雷曼倒闭:真正改变世界的一天

Back in 2001, just after 9/11, the Economist ran a cover with the headline The Day the World Changed. It felt right at the time. But when historians come to look back at our times I wonder if, vile as it was, that will really be the event they note as the trigger for the western world changing.

回到2001年，当时9/11恐怖袭击刚刚过去，《经济学人》(Economist)杂志刊登了一个封面，标题是"改变世界的一天"(The Day the World Changed)。当时这样的断语让人觉得颇为贴切。但是，尽管这一事件非常糟糕，当历史学家们开始回顾我们所处的时代时，我揣测他们会否真的认为那是引发西方世界改变的事件。

Instead, if you look around you now you might wonder if it was instead the poster moment of the financial crisis – the fall of Lehman Brothers.

如果你观察一下周围，你现在可能会猜测，改变世界的事件是否是金融危机的标志性时刻——雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的破产。

After all, the crisis is clearly changing global politics as fast as it is global finance. These things are obviously complicated but you can make a case that the Arab Spring was precipitated by fast rising food prices – something you can easily blame on QE – a clear and direct result of the financial crisis.

毕竟，这场危机改变全球政治格局显然与其改变全球金融格局的速度一样快。这些事情显然是复杂的，但你可以进行这样的推定：迅速上涨的食品价格——你可以轻易将其归咎于定量宽松政策——导致了阿拉伯之春(Arab Spring)，而定量宽松是金融危机的一个明显而直接的结果。

The crisis has also precipitated the sovereign debt disasters across Europe and is obviously responsible for the increasingly common protests they come with. It can be blamed for China's spat with Japan: would China's leaders be any more bothered about the Senkaku islands than usual if they weren't keen to shift attention from their own export slowdown?

这场危机还导致了欧洲的主权债务危机，并显然要对随之而来的日益普遍的抗议负责。就连中日争端也可以归咎于金融危机：如果中国领导人不是因为出口放缓而希望将注意力引开的话，他们对于尖阁诸岛（Senkaku，中国称之为"钓鱼岛及其附属岛屿"）的操心程度会否超出寻常水平？

It is also responsible in part for various independence movements. Would Scotland have elected the Scottish National Party if its voters hadn't perceived Labour as being financially incompetent? And would Catalonia be making a bid to take over tax raising powers from Madrid without Spain's economic crisis?

这场危机在一定程度上解释了各种各样的独立运动出现的原因。如果不是苏格兰选民认为工党(Labour)金融无能，那么苏格兰民族党(Scottish National Party)还会在选举中胜出吗？如果没有西班牙的经济危机，加泰罗尼亚还会要求接手马德里在该区的征税权力吗？

Then of course there is QE itself. Printing money for too long and in too great a volume is a bad idea for many reasons, but one is that printing money eventually kills faith in money. The legendary investor Sir John Templeton liked to point out that abusing weights and measures was a pretty fast way for a government to lose the trust of an electorate. And what is QE, something that changes the value of the dollar, pound and euro in your pocket, if it is not an abuse of a measure?

当然，接下来还有定量宽松本身。太长时间和太大数额的印钞从很多方面来讲都是一个糟糕的想法，但其中一点是，印钞最终会扼杀人们对金钱的信任。有传奇色彩的投资者约翰•邓普顿爵士(Sir John Templeton)喜欢指出，滥用度量衡是政府失去选民信任的一条捷径。改变你口袋里美元、英镑和欧元价值的定量宽松如果不是滥用度量衡的话，又是什么呢？

You could also blame the crisis for the fact that the size of western governments is more likely to increase than decrease from here. Why? Inequality.

你还可以将这一事实归咎于这场危机：西方国家政府的规模更有可能从现在的水平扩大，而非缩小。为什么？不平等。

You can make a (pretty good) argument to say that rising inequality, in the form of falling real wages for the 99 per cent, left consumers with no power to consume unless they borrowed to do so – another big contributory factor in the financial crisis. But whether that is true or not doesn't really matter. Inequality has become a political big deal across the West and that means politicians of all colours, even as they fail to deal with their budget deficits, are still trying to find new ways to redistribute.

你可以提出（非常充分）的理由，称日益加重的不平等（99%的人实际薪资下滑）让消费者没有能力消费，除非他们借款（这是引发金融危机的另一个重要因素）。但这点是否属实其实并不重要。不平等已成为西方的一件政治大事，这意味着，所有意识形态的政界人士都在寻找新的再分配方式，即便他们未能解决预算赤字问题。

This is why we have to put up with the interminable arguments about the introduction of wealth taxes here (I would remind you that in stamp duty and non index linked capital gains tax, we already have two wealth taxes); why not everyone is outraged by the Lib Dem idea that those earning over £50,000 should be forced to fund a greater share of the UK's debt repayments than they have so far; and why most of France's rich have already packed their bags for a multiyear sojourn in Monaco.

这就是为什么我们不得不忍受无休止的有关出台财富税的辩论（我要提醒你，印花税和非通胀挂钩的资本利得税意味着，英国已有两项财富税）；为什么并非所有人都对自由民主党(Liberal Democrats)提出的建议感到愤怒，该党提出，应迫使那些收入超过5万英镑的人承担比目前更高的英国政府偿债负担；为什么多数法国富人已收拾好行李，准备在摩纳哥度过多年。

My point in all this is that the crisis has not just had economic effects. It has had huge political effects too. Add all these together and you can see that levels of both misery and uncertainty across the global economy are surely at something of an extreme.

我提到这一切是为了说明，这场危机不仅造成了经济影响，还带来了巨大的政治影响。综合来看，你会发现全球经济中的苦难和不确定性都肯定处于极端水平。

That doesn't necessarily matter from a purely investing point of view. The question, as Sandy Nairn and Jonathan Davis say in their new book, Templeton's Way with Money, is just "how much negativity is already being discounted in the price of shares, bonds and other financial instruments". Usually when times are as tough – and in particular as unpredictable as this – investors are compensated in the form of very low valuations and thus a strong probability of high returns in the future. Hence the idea that one should "buy when there is blood on the streets".

从单纯的投资角度来看，这不一定重要。正如桑迪•奈恩(Sandy Nairn)和乔纳森•戴维斯(Jonathan Davis)在二人的新书《Templeton's Way with Money》中所言，问题无非是"有多少负面因素已被计入股票、债券和其他金融工具的价格"。通常，在经济困难时期，特别是像现在这样的不可预测的时期，投资者可以获得非常低的估值，从而有很大几率在未来获得高回报，由此得到补偿。因此有这样的说法：人们应"趁街上发生流血事件时买进"。

But there isn't any blood. Yes, one or two markets, especially in Europe, are cheap on the basis of long-term valuations. But, thanks to a toxic mixture of QE and delusion, the US is certainly not.

然而，现在街上一滴"血"都没有。没错，从长期估值，一两个市场（特别是在欧洲）较为廉价。但由于定量宽松和错觉的有毒组合，美国市场肯定不便宜。

Strategist Andrew Smithers suggests that while US equities should be "cheap in recognition of the risks" they are instead expensive – 59 per cent overvalued on Smithers' preferred measures. These are the cyclically adjusted p/e ratio, which looks at profits over a ten-year period, and Tobin's Q, which compares share prices to the replacement value of assets. How long can that last?

策略师安德鲁•史密瑟斯(Andrew Smithers)提出，尽管"考虑到风险"美国股市应变得"廉价"，但它们却很昂贵，根据史密瑟斯青睐的衡量标准，美国股市被高估59%。这些衡量标准包括经过周期调整的市盈率（考虑10年期间的利润）和托宾Q比率(Tobin's Q，比较股价与资产重置价值)。这能持续多久？

Société Générale's Albert Edwards thinks not very long. His latest note suggested that everyone should slash their equity exposure to the bone, something he last suggested back in May 2008, on the basis that while QE might well provide the money to keep asset prices up for a while, investors will eventually lose faith and accept that Ben Bernanke's "ruinous" policies will one day or another "destroy the world". Something to bear in mind if you think your money might be safer in the US than Europe.

法国兴业银行(Société Générale)的艾伯特•爱德华斯(Albert Edwards)认为时间不会很长。他在最新简报中提出，所有人都应大幅削减股票投资（他上一次这样说是在2008年5月），理由是，尽管定量宽松很可能产生资金洪流，在一段时间内保持资产价格高企，但投资者最终将失去信心，意识到本•伯南克(Ben Bernanke)的"毁灭性"政策终有一天会"毁灭世界"。如果你认为，你的钱在美国可能比在欧洲更安全的话，那么请记住这点吧。