Dark matter’ makes the US deficit disappear
In 2005 the US current account deficit is expected to top $700bn. It comes after 27 years of unbroken deficits that have totalled more than $5,000bn, leading to concerns of an impending global crisis. Once the massive financing required to keep on paying for such a widening gap dries up, there will be an ugly adjustment in the world economy. The dollar will collapse, triggering a stampede away from US debt, interest rates will shoot up and a sharp global recession will ensue.
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But wait a minute. If this is such an open and shut case, why have markets not precipitated the crisis already?
Maybe it is because there is something wrong with the diagnosis. Let us look at some facts. The Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates that in 1980 the US had about $365bn of net foreign assets that rendered a net return of about $30bn. Between 1980 and 2004, the US accumulated a current account deficit of $4,500bn. You would expect the net foreign assets of the US to have fallen by that amount to, say, minus $4,100bn. If it paid 5 per cent on that debt, the net return on its financial position should have moved from an income of $30bn in 1982 to an expenditure of $210bn a year in 2004. Right? After all, debtors need to service their debt. But the number for 2004 was, still, an income of $30bn, just like in 1980. The US has spent $4,500bn more than it has earned (which is what the cumulative current account deficit implies) for free.
How could this be? Here the official story becomes murky. Part of the answer is that the US benefited from about $1,600bn of net capital gains (which, at best, cuts the puzzle in half). The other part of the official answer is that the US earns a higher return on its holdings of foreign assets than it pays to foreigners on its liabilities. But where did those large capital gains come from? Or, why are US investors abroad so much smarter than foreign investors in the US?
We propose a different way of describing the facts.* We measure the assets according to how much they earn and the current account by how much these assets change over time. This is just like valuing a company by calculating its earnings and multiplying by a price-earnings ratio. Of course this opens up methodological questions, but the discrepancies with official numbers are so big that the details do not matter. To keep things simple in what follows we just take an arbitrary 5 per cent rate of return, which implies a price-earnings ratio of 20.
Let’s get to work. We know that the US net income on its financial portfolio is $30bn. This is a 5 per cent return on an asset of $600bn. So the US is a $600bn net creditor, not a $4,100bn net debtor. Since the assets have remained stable then on average the US has not had a current account deficit at all over the past 25 years. That is why it is still a net creditor.
We call the $4,700bn difference between our measure of US net assets and the standard numbers “dark matter”, because it corresponds to assets that generate revenue but cannot be seen. The name is taken from a term used in physics to account for the fact that the world is more stable than you would think if it were held together only by gravity emanating from visible matter.
There are several reasons why dark matter exists. The most obvious is superior returns on US foreign direct investment. Why do US assets earn such returns? Because that investment comes with a substantial amount of know-how that increases its earning potential. It explains why the US can earn more on its assets than it pays on its liabilities and why foreigners cannot do the same. In measuring FDI, the value of the know-how is poorly accounted for. There are other sources of dark matter, but FDI is where the big bucks are. Once dark matter is considered, the world is surprisingly balanced. The US and European Union essentially cover their apparent imbalance with the export of dark matter, emerging markets use their surplus to import dark matter and Japan finances the rest of the world. Net asset positions of all big regions are fairly small.
Is US dark matter a stable asset? We find that it is. It now stands at more than 40 per cent of gross domestic product and has fallen in only six of the last 25 years, never by more than 1.9 per cent of GDP.
In a nutshell our story is simple. Once assets are valued according to the income they generate, there has not been a big US external imbalance and there are no serious global imbalances.
Ricardo Hausmann is director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; Federico Sturzenegger is visiting professor of public affairs.
*US and Global Imbalances: Can Dark Matter Prevent a Big Bang?
暗物质”填补美国赤字
美
国2005年的经常账户赤字预计将达7000 亿美元。此前美国已连续27年出现赤字，总额超过5万亿美元。这让人们担心，全球危机迫在眉睫。填补这一不断扩大的缺口需要巨额资金，而一旦资金枯竭，世界经济将面临艰难的调整。美元将会崩溃，导致人们疯狂抛售美国国债，利率将会飙升，急剧的全球经济衰退也将随之而来。
不过，先别急。如果情况真这么简单，为什么市场还没有预见并引发危机呢？
也许是诊断有问题。让我们看一看一些事实。美国经济分析局(Bureau of Economic Analysis)指出，美国在1980年有约3650亿美元净外国资产，带来的净回报约为300亿美元。1980至2004年，美国的经常账户赤字累计为4.5万亿美元。你会以为，美国的净外国资产已减少了那么多，降至大约负 4.1万亿美元。如果这笔债务的利息为5%，那么美国财务状况的资产净回报1982年为300亿美元财务收入，2004年则成了2100亿美元的财务支出。不是吗？毕竟，债务人必须还本付息。但2004年的财务收入仍是300亿美元，和 1980年一样。美国比它所挣的多花了4.5万亿美元(根据其累计的经常账户赤字得出)，而且还是免费的。
怎么会这样呢？官方的解释非常模糊。一个解释是，美国得益于约 1.6万亿美元的净资本收益(这至多能解释一半)。官方的另一个解释是，美国从它持有的外国资产中获得的回报，高于它向外国人支付的外债支出。但这些巨额资本收益从何而来呢？换句话说，为什么美国的海外投资者，比在美国的外国投资者聪明这么多呢？
换种方式来解读
我们提议换种方式来解读这些事实。*我们根据资产的收益来衡量资产，并根据这些资产一段时间内的变化来计算经常账户。这就像通过计算收益，并乘以上市盈率来给企业估价。当然，这会使人对方法产生疑问，但官方数字的出入如此巨大，细节已不重要。为了使问题简单化，以下我们主观地假设资产回报率为5%，相当于市盈率为20 倍。
让我们来算一下。我们知道，美国财务资产组合的净收入为300亿美元，按5% 回报率计算，这意味着有6000亿美元资产。所以，美国就是6000亿美元的净债权人，而非 4.1万亿美元的净债务人。由于资产一直保持稳定，所以平均来说，美国在过去25年里，从来就没有出现经常账户赤字。这就是为什么美国仍是净债权人。
4.7万亿美元的暗物质
在我们计算的美国净资产与标准数据之间，相差了4.7万亿美元，我们称之为 “暗物质”(dark matter)，因为它对应于产生收益的资产，却不可见。这个提法源于一个物理学术语，用于解释这个事实，即世界比你所想象的只由可见物质发出的引力维系在一起的形态更为稳定。
暗物质的存在有几个原因。最明显的原因，是美国的外国直接投资的高回报。为什么美国的资产能获得这样的回报？因为这些投资附带了许多技术诀窍，增强了它的收益潜力。这就可以解释，为何美国在其资产上的收益，会超过其债务支出，而外国人却做不到这一点。在衡量外国直接投资时，技术诀窍的价值没有得到恰当的计算。尽管暗物质还有许多其它来源，但外国直接投资是最大来源。一旦把暗物质考虑进来，就会发现世界处于出人意料的平衡状态。美国和欧盟 (EU)实质上是靠出口暗物质，来弥补它们明显的失衡，新兴市场则用它们的盈余进口暗物质，日本则为世界其它地区提供资金。所有重要地区的净资产部位都相当小。
美国的暗物质是一种稳定的资产吗？我们发现它是的。目前，它占美国国内生产总值(GDP)逾 40%，而且在过去25年里，只有6年是下降的，下降也从未超过GDP的1.9%。
简言之，我们的主张很简单。一旦资产根据它们产生的收入来估价，就不会有美国的巨额外部失衡，也没有严重的全球失衡。
里卡多?豪斯曼是哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院国际发展中心主任，费德里科?施图尔辛格是公共事务客座教授。
*《美国和全球不平衡：暗物质能阻止大爆炸吗？》(US and Global Imbalances: Can Dark Matter Prevent a Big Bang?)，
www.cid.harvard.edu。
