全球金融市場暴跌 新危機真的要來了嗎
If you look only at the global economy, and what leading forecasters think it will do in 2016, things look to be in a reasonably solid state. The world economy will grow 3.4 percent this year, economists at the International Monetary Fund projected this week, up from 3.1 percent in 2015. Private sector forecasters mostly have similar expectations.
如果你只着眼於全球經濟，着眼於專家對2016年全球經濟走勢的預測，那麼形勢顯得相當穩健。本週，國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)的經濟學家預計，世界經濟今年將增長3.4%，較2015年的3.1%有所提高。私營部門的專家也有類似的預期。
If you look only at global financial markets, it’s Aaack, Run for the Hills! The Sky is Falling!
但如果你只看全球金融市場，就會有一種“啊啊啊，快逃啊！天要塌下來了！”的感覺。
That is to say, global stock, bond and especially commodity markets have, in the first three weeks of the year, swung in ways that suggest this is a perilous time. Their volatility and direction are consistent with the prospect of a new crisis or global recession. (The Standard & Poor’s stock index closed down 1.2 percent Wednesday after dropping more than 3 percent earlier in the day.)
換句話說，從全球股市、債市，尤其是大宗商品市場今年頭三個星期的走勢來看，現在是一個危險的時刻。這些市場的波動幅度和走向，顯示可能會出現一場新的危機，或者是全球經濟衰退。（標準普爾股票指數本週三收盤下跌1.2%，當天早些時候跌幅超過3%。）
The price of oil is where most of the action is, with West Texas Intermediate Crude trading below $27 a barrel Wednesday, down from around $37 at the end of December, $60 in June and $100 in mid-2014. The broad S.&P. is down 9 percent so far in 2016, and stock indexes in many emerging economies are down even more. Bond and currency markets point to economic troubles in oil-producing nations. (Considering a trip to Quebec? Good move. The Canadian dollar is down 19 percent against the United States dollar since May).
油價在其中出演了重頭戲，本週三，西德克薩斯中質原油價格跌至每桶不到27美元。這個價格在2014年年中是100美元，去年6月是60美元，12月底大約37美元。涵蓋行業廣泛的標普指數自2016年開年以來下跌了9%，而在很多新興經濟體，股指的下挫幅度還要更大一些。債券和外匯市場顯示，石油出產國遇到了經濟問題。（想去魁北克旅遊？明智之舉。去年5月以來，加元兌美元匯率下跌了19%。）
What makes these falling prices unnerving is that it’s hard to tell a simple story about what is driving them. It could be that the markets are moving according to their own internal logic, driven by money managers’ psychology, with their habitual toggle between fear and greed turning back toward the former. More frightening: The markets could be pricing in some darker facts about the outlook for the world that economists don’t fully understand.
價格這樣下跌之所以令人不安，是因爲很難找到它們背後的直接推動因素。這可能是因爲市場正按照自己的內在邏輯變化，由基金經理的心態所推動——他們的心理習慣性地在恐懼和貪婪之間切換，現在則一頭偏向了恐懼。更可怕的是：市場決定的價格，可能反映了一些關於全球展望的更陰暗的因素，而經濟學家對這些狀況的理解並不徹底。
In the past, when signals were so negative, there usually was a clearer story to tell.
在過去，當市場信號變得如此消極的時候，人們通常會找到比較清晰的原因。
In the summer and fall of 2011, markets were tumbling on fears that the union using the euro currency would dissolve; in 2008, it was fears that the global financial system would collapse; in 2000 it was on the realization that stock prices, especially for tech companies, had gotten out of line.
2011夏秋出現股市暴跌，是因爲市場擔心使用歐元的聯盟會瓦解；2008年是因爲擔心全球金融體系會崩潰；2000年是因爲意識到股票價格高得離譜，特別是科技公司的股價。
The recent market swings are “puzzling,” writes Olivier Blanchard, until recently the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. As a general rule, if Mr. Blanchard is puzzled about something involving global economics, you probably should be, too.
近期的市場波動“令人費解”，奧利維爾·布蘭查德(Olivier Blanchard)說。他是不久前卸任的IMF首席經濟學家，目前在彼得森國際經濟研究所(Peterson Institute for International Economics)擔任高級研究員。一般來說，如果布蘭查德對全球經濟中的某些東西感到費解，那麼你應該也很費解纔對。
China’s once-blockbuster economic growth does seem to have slowed a good deal, though it’s not clear why that should have enormous effects outside China. And the drop in the highly volatile and speculative Chinese stock market is more significant than is reflected by most evidence of what is happening on the ground in the Chinese economy; for example, private surveys of business activity point to only a slight contraction.
中國的經濟增長曾經令人驚歎，目前似乎大大放緩，但還不清楚爲什麼會給中國以外的地方帶來巨大影響。中國股市極不穩定，極具投機性質，但從大多數反映中國經濟基本面的證據來看，它的跌幅不應該這麼大。舉個例子，私營部門的調查顯示，中國的商業活動只出現了輕微的收縮。
Oil prices are down so much that profits of oil companies will suffer mightily, and some will surely go bankrupt. They have already been cutting way back on investment in oil exploration. But traditionally, that has been counterbalanced by celebrations from industrial and transportation companies and from ordinary people over lower bills for gasoline and other forms of fuel.
油價跌到這種程度，石油公司的利潤將會嚴重受損，有些公司必然會破產。它們已經削減了在石油勘探上的投資。不過從以往的情況來看，工業和運輸企業，乃至普通民衆從汽油和其他燃料價格的下降中獲得的利益，可以抵銷這種損失。
There’s a more complex story in which global banks are sitting on loans for oil exploration that will go bad, creating losses in the financial sector that could cause a pullback in lending more broadly, a risk described by researchers at the Bank for International Settlements in 2015. In this scenario, loans for oil exploration could be what subprime mortgages were in 2007 — a trigger that reveals bigger problems in the financial system.
這背後的問題更加複雜：全球銀行業爲石油勘探發放了很多貸款，如今這些貸款的前景不妙，這會導致金融業受損，進而會引發更加廣泛的貸款收縮。國際清算銀行(Bank for International Settlements)的研究人員2015年時曾闡述過這樣的情況。在這種形勢下，石油勘探貸款可能就像是2007年時的次級按揭貸款那樣，彷彿是一個觸發器，將金融體系中更重大的問題暴露出來。
One piece of evidence for this theory: Bank stocks have fallen even more in 2016 than the stock market over all, implying that investors believe banks did a little too much oil-field lending, though certainly this won’t amount to the kinds of declines and major troubles of 2008.
這個推斷的證據之一是：2016年，銀行類個股的跌幅大於總體股市，這可能意味着投資者認爲銀行爲油田提供的貸款太多了一點。不過可以肯定，當前的局面不能和2008年那樣的暴跌和大麻煩相提並論。
Another possibility is that this sell-off reflects the unwinding of “herd” behavior among global asset managers, who piled into similar investments during the 2009 to 2014 stock market rally and are now racing to unload the same high-yield bonds, emerging market stocks and energy investments all at once. In this telling, the moves in market prices reflect more the psychology of money managers than fundamental information about the state of the global economy.
另一種可能性是，這種拋售反映了全球資產管理者“羊羣效應”的循環。他們在2009年至2014年股市上漲期間紛紛涌入相同的投資領域，而現在卻突然爭相減持同樣的那些資產，如高收益債券、新興市場股票及能源投資。按照這種說法，市場價格的變動更多地反映了基金經理的心理，而不是有關全球經濟情況的基本信息。
This latter theory is the most optimistic one (and one Mr. Blanchard is particularly sympathetic to, for what that’s worth).
後一種推斷是最樂觀的，也是布蘭查德特別贊同的一種看法，其中多少有一些道理。
Financial markets are always more volatile than the underlying economy; the stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions, as an old line often credited to the economist Paul Samuelson has it.
金融市場的波動常常比經濟基本面更劇烈。就像一句老話所說，股票市場預言了過去五次經濟衰退中的九次。人們常常認爲，這句話是經濟學家保羅·薩繆爾森(Paul Samuelson)講的。
At the same time, sometimes markets know something that smarty-pants economists (or economic writers) don’t. It was certainly true in the fall of 2007, when the stock and bond markets were more prescient about the looming recession in the United States than the consensus view of economists.
與此同時，市場有時知道那些自作聰明的經濟學家（或經濟新聞作者）所不知道的事。2007年秋季就出現了這種情況，當時股市和債券市場對美國即將陷入衰退的預知，超過了經濟學家的一致意見。
The challenge for investors is to determine whether the stock market moves of the last few weeks represent the rational kind of fear or the irrational kind of fear, and we probably won’t know the answer anytime soon.
對於投資者來說，挑戰在於判斷過去五週股市的動盪是代表了理性的恐懼，還是非理性的恐懼，我們恐怕沒辦法很快得到答案。
