过于“负责”导致经济衰退。
在许多地方美国与欧洲有共同之处。两者都是多文化与民主体制，都非常富裕，都拥有对全球有影响的货币。不幸的是，从2000年到2007年，两个地区都经历了严重的房地产和信贷泡沫，泡沫破灭后都遭受了痛苦的经济衰退。
不过，经济衰退之后，大西洋两岸在政策上却分道扬镳。在一个大的经济体里，官员们严肃地践行财政政策及货币政策的美德，大力平衡预算，同时对通货膨胀表示警觉。在另一个经济体里，却并没有采取这样的态度。
这种不同成为两大经济体现在走上不同道路的主要原因。持挥霍态度并实施宽松货币的美国正在经历坚实的经济复苏——这是奥巴马总统在其充满活力的“国情咨文”讲话中所反映的现实情况。与此同时，讲究道德的欧洲却陷入日益严重的通货紧缩泥潭中；大家都希望周四宣布的新货币措施能够制止这种恶性循环，但实际上在我所知的人当中，没有人预计这种措施足以应对困境。
在美国经济方面：不，现在还不是美国之晨，更不用说克林顿时代所实现的那种经济繁荣。经济复苏本来可以，并且应该更快许多，家庭收入依然远低于危机前水平。尽管从公众讨论中人们永远不会得知，但经济学家中形成的一致共识却是，2009年到2010年奥巴马的经济刺激计划遏制了金融危机造成的破坏，但刺激计划规模太小，退出太快。尽管如此，比较过去两年里美国的经济表现与所有那些共和党人的末日预测，奥巴马先生为何有点趾高气扬不无道理。
另一方面，在欧洲——或者更准确地说由18个拥有共同货币国家组成的欧元区——几乎没有做对正确的事情。在财政政策方面，欧洲从未实施大的经济刺激计划，而是迅速地转向财政紧缩——削减开支，还有意义相对不大的增税——尽管失业率居高不下。在货币政策方面，官员们与想象中的通货膨胀威胁进行奋战，几年后才意识到真正的威胁是通货紧缩。
为什么会出现如此严重的错误？
在某种程度上，转向紧缩反映出制度上的缺陷：在美国，社会保障、医疗保险和食品券资助等联邦计划可以对佛罗里达州这样出现特别严重房地产萧条的州提供支持，而陷入类似困境的西班牙等欧洲国家却必须依靠自己。不过，欧洲财政紧缩还反映出对经济形势故意做出的错误诊断。与美国一样，在欧洲导致危机发生的过分行为几乎全是私人债务，而非公共债务，希腊只是非常突出的例外。然而，柏林及布鲁塞尔官员却对证明全部责任在于预算赤字这种说法的证据置之不理，还对证明——正确地——在经济不景气情况下大幅削减赤字只会加深经济衰退的证据予以拒绝。
与此同时，2011年，欧洲央行官员们认为要担忧通货膨胀并提高利率。尽管当时显然易见，这种做法是愚蠢的——没错，当时整体通货膨胀上升，但潜在通货膨胀的程度属于过低，而不是过高。
2011年年末马里奥·德拉吉担任欧洲央行行长后，货币政策得到很大程度的改善。几乎可以肯定，德拉吉先生向面临投机性攻击的国家提供流动性的壮举挽救欧元于崩溃之间。但是，他是否拥有能够打退多年来错误政策所致的更大范围的通货紧缩力量，现在还不得而知。此外，由于德国依然坚决反对任何改善债务国生活的政策，德拉吉的一只手受到束缚。
令人可怕的是，欧洲经济是在财务负责的名义下受到破坏的。没错，历史有过这样的时代，其强硬措施就是减少财政赤字，抵御引发货币的诱惑。然而，经济低迷时，预算平衡癖以及对硬通货的痴迷却是严重的不负责任，不但在短期内伤害经济，而且可以——在欧洲会——造成长期伤害，破坏经济的发展潜力，将其推入无法逃避的通货紧缩陷阱之中。
这种做法也不是一种无辜错误。欧洲热衷于财政紧缩的统治者以及热衷于通货紧缩的元老给我的最深印象，就是自我放纵。世界需要更多需求之际，这些人在感情及政治上感觉安逸自在，只要求别人做出牺牲。他们对证明自己错误的证据都迫不及待地躲在一边。
在未来几年，也许几十年里，欧洲将为自己的自我放纵付出代价。
(2015年1月23日《纽约时报》)
译者： ringohan
英文原文
Much Too Responsible
_Paul Krugman
The United States and Europe have a lot in common. Both are multicultural and democratic; both are immensely wealthy; both possess currencies with global reach. Both, unfortunately, experienced giant housing and credit bubbles between 2000 and 2007, and suffered painful slumps when the bubbles burst.
Since then, however, policy on the two sides of the Atlantic has diverged. In one great economy, officials have shown a stern commitment to fiscal and monetary virtue, making strenuous efforts to balance budgets while remaining vigilant against inflation. In the other, not so much.
And the difference in attitudes is the main reason the two economies are now on such different paths. Spendthrift, loose-money America is experiencing a solid recovery — a reality reflected in President Obama’s feisty State of the Union address. Meanwhile, virtuous Europe is sinking ever deeper into deflationary quicksand; everyone hopes that the new monetary measures announced Thursday will break the downward spiral, but nobody I know really expects them to be enough.
On the U.S. economy: No, it’s not morning in America, let alone the kind of prosperity we managed during the Clinton years. Recovery could and should have come much faster, and family incomes remain well below their pre-crisis level. Although you’d never know it from the public discussion, there’s overwhelming agreement among economists that the Obama stimulus of 2009-10 helped limit the damage from the financial crisis, but it was too small and faded away far too fast. Still, when you compare the performance of the American economy over the past two years withall those Republican predictions of doom, you can see why Mr. Obama is strutting a bit.
Europe, on the other hand — or more precisely the eurozone, the 18 countries sharing a common currency — did almost everything wrong. On the fiscal side, Europe never did much stimulus, and quickly turned to austerity — spending cuts and, to a lesser extent, tax increases — despite high unemployment. On the monetary side, officials fought the imaginary menace of inflation, and took years to acknowledge that the real threat is deflation.
Why did they get it so wrong?
To some extent, the turn toward austerity reflected institutional weakness: In the United States, federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and food stamps helped support states like Florida with especially severe housing busts, whereas European nations in similar straits, like Spain, were on their own. But European austerity also reflected willful misdiagnosis of the situation. In Europe as in America, the excesses that led to crisis overwhelmingly involved private rather than public debt, with Greece very much an outlier. But officials in Berlin and Brussels chose to ignore the evidence in favor of a narrative that placed all the blame on budget deficits, and simultaneously rejected the evidencesuggesting — correctly — that trying to slash deficits in a depressed economy would deepen the depression.
Meanwhile, Europe’s central bankers decided to worry about inflation in 2011 and raise interest rates. Even at the time it was obvious that this was foolish — yes, there had been an uptick in headline inflation, but measures of underlying inflation were too low, not too high.
Monetary policy got much better after Mario Draghi became president of the European Central Bank in late 2011. Indeed, Mr. Draghi’s heroic efforts to provide liquidity to nations facing speculative attack almost surely saved the euro from collapse. But it’s not at all clear that he has the tools to fight off the broader deflationary forces set in motion by years of wrongheaded policy. Furthermore, he has to function with one hand tied behind his back, because Germany remains adamantly opposed to anything that might make life easier for debtor nations.
The terrible thing is that Europe’s economy was wrecked in the name of responsibility. True, there have been times when being tough meant reducing deficits and resisting the temptation to print money. In a depressed economy, however, a balanced-budget fetish and a hard-money obsession are deeply irresponsible. Not only do they hurt the economy in the short run, they can — and in Europe, have — inflict long-run harm, damaging the economy’s potential and driving it into a deflationary trap that’s very hard to escape.
Nor was this an innocent mistake. The thing that strikes me about Europe’s archons of austerity, its doyens of deflation, is their self-indulgence. They felt comfortable, emotionally and politically, demanding sacrifice (from other people) at a time when the world needed more spending. They were all too eager to ignore the evidence that they were wrong.
And Europe will be paying the price for their self-indulgence for years, perhaps decades, to come.
