经济广角:IMF:G20要务是调整全球经济平衡

IMF chief urges G20 to focus on economic balance
World leaders should make rebalancing the world economy the priority for next week's Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, says the head of the International Monetary Fund.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Dominique Strauss-Kahn urged the G20 leading industrialised and developing nations to provide the political leadership that had been missing in past efforts to reduce economic imbalances while supporting global growth.

“We need to have rebalancing of growth and in- crease in consumption in the emerging markets to have enough growth in the short term,” he said. “We also need to define what the long-term growth model will be.”

Mr Strauss-Kahn's comments endorse a US-led push to make more balanced global growth – less reliant on debt-fuelled consumption by US consumers – a key theme of the Pittsburgh summit.

The IMF chief said his organisation had been stressing the need to rebalance the global economy for some time. “Multilateral consultations have been held on this topic with conclusions accepted on all sides and nothing happened,” he said.

“We need the G20 to put some steam behind this. The G20 can provide the political leadership while the IMF can provide expertise and capacity. The IMF or World Bank is unable to do this alone.”

G20 officials have discussed a peer-review process by which they would hold each other accountable for implementing policies that move in this direction. The US drive is backed by most European nations, but China appears wary that such a process could be used to put pressure on it to reduce its trade surplus and revalue its currency.

“What they need to do is to try to define together what is the realistic path of adjustment,” said Mr Strauss-Kahn.

He said global imbalances – big differences in national savings, consumption and investment rates reflected in large trade deficits and surpluses – were “bad” and “can be causes of disruptions”. There was “no reason why we would want a situation in the long term in which there are countries with large surpluses and countries with large deficits”.

In the short term, the crisis had resulted in some narrowing of imbalances, with China boosting domestic demand through loans and government spending at a time when there had been a “striking” increase in US household savings.

国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁多米尼克•斯特劳斯-卡恩(Dominique Strauss-Kahn)表示，世界各国领导人应该将调整全球经济平衡作为下周20国集团(G20)匹兹堡峰会的首要任务。

在接受英国《金融时报》采访时，斯特劳斯-卡恩敦促G20主要工业化及发展中国家提供政治领导，这是以往缓解经济失衡、同时支撑全球增长的努力中缺失的。

“我们必须调整经济增长平衡，增加新兴市场的消费，这样才能在短期得到充分的增长，”他表示。“我们还需要对长期增长模式进行定义。”

斯特劳斯-卡恩的言论，为美国领头的努力提供了支持，即让更均衡的全球经济增长（即减少依赖美国消费者的举债消费）成为匹兹堡峰会的关键主题。

斯特劳斯-卡恩表示，IMF一直在强调调整全球经济平衡的重要性。“就这个话题展开了数次多边磋商，各方对结论都表示赞同，但事后没有任何行动。”

“我们需要G20对此发挥一定的推动作用。G20能够提供政治领导，而IMF能够提供专业诀窍与能力。单靠IMF或世界银行(World Bank)是无力完成这项任务的。”

G20官员已就一套同行评议程序进行了讨论，根据这套程序，在实施这方面的政策方面，他们能够追究彼此的责任。美国的努力得到了多数欧洲国家的支持，但中国似乎表示警惕，担心其它国家会利用该程序对其施加压力，要求其缩减贸易顺差，提高人民币汇率。

“它们要做的是，试图共同定义什么才是现实的调整方法，”斯特劳斯-卡恩称。

他表示，全球失衡——国民储蓄、消费及投资率的巨大差距，在巨大的贸易顺差与逆差之中得到反映——是“有害的”，而且“可能引发危机”。“我们没有理由希望看到这样一种长期局势，即一些国家拥有巨额顺差，另一些国家则拥有巨额逆差。”

短期来看，本次危机导致失衡略有缓解：中国通过贷款和政府支出提振了国内需求，与此同时，美国家庭储蓄出现“惊人”增长。

们从这一交易中获得的利润。RBC Capital Markets驻多伦多的首席外汇技术分析师戴维斯(George Davis)说，美元似乎正呈现旷日持久的下行趋势，这是鼓励人们将美元作为融资套利交易借入货币的又一理由。