Deutsche Bank
strategists Jim Reid and Craig Nicol wrote a report this week that
echos what I and other Austrian School economists been saying for many
years: actions taken by governments and central banks to extend
business cycles and prevent recessions lead to even more severe
recessions in the end.MarketWatch reports –
ドイツ銀行のストラテジスト Jim Reid とCraig Nicolが今週報告書を書いた、その内容は私や他のオーストリア学派経済学者が長年警鐘を告げていたものと同様だ:政府や中央銀行がビジネスサイクルを引き延ばし景気後退を回避しようとするが、これが結局もっと深刻な景気後退を引き起こす。
MarketWatchの報告ーー
The 10-year old economic
expansion will set a record next month by becoming the longest ever.
Great news, right? Maybe not, say strategists at Deutsche Bank.
Prolonged
expansions have become the norm since the early 1970s, when the tight
link between the dollar and gold was broken. The last four expansions
are among the six longest in U.S. history .
Why so? Freed from the
constraints of gold-backed currency, governments and central banks have
grown far more aggressive in combating downturns. They’ve boosted
spending, slashed interest rates or taken other unorthodox steps to
stimulate the economy.
“This
policy flexibility and longer business cycle era has led to higher
structural budget deficits, higher private sector and government debt,
lower and lower interest rates, negative real yields, inflated financial
asset valuations, much lower defaults (ultra cheap funding), less
creative destruction, and a financial system that is prone to crises,’ they wrote in a lengthy report.
“In
fact we’ve created an environment where recessions are a global
systemic risk. As such, the authorities have become even more encouraged
to prevent them, which could lead to skewed preferences in
policymaking,” they said.“So we think cycles continue
to be extended at a cost of increasing debt, more money printing, and
increasing financial market instability.”
As I have explained
in the past, when central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve cut
interest rates to low levels, they manage to create economic booms by
encouraging borrowing and higher asset prices. These economic booms are
often based on dangerous economic bubbles that burst and lead to
recessions when interest rates are normalized again. As the chart below
shows, financial crises and recessions (see the gray vertical bars)
occur after rate hike cycles, including the dot-com and U.S. housing
market crashes.
The false economic booms that occur when central banks interfere with
the business cycle trick investors and entrepreneurs into thinking that
they are organic and sustainable booms. When the booms inevitably turn
to busts, the bad investments that result are known as malinvestments – 中央銀行が景気サイクルに介入することで生み出される偽の景気ブームは投資家や起業家に誤解を引き起こす、この経済ブームは自然なもので持続的なものだと。ブームというものには必ず終焉がある、このとき、筋悪投資がはじめてmalinvestmentsとして認識されるーー
Malinvestment is a
mistaken investment in wrong lines of production, which inevitably lead
to wasted capital and economic losses, subsequently requiring the
reallocation of resources to more productive uses. “Wrong” in
this sense means incorrect or mistaken from the point of view of the
real long-term needs and demands of the economy, if those needs and
demands were expressed with the correct price signals in the free
market.
Malinvestmentとは wrong lines of production 方針を間違えた生産への誤解による投資だ、これは必ず資本の浪費となり経済的損失を伴う、その後もっと生産的な目的へと資本の再配分が必要となる。ここで言うところの「Wrong」とは長期的視点での実需を見誤ったという意味だ、自由市場ならばこのような需要には正しい(投資、債務)費用が示される。
Random, isolated entrepreneurial miscalculations and
mistaken investments occur in any market (resulting in standard
bankruptcies and business failures) but systematic, simultaneous
and widespread investment mistakes can only occur through
systematically distorted price signals, and these result in depressions
or recessions. Austrians believe systemic malinvestments occur
because of unnecessary and counterproductive intervention in the free
market, distorting price signals and misleading investors and
entrepreneurs.
For Austrians, prices are an essential information
channel through which market participants communicate their demands and
cause resources to be allocated to satisfy those demands appropriately.
If the government or banks distort, confuse or mislead
investors and market participants by not permitting the price mechanism
to work appropriately, unsustainable malinvestment will be the
inevitable result.
Because the current economic cycle has lasted for an unusually long
time due to the actions of central banks, an unprecedented amount of
malinvestment has built up globally that needs to be cleansed in the
coming recession. It’s similar to a night of drinking: the more you
drink and the later you stay out, the worse your hangover is going to
be. Globally speaking, the last decade has been the bender to
end all benders and the coming hangover is going to proportionally
severe.
文章全体がZeroHedge特有の皮肉で満ちています。 Global Earnings Downgrades At Highest Level In 10 Years by Tyler Durden Thu, 01/10/2019 - 16:45 As stock markets plunged in December, asset-gatherers and commission-takers (and politicians) rushed on to every media outlet to reassure everyone that the fundamentals are "solid", "extremely strong", "very positive" ... pick your spin. The only problem is that top-down, the fundamentals are dismally disappointing... 12月の株式急落で、株式を買い集めている人、手数料狙いの人(そして政治家)はメディアに出ずっぱりで誰もにこう訴えた、ファンダメンタルズは「健全」、「とても強い」、「とてもポジティブ」・・・みなさんもこれに振り回された。唯一の問題はこれらは上意下達であることだ、実際のファンダメンタルズは悲しいかな失望するものだ・・・・ And bottom-up, the fundamentals are almost as bad as they have ever been as analysts take the ax to their outlooks... the number of analysts’ global earnings downgrades exceeded upgrades by the most since 2...
米国はよく理解してませんが、日本の場合では量的緩和で日銀が国債買い上げした資金は日銀当座預金にそのままです、市中には流れていません。でもNHKのニュース等では「ジャブジャブ」という表現をアナウンサーが使い、さらに丁寧に水道の蛇口からお金が吐き出される画像まで示してくれます。これって心理効果が大きいですよね。量的緩和とは何かを7時のニュースや新聞でこれ以上丁寧に解説するのはそう簡単ではありません。一般の人も株式をやっている人も「イメージ」で捉える以上はそう簡単にできません。多くの人は量的緩和とはなにか、を理解していないと私は想像しています。 ただし、国債を買い上げるので長期金利が低下し住宅ローン金利等が下がったのは確実な効果です。一方で長短金利差が少なくなると銀行のビジネスモデルが成り立たなくなりますが。 This Is The One Chart Every Trader Should Have "Taped To Their Screen" by Tyler Durden Sat, 01/19/2019 - 18:55 After a year of tapering, the Fed’s balance sheet finally captured the market’s attention during the last three months of 2018. 一年間のテーパリング後、FEDバランスシートがとうとう市場の注目をあびることになった、2018年の最後の3ヶ月だ。 By the start of the fourth quarter, the Fed had finished raising the caps on monthly roll-off of its balance sheet to the full $50bn per month (peaking at $30bn USTs, $20bn MBS...