美国当真摆脱通胀了吗？ | 经济学人财经
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思维导图作者：
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Finance and economics | Still energised
财经 |活力依旧
英文部分选自经济学人20240106期财经板块
Finance and economics | Still energised
财经 |活力依旧
Has America really escaped inflation?
美国当真摆脱通胀了吗？
The country’s extraordinary economic vigour keeps the threat alive
非凡的经济活力使其持续面临通胀威胁
At some point American economic growth will disappoint expectations. For now, though, it appears to have ended 2023 much as it passed the previous few years, with yet another expansion that defied forecasts. Recent data suggest that the economy grew at an annualised pace of 2.5% or so in the final three months of the year, more than twice the median expectation of analysts at the start of the quarter.
美国经济总会有令人失望的那一天。但就目前而言，2023年的经济增长似乎和前几年一样，再一次超过了预期。近期数据显示，美国经济2023年四季度环比年化增幅约2.5%，是四季度初分析机构预期中值的两倍多。
延申阅读：
1.《国际观察丨美国经济能否“软着陆”待观察》
Source：http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/20240103/110d5679b0304233bfab3c25d24d7086/c.html
2. 美国季度GDP
GDPNow（预测）：https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
官方发布：https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gross-domestic-product
Although such momentum is welcome, it complicates the outlook as the Federal Reserve contemplates when to start cutting interest rates. America’s strength is broad-based. Investment in manufacturing facilities has soared to record highs, propelled by the Biden administration’s subsidies for electric-vehicle and semiconductor production. Elevated mortgage rates have led to big falls in sales of existing houses, but property developers have responded to the dearth of single-family homes on the market by ramping up building. The government has remained a backstop to growth—albeit a worrying one from the standpoint of long-term fiscal sustainability—with its deficit running at about 7% of gdp, which is virtually unprecedented during peacetime without a recession.
尽管人们喜闻乐见这样的增长势头，但美联储何时能降息的问题也因此变得更加复杂。美国的实力是具有广泛基础的。在拜登政府对电动汽车和半导体生产的补贴推动下，制造设施投资飙升至新高。抵押贷款利率上调导致现有房屋销售大幅下降，与此同时，为了弥补市场上独立住宅的供应不足，房地产开发商纷纷加大了新建房屋的建设力度。政府仍然是经济增长的后盾，虽然从长期财政可持续性的角度看，这个后盾也令人堪忧，其财政赤字约占GDP的7%，这在没有经济衰退的和平时期是空前的。
注释：
Single-family home：a standalone residential structure, designed to be occupied by an individual household.独户住宅（包含别墅但不仅限于别墅）
Most important of all, American consumers have remained indomitable, defying expectations of a retrenchment in personal spending. Two factors help explain their resilience. The stash of savings accumulated by households during the covid-19 pandemic, thanks to the government’s fiscal largesse, has continued to offer them a buffer. Economists at the Fed’s branch in San Francisco reckon that households had about $290bn of excess savings, relative to the expected baseline, as of November. Moreover, the tight labour market has led to robust wage growth, especially for lower-income workers, who, in turn, have a higher propensity to spend. As inflation has come under control their real wage gains look even more substantial.
最重要的是，美国的消费者面对通胀始终坚挺，并没有像预期的那样缩减个人开支。消费者的韧性主要受两方面因素影响：政府慷慨的财政救助金使得美国家庭在新冠大流行期间有所积蓄，也在此后缓和了他们应对通胀的压力。旧金山联邦储备银行的经济学家估算，截至 11 月，相对于预期基线，美国家庭有约 2900 亿美元的超额储蓄。此外，紧俏的劳动力市场推动薪资强劲增长，特别是低收入的工人因此有了更高的消费倾向。随着通胀得到控制，他们的实际工资增长显得更为可观。
注释：
Fed’s branch in San Francisco旧金山联储
旧金山联邦储备银行是美国第十二区的联邦储备银行。第十二区由9个西部州份组成，包括阿拉斯加州、亚利桑那州、加利福尼亚州、夏威夷州、爱达荷州、内华达州、俄勒冈州、犹他州和华盛顿州，加上北马里亚纳群岛、美属萨摩亚和关岛。
Source: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%97%A7%E9%87%91%E5%B1%B1%E8%81%94%E9%82%A6%E5%82%A8%E5%A4%87%E9%93%B6%E8%A1%8C/4637101?fr=ge_ala
Excess savings：Excess savings are balances that deviate from this long-term level of saving and capture fluctuations related to the current economic cycle；超额储蓄
Source：：https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2023/have-us-households-depleted-all-the-excess-savings-they-accumulated-during-the-pandemic.aspx#:~:text=Excess%20savings%20are%20balances%20that%20deviate%20from%20this,have%20prevailed%20in%20the%20absence%20of%20the%20pandemic.
延申阅读：
《旧金山联储：美国家庭将于本季度耗尽超额储蓄》
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1774457848648965635&wfr=spider&for=pc
These various sources of strength contributed to America’s barnstorming third quarter in 2023, when it posted annualised growth of 4.9%. Some slowing was only natural after such a rapid expansion. As recently as early October analysts had pencilled in growth of just 0.7% in the final quarter of 2023. But the latest reading from a real-time model by the Atlanta Fed—which has proved to be a reliable guide for recent gdp figures—points instead to annualised growth of 2.5%. Although the reading will fluctuate as more data trickle in, the margin for error shrinks as the date of a gdp release nears; the next one is on January 25th. For 2023 as a whole growth is likely to be about 2.5%, impressive considering that most economists expected America to be flirting with recession.
以上种种造就了美国经济2023年第三季度的强劲增长，环比年化增速达4.9%。在如此快速的增长后，（第四季度）如有放缓也是自然而然。就在10月初，分析师预测2023年第四季度增长率仅为0.7%。然而亚特兰大联邦储备银行最新的实时模型数据预测折年增速为2.5%——该模型在预测最近的GDP数据方面有着可靠表现。尽管随着更多数据的汇入，预测会有所波动，但随着 GDP 发布日期的临近，误差幅度也会缩小；四季度GDP会在1月25日发布。2023年全年的增速有望达到2.5%左右，考虑到大多数经济学家预计美国将陷入衰退，这一数字着实令人震惊。
What makes the growth all the more striking is that it has come at the same time as inflation has receded. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation—the personal consumption expenditure (pce) price index—hit 2.6% in November compared with a year earlier, down from 7% in mid-2022. Even more encouragingly, core pce prices, which strip out volatile food and energy costs, have risen by just 2.2% on an annualised basis over the past three months, in line with the Fed’s target of 2%. The disinflation has been propelled by declines in goods prices as supply chains have recovered from pandemic disruptions.
更令人震惊的是，高速增长与通胀回落同时出现。美联储首选的通胀衡量指标个人消费支出(PCE)物价指数11月达到2.6%，与2022年中期7%相比有所下降。更振奋人心的是，剔除掉波动较大的食品和能源价格的核心PCE物价，在过去三个月的年化涨幅仅为2.2%，基本符合美联储2%的目标。随着供应链从疫情影响下恢复过来，商品价格下降带动了通胀率下降。
注释：
美联储非常关心的PCE是什么？https://xueqiu.com/3133381707/129155821
This has given rise to a best-of-both-worlds scenario: resilient growth and fading inflation. Such a propitious combination might allow the Fed to cut rates in the coming months not because growth is weakening, but because it wants to avoid excessive monetary restraint. Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, seemed to give voice to these hopes after the central bank’s meeting in mid-December, when he said that rate cuts “could just be a sign that the economy is normalising and doesn’t need the tight policy”. His words fuelled a rally in both stocks and bonds.
这带来了两全其美的情形：经济增长，通胀消退。局面大好之下美联储可能会在未来几个月内降息。不是因为经济增长减弱，而是因为希望避免过度的货币紧缩。美联储12月中旬的议息会议后，其主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔（Jerome Powell）便有所暗示，他说：“降息可能只是经济正常化后不需要实施紧缩政策的迹象。”他的言论刺激了股票和债券市场反弹。
注释：
the best of both worlds: all the advantages of two different situations and none of the disadvantage
Yet the strong growth points to a less pleasant scenario: that the fall in inflation is a false signal. Whereas goods prices have declined, those for many services continue to rise at a faster clip than their pre-pandemic trend. Housing prices even rebounded in 2023, despite mortgage rates climbing to 8%, their highest in two decades. With mortgage rates falling back below 7% in December, the prospect of a bigger re-acceleration in the property market looms large. An easing in financial conditions as a result of rate cuts would support economic growth but would also feed into renewed price pressures.
然而，强劲增长也指向一种不太乐观的情况：通胀回落是一个虚假信号。尽管商品价格已有所下降，许多服务价格却在以疫情前都难以企及的速度持续增长。尽管抵押贷款利率攀升到8％，是近20年来的最高水平，但2023年房价甚至发生反弹。随着抵押贷款利率在12月跌回7％以下，房地产市场再次加速增长的前景愈发明显。降息将使得金融状况较为宽松，有利于经济增长，但也会助长新一轮的价格压力。
If inflation rebounds the Fed would have little choice but to keep interest rates elevated, perhaps reviving the fears of a recession that have all but vanished. These risks help explain why John Williams, president of the New York Fed, poured cold water on the most feverish speculation about imminent rate cuts in the wake of Mr Powell’s comments last month. He said it was “just premature to be even thinking about that”. It is probably also premature to celebrate America’s escape from the past few years of brutal inflation with barely a bruise to its economy.
如果通胀反弹，美联储别无选择，只能维持较高利率，而这可能唤起人们几近消失的对衰退的担忧。这些风险解释了为什么在上个月鲍威尔先生发言引起市场对即刻降息的狂热乐观后，纽约联邦储备银行主席约翰·威廉姆斯（John Williams）要急泼冷水。威廉姆斯表示，现在“哪怕只是考虑降息都为时尚早”。同样地，现在庆祝美国逃离过去几年通胀残酷的魔爪，经济几乎毫发无损，可能也为时过早。
翻译组：
Snowy, 厨艺初级的新闻民工，啥都学点儿
Humi，女，学习财经的金融小白，不负韶华，平视世界
Summer，女，QE在职，梦想能仗翻译/ 音乐/ 健康走天涯
校对组：
Hannah，做个废柴，保持愉快
Eva，寻路中，偶尔怀念，时常向前
风筝，热爱生活 热爱翻译 热爱搞钱 热爱猫咪
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