通胀迷局 [英国媒体]

The Great Inflation Mystery

通胀迷局
The people who set interest rates don’t know what causes inflation, how to measure it, or how to move it up and down.

制定利率的人不知道是什么原因导致通货膨胀，如何衡量通货膨胀，如何上下控制通货膨胀。

By
Peter Coy



The first principle of war is “know thine enemy.” But as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues raise interest rates to keep the U.S. economy from overheating, there’s a lot they don’t know about the foe they’re trying to contain: inflation.

战争的首要原则是“认识敌人”。但是当美联储主席杰罗姆鲍威尔和他的同事提高利率以防止美国经济过热时，他们做了很多事情 。但我觉得他们不知道想应对的敌人是什么：通货膨胀。

Here are some of the things about inflation the Fed and other central banks are uncertain of: what causes it; what effects it has; what to count in measuring it (stock prices?); how low, or high, it should be; and how to move it up and down.
The Fed, in other words, is driving blind. Daniel Tarullo, in a tell-all address at the Brookings Institution in October after his resignation from the Fed’s Board of Governors, said, “We do not, at present, have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well to be of use for the business of real-time monetary policymaking.”

以下是关于通货膨胀的一些事情，美联储和其他中央银行不确定：是什么原因造成的通胀；它有什么影响；在衡量它时应考虑什么(股票价格？)；它是低还是高？ 如果是过高，如何上下调控。
换句话说，美联储是在盲目行事。10月丹尼尔·塔鲁洛在布鲁金斯学会发表了一篇关于他辞去美联储理事会职务的演讲，他说：“当前我们没有一种通胀动态理论，足以用于辅助实时货币政策的制定。“

On March 21, the Federal Open Market Committee raised its target range for the federal funds rate to 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent. In his first press conference as chairman, Powell said, “There’s no sense in the data that we’re on the cusp of an acceleration of inflation.”

3月21日，联邦开放市场委员会将联邦基金利率的范围从1.5%提高到1.75%。鲍威尔在他身为主席的第一次新闻发布会上表示：“没有数据显示我们正处于通胀加速边缘。“

Like a cook lowering the flame under a pot, the Fed is trying to reduce the pace of growth from a boil to a simmer to extend the life of the almost nine-year expansion. History shows that once the central bank begins to raise interest rates, it often goes too far. Five of the seven credit-tightening cycles since 1970 have choked growth and ended in a recession. But without understanding more about inflation, it’s hard to know if the Fed is tightening too quickly, not quickly enough, or at about the right pace.

就像一个厨师在锅下点火一样，美联储正试图将通胀速率从沸腾减小到可接受范围，以延长九年期的信贷扩张。历史表明 一旦三大银行开始加息，往往会坐过头。自1970以来在7个信贷紧缩周期中，有5个周期扼杀了经济增长并以衰退告终。但在不了解更多通胀本质的前提下，很难判断美联储加息脚步是太快，不够快，还是该以适当速度紧缩利率。

The chart above illustrates one problem facing the central bank: Prices don’t rise or fall in unison. What the Fed calls “inflation” is just a weighted average of the ups and downs of the prices of all goods and services in a basket that reflects the spending of all American consumers. And those prices change for a variety of reasons, including technology, consumer preferences, and the cost of imports.
How people experience inflation varies. It was higher for the old, for the poor, and for large families than for the rest of the population from 2004 to 2013, according to research into half a billion transactions by economists Greg Kaplan of the University of Chicago and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

上图说明了央行面临的一个问题：各行各业价格涨跌并不一致。美联储所称的“通胀”只是铝价涨跌的加权平均值。 商品和服务放在一个篮子里反映的是所有美国消费者的消费情况。这些价格的变化受到多种原因也许，包括技术、消费者偏好和进口成本。人们对通货膨胀的感受各不相同。 芝加哥大学的经济学家GregKaplan和芝加哥联邦储备银行的萨姆·舒尔霍弗·沃尔经过研究发现，根据对5亿人的研究显示2004至2013年间，老年人、穷人和大家庭比其他人口更感受到了通胀的影响。

The sales channel matters, too. Inflation of goods sold online ran 1.3 percentage points lower than the Consumer Price Index for the same product categories from 2014 to 2017, according to research by Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Pete Klenow of Stanford, who analyzed data from the Adobe Experience Cloud, which includes 80 percent of the transactions of the top 100 U.S. retailers.

芝加哥大学布斯商学院的AustanGoolsbee和斯坦福的PeteKlenow，他们分析了Adobe体验云的数据，其中包括80%的交易 美国百强零售商，发现销售渠道也很重要。研究表明，从2014到2017网上商品的销售比同类产品的消费价格指数下降了1.3个百分点。

Another big divergence is between goods and services. Since the end of the last recession, the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation—the change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures—has averaged 1.5 percent a year. But when you break the index into its two main components, services inflation has averaged 2.2 percent annually while goods inflation has come in at just 0.3 percent. The problem for the Fed is that monetary policy is a blunt instrument that can’t treat the services side and the goods side of the economy differently. “The average of landing at two airports is called a crash,” says Brian Barnier, an expert in operations research who’s head of analytics at ValueBridge Advisors LLC in New York.

另一个很大的分歧是商品和服务之间的差异。自上一次衰退结束以来美联储最喜欢的通胀指标--个人消费支出价格指数平均每年变化1.5%。但是当你把这个指数分为两个主要部分时服务业的年平均通货膨胀率为2.2%，而商品的通货膨胀率仅为0.3%。美联储的问题是货币政策是一种迟钝的货币工具，不能以不同的方式对待服务和商品两方面。“在两个机场降落的平均水平被称为 “一场车祸，”运筹学专家布赖恩·巴尼尔说，他是纽约ValueBridge Advisors有限责任公司的分析部门主管。

The problem with inflation theories is that they tend to rest on “unobservables,” such as the concept of the natural rate of unemployment. “Attempts to estimate them have strongly suggested that they aren’t constants,” writes Edward Yardeni, the Wall Street economist, in a new book, Predicting the Markets: A Professional Autobiography.

通货膨胀理论的问题在于它们往往依赖于“不可观测的”如自然失业率等概念。“试图估计这些量的行为强烈地表明他们不是常量。 华尔街经济学家爱德华·亚德尼在一本新书“预测市场：专业自传”中写道。

The Fed’s challenge with inflation isn’t just a lack of knowledge; it’s also a lack of power. The economist Milton Friedman asserted in 1963 that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” implying that the Fed could exert near-total control over it by adjusting the supply of base money. He theorized that prices couldn’t possibly rise unless the Fed pumped more money into the economy. But he was wrong. Even if the Fed does nothing, the opportunity for inflation can increase if banks make more loans and if money circulates through the economy faster.

美联储面对通胀的挑战不仅仅是缺乏知识，还包括缺乏权力。经济学家米尔顿弗里德曼在1963断言：“通货膨胀是随时随地都存在的货币现象。 这意味着美联储可以通过调整基础货币的供应来对其施加近乎全面的控制。他的理论认为，除非美联储向经济注入更多的资金否则货币价格不可能上涨。 但他错了。即使美联储什么也不做，如果银行提供更多贷款货币在经济中流通得更快，通胀的机会也会增加。

There’s even an argument that raising interest rates now, far from damping price pressures, could stoke them. The idea goes back to economist Irving Fisher in the 1930s, based on the simple equation that the nominal rate of interest equals the real rate plus inflation. For example, if the nominal rate is 2 percent and inflation is zero, the real interest rate is also 2 percent. If the Fed raises the nominal rate to 4 percent but the real interest rate stays at 2 percent, then inflation will have to rise to 2 percent to make up the difference: 2 + 2 = 4. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in a presentation in Germany in 2016 that “Neo-Fisherian ideas may have an important impact on our thinking about monetary policy in the future.”

甚至有一种观点认为，现在提高利率非但不能减轻价格压力反而会加剧利率压力。这个想法可以追溯到上世纪30年代的经济学家欧文·费舍尔，基于简单的方程t ：名义利率等于实际利率加上通货膨胀。例如如果名义利率是2%，通货膨胀是零，那么实际利率也是2%。如果美联储提高利率 ，名义利率为4%，但实际利率保持在2%，那么通货膨胀将不得不上升到2%，以弥补差额：2+2=4。圣路易斯联邦储备银行恩特詹姆士布拉德在2016德国的一次演讲中说：“新费舍尔的思想可能对未来我们货币政策的思考产生重要影响。”

Many of the people asking the sharpest questions about the Fed’s thinking on inflation aren’t anointed doctors of economics. An extreme example of the self-taught econ skeptic is Matt Busigin, who dropped out of high school at 15 but has managed to have a dual career as a software engineer in Buffalo and a portfolio manager for Los Angeles-based New River Investments Inc. Running tests on 20 years’ worth of data, he found a negative correlation between increases in the Fed’s base money and future inflation: When one rises, the other falls, and vice versa. Theory predicts a positive correlation.

许多人对美联储的通胀思想提出了最尖锐的批评，但他们并不是经济学专家。一个自学成才的经济怀疑论者的极端例子是matt busigin，他是15岁就从高中辍学，但他在布法罗做软件工程师，还在洛杉矶的新河投资有限公司担任投资综合经理。经过20年运行测试 他发现美联储的基本货币和未来通胀率之间存在负相关关系：当一个货币升值时，另一个上升，反之亦然。理论预测呈正相关关系 .

Closer to the center of power is Patrick Harker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, an engineer by training with expertise in operations research, a scientific method for management of systems ranging from transportation networks to factory floors. Operations researchers tend to value data collection over theory-spinning. Thinking out of the box, Harker’s bank is even toying with using the emerging science of machine learning to make macroeconomic predictions and policy. It sponsored a conference on the topic last year and hired an expert in the field to start work in August.

离权力中心更近的是费城联邦储备银行行长帕特里克·哈克，他是一名经过运筹学专业培训（这是管理人员的一种科学方法）的工程师。 研究如何架构从运输网络到工厂楼层的高效系统。运筹学家倾向于重视数据收集而不是理论推倒。哈克的银行在打破常规思维的同时，甚至还在利用新兴的机器学习来做出宏观经济预测和政策制定。它去年主办了一次关于这一主题的会议。 并在八月聘请了一位实地专家开始工作。

What can the Fed and other central banks do, given the uncertainty? A good start is to admit the problem exists. Powell’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, kept the Fed “data-dependent”—dragging her heels on raising rates until she saw evidence of inflation, not just theories predicting it. Said Yellen last year in New York: “You have to keep an open mind and not assume you have a monopoly of truth.”

考虑到不确定性，美联储和其他央行能做什么？一个好的开始是承认问题的存在。鲍威尔的前任，Janet Yellen，保持美联储“数据依赖”-拖累了她发现通胀的本质， 直到她看到通货膨胀的证据而不仅仅是预测通货膨胀的理论，她才开始提高利率。耶伦去年在纽约说：“你必须保持开放的心态，而不是自我感觉垄断了真理。”