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【速度】
IMF: Financial Stability Improved, but Not Assured Long-term
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The International Monetary Fund said that global financial stability has improved over the last several months with the easing of the European debt crisis, but not so much as to ensure long-term economic growth.
An IMF senior official, Jose Vinals, said Wednesday in Washington that a new financial bailout for Greece and a European rescue fund for future financial emergencies have eased global financial concerns. But he said the gains are tenuous.
"These actions and policies have brought much-needed relief to financial markets since the peak of the crisis late last year," said Vinals. "But it is too soon to say that we have exited the crisis, because lasting stability is not yet ensured."
"Indeed," he added, "we have been reminded in recent weeks that sentiment can quickly shift and rekindle sovereign financing stress, leaving many sovereigns and banking systems caught in a vicious circle."
The fragile nature of the European economy was underscored in Italy, with the Italian government warning that the country's recession is deeper than predicted earlier. Rome said Italy's economy would shrink 1.2 percent this year and that the national budget would not be balanced until 2015, two years later than originally planned.
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Vinals said European banks remain vulnerable to new financial pressures. He said their assets could shrink in the next two years by more than $2 trillion, leaving them with less money to lend and hindering the continent's economic growth.
In addition, Vinals said that the United States, with the world's largest economy, and Japan each need to forge a political consensus to cut deficit spending by their governments that threatens economic advances on a broader scale throughout the world.
"Unaddressed fiscal challenges in the United States and Japan represent latent risks to global stability," Vinals added. "Both countries have yet to forge a much-needed political consensus for medium-term deficit reductions. The United States is also grappling with high household debt burdens and an overhang of home foreclosures."
Vinals called on European leaders to create a "more and better Europe," with greater economic integration throughout the 17-nation euro currency bloc. He acknowledged that heightened European unity would be "politically difficult," but said that it was necessary to end the threat of financial instability.
Obama to Request Crackdown on Oil Traders
President Barack Obama proposed tougher measures Tuesday to fight the illegal manipulation of oil markets, saying his plan would protect American consumers against artificially inflated gasoline prices.
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The country cannot have some speculators reap millions of dollars in illegal profits while consumers suffer, said Obama. “We cannot afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage and driving prices higher, only to flip the oil for a quick profit."
The president is asking Congress for $52 million worth of reforms in the way oil trading is monitored. He wants to hire six times more employees at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which supervises oil markets.
He also wants to raise the penalties for market rigging and allow regulators to require more money to back up speculative trading. “Things that we can do administratively, we are doing," he noted. "And I call on Congress to pass a package of measures to crack down on illegal activity and hold accountable those who manipulate the market for private gain at the expense of millions of working families."
As with many of the president’s initiatives, the stricter oil market regulations could face an uncertain future in Congress. The top Senate Republican, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, criticized Obama’s proposal as a political stunt. “The president’s goal here is not to do something about the problem," suggested McConnell. "It is to make people think he is doing something about the problem until the next crisis comes along.”
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Republicans have vigorously opposed the president’s energy policies and they reject most additional financial regulations, saying it costs jobs.
President Obama has been focusing on energy policy lately, with the election less than five months away and Americans worried about the cost of fuel.
U.S. gasoline prices have eased somewhat in recent weeks, after surging in recent months.
India Cuts Interest Rate for First Time in 3 Years
India’s Central Bank has cut interest rates for the first time in three years to give fresh momentum to a slowing economy. The government hopes it will revive confidence in an economy that many fear is losing its sheen.
The Central Bank announced Tuesday it will cut interest rates by half a percentage point from 8.5 percent to 8 percent. The reduction was larger than expected.
The Central Bank says it has lowered interest rates because economic growth has slowed to less than what it believes is its long-term trend rate.
Economic growth slipped to less than 7 percent last year. Many believe that 13 successive rate hikes since March 2010 contributed to the slowdown in an economy that had been racing ahead at almost 9 percent.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee hopes the Reserve Bank’s measure will help the economy to rebound.
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"The growth outlook, which had weakened in these past months, should now improve. The monetary policy announcement should help in investment revival and contribute to strengthening business sentiment,” he stated.
Business leaders have welcomed the cut in interest rates and expressed confidence that it will encourage more aggressive investment. More expensive credit had slowed domestic demand for homes and cars.
But worries remain. The Central Bank has warned it may not be able to cut interest rates any further if the government does not take steps to control a high budget deficit.
A higher bill for food and fuel subsidies, and higher spending on rural welfare programs, have put the government’ finances under strain.
N. R. Bhanumurthy, at the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi, says it is critical for the government to shore up its finances.
“The biggest downturn risk is the seriousness of the government in containing the deficit, particularly the subsidy bill. They are expected to bring it down sharply, he said. "If that does not realize, I think the scope for monetary policy to play as a growth measure is going to be very limited.”
The government is hoping that growth will improve this year to over 7 percent.
India is Asia’s third largest economy, and was widely seen as one of the engines that could help a global economic revival. But the recent slowdown has dented some of that that optimism.
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【越障】
China’s Achilles heel
A comparison with America reveals a deep flaw in China’s model of growth
LIKE the hero of “The Iliad”, China can seem invincible. In 2010 it overtook America in terms of manufactured output, energy use and car sales. Its military spending has been growing in nominal terms by an average of 16% each year for the past 20 years. According to the IMF, China will overtake America as the world’s largest economy (at purchasing-power parity) in 2017. But when Thetis, Achilles’s mother, dipped her baby in the river Styx to give him the gift of invulnerability, she had to hold him somewhere. Alongside the other many problems it faces, China too has its deadly point of unseen weakness: demography.
Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that rate (see table). Because very low fertility can become self-reinforcing, with children of one-child families wanting only one child themselves, China now probably faces a long period of ultra-low fertility, regardless of what happens to its one-child policy.
The government has made small adjustments to the policy (notably by allowing an only child who is married to another only child to have more than one child) and may adapt it further. But for now it is firmly in place, and very low fertility rates still prevail, especially in the richest parts of the country. Shanghai reported fertility of just 0.6 in 2010—probably the lowest level anywhere in the world. According to the UN’s population division, the nationwide fertility rate will continue to decline, reaching 1.51 in 2015-20. In contrast, America’s fertility rate is 2.08 and rising.
The difference between 1.56 and 2.08 does not sound large. But over the long term it has a huge impact on society. Between now and 2050 China’s population will fall slightly, from 1.34 billion in 2010 to just under 1.3 billion in 2050. This assumes that fertility starts to recover. If it stays low, the population will dip below 1 billion by 2060. In contrast, America’s population is set to rise by 30% in the next 40 years. China will hit its peak population in 2026. No one knows when America will hit its population peak.
The differences between the two countries are even more striking if you look at their average ages. In 1980 China’s median (the age at which half the population is younger, half older) was 22. That is characteristic of a young developing country. It is now 34.5, more like a rich country and not very different from America’s, which is 37. But China is ageing at an unprecedented pace. Because fewer children are being born as larger generations of adults are getting older, its median age will rise to 49 by 2050, nearly nine years more than America at that point. Some cities will be older still. The Shanghai Population and Family Planning Committee says that more than a third of the city’s population will be over 60 by 2020.
This trend will have profound financial and social consequences. Most obviously, it means China will have a bulge of pensioners before it has developed the means of looking after them. Unlike the rest of the developed world, China will grow old before it gets rich. Currently, 8.2% of China’s total population is over 65. The equivalent figure in America is 13%. By 2050, China’s share will be 26%, higher than in America.
In the traditional Chinese family, children, especially sons, look after their parents (though this is now changing—see story on next page). But rapid ageing also means China faces what is called the “4-2-1 phenomenon”: each only child is responsible for two parents and four grandparents. Even with high savings rates, it seems unlikely that the younger generation will be able or willing to afford such a burden. So most elderly Chinese will be obliged to rely heavily on social-security pensions.
China set up a national pensions fund in 2000, but only about 365m people have a formal pension. And the system is in crisis. The country’s unfunded pension liability is roughly 150% of GDP. Almost half the (separate) pension funds run by provinces are in the red, and local governments have sometimes reneged on payments.
But that is only part of a wider problem. Between 2010 and 2050 China’s workforce will shrink as a share of the population by 11 percentage points, from 72% to 61%—a huge contraction, even allowing for the fact that the workforce share is exceptionally large now. That means China’s old-age dependency ratio (which compares the number of people over 65 with those aged 15 to 64) will soar. At the moment the ratio is 11—roughly half America’s level of 20. But by 2050, China’s old-age ratio will have risen fourfold to 42, surpassing America’s. Even more strikingly, by 2050, the number of people coming towards the end of their working lives (ie, those in their 50s) will have risen by more than 10%. The number of those just setting out (those in their early 20s, who are usually the best educated and most productive members of society) will have halved.
Help wanted
The shift spells the end of China as the world’s factory. The apparently endless stream of cheap labour is starting to run dry. Despite pools of underemployed country-dwellers, China already faces shortages of manual workers. As the workforce starts to shrink after 2013, these problems will worsen. Sarah Harper of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing points out that China has mapped out the age structure of its jobs, and knows for each occupation when the skills shortage will hit. It is likely to try to offset the impact by looking for workers abroad. Manpower, a business-recruitment firm, says that by 2030 China will be importing workers from outside, rather than exporting them.
Large-scale immigration poses problems of its own. America is one of the rare examples of a country that has managed to use mass immigration to build a skilled labour force. But America is an open, multi-ethnic society with a long history of immigration and strong legal and political institutions. China has none of these features.
In the absence of predictable institutions, all areas of Chinese society have relied onguanxi, the web of connections that often has extended family relations at the centre. But what happens when there are fewer extended families? One result could be a move towards a more predictable legal system and (possibly) a more open political culture. And, as shifts in China’s economy lead to lower growth, Chinese leaders will have to make difficult spending choices; they will have to decide whether to buy “guns or walking sticks”.
China is not unique in facing these problems. All rich countries have rising pension costs. And China has some advantages in dealing with them, notably low tax rates (giving room for future increases) and low public expectations of welfare. Still, China is also unusual in two respects. It is much poorer than other ageing countries, and its demographic transition has been much more abrupt. It seems highly unlikely that China will be able to grow its way economically out of its population problems. Instead, those problems will weigh down its growth rate—to say nothing of the immense social challenges they will bring. China’s Achilles heel will not be fatal. But it will hobble the hero.
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发表于 2012-4-19 21:11:16
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