專訪灰犀牛作者:全球將有近11萬億美元債務到期！

摘要：網易研究局·大師：IMF公佈了最新的世界經濟預測，預計世界主要發達經濟體的GDP增速今年會是-3%，這是否會加深市場的恐慌。網易研究局·大師：疫情是否會加劇逆全球化趨勢。

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·聚焦國際思想市場·解析財經新聞熱點·對話國際經濟學大師

對話《灰犀牛》作者米歇爾·渥克

文/李兆元

新冠疫情蔓延引發全球市場震盪，未來世界經濟將如何發展？網易研究局專訪了《灰犀牛》作者米歇爾·渥克。

以下爲專訪精編：

網易研究局·大師：如何看待當前疫情所處的階段以及此次疫情對全球經濟的影響？

米歇爾·渥克：我認爲將這次經濟震盪理解爲大蕭條是一個貼切的比喻。隨着新冠病毒的爆發和蔓延，全球經濟增長已經開始放緩。很多負面因素讓經濟變得十分脆弱，失業率急劇增加，但儘管如此，我認爲我們仍然麻木，並且隨之而來的是更多的痛苦。在我們研發出疫苗或是找到治療COVID-19的方法之前，經濟無法完全恢復生機。我們仍然不知道疫情會持續多久，持續的時間越長，對經濟的多米諾骨牌效應就會越嚴重。

債務是一個很大的問題，國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）的分析師警告稱，全球債務水平已經創下歷史記錄，經濟極度容易陷入衰退。營收的下降意味着越來越多的公司將面臨債務壓力。在接下來的四年中，全球將有近11萬億美元的公司債務到期（每年約2萬億美元），在這種環境下很難再進行融資。我們可能會看到債務違約激增以及不良貸款上升。只要消費者的日子不好過，那麼企業、房東和債權人也很難好過。因此，政府現在應該着手重組和減免部分債務，等待的時間越長，成本就會越高，並且隨着越來越多的企業破產，銀行倒閉，經濟會變得更加混亂。

所有這些問題都造成了一個惡性循環：人們對經濟的預期越糟糕，他們的消費或者投資就會越少。因此，政府應該果斷採取政策來支持失業人員，重組債務，以及與私營企業合作來支持危機中正在出現的創新，這些措施將決定這種糟糕局面會持續多長時間。

網易研究局·大師：IMF公佈了最新的世界經濟預測，預計世界主要發達經濟體的GDP增速今年會是-3%，這是否會加深市場的恐慌？世界各國應如何應對經濟衰退？

米歇爾·渥克：IMF的預測可能是比較樂觀的，因爲這種預測基於一種假設——疫情影響將逐漸減弱，經濟將在下半年恢復生機，但這種假設的不確定性很高。同樣重要的是，這是一個平均值，是基於新興市場國家比富裕國家將遭受更大損失的預測。但美國的實際失業率已經超過20％，遠遠超過官方的水平，這是自1934年以來的最高水平。

但事實是，我們無法對疫情進行準確的預測，因爲我們不知道疫苗研發將花費多長時間，或者經濟重新恢復正常需要多長時間。我們也不知道隨着今年秋天，也就是下一個流感季節的來臨，將會發生什麼，因爲許多人都認爲可能會出現第二波感染。請記住，1918年的大流感持續了整整兩年，我的曾祖父在1918年11月的第二波感染中去世。這在很大程度上取決於公民是否對戴口罩足夠自律，包括經常洗手和避免聚集。在西方社會，大家都習慣於無視可能對他人造成的危險，這是一個重大問題。與幾個月前相比，我們對藥物測試和對病毒的瞭解有了一些進展，但是在能夠完全控制病毒之前，我們還有很多要了解的事情。

疫情造成的結果取決於政策決策者的反應。政府會支持失業人羣嗎？是否會解決損害實體經濟並助長投機的貨幣失衡問題？在美國，擁有信貸額度和其他資本來源的大公司花掉國會用於支持中小型企業的大量資金，民衆存在着許多憤慨。令人們感到不安的是，那些使用大部分現金流回購股票的公司現在都在尋求政府的救助。

網易研究局·大師：您如何看待未來的油價趨勢？減產協議是否意味着“原油價格戰”已經結束？

米歇爾·渥克：在目前這種瘋狂的情況下，我們不能認爲一切都已經結束，但我認爲負油價的衝擊和石油供應的大規模減少將導致大量減產。現在有很多關於產量水平的爭論，將再次傷害大型石油生產商。即使產量處於較爲合理的水平，需求端也不足以支持幾個月前的價格，許多較小的石油產出國將無法生存。無論是從溫室氣體排放量還是相關污染問題，研究都表明，人們更容易感染呼吸道病毒，轉向清潔能源很可能是最後的結果。能源公司數十年來獲得了鉅額補貼，但是隨着其他替代方案（其中許多創造了更多的就業機會）變得可行，政府不僅需要停止補貼非清潔燃料，而且還必須考慮其造成的健康和環境負面外部影響。

我希望看到的政策結果是低價徵收碳稅。消費者仍然會比之前付更少的錢，而且這部分財政收入將有助於減少迅速增長的財政赤字。減稅這一措施將會發出一個信號，鼓勵人們使用更清潔的交通方式，包括混合動力車，電動汽車，公共交通和自行車等等，並且可以重新定向對石油行業的工人提供新工作培訓或過渡福利。

網易研究局·大師：全球疫情仍在蔓延，中國應該如何應對進出口的壓力？對於外貿企業來說，全球訂單萎縮，他們應該如何熬過這個寒冬？

米歇爾·渥克：對於製造業來說，情況已經很糟，服務業受到的打擊更大。人們需要收入購買製造業產品，因此，我們需要一種從整體上拯救經濟的辦法。

可能對製造業有利的一件事是，疫情顯示出了即時供應鏈管理的問題。企業需要重新考慮這一點，這可能會導致短期內更大的補貨訂單並有助於復甦。

我們將看到世界範圍內的貿易格局發生巨大的變化。在政策問題上，我堅決反對民族主義封鎖邊境和限制貿易的傾向。我個人非常喜歡去到世界各地，並且從中收穫了很多，這是全球化之前無法體驗到的。

隨着各國生產活動的恢復，許多產品的價格將在高薪地區上漲，因爲它們的生產成本更高。各國將必須制定政策框架，以確保更多的公民能夠負擔得起更高的價格。這意味着要解決疫情暴露的經濟不平等現象，並使之更加難以忽視。

中國面臨的一線希望可能是，這是應對長期挑戰的機會：使投資與消費實現更好的平衡。中國的政策應着眼於國內消費，促進中低收入人羣就業和提高該羣體的收入。

網易研究局·大師：疫情是否會加劇逆全球化趨勢？如何看待近日一些國家禁止糧食出口？

米歇爾·渥克：很不幸，疫情的確加劇了逆全球化，可能會出現食物短缺的情況。聽說有些國家禁止大米出口後，上週末我去了巴基斯坦人經營的當地超市，在那裏我買了印度香米，他們說交貨時間將會短暫延遲，但到目前爲止還不錯。不過，我並沒有指望這種情況將會持續。

迄今爲止，對食品供應鏈最大的破壞是由於工人患病而導致播種，收穫和加工的中斷。在美國，由於許多工人患病，屠宰場一直在關閉或削減肉類加工業務。疫情還損害了分銷網絡。我的家人來自中西部的威斯康星州，因其奶牛場和奶酪生產而被暱稱爲“美國的奶牛場”。我看到農民把牛奶倒在地上的視頻，令人傷心，因爲他們沒有辦法將牛奶賣給消費者，而且奶牛需要擠奶。尤其令人難過的是，在食物短缺，飢餓加劇的同時，還有着巨大的浪費。我看到了另一個有關養蛋農場主的故事，該農場主向慈善機構捐贈了2500個多餘的雞蛋，這些雞蛋在幾分鐘內就全部消失了。

網易研究局·大師：美聯儲3月底實行無限量化寬鬆救市，從這幾天的市場表現來看，是否已經對美股起到了支撐作用？美聯儲大規模量化寬鬆，是否是目前最佳的救市方案？

米歇爾·渥克：量化寬鬆的某些要素是必要的，但採取這種措施來應對意料之外的事件（比如市場泡沫）已經是很久之前的事情了。政府借款的大量增加意味着提高利率將迅速增加預算赤字。但是美聯儲的政策工具是有限的：內部人士所說的“傳導機制”存在問題，如何將流動性注入實體經濟而不僅僅是金融資產也是一個問題。政策的失敗使經濟陷入困境，也讓我們的金融體系變得更加脆弱。國會需要採取一些應對措施來對沖政策帶來的副作用：量化寬鬆對投機者的幫助超過了實體經濟，工人和企業家。

荒謬的是，在這種經濟現狀下，美股僅比歷史最高點低16%。市場邏輯是，美聯儲宣佈將盡一切努力來挽救市場。這完全摧毀了傳統的認知，並非明智的決定。股市反映了對未來經濟增長的期望，這些期望將通過分紅回報給股東。然而事實恰恰相反：在相當長的一段時間裏，市場僅僅反映了投機者對進一步寬鬆貨幣政策的預期。經濟預期越差，印的錢越多，投機的錢就越多。不幸的是，這些錢大部分都沒有進入實體經濟，這意味着最終這套紙牌屋極其不穩定。

美國的稅收政策使這種動態情況變得更糟，因爲它通過降低股票市場投資的稅率和對風險保證金投資的稅收減免來補貼市場投機活動。2017年美國將公司稅率下調至21％，公司繳納的稅款仍然高於投資股票市場的人。對於持有超過一年的股票來說，即使是最高的“長期”資本利得稅率，對於大多數高收入者來說也僅有20%。曾有人呼籲提高資本所得稅稅率，每一次市場大幅下跌，美聯儲都會降低利率，這是一種很瘋狂的操作。但是當股市“熔斷”時，他們不會緊急加息。這是一個錯誤：中央銀行需要關注資產通脹以及其他經濟體的物價水平。

作者簡介：

米歇爾·渥克(Michele Wucker)，財經暢銷書《灰犀牛：如何應對大概率危機》作者。2007年古根海姆學者獎獲得者，2009年世界經濟論壇“青年領袖”，她身兼數職，擔任紐約國際政策研究所所長、芝加哥議會全球事務研究中心副主任、《國際金融評論》拉美辦公室主任。

附英文實錄：

NERB: Some people holds the view that weare now suffering a new round of Great Depression, which will be even worse than 1930s’. Do you agree with this comment? How do you evaluate the influence of coronavirus on world economy?

Michele Wucker: The Great Depression is an appropriate analogy, I am sad to say. The global economic outlook already was slowing, as a long expansion matured, before the coronavirus hit. So we already were hitting headwinds, which made us that much more vulnerable to the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic. Unemployment has already risen dramatically, but despite that I think we are still numb and that there is much, much more pain to come. Until we have a vaccine and better understanding of how to treat COVID-19, the economy will not be able to fully spring back to life. We still don't know how long that will be -and the longer it takes, the more economic dominoes will fall.

Debt is a big, big one. The International Monetary Fund and smart analysts whose views I respect have already been warning that record global debt levels have left the world extremely vulnerable to a recession. Falling revenues mean that more and more companies will have a hard time keeping up with their debt obligations. Nearly $11 trillion in corporate debt around the world matures over the next four years --roughly $2 trillion a year-- and will be much harder to refinance in this environment. We are likely to see a spike in corporate debt defaults as well as distressed consumer lending. As long as consumers are struggling, businesses, landlords, and creditors will too. So policy makers need to be working now to restructure and forgive some of that debt, because the longer they wait, the bigger the cost will be and the more chaotic things will be as businesses fail, taking banks down with them.

All of this creates a vicious downward circle: the worse people think it will be, the less they spend or invest. So decisive policy action to support the jobless, restructure debt, and --the one bright spot-- to partner with the private sector to support the innovation that is appearing amidst the crisis-- will play a big part in determining just how bad things will be and for how long.

NERB: The IMF forecasted that the global GDP growth rate will become -3% this year. How do you think about this forecast? Will this increase market panic? How should major economies respond to economic recession?

Michele Wucker: That forecast may turn out to be optimistic, as it assumes the pandemic will wind down and economies come back to life in the second half of the year and that's not 100% certain by any means. It's also important to remember that this is an average, based on projections that emerging market countries will suffer considerably more than wealthier countries. The United States already is at a real unemployment rate (which is much higher than the official level) of over 20% --the highest level since 1934.

But the truth is there's no way to forecast accurately, since we don't know how long it will take to create a vaccine or how long it will be until economies can fully re-open. We also do not know what will happen as the next flu season begins this fall, as many people expect another wave of infections. Remember that the 1918 flu pandemic lasted two full years. My great-grandfather died during the second wave, in November 1918. Much of this depends on how responsible citizens are in wearing masks, washing hands, and avoiding crowds. In the West, where there is a dangerous disregard for others in society, this is a major issue. There is some progress testing some drugs and more understanding of the virus than we had a few months ago, but we have much more to learn before we can safely control it.

The outcome depends on how policy makers react. Will they support people who have lost their jobs? Will they address the monetary imbalances that are hurting the real economy and helping speculators? In the United States, there has been a lot of justified outrage at how big companies with access to credit lines and other sources of capital took a lot of the money that Congress authorized to support small and medium sized businesses. People also have been upset that companies that used most of their free cash flow to buy back their shares now want government bailouts.

NERB: The oil price has been fluctuated during the past months and became negative this week, how do you think about the trend of oil price in the future? Does the reduction agreement mean that the "crude oil price war" has come to an end? How do you view the global demand for crude oil in the future?

Michele Wucker: We cannot assume that anything has come to an end in this crazy situation, but I suspect that the size of the negative price shock and oil supplies overwhelming storage capacity will cause a lot of production cutbacks. This is a terrible time to be having a spat about production levels and that will come back to bite big oil producers. Even if production is at more sensible levels, global demand will not support prices at levels where they were just a few months ago. Many smaller oil producers will not survive. Given the need to move to cleaner energy is not the worst possible outcome, both in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and related pollution issues which studies have shown make people more vulnerable to respiratory viruses. Energy companies have received huge subsidies for decades, but as other alternatives --many of which create more jobs-- have become feasible, governments not only need to stop subsidizing dirty fuels but also must factor in the health and environmental negative externalities they create.

The policy outcome I would like to see is taking advantage of low prices to institute a carbon tax. Consumers would still be paying less than before. The revenue would help put a dent (however small) in the rapidly growing fiscal deficits. The tax would send a message encouraging people to use cleaner transportation options, whether hybrids, electric cars, rideshares, public transport or bicycles. And it could be redirected toward new job training and/or transition benefits for oil industry employees.

NERB: Global manufacturing industries have been shrinking, how should we protect manufacturing companies in the world? For foreign trade companies, how should they survive in this disaster? How should China cope with the pressure on trade?

Michele Wucker: As bad as things have been for manufacturers, service industries have been hit even harder. And for people to buy manufactured goods, they need income. So we need a whole-of-economy approach.

One of the things that could be positive for manufacturing is that the pandemic has shown problems with the "just in time" supply chain management that had become so popular. Businesses will need to re-think that, which could lead to larger re-stocking orders in the short term and help with the recovery.

We will be seeing a dramatic re-shaping of trade patterns around the world On policy issues, I could not disagree more with the nationalist impulses to close borders and restrict foreign trade. And having traveled around the world, I personally love and benefit from being able to get things from far-away destinations that I would not have been able to get before globalization. But as someone who is profoundly concerned about climate change, I will be happy to see goods traveling shorter distances and think that is a positive trend. I would like to see labeling of goods to reflect their carbon footprint so consumers can make better prices.

As countries re-shore manufacturing, prices of many goods will rise in higher-wage destinations since they will be more expensive to manufacture. This will increase the use of automation and additive printing to bring costs down. Countries will have to put in place policy frameworks to ensure that more citizens can afford higher prices. This means addressing economic inequalities that the pandemic has brutally exposed and made harder to ignore.

The silver lining for China could be that this is an opportunity to address a long-term challenge: to bring into better balance investment and consumption. China's policy response should be a laser focus on domestic consumption. Measures to boost lower and middle class jobs and incomes will be a crucial part of this effort.

NERB: Will the epidemic enhance the anti-globalization trend? Some countries have banned rice exports, do you think we will fall into a food crisis?

Michele Wucker: Unfortunately, yes, the epidemic is already adding to anti-globalization. There will be food shortages. After I heard that some countries were halting rice exports, over the weekend I went to the local supermarket, run by Pakistani immigrants, where I get basmati rice. They said there had been a brief delay in deliveries, but so far so good. I'm not counting on that to last, however.

So far, the most dramatic disruption to food supplies has been in the interruption of planting, harvests, and processing because of worker illness. In the United States, slaughterhouses have been closing or cutting way back their meat processing operations because so many workers are getting sick.

The pandemic also has hurt distribution networks. My family is from Wisconsin in the Midwest, nicknamed "America's Dairyland" for its dairy farms and cheese production. There has been such sad video of farmers pouring milk onto the ground because they had no way to get it to customers, and the cows need to be milked. What's especially sad is that there will be tremendous waste alongside the shortages, at a time when hunger is increasing. I read another story of an egg farmer who donated 2,500 surplus eggs to a charity, and they were all gone in minutes.

NERB: The Federal Reserve is committed to use its full range of tools to support the U.S. economy and President Trump signed the bill of US $ 2 trillion economic stimulus plan. Do you think this will work? Do you think the infinite QE is the best rescue plan for the market?

Michele Wucker: Some elements of quantitative easing are necessary but it is long past time to put in counter-measures to deal with the unintended side effects, like market bubbles. The huge surge in government borrowing means that raising interest rates would quickly add even more to the budget deficit. But the Fed's tools are limited: there are problems with what insiders call the "transmission mechanism," or how to get liquidity into the real economy instead of just financial assets. That policy failing is part of what got us into this mess, making us that much more financially vulnerable to a pandemic. Congress needs to put in place counter measures against a major side effect: that QE is helping speculators more than the real economy, workers and business owners.

Right now the US stock market is only 16 percent off of its record high which is ridiculous given the economic realities. But market logic is that the Fed will do whatever it takes to support the markets. This completely destroys the conventional "wisdom" --which is not so wise-- that says the stock market reflects expectations for future economic growth that will be returned to shareholders through dividends. The reality is quite the opposite: for quite some time the markets have reflected only speculators' expectations of further loose monetary policy. And the worse economic expectations are, the more money will be printed, and the more money goes into speculation. Unfortunately, most of that money is not going into the real economy. And that means ultimately this house of cards is extremely unstable.

US tax policy makes this dynamic worse because it subsidizes market speculation, both through a lower rate for stock market investments and through a tax deduction for risky margin investing. The 2017 cut in corporate tax rates, to 21 percent, still left companies paying higher taxes than people who simply stick their money in the stock market. Even the highest "long term" capital gains tax rate --for stocks held more than a year, which is not very long term by most measures -- is 20 percent for high income earners. There have been some calls for increases in the capital gains tax rate, but there need to be more and much louder. It is crazy that it seems that every time the market drops sharply, the Fed lowers rates. But they don't do emergency rate hikes when markets "melt up." That is a mistake: central banks need to pay attention to asset inflation as well as price levels in the rest of the economy.

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