Economists Begin To Tally Costs Of Ensuring US Recovery
Relieved that the U.S. economic slump is finally ending, economists, financial analysts and corporate planners are starting to fret about the long-term consequences of the government's extraordinarily ferocious efforts to engineer a recovery.
When the economy sank into recession in 2001, U.S. fiscal and monetary policymakers acted with unusual speed and vigor to revive it. Congress enacted some of the deepest tax cuts in history, and the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to levels that hadn't been seen since the 1950s. Those actions have borne fruit: most forecasters think the economy will grow smartly over the next 16 months.
Now economists are now starting to contemplate the long-term costs of those decisions, and they're showing their uneasiness. Kicking off the annual conference of the National Association for Business Economics, more than 100 economists and investment experts spent Sunday worrying about the outlook beyond the recovery. Many were troubled by the size of the annual U.S. budget deficit, now approaching a record $500 billion. Some fretted that stock analysts and investors are again starting to show signs of giddiness.
"There's no question that people are feeling more secure about the economic recovery," said Diane Swonk , an economist with Bank One in Chicago. But she said the huge tab Congress ran up to ensure the recovery - along with the Fed's protracted campaign of interest-rate cuts - could make the economy harder to control in future. "We're worried about what happens five to 10 years from now," she said.
Until last week, economists who groused about the budget deficit tended to academic or think-tank types - corporate economists mostly cheered the tax cuts. But President George W. Bush's $87 billion request to Congress to pay for the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq made worries about the deteriorating budget balance more pervasive. Wall Street economists raised their forecasts of long-term deficits and the national debt. International lenders warned that the red ink could derail the U.S. recovery if it caused foreign investors to lose confidence in the economy.
On Sunday, a key architect of Bush's tax-cut proposals defended the cuts and asserted that partisan politics accounted for much of the criticism. "All of the hand-wringing over deficits and interest rates is at a high-decibel level when we're talking about tax cuts. I haven't heard it in discussions of Medicare," said R. Glenn Hubbard, who was chairman of Bush's Council of Economic advisers until last spring. He said the tax cuts would result in a modest but permanent increase in the U.S. economic growth rate.
But Peter Orszag, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the increase - if any - would be too modest to justify the long-term costs of the tax cuts. He said the tax cuts would add $8 trillion to the national debt by 2011, and reduce annual national economic output by 1.8% after 2012. "Even if there's a positive effect of the tax cuts, it's nowhere near enough to pay for the tax cuts," said Orszag, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Those worries, however, won't be a liability for Bush in 2004. Most economists here expect the gross domestic product to grow at an annual rate of more than 3.5% in each of the next six quarters, ending the jobless recovery and making Bush's reelection a near certainty. "He should win by a big majority if the economy does as we think it will do," said Ray Fair, an economics professor at Yale University.
Fair is best known as the developer of an equation that accurately predicted the outcomes of all but two of the last 21 presidential elections. He said it is not capable of assessing what continuing U.S. combat deaths in Iraq might do to Bush's chances. But if current economic expectations are realized, Fair said, Bush will get at least 57% of the popular vote.
Swonk and other economists said Bush also is likely to benefit from the stance of the U.S. central bank, which has said it will keep interest rates low for "a considerable period" after the economic recovery has taken root. Federal Reserve policymakers are widely expected to leave the key federal funds rate unchanged when they meet on Tuesday. It is also likely to retain a "bias" indicating it will cut interest rates if necessary, said Stuart Hoffman, an economist with PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh.
Swonk said the Fed will not start raising interest rates until August of 2004 at the earliest - and may balk at acting even then if inflation is tame. In 1992, she said, Bush's father lost the election over the poor state of the economy - and blamed Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for it. "Ironically, the economy will not be a problem this time because Greenspan helped the Bush administration when they most needed the help," Swonk said. "But we don't know what the long-term cost will be."
美国经济复苏的长期成本
美国经济终于止住滑坡势头，经济学家、金融分析师和企业规划人士对此颇感宽慰，但很快他们又开始为美国政府刺激经济的“猛药”可能产生的长期后果而忧心忡忡。
当美国经济于2001年陷入衰退后，美国财政和货币政策的决策者们以异乎寻常的速度和力度采取了经济刺激举措。国会(Congress)通过了美国历史上幅度最大的减税法案，而美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve, 简称Fed)则将利率调低至1950年代以来的最低水平。这些举措现已取得重大成效：大部分预测人士都认为，美国经济增长在今后16个月中将有出色表现。
现在，经济学家们开始对这些决策的长期成本进行思考，并已显示出他们在此问题上的焦虑和不安。在上周日召开的美国商业经济协会(National Association for Business Economics)年会上，100多位经济学家和投资专家对美国经济实现复苏之后的长期前景表示了他们的担忧。许多人所担心的是美国年度财政赤字的规模，该数字现已接近创纪录的5,000亿美元。部分经济学家还担心，股市分析师和投资者现在又开始显示出盲目乐观的迹象。
美一银行(Bank One Corp.)驻芝加哥经济学家丹尼?斯旺(Diane Swonk)说，毫无疑问，人们现在对经济的复苏更加感到放心。但她表示，为确保经济复苏所累积起来的巨额财政赤字以及Fed延长的降息周期，可能会使美国经济在未来变得难以驾驭。“我们担心的是五至十年后会发生什么，”她说。
直到上周之前，对美国财政赤字感到担忧的经济学家通常是智囊机构或学院派人物，而大部分企业界经济学家对减税政策表示欢迎。不过，随著总统布什(George W. Bush)要求国会增加870亿美元预算用于伊拉克驻军和重建支出，越来越多的经济学家开始对财政赤字状况的进一步恶化感到忧虑。华尔街的经济学家调高了他们对长期赤字和政府负债水平的预期。
国际贷款机构警告称，如果财政赤字水平导致外国投资者对美国经济丧失信心，那么它可能使经济复苏偏离正常轨道。
上周日，布什政府减税提议的主要设计师格林?赫巴德(R. Glenn Hubbard)辩称道，对减税政策的批评主要源于党派政治纷争。他曾是布什政府国家经济顾问委员会(Council of Economic Advisors)主席。赫巴德表示，减税将对美国经济增长带来适度而持久的推动力。
但布鲁金斯研究所(Brookings Institution)驻华盛顿的高级研究员皮特?奥扎格(Peter Orszag)表示，即使有的话，减税所带来的经济增幅也将过于温和，以致于无法证明其长期成本是合理的。他表示，减税将在2011年前新增8万亿美元财政赤字，而且在2012年之后，它将导致年度经济产值减少1.8%。奥扎格曾是前总统克林顿(Bill Clinton)的经济顾问。
尽管如此，这些担心不会成为布什在2004年的一种负担。与会的大部分经济学家都预计，在今后6个季度中，美国经济折合年率的增长率均会在3.5%以上，经济复苏与失业加剧并存的现象将告结束，从而使得布什在连任总统的大选中近乎稳操胜券。“如果经济表现确实如我们所预期的那样好，布什应该会以很大优势赢得总统选举，”耶鲁大学(Yale University)经济学教授瑞?福埃尔(Ray Fair)说。
斯旺和其他经济学家都表示，布什还可能会受益于美国央行的政策立场。Fed已表示会在经济真正复苏后的相当长时期内仍将利率维持在低水平。人们普遍预期在周二的政策例会上，Fed决策者将保持关键的联邦基金利率不变。PNC Financial Service的经济学家斯图尔特?霍夫曼(Stuart Hoffman)说，Fed也可能会保留其倾向于降息的政策立场，即如果需要，它还会实施降息。
斯旺说，至少在2004年8月之前，Fed不会开始上调利率，而且如果通货膨胀得到控制，即使到那时它也不会贸然加息。她说，布什的父亲于1992年在总统大选中败北，当时的经济表现非常糟糕，老布什将选举失败归咎于Fed主席格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)。“具有讽刺意味的是，这一次经济将不再是个问题，因为格林斯潘在布什政府最需要帮助的时候伸出了援助之手，”斯旺说，“但问题是，我们不知道其长期代价会是什么。”
