国际货币基金组织 - 世界银行：基金与财政担忧的摔跤

亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者国际编辑汤姆布尔特克莱将在全周的东京会议上报告。一定要在会议上查看他的日常帖子，以及来自国际银行家和投资者聚集在一起的嗡嗡声。国际货币基金组织首席克里加德大众赞扬美国联邦储备委员会，国际货币基金组织首席陆基·拉加德（Christine Lagarde）审查全球经济展望。The Fed’s latest commitment to buy mortgage bonds, indefinitely this time, along with similar steps by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, are “big policy signals in the right direction” that offer the best chances of jolting advanced economies to life, Lagarde said. “Just as the central banks were misguided during the Great Depression and accelerated that crisis, it may well be that central banks will have played a significant role in pulling the global economy out of this Great Recession,” Lagarde said in a September 24 speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. On the same afternoon, at the IMF’s offices a few blocks away, several academics and policymakers participating in a forum on financial services in developing economies provided a more jaundiced view of quantitative easing. Franklin Allen, a professor of finance and economics at the Wharton School, pointed out that Japan’s economy is still struggling more than two decades after the country’s equity and real estate bubbles burst, despite several rounds of QE by the BoJ. “We seem to be going the same way,” Allen said. The Fed “can print money, but growth doesn’t look good.”那些对比的评论切割到困境的心脏，即全球政策制定者在本月举办国际货币基金组织世界银行年度会议上的东京会对东京会面临着困境，这对会议的预期降低了。最近几个月的前景在美国恢复溅射，欧洲的大部分地区都陷入了衰退，曾陷入衰退，这是中国这样的强大的新兴市场表明了失去蒸汽的迹象。周二该基金将其全球增长预测降至2012年的3.3％和2013年3.6％，下降了3.5％和3.9％。首席经济学家Olivier Blanchard指责在欧元区的更大疲软的修订，预计今年产量将下降0.4％，并在巴西，中国和印度的增长显着较慢。

然而很少有杠杆留给决策者pull. Open-ended bond purchases represent a bold move by the Fed, but the central bank is acting on its own because of the political gridlock that grips Washington. Morgan Stanley surveyed its clients about the U.S. fiscal outlook late last month. Roughly three quarters of them said that fiscal uncertainty is hurting the economy now and will continue to do so in 2013; two thirds predicted the government will avoid any serious budget compromise and keep kicking the can down the road regardless of who wins the November election. That’s a sobering prospect considering how difficult it would be, even with the best of intentions, to deal with today’s high debt levels. Last month the IMF released a study titled “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: 100 Years of Dealing with Public Debt Overhangs.” It reviewed 26 cases — some extending back to the 19th century — in which advanced economies allowed public debt to exceed 100 percent of GDP. Those countries tended to have lower-than-average growth, and they struggled to get back to fiscal health. After 15 years the median debt-to-GDP ratio had improved by only 10 percentage points. Currently, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal and the U.S. are above the 100 percent threshold, according to IMF figures, and several European countries are not far below it. The Fund’s policy advice for the U.S.: Avoid the fiscal cliff, the package of big tax hikes and spending cuts due to take effect at the start of 2013, while taking steps to reduce the deficit over the medium term. Lagarde isn’t pressing her case too hard yet, though, knowing that no one in Washington is listening. The crowd in Tokyo will be hoping that changes come before year-end. As for the Fund’s other big preoccupation, Lagarde continues to exhort European Union leaders to press ahead with structural reforms of the euro area, but political differences have slowed progress on a banking union and a bailout for Spain, a topic likely to loom large in Tokyo. ECB president Mario Draghi has promised to support Spanish bond prices provided that the country first reaches a bailout agreement with EU authorities. Draghi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel want the IMF to join in any bailout because of its expertise in imposing economic conditionality. Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, is resisting the pressure. “The Spanish don’t want us in there,” says one Fund official. It’s bad enough to have to go to your EU partners for money. Going cap in hand to the IMF could be political suicide.

The annual meetings may underscore the West’s political paralysis and stagnant growth. The choice of Japan as a setting seems sadly appropriate.