全球股市危机早有预兆

Signs, Long Unheeded, Now Point to Risks in U.S. Economy
全球股市危机早有预兆

As investors scramble to make sense of the wild market swings in recent days, a number of financial experts argue that, for more than a year now, signs pointing to an equity crisis were there for all to see.

正当投资者乱作一团，试图读解最近疯狂的股市动荡时，一些金融专家认为，在这一年多以来，指向这次股市危机的征兆早就已经摆在台面上。

The data points range from the obvious to the obscure, encompassing stock market and credit bubbles in China, the strength of the dollar relative to emerging market currencies, a commodity rout and a sudden halt to global earnings growth.

这些数据迹象有的明显，有的不明显，其中包括了中国的股市及信贷泡沫、美元相对新兴市场货币的坚挺、大宗商品的需求下降和全球收益增长的突然停顿。

While it would have been impossible to predict the precise timing of the last week’s downturn, this array of economic and financial indicators led to an inescapable conclusion, these analysts say: The United States economy would only be able to avoid for so long the deflationary forces that have taken root in China.

这些金融分析师说，虽然他们不可能预测到上周发生股市危机的确切时间，但这一系列的经济和金融迹象均指向同一个无可避免的结论：美国经济很快便会迎来源于中国的通缩压力。

And if the bull market had made it to April, it would have become the second-longest equity rally in United States history.

而如果牛市能持续到4月，本来会是美国历史上历时第二长的股市反弹。

The one common theme binding all these measures together is the risk that they pose to the economic recovery in the United States. The Federal Reserve has said that it expects to raise interest rates sometime soon, given evidence over the last year that economic growth is picking up.

这一切的迹象都列于同一个主题之下，那就是它们都对美国的经济复苏带来风险。美国联邦储备银行之前表示，因为去年全年的情况显示美国经济增长有所好转，它本来预计在不久之后加息。

But more and more analysts are now pointing to problems in China and other markets as posing a real threat to the American economy.

然而，现在越来越多分析师指出，中国和其他国家市场上的问题会对美国经济构成实际的威胁。

“The global G.D.P. pie is shrinking,” said Raoul Pal, a former Goldman Sachs executive, now based in the Cayman Islands, who produces the Global Macro Investor, a monthly financial report that caters to hedge funds and other sophisticated investors.

“全球GDP正在萎缩，”拉乌尔・帕尔(Raoul Pal)说。他是前高盛高管，现在在开曼群岛制作面向对冲基金和高端投资者的金融报告月刊《全球宏观投资者》(Global Macro Investor)。

Of the hundreds of indicators that Mr. Pal follows, the most crucial over the last year, in his view, has been the relentless upward move of the dollar against just about all emerging-market currencies. The dollar rally began in January 2014, when the Fed signaled that it would raise interest rates.

帕尔认为，在他目光所及的种种迹象中，去年最关键的迹象便是美元对差不多所有的新兴市场货币都持续升值。美元由2014年1月开始反弹，那时候美联储刚好宣布将会加息。

But the greenback’s strength against currencies like the Russian ruble, the Turkish lira and the Brazilian real began to gather steam a year ago. Veterans of past emerging-market booms and busts will tell you that the party always ends ― as it did in Latin America in the 1980s and Southeast Asia in the 1990s ― when the dollar takes off against these monetary units.

但是，美元对俄罗斯卢布、土耳其里拉和巴西雷亚尔等货币的强势，是在一年前开始的。经历过以往的新兴市场大起大落的老手都会告诉你，天下没有不散的宴席，而1980年代的拉丁美洲和1990年代的东南亚就印证了这一点――当时就是美元开始相对这些货币大幅升值。

Suddenly, loans in relatively cheap dollars that financed real estate and consumption booms were no longer available and the ultimate result was always a growth slowdown.

突然之间，支撑了房地产和消费繁荣的那些相对便宜的美元贷款没有了，最终结果只能是增长放缓。

Any discerning investor could have taken note of this trend.

任何精明的投资者都应该留意到这种趋势。

For example, through the year ending on Aug. 19, the worst-performing investments in dollar terms were the following, according to Merrill Lynch: Brazilian equities, down 45 percent; Russian bonds, down 43 percent; Indonesian equities, down 26 percent; Turkish and Korean equities, down 25 percent; and Mexican equities, down 22 percent.

举个例子，据美林证券(Merrill Lynch)资料显示，到8月19日为止，按美元计算今年表现最差投资项目如下：巴西股票（下跌45%）、俄罗斯债券（下跌43%）、印尼股票（下跌26%）、土耳其和韩国股票（下跌25%）、墨西哥股票（下跌22%）。

During this same period, United States equities returned 8.7 percent ― the fourth-best return delivered by any major class of assets.

在这段时间，美国股市回报率为8.7%，是在所有主要资产类别中的第四佳表现。

In effect, investors in the United States were saying that what happened in Russia, Turkey and Indonesia need not have any effect on stocks of companies based in the United States.

实际上，美国的投资者曾认为俄罗斯、土耳其和印尼的情况不会对美国公司的股票走势有任何影响。

This would turn out to be a major miscalculation.

但事实会证明他们是大大失算了。

What was driving weakness in all these countries was the gradual slowdown in the Chinese economy. As China bought less steel from Brazil, iron ore from Australia (its stock market was down by 22 percent during this time frame) and less mineral fuel and oil from Indonesia, the effect on these economies was immediate.

这些国家的表现转弱是由于中国经济逐步放缓。因为中国减少了从巴西进口钢、从澳大利亚进口铁矿（它的股市在这段时间下跌了22%）、从印尼进口矿物燃料和油，对这些经济体的影响便立刻反映了出来。

When it comes to warning indicators from China, there are many from which to choose. One is that, according to their 2014 balance sheets, four out of five of the world’s largest banks are Chinese. Or one could choose the Chinese debt ratio, which McKinsey & Company has estimated to be over 280 percent of the country’s total economic output.

当谈到来自中国的预警，有很多可供选择。其一是，从2014年的资产负债表来看，世界五大银行中四家是中国银行。或者你可以选择中国的资产负债率，据麦肯锡公司(McKinsey & Company)估计，其负债将超过中国经济总产出的280％。

But for Albert Edwards, a strategist at Société Générale in London, what really confirmed in his mind that the Chinese growth engine was sputtering to a halt was the government’s naked support of the country’s stock market bubble. Among the government interventions were lending state entities money to buy stocks and restricting shareholders from selling large positions. Before the market collapsed, Chinese stocks reached a market capitalization of close to $10 trillion ― making it the second-most valuable exchange in the world.

但对兴业银行(Société Générale)驻伦敦策略师阿尔伯特・爱德华兹(Albert Edwards)而言，让他确信中国增长引擎正在渐渐熄火的，是中国政府对该国股市泡沫进行的赤裸裸的支持。政府的干预包括借钱给国企买入股票及限制股东大幅减持。在崩盘之前，中国股市资本总额接近10万亿美元，使其成为全球市值第二高的股市。

“Once you encourage an equity bubble, it will collapse ― and then you are really in trouble,” Mr. Edwards said. “This was utter madness.”

“一旦你鼓励了股市泡沫，它就会崩溃，然后你就真的有麻烦了，”爱德华兹说。 “这是绝对的疯狂。”

Long before China’s decision to devalue its currency this month, Mr. Edwards said that it was the sharp reduction in value of the Japanese yen against the dollar in autumn 2014 that also set off alarm bells.

爱德华兹说，早在中国决定于本月贬值其货币之前，2014年秋日元对美元的急剧贬值也敲响了警钟。

Because Japanese exports compete aggressively with currencies in Thailand and Korea, this was, in effect, a precursor to the Chinese currency move. He also noted that one of the causes of the Asian emerging market crisis in 1997 was that countries in the region broke their peg with the yen.

由于日本出口在泰国和韩国与其货币激烈竞争，这实际上是中国货币举措的先兆。他还指出，1997年亚洲新兴市场危机的原因之一是该地区的国家没有继续盯住日元。

“It just rippled across the whole region,” he recalled.

“就这样波及到整个地区，”他回忆道。

The bottom line though, is that investors in American stocks recognized too late in the game that a global contraction was sneaking up on them.

然而，归根结底是美国股市投资者在博弈中没能及时发现，全球经济收缩已经偷偷接近他们了。

For Jeffrey Sherman, a portfolio manager at the bond investment firm DoubleLine, the big cautionary sign was the correction in the high-yield corporate bond market. In summer 2014, as stocks of United States companies continued to push upward, the yields on risky corporations started to spike.

对债券投资公司DoubleLine的投资组合经理杰弗里・谢尔曼(Jeffrey Sherman)来说，最明显的警示是高收益的公司债券市场出现的调整。在2014年的夏天当美国公司股票继续向上涨，高风险企业的收益也大幅上升。

As many of these companies were in the energy sector, mostly digging for shale oil, they were hard-hit by the sharp drop in oil prices. Still, the fact that these bonds were entering their own bear market should have been seen by equity investors as a warning sign, Mr. Sherman said.

由于这些公司许多都在能源领域，尤其是页岩油开采，他们因油价大幅下滑遭受重创。不过谢尔曼说，股票投资者看到这些债券进入熊市，应该认识到这是一个警示。

“These bonds have been very weak,” Mr. Sherman said. “There has been a huge divergence between high yield bonds and the stock market.”

“这些债券已经非常疲弱，”谢尔曼说。 “高收益债券和股市之间有一道鸿沟。”

Taken together with slow growth in China, the result, as he sees it, is that the outlook for growth in the United States is extremely fragile and not in a good position to survive an increase in interest rates from the Fed.

在他看来，与在中国的缓慢增长综合起来，结果就是美国增长的前景是非常脆弱的，而美联储增加利率则会令前景更暗淡。

David A. Stockman, a former budget director under Ronald Reagan, has spent the last three years closely examining the excesses of the Chinese investment boom and warning on his contrarian blog of their consequences.

罗纳德・ 里根(Ronald Reagan)的预算办公室主任戴维・A・斯托克曼(David A. Stockman)过去三年一直在仔细审视中国的过度投资热潮，并在他的逆向投资博客上就其后果发出警告。

He points out, for example, that in the late 1990s, China had the capacity to manufacture 100 million tons of steel. That figure today is 1.1 billion tons ― almost twice the amount of annual demand for steel in China.

他指出，以90年代末为例，中国的钢铁产能是1亿吨。今天这个数字为11亿吨，约为中国年钢铁需求量的两倍。

The China steelmaking boom also sent the price for iron ore up to nearly $200 a ton in 2011, from around $30 in 2008. Like all commodity prices, it has fallen sharply, to just under $100, a correction that creates problems for big iron ore-producing countries like Australia, which made huge investments to keep supplying these raw materials to China.

中国炼钢热潮也把铁矿石的价格从2008年的大约每吨30美元推至2011年的每吨将近200美元。和所有大宗商品一样，它的价格现在也大幅下降到不足100美元。对澳大利亚这样为满足中国的原材料需求而大举投资的国家来说，这次调整会带来大麻烦。

“Iron ore is the canary in the steel shaft if you will,” Mr. Stockman said. “It is a real measure of the violence of global deflation that is currently underway.”

“你可以说铁矿石是钢铁业的金丝雀，”斯托克曼说。 “对于当前的这场全球通缩动荡，它是一种切实的衡量手段。”