时事新闻:美国经济已对刺激计划上瘾

【英文原文】

America and Its Junky, Junkie Economy
'Now the drugs don't work. They just make you worse.' ─ The Verve

It's the day every junkie dreads. And ours is coming soon. America must learn to live without all the drugs we've been feeding ourselves.

We've been on one heck of a binge ─ the TARP, the TALF, the FHA's Hope for Homeowners, Cash-for-Clunkers ─ more than $4 trillion of it so far.

And while there is little doubt that the junk has made us feel better, you have to wonder if it's still working.

Today's existing-home sales numbers suggest it may not be. After rising four months in a row, August home re-sales fell unexpectedly by 2.7% to 5.1 million annual sales.

A 'mild retreat' said the National Association of Realtors. But apparently it wasn't 'mild' enough for the Dow which promptly swung from a 50 point gain to a 50 point loss on the news.

Investors don't like when things that are supposed to happen don't. And home sales are supposed to keep rising, especially when the Fed and the U.S. government are doing everything they can to juice them.

For America's homebuyers, credit is certainly available. The Federal Housing Agency has insured so many dubious mortgages that it's already fallen below its legally-mandated reserves.

Mortgage rates are low: the Fed's purchases of over a trillion dollars in mortgages have seen to that. For August, the rate on a 30 year mortgage was an astonishing 5.19%.

And there's even 'free money' available: Until November 30th, first-time homebuyers qualify for an $8,000 tax credit. We're back to buying $150,000 homes for only a few thousand dollars down.

So with all these inducements, how could home sales have possibly declined?

Well, it could be just a statistical blip ─ 'bad weather kept buyers at home' as the retailers are fond of saying. Or it could be that all our Keynesian tinkering is messing with the natural balance of supply and demand. Once you start introducing one-off special incentives, things get unpredictable when you take them away.

That's what happened with the $3 billion Cash-for-Clunkers program. The $4,500 government subsidy produced a great July and August for car sales, but September is dismal. As CEO Jeremy Anwyl put it: 'Cash for Clunkers was supposed to prime the pump, but that is a physics concept, and economics is quite different. Demand has dropped off significantly since the program ended.'

Is the August drop in home sales the result of the coming expiry of the $8,000 tax credit or of the FHA finally starting to tighten credit? We don't know.

But we do know that no matter how badly we crave them, the drugs in fact can make you worse. Just look at what the Fed's easy money, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and all those subprime mortgages did to us not too long ago. It almost killed us.

But how quickly we forget. The National Association of Homebuilders and the National Association of Realtors have already started their predictable campaigns for the extension of the $8,000 homebuyer credit.

No surprise. Whether you're in Washington on Wall Street or Main Street, there are always some junkies that refuse to go into rehab.

【中文译文】

“药丸现在已不起作用，只会让你更难受。”──Verve乐队。

所有的瘾君子都害怕这一天的到来。而我们的这一天即将来临。美国必须学会摆脱我们一直在喂给自己的所有药物。

我们如同置身于一场狂欢──问题资产救助计划(TARP)、定期资产支持证券贷款工具(TALF)、美国联邦住房管理局(FHA)的“房屋所有者希望计划”( Hope for Homeowners)、旧车换现金计划(Cash-for-Clunkers)──迄今为止总规模超过4万亿美元。

毋庸置疑，这些麻醉药让我们感觉好受了些，但你必须考虑它是否仍在发挥作用。

周四的成屋销售数字显示出这些措施可能不再有效。在连续几个月增长后，8月份房屋销量意外下跌2.7%，折合年率为510万套。

美国全国地产经纪商协会(National Association of Realtors)说，这是“温和收缩”。但对于道琼斯指数来说显然不够“温和”，该消息传出后，道琼斯指数马上从上涨50个基点转为下跌50个基点。

投资者们不喜欢该来的不来这种情况。而房屋销量本来应当保持增长，尤其是在美联储(Fed)和美国政府竭尽所能提振房市的情况下。

美国买房者获得信贷肯定不成问题。美国联邦住房管理局为太多可疑的抵押贷款提供了担保，其储备资金已低于法律要求的水平。

抵押贷款利率也很低：美联储购买了逾1万亿美元抵押贷款，从而造成了这一结果。8月份30年期抵押贷款利率为令人惊异的5.19%。

而且甚至还有免费的午餐：11月30日前首次买房的人可获得8,000美元减税。我们又可以象危机前那样用几千美元买价值15万美元的房子了。

那么，在所有这些因素的刺激下，房屋销售怎么可能下降呢？

这可能只是个小小的统计学问题──就像零售商总爱说“因为天气不好，顾客都不出门”。还有一个可能是，我们所有的凯恩斯主义提振措施干扰了自然的供求平衡。一旦开始实施一次性的特殊刺激，等到停止刺激措施的时候情况就会变得不可预料。

规模30亿美元的旧车换现金计划正是如此。政府提供的4,500美元补贴大大推动了7月和8月的汽车销量，但9月份的销量十分暗淡。正如消费者汽车网站的首席执行长安维尔(Jeremy Anwyl)所说：旧车换现金计划的原意是提振车市，但那是物理学的概念，而经济学则大不一样。该计划结束后，需求大幅下降。

8月份房屋销售下滑，是因为8,000美元减税措施即将到期，还是因为美国联邦住房管理局终于开始收紧信贷？我们不得而知。

但我们很清楚，无论有多渴望那些药物，它们实际上会让你的状况恶化。看看不久前美联储的低息贷款、房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)，以及那些次级抵押贷款给我们造成的苦果吧。那几乎导致整个经济崩溃。

但我们好了伤疤忘了痛也太快了。全美房屋建筑商协会(National Association of Homebuilders)和美国全国地产经纪商协会(National Association of Realtors)已经开始争取延长针对买房者的8,000美元减税计划。

这是意料中事。无论政府官员、金融界人士还是普罗大众，总有一些瘾君子拒绝戒瘾。