃上癮
【英文原文】
America and Its Junky, Junkie Economy
'Now the drugs don't work. They just make you worse.' ─ The Verve
It's the day every junkie dreads. And ours is coming soon. America must learn to live without all the drugs we've been feeding ourselves.
We've been on one heck of a binge ─ the TARP, the TALF, the FHA's Hope for Homeowners, Cash-for-Clunkers ─ more than $4 trillion of it so far.
And while there is little doubt that the junk has made us feel better, you have to wonder if it's still working.
Today's existing-home sales numbers suggest it may not be. After rising four months in a row, August home re-sales fell unexpectedly by 2.7% to 5.1 million annual sales.
A 'mild retreat' said the National Association of Realtors. But apparently it wasn't 'mild' enough for the Dow which promptly swung from a 50 point gain to a 50 point loss on the news.
Investors don't like when things that are supposed to happen don't. And home sales are supposed to keep rising, especially when the Fed and the U.S. government are doing everything they can to juice them.
For America's homebuyers, credit is certainly available. The Federal Housing Agency has insured so many dubious mortgages that it's already fallen below its legally-mandated reserves.
Mortgage rates are low: the Fed's purchases of over a trillion dollars in mortgages have seen to that. For August, the rate on a 30 year mortgage was an astonishing 5.19%.
And there's even 'free money' available: Until November 30th, first-time homebuyers qualify for an $8,000 tax credit. We're back to buying $150,000 homes for only a few thousand dollars down.
So with all these inducements, how could home sales have possibly declined?
Well, it could be just a statistical blip ─ 'bad weather kept buyers at home' as the retailers are fond of saying. Or it could be that all our Keynesian tinkering is messing with the natural balance of supply and demand. Once you start introducing one-off special incentives, things get unpredictable when you take them away.
That's what happened with the $3 billion Cash-for-Clunkers program. The $4,500 government subsidy produced a great July and August for car sales, but September is dismal. As CEO Jeremy Anwyl put it: 'Cash for Clunkers was supposed to prime the pump, but that is a physics concept, and economics is quite different. Demand has dropped off significantly since the program ended.'
Is the August drop in home sales the result of the coming expiry of the $8,000 tax credit or of the FHA finally starting to tighten credit? We don't know.
But we do know that no matter how badly we crave them, the drugs in fact can make you worse. Just look at what the Fed's easy money, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all those subprime mortgages did to us not too long ago. It almost killed us.
But how quickly we forget. The National Association of Homebuilders and the National Association of Realtors have already started their predictable campaigns for the extension of the $8,000 homebuyer credit.
No surprise. Whether you're in Washington on Wall Street or Main Street, there are always some junkies that refuse to go into rehab.
【中文譯文】
“藥丸現在已不起作用，只會讓你更難受。”──Verve樂隊。
所有的癮君子都害怕這一天的到來。而我們的這一天即將來臨。美國必須學會擺脫我們一直在餵給自己的所有藥物。
我們如同置身於一場狂歡──問題資產救助計劃(TARP)、定期資產支持證券貸款工具(TALF)、美國聯邦住房管理局(FHA)的“房屋所有者希望計劃”( Hope for Homeowners)、舊車換現金計劃(Cash-for-Clunkers)──迄今爲止總規模超過4萬億美元。
毋庸置疑，這些麻醉藥讓我們感覺好受了些，但你必須考慮它是否仍在發揮作用。
週四的成屋銷售數字顯示出這些措施可能不再有效。在連續幾個月增長後，8月份房屋銷量意外下跌2.7%，摺合年率爲510萬套。
美國全國地產經紀商協會(National Association of Realtors)說，這是“溫和收縮”。但對於道瓊斯指數來說顯然不夠“溫和”，該消息傳出後，道瓊斯指數馬上從上漲50個基點轉爲下跌50個基點。
投資者們不喜歡該來的不來這種情況。而房屋銷量本來應當保持增長，尤其是在美聯儲(Fed)和美國政府竭盡所能提振房市的情況下。
美國買房者獲得信貸肯定不成問題。美國聯邦住房管理局爲太多可疑的抵押貸款提供了擔保，其儲備資金已低於法律要求的水平。
抵押貸款利率也很低：美聯儲購買了逾1萬億美元抵押貸款，從而造成了這一結果。8月份30年期抵押貸款利率爲令人驚異的5.19%。
而且甚至還有免費的午餐：11月30日前首次買房的人可獲得8,000美元減稅。我們又可以象危機前那樣用幾千美元買價值15萬美元的房子了。
那麼，在所有這些因素的刺激下，房屋銷售怎麼可能下降呢？
這可能只是個小小的統計學問題──就像零售商總愛說“因爲天氣不好，顧客都不出門”。還有一個可能是，我們所有的凱恩斯主義提振措施干擾了自然的供求平衡。一旦開始實施一次性的特殊刺激，等到停止刺激措施的時候情況就會變得不可預料。
規模30億美元的舊車換現金計劃正是如此。政府提供的4,500美元補貼大大推動了7月和8月的汽車銷量，但9月份的銷量十分暗淡。正如消費者汽車網站的首席執行長安維爾(Jeremy Anwyl)所說：舊車換現金計劃的原意是提振車市，但那是物理學的概念，而經濟學則大不一樣。該計劃結束後，需求大幅下降。
8月份房屋銷售下滑，是因爲8,000美元減稅措施即將到期，還是因爲美國聯邦住房管理局終於開始收緊信貸？我們不得而知。
但我們很清楚，無論有多渴望那些藥物，它們實際上會讓你的狀況惡化。看看不久前美聯儲的低息貸款、房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)，以及那些次級抵押貸款給我們造成的苦果吧。那幾乎導致整個經濟崩潰。
但我們好了傷疤忘了痛也太快了。全美房屋建築商協會(National Association of Homebuilders)和美國全國地產經紀商協會(National Association of Realtors)已經開始爭取延長針對買房者的8,000美元減稅計劃。
這是意料中事。無論政府官員、金融界人士還是普羅大衆，總有一些癮君子拒絕戒癮。
