法律翻译 | 政客何时会面临“金融市场的愤怒”

译者｜潘研 清华大学LL.B.

审稿｜Jessie PKU硕士

         董辰 中国政法大学硕士

编辑｜Gary 詹远 UNSW J.D

责编｜Izzy 美国西北大学LL.M.

When Do Politicians Face “the Wrath of the Financial Markets”?

政客何时会面临“金融市场的愤怒”

Written by Neil H. Buchanan

作者：尼尔·布坎南 （Neil H. Buchanan）

October 27, 2022

原文发表时间：2022年10月27日

原文链接：https://verdict.justia.com/2022/10/27/when-do-politicians-face-the-wrath-of-the-financial-markets

Are we at the mercy of global financial markets, the so-called Bond Vigilantes so frequently invoked by Wall Street analysts? Do modern governments quake when unelected financiers threaten to wreak havoc on their economies? To a certain degree, the answer to both of these questions is obviously—even trivially—yes.

我们是否任由全球金融市场——即华尔街分析师们经常提起的所谓债券义警（Bond Vigilantes）——摆布？当非经选举产生的金融家威胁要破坏国家经济时，现代政府是否会战栗？在某种程度上，这两个问题的答案显然是肯定的。

But having some power is quite different from being all-powerful, and we need to understand the difference. The human beings who interact in the financial markets on Wall Street and around the world can and do change the options that politicians face. Sometimes. That can be good or bad, but either way, we would do well to understand how far that power does and does not extend.

但是，拥有一些权力与全能是完全不同的，我们需要理解两者的区别。在华尔街和世界各地的金融市场上进行交易的人们能够而且确实改变了政治家们所面临的选择。至少有时是这样。这可能是好事，也可能是坏事，但无论如何，我们都应该了解这种权力的范围与边界何在。

Here, I will discuss the power and limits of financial markets by looking at three examples: (1) the disastrous, brief tenure of former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, (2) the markets' response (more accurately, their lack of response) to the US federal debt, and (3) the possibly cataclysmic fallout if Republicans retake the majority in either house of Congress in the midterms and then refuse to increase the federal debt ceiling.

在这里，我将通过对三个案例的考察来讨论金融市场的权力及其局限：(1）英国前首相利兹·特拉斯（Liz Truss）灾难性的短暂任期，（2）市场对美国联邦债务的反应（确切来说是缺乏反应），以及（3）若共和党人在中期选举中重新获得国会两院的多数席位并拒绝提高联邦债务上限，可能会产生的灾难性后果。

Political Power and Its Counterweights

政治权力及其抗衡力量

In the continuing turmoil of modern politics, once-stable countries like the United States and the United Kingdom are suddenly the objects of richly deserved ridicule. Americans were ruled for four years by a former game-show host, a man who now commands the loyalty of people who think that "Do your own research" is a synonym for "I can do whatever I want." Britons, meanwhile, are watching their political system circle the drain. What is not to mock? 

在现代政治的持续动荡中，像美国和英国这样曾经稳定的国家突然理所应当地成为嘲弄对象。美国人被一个前娱乐节目主持人统治了四年，这个人现在得到了那些认为“自己做调查”是“我可以为所欲为”的同义词的人的忠诚。与此同时，英国人正看着他们的政治体系陷入困境。这难道不值得嘲笑吗？

Being ridiculous is not necessarily funny, of course, and both countries face rising dangers from political extremism and economic self-damage. The UK's fateful decision to vote for Brexit did not cause an immediate depression, but it is now clear that the country will be permanently poorer than it otherwise could have been, as its refusal to accept its diminished importance is already causing predictable (and predicted) economic harms. Meanwhile, the conservative party in the United States would rather tank the economy and blame the Democrats than serve the people they claim to represent.

当然，值得嘲笑并不一定有趣，这两个国家都面临着来自政治极端主义和经济自毁的日趋严重的危险。英国意义重大的对“脱欧”进行公投的决定并没有立即导致经济萧条，但现在很明显，该国将永远比不做出这一决定时更穷，因为它拒绝接受自身重要性的降低已经造成了可预见的（和被预测的）经济损失。与此同时，美国的保守党派宁愿把经济搞垮并指责民主党，而不是为他们声称代表的人民服务。

A large part of the problem in both countries, mirrored to varying degrees in far too many other nations around the world, is that their political systems have gone off the rails. At a deep level, conservative politicians in America and Britain do not want to be accountable to the people, so they are making the people irrelevant. Democracy can be so inconvenient for ideologues who would like to wield power without facing consequences for the damage that they inflict on their citizens.

这两个国家的问题中的很大一部分在不同程度上反映了世界上许多其他国家的问题，即他们的政治制度已经“脱离轨道”。从更深层次上说，美国和英国的保守派政客不想对人民负责，所以他们在做决策时让人民变得无关紧要。对那些想行使权力而又不愿意为他们对国民造成的损害承担后果的空想家来说，民主可能是非常不方便的。

But there are other sources of countervailing power that can bring a wayward government to heed. In other eras, churches in the US and the UK were powerful enough to directly influence policy. That is still true to some extent, although it has never been a particularly comforting thought that an even less democratic and almost wholly unaccountable sector of society could wield such power. The point, however, is that church and state often did rein each other in.

但是，还有其他的抗衡力量来源，可以让一个误入歧途的政府重回正轨。在其他时代，英美的教会强大到足以直接影响政策。在某种程度上，这仍然是真实的，尽管由一个更不民主和几乎完全不负责任的社会部门掌握这种权力的想法，从来就不特别令人欣慰。但重点在于，教会和国家经常互相牵制。

Another source of power that can stop even the least politically accountable politicians from acting without consequence is the financial markets. (Those, too, are undemocratic.) Poorer countries see this up close almost every day, with constant worries about global financiers' reactions to such countries' borrowing and monetary policies, along with other potential sources of instability.

另一个可以阻止即使是政治上最不负责任的政治家不顾后果行事的权力来源是金融市场（这一权力来源也不民主）。较贫穷的国家几乎每天都能在对国际金融家关于这些国家借贷和货币政策会做出何种反应的持续担忧以及其他潜在的不稳定因素中，近距离见证这一权力来源。

The short version of the conventional wisdom is that "the markets will punish you" if a government should try to ignore the supposedly immutable fundamental realities of economics. And at some extreme level, this must certainly be true. If, for example, a government announced that it was going to allow all of its citizens to retire early and then give them pensions fit for monarchs, no investors in the world would be willing to put their money into that country. Absurd policies have consequences.

一言以蔽之，传统观点认为如果政府试图忽视所谓不可改变的经济学基本现实，那么“市场会惩罚你”。在极端情况下，这一论断肯定是正确的。例如，如果一个政府宣布它将允许所有的公民提前退休，然后给他们提供适合的养老金，那么世界上就不会有投资者愿意把钱投入这个国家。荒谬的政策会带来后果。

This reality, however, merely says that it is possible to go too far. That people can kill themselves by overeating is not an argument against consuming food, just as we should engage in physical exercise even though it is possible to die from pushing our bodies beyond their limits. There is a large middle ground within which people can make reasonable choices, just as different countries can make different decisions about economic policy without going too far.

然而，这一事实仅仅意味着政策有可能过于极端。人们可能因暴饮暴食而死，但这并不是反对进食的理由。这就好比我们应该进行体育锻炼，即使我们有可能因超负荷运动而死亡。人们可以在一个很大的中间地带中做出合理选择，就像不同国家可以在不极端的范围内对经济政策做出的不同决定。

The question is: How much is too much? In a Verdict column on October 13 of this year, I mocked the argument that the financial markets will ruthlessly punish the US government for supposedly borrowing too much money. The logic by which this is supposed to work is actually rather amusing.

问题是：什么程度才算极端？在今年10月13日的“Verdict”专栏文章中，我嘲笑了“金融市场将因所谓的过度贷款无情地惩罚美国政府”这一论点。但是，这种说法所依据的逻辑实际上是相当有趣的。

Those Neurotic Markets

那些神经过敏的市场

Conservatives often talk about "the markets" as though they are needy collectives of worried and fidgety people who crave nothing so much as confidence. What does it mean to give markets confidence? In truth, anti-government ideologues use the faceless markets as a vehicle to advance their reactionary policy preferences: cut spending for the oh-so-undeserving poor, slash taxes on the rich, allow businesses to exploit the weak (and the environment), and so on. Any move by liberals in other directions, we are told endlessly, will harm markets' confidence.

保守派经常谈论“市场”，仿佛它们是由忧虑和焦躁的人组成的赤贫集体，他们最渴望的就是信心。给予市场信心是什么意思？事实上，反对政府的空想家们利用不可捉摸的市场作为工具，来支持他们的反动政策主张：削减“不值得关心的”穷人的开支，减少富人的税收，允许企业剥削弱者（及污染环境）等等。我们被没完没了地告知，自由主义者在其他方向的任何举动都会损害市场的信心。

In that column, I noted that those of us who doubt the awesome power of The Markets have taken to characterizing the conservative story as an appeal to an erratic sprite that we call the Confidence Fairy. One merely needs to turn on any financial news channel on any given day to hear an overpaid analyst claiming that "market confidence is up" or "the government is destroying market confidence," with consequences sure to follow.

我在那篇专栏文章中指出，我们这些怀疑市场的强大力量的人已经开始将保守派的叙事描述为诉诸一个反覆无常的精灵，那个精灵被我们称作“信心仙子（Confidence Fairy）”。人们只需在任何一天打开任何一个金融新闻频道，就能听到一个高薪的分析师声称“市场信心上升”或“政府正在破坏市场信心”，并指出随之而来的后果。

Why do we mock that idea? Because (to mix children's stories) the people who want us to pay heed to the Confidence Fairy are the boys who cried wolf, again and again and again. By their lights, it is always true that the government is one liberal decision away from destroying markets' confidence and creating hell on earth. As I wrote in that earlier column:

为什么我们要嘲笑这种想法？因为希望我们服从于“信心仙子”的人是那些一而再、再而三地喊狼来了的男孩。按照他们的说法，政府只要做出一个自由主义决定，就会破坏市场信心、创造人间地狱。正如我在之前的那篇专栏文章中所写的那样。

The problem is that the Confidence Fairy—less fancifully known as bond vigilantes—is often invoked but rarely seen. We spent the entire Obama era being told that Democrats were undermining confidence in the financial markets and that interest rates would inevitably rise while inflation ran riot, but it never happened.

问题在于，“信心仙子”——它不那么富有想象的名字是“债券义警”——经常被提起，但很少被看见。我们在整个奥巴马时代都被告知，民主党人正在破坏金融市场的信心，利率将不可避免地上升，通货膨胀则会暴发，但这些从未发生。

I wrote those words while criticizing the claim that US federal debt is going to lead the Confidence Fairy/bond vigilantes to punish us. I will return to that specific example below, but I will turn first to the experience of the hapless Ms. Truss in the UK, an experience that validated what I wrote in the very next sentence of my October 13 column: "Just because something has not happened yet, however, does not mean that it could never happen."

我写下上述观点是为了反驳美国联邦债务将导致“信心仙子”/债券义警惩罚我们的说法。我将在下文再次论及这个具体的例子，但我要先谈谈英国那位倒霉的特拉斯女士的经历。这个经历验证了我在10月13日专栏文章中所写的下一句话：“然而，某些事情尚未发生，并不意味着它永远不会发生。”

The British Bond Vigilantes Had Quite a Month

英国的债券义警度过了难熬的一个月

As the citizens of the UK learned to their dismay, market punishment of foolish government policies can definitely happen. What went wrong for the short-lived Truss government? Basically, two versions of conservative market idolatry collided. It was not clear in advance, however, which one would win.

市场对愚蠢政府政策的惩罚肯定会发生，英国人已经沮丧地意识到了这一点。转瞬即逝的特拉斯政府出了什么问题？从根本上说，保守主义市场偶像崇拜的两个版本发生了碰撞。然而，人们预先并不清楚哪一个会赢。

Truss and her government came into office at the end of the summer and, after a two-week pause for national commemorations of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, announced that they would cut taxes (especially on the rich) and increase spending, the latter to gain political support by helping Britons afford to pay for higher heating and other costs.

特拉斯和她的政府在夏末就职。在为全国纪念英国女王伊丽莎白二世去世而暂停两周后，该政府宣布他们将减税（尤其是对富人）并增加支出，后者获得政治支持是因为能帮助英国人支付更高的供暖和其他费用。

Even with the sops to the non-rich, this was a very regressive agenda. A news article in The New York Times blithely referred to Truss's policies as "a free-market fiscal agenda," but this is a rather odd way to describe a radical increase in government borrowing, because it contradicts the countervailing conservative faith in the idea that government borrowing is bad. If conservatives are in favor of free markets, and if a government is forced to go into the financial markets to borrow large sums of money to finance deficits caused by tax cuts, then that does not look like Econ 101's version of an economic system that thrives while a hands-off government nods approvingly from a safe distance.

即使包含对非富人有利的方面，该议程仍旧是巨大的退步。《纽约时报》的一篇新闻文章轻率地将特拉斯的政策称为“一个自由市场财政议程”，但用这种方式描述政府借贷激进增长是相当奇怪的，因为该措施与保守派所持的政府借贷是坏事的想法相抵触。如果保守派赞成自由市场，而政府被迫进入金融市场大量借贷为减税造成的赤字提供资金，那么似乎并非经济学基础课程中所说经济体系繁荣情景。在该情景中，经济体系繁荣，而一个“无为而治”的政府则在安全的距离内赞许地点头。

This is, as I noted above, the clash of two conservative visions. The first vision, based on regressive tax cuts, is also known as trickle-down economics. In its most extreme variation, called supply-side economics, the tax cuts are said to be not merely stimulants to private-sector activity but so wonderfully stimulative that the tax cuts are more than outweighed by the increase in economic activity. Conservative financial market types, then, should presumably have loved the return of policies once advanced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, which should have made the bond vigilantes and the Confidence Fairy happy.

正如我在上面指出的，这是两种保守派愿景的冲突。第一种观点被称为涓滴经济学，其基础在于递减性减税。其最极端的变体——即供给方经济学——认为，减税不仅仅是对私营部门活动的刺激，而且是如此美妙的刺激，以至于减税的影响被经济活动的增加完全抵销。由此，保守的金融市场人士应该会喜欢重返撒切尔夫人和罗纳德·里根曾经提出的政策，这一政策也应该会让债券义警和“信心仙子”感到高兴。

The alternative conservative vision, however, arguably prevailed in this case. The UK and global financial markets lost confidence in the Truss government overnight, pushing the value of the British Pound to record lows and forcing the Bank of England to intervene—proving once again that government bailouts can save an economy—and forcing Truss to reverse her policies within days. Showing a level of shame and responsiveness to accountability unknown in the US, Truss soon walked away.

然而，另一种保守主义愿景可以说是在这一案例中占了上风。英国和全球金融市场一夜之间对特拉斯政府失去了信心，将英镑的价值推到了历史最低点，并迫使英格兰银行进行干预——这再次证明政府的救助可以拯救经济——最终迫使特拉斯在几天之内扭转了她的政策。特拉斯表现出了美国官员所不具备的羞耻心和对问责的反应，很快宣布辞职。

Citing the British economist Simon Wren-Lewis, however, Paul Krugman argued last week that the problem—the real reason that the bond vigilantes summarily dispatched Truss—was "that financial markets were responding in large part to increased uncertainty, which was in turn largely a reflection of political uncertainty. The Truss economic plan was obviously unsustainable politically, but it wasn't clear what would come next."

然而，保罗·克鲁格曼在上周援引英国经济学家西蒙·沃伦·刘易斯的话说，问题——债券义警迅速“开除”特拉斯的真正原因——在于“金融市场会在很大程度上对不确定性的增加做出反应，而这又在很大程度上反映了政治不确定性。特拉斯的经济计划在政治上显然是不可持续的，但接下来会发生什么并不清楚。”

Krugman further points out that, unlike my example above of the small, poor country that is punished by the Confidence Fairy if its government acts irresponsibly, the independence of the Bank of England gave everyone confidence that the UK is not on a slippery slope toward becoming the proverbial banana republic. Markets had indeed lost confidence, but not in the British government's ability to finance itself. They thought that the politicians had become unhinged.

克鲁格曼进一步指出，与我上面所举的如果政府行为不负责任就会被“信心仙子”惩罚的贫穷小国的例子不同，英格兰银行的独立性让所有人都相信，英国并没有处在滑向众所周知的香蕉共和国[T21] 的斜坡之上。[1]市场确实失去了信心，但并非对英国政府的融资能力失去信心，而是由于市场认为政治家们已经变得不正常了。

Why does that matter? If the standard bond vigilante/Confidence Fairy story were true, the problem would be that the government was about to borrow too much money. Krugman is saying that the punishment was not meted out due to the borrowing that Truss's policies would have required but because the entire British political system was in turmoil. Oddly, of course, the result of the vigilantism was to create still more political turmoil, leaving Truss with the shortest term in office of any British Prime Minister in (a very long) history.

这一结论的意义何在？如果标准的债券义警/“信心仙子”的故事是真的，那么问题就在于政府即将借贷太多资金。克鲁格曼的意思是，惩罚不是因为特拉斯的政策所需要的借贷，而是因为整个英国的政治体系处于动荡之中。当然，奇怪的是，义警主义的结果是造成了更多的政治动荡，这使特拉斯成为英国古老历史上任期最短的首相。

The US National Debt and the Revenge of the Markets

美国国债和市场的复仇

The contrast with the Republicans' fearmongering about federal debt in the US could not be clearer. I wrote my Verdict columns earlier this month in response to a contrived effort by the mainstream press and anti-debt conservatives to get everyone to panic because gross federal debt now exceeds $31 trillion. Why was that supposedly bad? As I noted above, the story ultimately comes down to the Confidence Fairy … as always.

上述例子与与共和党人对美国联邦债务的恐惧宣传形成了极为清晰的鲜明对比。本月早些时候，我撰写了一篇Verdict专栏文章以回应主流媒体和反借贷的保守派所做的努力，它们让民众因联邦债务总额现在超过31万亿美元而恐慌。为什么借贷被认为是坏事？正如我在上面指出的，这个叙事最终一如既往地追溯到“信心仙子”。

The problem for conservatives is that this story (the claim that increases in the US federal debt are going to invite the fury of the markets) offers no triggering event. There is nothing about the number $31 trillion that should—or did—spook the financial markets. Yes, that is a big number to most people, but it is easy to evoke oohs and ahhs with any number ending in "-illion." Moreover, there is no clear explanation why the financial markets care about the dollar amount of gross federal debt, which is itself a meaningless number.

保守派的问题是，这个叙事（声称美国联邦债务的增加将招致市场的愤怒）中并不存在触发事件。“31万亿美元”这个数字不应也并未惊动金融市场。是的，这对大多数人来说是个大数字，但任何以超过七位的数字都很容易引起人们的惊叹。此外，他们未能明确解释为什么金融市场会关心联邦债务的美元总额，而这本身就是一个毫无意义的数字。

Most importantly, it was not a surprise to any financier who cares to know about these things that we reached the $31 trillion level this month. The debt number rises, just as the nation's income rises, and it is likely to reach $32 trillion next June and $33 trillion sometime in 2024 or 2025. The markets could barely stifle a yawn at the attempts to make a big deal out of hitting an arbitrary "historic" level of debt.

最重要的是，对于任何关心这些事情的金融家来说，我们的联邦债务在本月达到31万亿美元的水平并不奇怪。债务数字随着国家收入的增加而上升，在明年6月可能达到32万亿美元，而在2024年至2025年间的某个时候达到33万亿美元。对于那些试图炒作债务总额达到其随意选取的“历史性”水平的行为，市场是如此不在意以至于“无法遏制住打哈欠”。

Back to the Debt Ceiling

再论债务上限问题

I do not want to go too far into the weeds about the federal debt ceiling statute, about which I have written at great length. I will, however, take this opportunity to point out that Republicans have announced plans to use the majorities that they hope to win in the midterm elections next month to refuse to increase the debt ceiling. If they do so, that will be exactly the moment when the Confidence Fairy will become a hyper-depressive basket case, and the bond vigilantes will run amok.

我不想过于深入地讨论联邦债务上限法规问题，对此我已经花费了很大篇幅。然而，我将借此机会指出，共和党人已经宣布计划利用他们希望在下个月的中期选举中赢得的多数席位来拒绝提高债务上限。如果他们这样做，那将恰恰是“信心仙子”完全不能被指望，而债券义警横行霸道的时刻。

Why do they not care about supposedly out-of-control levels of debt, but they would go completely bonkers in the midst of a debt ceiling crisis? The two situations could not be more different.

为什么他们不关心所谓的失控的债务水平，但却在债务上限危机中完全发疯？这两种情况大相径庭。

Again, a government could go too far in committing itself to future borrowing, in which case the markets would react harshly. The fact is, however, that the US's current and projected levels of debt are sustainable. Whatever financial players' political preferences might be (mostly conservative and Republican), their investment decisions speak louder than their words.

同样，政府可能在承诺未来借贷方面走得太远，在这种情况下，市场会做出严厉的反应。然而，事实是美国当前的和预计的债务水平是可持续的。不管金融从业者的政治偏好如何（他们大多是保守派和共和党人），他们的投资决定比他们的言论更有说服力。

By contrast, a debt ceiling crisis would cause a first-ever US default. The Treasury securities that represent the federal debt are valuable assets to the people and institutions who loaned some of their savings to the government. They expect to be paid interest and principal, in full and on time. They handed over their savings in the belief that this country is not a deadbeat—and for good reason, because the United States government has in fact never defaulted on its obligations.

相比之下，债务上限危机可能导致美国有史以来第一次债务违约。代表联邦债务的国库券对那些将自己的部分储蓄借给政府的人和机构来说是有价值的资产。他们希望能够按时足额地得到利息和本金的支付。他们交出了自己的储蓄，相信这个国家不会赖账。而且，他们的信任有充分的理由，因为美国政府事实上从未拖欠过债务。

If that changes, that is when the markets would strike back. What happened to the UK a few weeks ago will look like nothing compared to what would happen in case of US debt default. Because ours is the largest economy in the world, and because even the most cynical financial players both at home and abroad count on the US government to pay its obligations, the freakout will soon go global.

如果这种情况发生变化，市场就会进行反击。与美国债务违约的情况相比，几周前发生在英国的事情看起来不算什么。因为美国是世界上最大的经济体，而且即使是国内外最愤世嫉俗的金融从业者也希望美国政府支付其债务，所以这种恐慌将很快蔓延到全球。

So yes, financial markets do have the power to damage an economy in reaction to bad political choices. The now-defunct Truss government offered a brief reminder—thankfully with limited damage—of what can go wrong. US debt is simply not on a path that would cause anything like that kind of reaction. But if Republicans want to prove that bad political decisions can destroy the US and the world economies, refusing to adjust the debt ceiling as needed is, without question, the best way to make their point.

所以，金融市场确实有能力破坏经济，以作为对糟糕政治选择的反应。现在已经下台的特拉斯政府提供了一个清晰的提醒——所幸破坏力有限-——提醒人们在哪里可能犯错。美国国债并未走上会引起类似这种反应的道路。但是，如果共和党人想证明错误的政治决定可以摧毁美国和世界经济，拒绝根据需要调整债务上限将毫无疑问是表达他们观点的最佳方式。

[1] 译者注：“香蕉共和国”一词由美国作家欧·亨利最初使用，原指洪都拉斯等依赖出口香蕉、可可等经济作物并受美国经济剥削的国家，现泛指经济上极度依赖自然资源出口、政治上缺乏稳定并受外部资本操纵的国家，参见Where did banana republics get their name? (2013) The Economist. The Economist Newspaper. Available at: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/11/21/where-did-banana-republics-get-their-name (Accessed: November 2, 2022).