安倍只有一支箭 The vanishing golf courses that sum up Abenomics
The golf courses of Japan are a useful financial indicator. As members succumb either to straitened circumstances in a struggling economy or to old age, these lush expanses of manicured grass — symbolic of the excesses of the bubble years — are falling out of favour. A foreign-owned property company in Tokyo has begun buying them up and, reflecting the popular anxiety following Fukushima, is converting them into solar farms.
日本的高尔夫球场是一个有用的金融指标。随着会员或是在经济低迷的背景下失去兴致，或是年事渐高，这些精心修剪过的青草地（它们象征着泡沫年代的过剩）日益受到冷落。东京的一家外资房地产公司已经开始收购这些高尔夫球场，将其改造为太阳能发电场，反映福岛(Fukushima)核事故后公众的焦虑情绪。
The Bank of Japan’s decision to embrace negative interest rates, the latest attempt to reinvigorate the ossified economy, does not apply to retail deposits... least, not yet. That, however, is small comfort to the salarymen and their retired counterparts who have seen the return on their savings decimated by years of zero interest rates.
日本央行重振僵化经济的最新尝试——实行负利率的决策，并不适用于零售存款，至少目前还不是这样。然而，对于看到自己的储蓄回报由于多年的零利率而被严重削减的在职和退休工薪阶层而言，这只是微不足道的安慰。
Despite Shinzo Abe’s boasts about the “three arrows” of his Abenomics programme, there has been only ever one missile in the prime minister’s quiver: yen depreciation (albeit indirectly), through ever-lower interest rates, to support Japanese exporters as they try to fend off rivals such as China and Vietnam. The other two arrows — fiscal and structural reform — are but pinpricks.
尽管安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)吹嘘他的“安倍经济学”有“三支箭”，但这位首相的箭筒里一直只有一支箭：日元贬值（尽管是间接的，借助越来越低的利率），以支持试图抵御中国和越南等国竞争对手的日本出口商。另外两支箭——财政和结构性改革——只是两个小点。
The BoJ’s support of Abenomics through this kind of unconventional monetary policy has never been about real economic growth.
日本央行通过这种非常规的货币政策对安倍经济学给予支持，然而这从来就不是关乎实体经济增长。
Like the policies of the US Federal Reserve, it has led to asset price inflation and distorted incentives rather than a rejuvenated economy built on a world-class service sector and leading-edge technology companies.
就像美联储(Fed)的政策一样，这导致资产价格膨胀和激励机制扭曲，而不是建立在世界级服务业和前沿科技公司基础上的重新焕发活力的经济。
So far Abenomics has not led to a growth spurt. Output in the fourth quarter of 2015 contracted by 1.4 per cent, which was worse than expected. Indeed, for the whole of last year, growth was below the average 0.6 per cent of the previous two years. If zero rates failed to ignite the spirits of either companies or consumers, it is hard to see why negative rates would have that effect.
到目前为止，安倍经济学还没有带来增长提速。2015年第4季度，日本经济产出萎缩了1.4%，比预期更加糟糕。的确，日本去年全年增长率低于之前两年0.6%的平均值。如果零利率未能提振企业或者消费者的情绪，很难看出负利率如何达到这一效果。
By contrast, corporate profits reached record levels in the first half of 2015 but that was almost entirely a benefit of the cheap yen combined with lower global energy prices — important for a big importer such as Japan.
与此形成反差的是，日本企业利润在2015年上半年达到里创纪录水平，但这几乎完全是廉价日元和全球能源价格走低的利好所致——后者对日本这样的能源进口大国而言很重要。
This brings us to another “arrow”: structural and corporate reform. That cheap yen, like so many other gifts from the central banks, has the unintended consequence of making companies less likely to reform — raising salaries, for example, or increasing diversity at senior levels — because they rely on a cheap currency rather than innovation to make them competitive. It is a sign of the times that the market for drones, the current must-have consumer electronic product , is dominated by DJI, a Chinese company , rather than a Japanese group.
这指引我们看到另一支“箭”：结构性改革和企业改革。就像央行的其他许多“礼物”一样，廉价日元带来了意料之外的结果——让企业更不可能进行改革，比如提高薪酬、或者提升高层人员的多元化程度。因为企业依赖廉价日元而非创新来取得竞争优势。作为当前热门的消费电子产品，无人机市场由中国公司大疆创新(DJI)主导，而非日本的公司，这是一个新时代的征兆。
The average worker has been less fortunate. Total earnings are expected to have declined in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile economists expect consumption to fall by 2 per cent on the back of weaker-than-expected retail sales and household spending.
一般的劳动者没那么幸运。预计去年第4季度劳动者总收入将下降。与此同时，经济学家们预计，逊于预期的零售销售和家庭支出将使消费下降2%。
In other words, while the government and the central bank are trying to engineer a rise in inflation, it appears that they have not yet managed to extend it to the sort of wage and income growth that could lift economic prospects in a sustainable way.
换言之，尽管日本政府和央行试图促成通胀率上升，但它们似乎未能将其延伸至有望以可持续方式改善经济前景的那种薪资和收入增长。
As for fiscal policy, that, disappointingly, remains more of the same: largely resource transfers to the construction sector, traditionally a big donor to the ruling Liberal Democratic party. Even the commissions from the politically privileged builders are of the wrong sort, though. Japan should be building nursing homes for its ageing population rather than Olympic stadiums, which will have negligible multiplier effects on the economy. They will, however, put the government deeper into debt — and its sovereign bonds will not always be able to be sold at negative yields.
令人失望的是，财政政策大致保持原样：基本上就是把资源转移到建筑业，而后者传统上是执政的自民党(Liberal Democratic party)的大金主。然而，享有政治特权的建筑商就连承接的建设项目也是错误的。日本应该为日渐老龄化的人口建造更多养老院，而不是奥林匹克体育场馆，后者对经济的乘数效应微不足道，它们只会让政府更深地陷入债务泥潭——而日本的主权债券不会永远能在负收益率的情况下售出。
The latest measures from the BoJ have ceased to reliably lead to a rise in the price of more risky assets such as equities. The Nikkei stock index dropped 15 per cent in the wake of the policy shift, with bank shares especially hard hit. That is because negative rates crush net interest margins on what little lending banks undertake, since their corporate customers cannot see the point of expanding capital investment while their customer base shrinks. Meanwhile, despite Tokyo’s intentions, the yen has risen against the dollar, damaging exporters’ prospects.
日本央行的最新举措不再是提升股票等较高风险资产价格的可靠手段。日经(Nikkei)股指在政策转变后下跌了15%，银行股领跌。这是因为负利率摧毁了银行尚存的少量放贷的净息差。银行的企业客户认为，在顾客群体萎缩的背景下，扩张资本投资没有意义。同时，和东京方面的意愿相左的是，日元相对于美元升值，破坏了出口商的前景。
It used to be that it was the private sector that engaged in financial engineering while central banks condemned such money games. Now the central banks themselves have turned into financial engineers. Their success, like that of Japan’s golf courses, is bound to be fleeting.
过去的情况是私营部门进行“金融工程”，央行则谴责这种金钱游戏。现在央行自身变成了金融工程师。就像日本的高尔夫球场一样，它们的成功必将是短暂的。
