日志
James Galbraith 已造成巨大损失 美联储应降息
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James Galbraith 已造成巨大损失 美联储应降息
“已经造成了巨大损失”：经济学家詹姆斯·加尔布雷斯表示美联储应该降息
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-great-deal-of-damage-has-been-done-economist-james-galbraith-says-the-fed-should-cut-rates-cef56ab7
加尔布雷斯表示，将通胀下降归功于美联储“是不恰当的”
作者：Greg Robb：2024 年 1 月 11 日
照片：YouTube/新经济思维
詹姆斯·加尔布雷斯是美国著名经济学家约翰·肯尼斯·加尔布雷斯的儿子，他曾是美国总统约翰·肯尼思·加尔布雷斯的亲密顾问，他在美国经济学的主流之外开创了自己的职业生涯。
加尔布雷斯的职业生涯始于国会山，并曾在海外工作过。加尔布雷思现在是德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校林登·约翰逊公共事务学院的政府学教授，著有数本书，包括《不平等：每个人都需要知道的》。
加尔布雷思最近在圣安东尼奥举行的美国经济协会年会上接受了 MarketWatch 的采访，分享了他对美国经济和美联储政策的看法，以及投资者现在面临的挑战。为清晰起见，本次采访进行了编辑。
MarketWatch：您认为商业媒体的哪些报道是错误的？
加尔布雷思：有一波报道称美联储应为通胀下降做出贡献。但事实是，物价上涨的高峰出现在 2022 年 6 月，而这距离美联储开始加息仅三个月。
因此，绝对没有理由将物价变化率的峰值和随后的下降归咎于美联储所做的任何事情。把他们没有设计、也没有预料到的事情归功于他们，这是不恰当的。
MarketWatch：你认为美联储应该降息吗？
Galbraith：是的。我认为，首先，已经造成了很大损失。
当然，房地产市场就是其中之一。几年前 2% 的抵押贷款利率现在是 7%。卖房就得祝你好运了。在现有房价下跌之前，这会使交易变得复杂。人们的财富将变得非常不稳定。有些人会获利，有些人会损失，但以这种方式扰乱人们的资产负债表并不是一个好主意。
第二个问题与拜登政府的政策目标有关，其中包括大量由私人公司进行的长期投资，这些投资主要由税收抵免补贴，特别是在能源转型方面。
如果你与企业交谈，他们会告诉你，这些计划是在相当薄的利润率的基础上制定的，包括可承受的利息成本。利率上升使所有这些计算都落空了，结果就是那些已经开始或正在筹划的项目——海上风电场和类似项目——都被取消了。
MarketWatch：您谈到了媒体中伪技术和相互竞争的叙述的兴起。您在金融市场中看到了什么？
Galbraith：我觉得这是我们社会中一种普遍存在的现象，远远超出了经济学的范畴。公司的估值，在某些情况下，从物理足迹来看，其实是无关紧要的公司，与它们实际做的事情完全不成比例。无论人工智能能带来什么，对“空中楼阁”的估值都是由一种你无法评估的叙述所驱动。它没有你可以实际检查的基础。它不像水力大坝。
MarketWatch：主流经济学家对不断膨胀的国家债务越来越担忧。您也有同样的担忧吗？
加尔布雷斯：这一切让我想起了杂耍剧团的一位老人，他跑上舞台说：“不要鼓掌太大声。这是一个古老的剧院。”
几十年来，国会预算办公室一直在制作这些爆炸式增长的债务预测。从经济角度来看，它们完全不一致。
它们基于这样的观点：我们将拥有一个持续的高利率环境，社会保障和医疗保险支出将激增，而我们不会遇到通货膨胀或失业问题。这是国会预算办公室的基线。这真的是一个一致的故事吗？答案是，它不是。其结果是不必要地吓坏了人们。
我们有很多事情要担心。我的意思是，我们存在大量的不平等、不安全、城市衰败、物质基础设施、各种问题——当然还有能源、环境，我可以列出这个清单——更不用说更广阔的世界的政治局势了。联邦债务？我们应该对此念念不忘吗？我觉得这没有道理。
MarketWatch：你对所谓的巫医经济政策表示担忧。你指的是什么？
Galbraith：如果我能说明一点，现代医学涉及与具体行动相关的具体诊断。但现代医学
经济学——经济学家对通货膨胀问题的原因的看法并不一致。有些人说是货币，有些人说是债务，有些人说是预期，有些人说是低失业率——菲利普斯曲线。他们都对此争论不休，但后来又说我们应该怎么做。我们有一个工具：提高短期利率。这与中世纪的医生完全相似，他不知道疾病的病因是什么，但治疗方法总是相同的：切开病人，放血。
是时候让经济学走出 18 世纪，至少进入 19 世纪末，开始认识到有特定的原因和特定的治疗方法才能得到特定的结果。
MarketWatch：您如何评价拜登政府的表现？
加尔布雷斯：从经济角度来看，情况好坏参半。经济学家有一种想法，你只需将失业率加到当前的通货膨胀率上，如果总和很低，人们就会感到高兴。
但人们的看法并非如此。人们在过去的几年中经历了很多事情，他们可以看到他们的生活成本上涨幅度超过了他们的收入。这是许多人正在经历的事情。这意味着他们面临着支付房租、水电费和学费的压力。这让他们不高兴。在这种情况下，他们会给政府打低分。
关于大型气候变化项目——如果一颗小行星撞向地球，我们会认为这是一个生存危机。说“我们想要制定反小行星政策，但我们不想让中国人参与进来”是没有意义的。如果气候变化是一颗小行星，那么制定一项政策说我们将通过一项基本上排除与其他国家合作的国家投资计划来应对这一问题，特别是那些有能力帮助解决这一问题的国家，这是没有意义的。
我们必须面对这样一个事实：世界是多极的，我们的影响力无法通过军事手段投射出来。
MarketWatch：您认为改革美国经济的首要任务是什么？
Galbraith：如果您问我，对于美国经济结构，我的首要任务是什么，我有两个。一是去金融化——缩小金融部门的规模。这不仅是华尔街，而是整个金融部门。我们过去的金融部门规模要小得多，更集中，控制力更强。它占用了太多的资源，将权力集中在一小群人身上，而这些人对公众没有任何责任。
我的第二个目标是非军事化。我认为，我们致力于建立一个功能失调的世界权力保护结构，这种结构建立在过时的技术之上。固定基地只是目标，大型浮动航空母舰也是如此。在一个我们被过时技术束缚的世界里，我们不会取得成功。我的观点是，最终，我们必须面对这样一个事实：世界是多极的，我们的影响力无法通过军事手段投射。
更多：不要指望 2023 年的看涨市场趋势会在 2024 年为您带来收益
另请阅读：我们可以应对气候变化、就业、增长和全球贸易。以下是阻碍我们前进的因素。
James Galbraith
'A great deal of damage has been done': Economist James Galbraith says the Fed should cut rates
'It's inappropriate' to give the Fed credit for inflation subsiding, Galbraith says
James Galbraith, the son of famed American economist John Kenneth Galbraith — who was a close adviser to U.S. President John Kennedy — has carved out his own career outside the mainstream of American economics.
Galbraith began his career on Capitol Hill and has worked overseas. Now a professor of government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Galbraith is the author of several books, including “Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
Galbraith recently sat down for an interview with MarketWatch at the American Economics Association’s annual meeting in San Antonio, where he shared his views about the U.S. economy and Federal Reserve policy, and the challenges investors now face from both. This interview has been edited for clarity.
MarketWatch: What stories is the business press getting wrong, in your opinion?
Galbraith: There is a wave of reporting to the effect that the Fed deserves credit [for the drop in inflation]. But the fact is that the peak in rising prices occurred in June 2022, and that was only three months after the Fed started raising interest rates.
So there’s absolutely no reason to attribute the peaking and subsequent decline in the rate of change of prices to anything the Fed did. It’s inappropriate to give them credit for something they did not engineer and did not expect to happen, either.
MarketWatch: Do you think the Fed should cut rates?
Galbraith: Yes. I think, first of all, a great deal of damage has been done.
One [thing] is, of course, in the housing market. What was a 2% mortgage rate a few years ago is now a 7% mortgage rate. And good luck trying to sell a house. It complicates transactions until the price of existing housing falls. People’s wealth possessions are going to be very destabilized. Some people will gain, some people will lose, but it’s not a good idea to basically disorient people’s balance sheets in this way.
Problem No. 2 is in relation to the policy objectives of the Biden administration, which include a lot of long-term investment by private firms heavily subsidized by tax credits, particularly in energy transition.
If you talk to the businesses, they will tell you those plans were made on the basis of fairly thin margins, including affordable interest costs. The rise in interest rates has thrown all of those calculations into a cocked hat, with the result that things that were started, or were on the drawing boards — offshore wind farms and things of that nature — have been canceled.
MarketWatch: You’ve spoken about the rise of pseudo-technology and competing narratives in the media. Where are you seeing this in the financial markets?
Galbraith: It strikes me that this is a pervasive phenomenon in our society that goes far beyond economics. The valuation of firms, in some cases really inconsequential firms in terms of their physical footprint, is absolutely out of proportion to what they actually do. The valuation of “pie in the sky,” whatever [artificial intelligence] may or may not yield, is being driven by a narrative that you can’t evaluate. It has no foundation that you can actually check. It’s not like a hydraulic dam.
MarketWatch: There’s a growing concern among mainstream economists about the ballooning national debt. Do you share that worry?
Galbraith: This all reminds me of the old man from vaudeville who runs out on stage and says, “Don’t clap too loud. It’s an old theater.”
The Congressional Budget Office has been producing these exploding debt projections for decades. And they are completely inconsistent as a matter of economics.
They are based upon the idea that we’re going to have a sustained high-interest-rate environment, an explosion of Social Security and Medicare spending, and we’re not going to have any problem with inflation or unemployment. That’s the CBO baseline. Is this really a consistent story? The answer is, it is not. The effect is to scare people unnecessarily.
We have plenty of things to worry about. I mean, we have a vast amount of inequality, of insecurity, of decay in our cities, physical infrastructure, all kinds of problems — of course energy, environment, I can go down that list — not to mention the political situation in the wider world. The federal debt? We should obsess on this? It does not make sense to me.
MarketWatch: You’ve expressed concern about what you call witch-doctor economic policies. What are you referring to?
Galbraith: If I could get one point across, modern medicine involves specific diagnoses linked to specific actions. But modern economics — economists are not on the same page in terms of what’s causing the inflation problem. Some of them say money, some of them say debt, some of them say expectations and some of them say low unemployment — the Phillips curve. They all quibble about that, but then they come back and say what should we do about it. We have one tool: raising the short-term interest rate. This is exactly parallel to the medieval doctor who didn’t know what the cause of the malady was, but the cure was always the same: cut the patient and let out the blood.
It’s about time that economics got over the 18th century and entered at least the late 19th century and began to learn that there are specific causes and specific treatments to get specific outcomes.
MarketWatch: How would you assess the performance of the Biden administration?
Galbraith: In economic terms, it is mixed. Amongst economists there is an idea that you just add the unemployment rate to the current inflation rate and, if the sum is a low number, people should be happy.
But this isn’t the way people see it. People have experience over a period of a few years and they can see that their cost of living has gone up more than their income. That is what large numbers of people are experiencing. And that means they are under pressure to meet their rent, utility and tuition bills. And this makes them unhappy. They are going to give the administration low marks under those circumstances.
On big climate-change projects — if an asteroid was coming toward the Earth, we would consider this to be an existential emergency. And it would not make sense to say, “We want to have an anti-asteroid policy, but we don’t want to involve the Chinese.” If climate change is an asteroid, it does not make sense to have a policy which says we’re going to deal with it with basically a national investment program that excludes cooperation with other countries, particularly those that are in a strong position to help address the issue.
We have to deal with the fact that the world is multipolar and that our influence cannot be projected militarily.
MarketWatch: What do you think are the top priorities for reforming the U.S. economy?
Galbraith: If you ask what my priorities would be with the structure of the American economy, I have two. One is to definancialize — reduce the scale of the financial sector. It’s not just Wall Street but the whole financial sector. We used to have a much smaller one, more focused, better control. It simply takes too large a share of resources, concentrates power in too small a group of people who are not accountable in any way to the public.
And my second one is demilitarization. I believe that we have committed ourselves to a dysfunctional structure of power protection in the world, based upon technologies that are obsolete. Fixed bases are simply targets, and so are big floating aircraft carriers. We’re not going to succeed in a world in which we are wedded to obsolete technologies. My view is that, ultimately, we have to deal with the fact that the world is multipolar and that our influence cannot be projected militarily.
More: Don’t bank on 2023’s bullish market trends making you money in 2024
Also read: We can tackle climate change, jobs, growth and global trade. Here’s what’s stopping us.
