OECD in warning to leading economies
Poor prospects for economic growth in Japan and continental Europe alongside a robust US economy will exacerbate global economic imbalances, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said yesterday as it cut its economic forecasts for all leading economies.
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The Paris-based international organisation, charged with improving the economic prospects of advanced countries, said in its twice-yearly economic outlook: “These continuing divergences in domestic demand between Europe and some Asian countries on the one hand, and the US on the other, cannot be treated with benign neglect”.
The OECD forecast that the US current account deficit, the most important measure of the size of global economic imbalances, and the risks to the world economy, would continue to rise, hitting nearly $900bn or 6.7 per cent of US gross domestic product in 2006.
Jean-Philippe Cotis, the OECD chief economist told the Financial Times: “We're not saying there will be a doomsday tomorrow morning . . . but because the adjustments [to global imbalances] are relatively slow, we are running the risk an accident will happen. That's where we are.”
“Time is running out the numbers are getting big, big, big”, Mr Cotis added.
To help the adjustment the OECD said Europe and Japan needed higher growth, the US would have to increase savings and Asian currencies must appreciate against the dollar. It said that Japan should avoid giving any appearance of tightening monetary policy because any movement by the Bank of Japan would “prematurely send a signal that deflation has been or is about to be overcome”.
The OECD used a simulation model to assess what would happen if there was “an abrupt weakening of the dollar”, not the most likely outcome, but an “unpleasant scenario [which] is gradually looming larger”.
It estimated economic growth would be at leat one percentage point lower in the US, Europe and Japan even without contagion in the form of lower equity bond and house prices. That outcome also assumed the ECB would cut interest rates to zero.
The OECD also pressed the European Central Bank to boost demand, urging it to act immediately “by significantly cutting policy rates” by 0.5 percentage points.
“It is of course a matter of central importance for the growth prospects of the countries involved but also, to some extent, for the credibility of the Economic and Monetary Union itself,” the OECD's economic outlook said.
The OECD's call on rates came after it concluded there was a “chronic pattern of weak resilience and divergent activity” in the eurozone economy and that “circumstantial arguments”, such as the Iraq war, oil prices and exchange rate fluctuations, were “not sufficient to explain the string of aborted recoveries in continental Europe”.
经合组织：全球经济失衡将恶化
经济合作与发展组织(OECD)昨天表示，日本和欧洲大陆经济增长前景不妙，而美国经济强劲，将使全球经济失衡进一步恶化。经合组织还削减了所有主要经济体的经济预测数据。
这个国际组织总部位于巴黎，其使命是改善发达国家的经济前景。它在其一年两次的经济展望报告中表示：“欧洲一方面与一些亚洲国家、一方面与美国之间的内需继续分化，这些现象不可忽视。”
经合组织预测，美国的经常账户赤字将继续上升，2006年将达近9000亿美元，即美国国内生产总值的6.7%。美国的经常账户赤字，是衡量全球经济失衡和全球经济风险的最重要指标。
经合组织首席经济学家让-菲利普?科蒂斯(Jean-Philippe Cotis)对《金融时报》说：“我们不是说明天就是世界末日……但由于（全球经济失衡的）调整相对很慢，我们目前有发生意外的风险。我们目前就是这个情况。”
为帮助进行调整，经合组织表示，欧洲和日本需要更快的经济增长，美国必须增加储蓄，亚洲货币必须对美元升值。该组织表示，日本应避免表现出任何紧缩货币政策的迹象，因为日本央行(Bank of Japan)的任何行动将“过早地发出这样一个信号，即通缩已被克服或将被克服”。
经合组织用一个模拟模型来评估“美元突然贬值”时将会发生的情形。美元突然贬值虽非最可能出现的结果，但却是一种“使人感到不快的情形，其发生概率越来越大”。
该组织估计，即便没有股票、债券和住房价格下滑的影响，美国、欧洲和日本的经济增长也将下降至少1个百分点。该结果的假设条件，也包括欧洲央行(ECB)把利率调降至零。
经合组织还力促欧洲央行刺激需求，敦促它立即采取行动，“大幅调降政策利率”0.5个百分点。
