Leaders | The haven falls英文部分选自经济学人20240430社论版块
Leaders | The haven fallsJapan is wrong to try to prop up the yenSupporting the currency is expensive and futileIt is easy for investors to lose a fortune in the financial markets—and even easier for governments. In 2022 Japan spent more than $60bn of its foreign-exchange reserves defending the yen, its first intervention to strengthen the currency since 1998, after the exchange rate fell to nearly ¥146 to the dollar. And for what? Today the yen is weaker still. Yet instead of learning that fighting the market is futile, policymakers are repeating the mistake. After falling to ¥160 to the dollar on April 29th, its lowest in 34 years, the currency twice moved sharply upwards in the subsequent days. It seems the government is buying again, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.在金融市场，投资者很容易蒙受巨额损失，政府更是如此。2022年，日元汇率跌至约1美元兑146日元，之后日本动用600多亿美元外汇储备保卫日元，这是自1998年以来日本为加强日元汇率首次出手干预。结果呢？现在的日元依然疲软。然而，政策制定者并未从中认识到对抗市场是徒劳的，反而在重蹈覆辙。4月29日，日元汇率跌至1比160，达到34年来的新低，随后几天日元汇率两次大幅上升。似乎日本政府又在买进了，规模达数百亿美元。The yen has been falling primarily because of simple economic logic. The gap in interest rates between Japan and America is yawning. Although the Bank of Japan raised rates in March, it did so by only a smidgen: they increased from between minus 0.1% and zero to between zero and 0.1%. Rates in booming America, by contrast, are more than five percentage points higher. Investors expect the gap to shrink a little over time, but not by much. As a result a ten-year Japanese government bond yields just 0.9%, compared with 4.6% for an American Treasury of the same maturity.日元下跌的背后是再简单不过的经济学逻辑：美日两国之间有巨大利差。日本央行3月加了息，但幅度很小：从-0.1~0%加至0~0.1%。而在经济欣欣向荣的美国，联邦基金利率却高五个百分点以上。投资者预计这一利差会渐渐收窄，但也不会缩小太多。因此，日本十年期政府债券收益率仅为0.9%，而同期的美国国债收益率为4.6%。
The gulf exists because of differences in the outlook for inflation. It is still unclear just how emphatically Japan has broken out of the low-inflation—and at times deflationary—trap in which it has been stuck since asset prices collapsed in the 1990s. Although headline annual inflation has been above the central bank’s 2% target for nearly two years, there are signs that price rises have been slowing. Rightly, rate-setters at the Bank of Japan seem more concerned with hitting their inflation target than with using monetary policy to support the yen. All told, therefore, the country’s interest-rate outlook is diverging from America’s, where there are growing worries that inflation is not falling as it should and that the Federal Reserve will, as a result, not cut interest rates any time soon.美日利差鸿沟缘于通胀预期的差异。自上世纪90年代资产价格暴跌以来，日本一直深陷低通胀（以及时而通缩）的泥潭，这一困局至今也没有被明确打破。尽管近两年来整体年通胀率超过了央行2%的目标，但各种迹象表明物价上涨已经慢下来了。日本央行的利率制定者并没有想着怎么利用货币政策支撑日元，他们更关心的似乎只是是否达到通胀目标，这倒也没错。所以，日本利率预期与美国迥异。在美国，人们觉得通胀应该下降却没看到下降之势，而且美联储似乎也没有降息的打算，从而导致忧虑情绪上升。Given that Japan has an open capital account, an inevitable side-effect of its low relative interest rates is a weak currency. Higher rates abroad make profitable a “carry trade”, whereby investors borrow in yen and invest in dollars; that weakens the yen and strengthens the greenback. In theory, the yen must depreciate until its cheapness—and hence the higher likelihood of a rebound in future—means this trade is no longer expected to yield profits. Currencies can overshoot the fundamentals, but it is difficult to tell when they have, and harder still to calibrate an appropriate response. The thresholds at which the Japanese government has chosen to intervene are arbitrary. It says that volatility in the currency has been excessive, but its opaque criteria for selling reserves may well have made that problem worse.鉴于日本的开放资本账户，那么日本较低的相对利率必然会导致日元疲软。国外较高的利率使得“套息交易”成为了香饽饽，即投资者借入日元、投资美元，这使日元贬值、美元走强。理论上讲，日元必须贬值到让人无利可图（因而也提高了未来反弹预期）的程度。汇率可能会超过基本面，但很难确定这个时间点，更不要说去精准调整应对措施了。日本政府设置干预的阈值总是很不靠谱，一边说日元波动性已经过大，但出售外汇储备时，标准又不透明，这么干预下去，日元波动只会更大。After the last intervention, economic logic was temporarily obscured by good luck. Towards the end of 2022 America’s bond yields fell, allowing the yen to strengthen in the months that followed the intervention, before its slide resumed the next year. There is no guarantee that this pattern will be repeated. Instead, resisting the adjustment is likely to create opportunities for speculators, who will gladly treat the government as dumb money. After the apparent interventions, the exchange rate quickly began drifting back towards its previous level.在上次干预之后，一时的运气遮蔽了经济逻辑。2022年底，美国债券收益率下降，所以日元在干预后的几个月里一直走强，直到次年才又重新开始下滑。但总不能指望着每次都撞大运，相反，如果不调整，倒是会给投机者创造好机会，让他们把政府当“冤大头”，这便宜不占白不占。在明显的干预之后，汇率很快又开始回落到之前水平。The Japanese government’s urge to intervene is driven by a combination of political calculation and national pride. A cheaper yen makes imports, most notably of energy, more expensive, which is painful for voters. There is no doubting Japan’s firepower: at last count it had almost $1.3trn of foreign-exchange reserves to run down. But it is a waste to spend them doing battle with currency traders who—thanks to the choices of Japan’s own policymakers not to follow the Fed—have good reasons to be selling yen and buying dollars.日本政府出面干预汇率既是出于政治考量也是为了维护民族自豪感。日元一贬值，进口（尤其是能源进口）就会更贵，那肯定会得罪选民。日本的财力毋庸置疑：据最新统计，日本坐拥近1.3万亿美元外汇储备，但是，把这么大火力都集中在货币交易商身上实属浪费，既然日本政府决定了“走自己的路、让美联储说去吧”，那交易商还不赶紧卖出日元、买入美元。
Pay，一个坚定远航的sailor
Leon，男，驻外民工，经济学人读者
Yo，女，种下过流星，立志不做大鸵鸟
Tera，一口
Cecilia，今年过得贵妇一点
Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译
感想|观点
本周感想作者：
Forest，爱树的人，精神小花园持续耕耘中
每一篇文章都是有自己的角度和站位的，完全客观、多方平衡的文章其实是很难得有的。这其实一方面是因为一件事的利益相关者的得失损益本来就可能四面八方，如此面面俱到就难以做到或者也可能本来就并非心之所愿；另一方面是从现象看问题总是乱花渐欲迷人眼的，表象往往是某些实质性行为的结果，所以追溯本源看问题也是不可或缺的。
个人、企业、政府都可以算作是经济活动者，不过规模大小不同，目标有所不同。
一般来说，普通个人在乎的是自己的收入，因为普通人的收入直接影响其可支配的支出，影响消费能力。今年日本的“春斗”（日本每年春季举行全国性劳资谈判，对日本全年的工资涨幅有着“风向标”的指引作用。）结果引人关注，据说是工会提出要求涨薪比例在5%以上，创30年来最大涨幅。
据新闻说，日本国内消费显现疲软，主要原因是较长时间的实际工资增长持续为负，反正就是日本普通居民至少近两年来的实际可支配的收入是有一点持续性下降的意思；“春斗”加薪首先且主要是大企业能够响应，众多中小企业的加薪情况则可能还需要等待，并不清楚最终是否能够理想。普通日本人的就业大约有七成在中小企业，所以实际上能够马上加薪的好像是10%左右的打工人。
这就是现象，事实上这就是说人们的收入没有跑赢物价啊，就日本来看这是和是来年前就慢慢开始的“钱”的超发有关啊，超发的钱往往并不能被均衡地被分配。那“钱”如果是超发的，那是不是就意味着从长期视角来看，这个货币一定就是变多了，所以必须应该是贬值才能和其他国家的货币保持价值平衡呢？不然在购买力上就不公平了。所以，这肯定是货币贬值的基本面问题。
考虑到和日本关联紧密的美国，人家也是一样宽松的；日本的资本市场也是向外开放的，那比价最后是什么样子，还要看其他的因素，比如经济增长率啊、以及目前最明显的利差，而利率差的影响肯定是很大的。
投资者有了机会，必然是忙得不亦乐乎。借入几乎是零利率的日元，用日元换了美元，享受高利率的回报，再回来还日元，日元还是贬值的，或者至少预期的贬值的。不过这些机会大部分时候都还是建立在基本面上的。
对日本企业来说，如果是能够出口的，应该说日本旨在能出口的企业肯定是比较多的，贬值是利于出口的，那可能对本币贬值就不是那么地在意。只是企业通常也需要使用进口的物资，那这个层面是要受些影响，能源和原材料的进口数额确实一直是很大，现在新兴技术使用费应该也不少，以至于日本是长期贸易逆差的（新闻上说至少最近三个财年是贸易逆差的），那这又成为货币贬值的基本面问题了。
就政府来说，在著名的不可能三角中，日本选择了资本自由流动、货币政策的独立性之后，也就只能接受汇率的波动了。美国不进入降息周期，那就是说两个国家的货币利率差真实存在，那其实日本政府并没有笃定的办法自己单方面去稳定汇率，加上自己十来年的长期货币超发、长期贸易逆差啊这些实质性原因的存在，它也就只能嘴上多说说，行动不明了。嘴上呼吁，当然可以对维护民族自豪感有些正面作用，忽然发力也表明政府是有力的，可以作为的，或者也可以放一些烟雾弹。本来实际上要有什么明确的方向性和具体动作，并不是像说说这么简单的，自己短时间之内就可以完全搞定的事情。
可是，写文章的人不是有自己的站位嘛？
看着看着，难免亦有所想，比如新闻里说五一好多国人跑去日本旅游购物，可是我们的内需不也是需要提振的吗？看来，这贬值对我们其实是有影响的。
其实，国内可以好好旅游的地方也挺多的，不过加强交流当然也是挺好的。但是，我们的旅游开发目前肯定也是有待多多进步，文化产业发展也要更多用心。发达国家的文化产业占GDP的平均水平差不多是13%，我们国家目前不到5%。所以这也是挑战和机遇并存，也是需要政府、企业、个人等不同层次的经济活动者共同努力的。这样说下去，似乎还有很多话要说，就此打住了。
衷心祝福如今中国文旅新风的“烟火气”与“文化味”，祝愿我们“化古为新·雄甲辰”；龙行天下，盛世花开！
