安倍只有一支箭 The vanishing golf courses that sum up Abenomics
The golf courses of Japan are a useful financial indicator. As members succumb either to straitened circumstances in a struggling economy or to old age, these lush expanses of manicured grass — symbolic of the excesses of the bubble years — are falling out of favour. A foreign-owned property company in Tokyo has begun buying them up and, reflecting the popular anxiety following Fukushima, is converting them into solar farms.
日本的高爾夫球場是一個有用的金融指標。隨着會員或是在經濟低迷的背景下失去興致，或是年事漸高，這些精心修剪過的青草地（它們象徵着泡沫年代的過剩）日益受到冷落。東京的一家外資房地產公司已經開始收購這些高爾夫球場，將其改造爲太陽能發電場，反映福島(Fukushima)核事故後公衆的焦慮情緒。
The Bank of Japan’s decision to embrace negative interest rates, the latest attempt to reinvigorate the ossified economy, does not apply to retail deposits... least, not yet. That, however, is small comfort to the salarymen and their retired counterparts who have seen the return on their savings decimated by years of zero interest rates.
日本央行重振僵化經濟的最新嘗試——實行負利率的決策，並不適用於零售存款，至少目前還不是這樣。然而，對於看到自己的儲蓄回報由於多年的零利率而被嚴重削減的在職和退休工薪階層而言，這只是微不足道的安慰。
Despite Shinzo Abe’s boasts about the “three arrows” of his Abenomics programme, there has been only ever one missile in the prime minister’s quiver: yen depreciation (albeit indirectly), through ever-lower interest rates, to support Japanese exporters as they try to fend off rivals such as China and Vietnam. The other two arrows — fiscal and structural reform — are but pinpricks.
儘管安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)吹噓他的“安倍經濟學”有“三支箭”，但這位首相的箭筒裏一直只有一支箭：日元貶值（儘管是間接的，藉助越來越低的利率），以支持試圖抵禦中國和越南等國競爭對手的日本出口商。另外兩支箭——財政和結構性改革——只是兩個小點。
The BoJ’s support of Abenomics through this kind of unconventional monetary policy has never been about real economic growth.
日本央行通過這種非常規的貨幣政策對安倍經濟學給予支持，然而這從來就不是關乎實體經濟增長。
Like the policies of the US Federal Reserve, it has led to asset price inflation and distorted incentives rather than a rejuvenated economy built on a world-class service sector and leading-edge technology companies.
就像美聯儲(Fed)的政策一樣，這導致資產價格膨脹和激勵機制扭曲，而不是建立在世界級服務業和前沿科技公司基礎上的重新煥發活力的經濟。
So far Abenomics has not led to a growth spurt. Output in the fourth quarter of 2015 contracted by 1.4 per cent, which was worse than expected. Indeed, for the whole of last year, growth was below the average 0.6 per cent of the previous two years. If zero rates failed to ignite the spirits of either companies or consumers, it is hard to see why negative rates would have that effect.
到目前爲止，安倍經濟學還沒有帶來增長提速。2015年第4季度，日本經濟產出萎縮了1.4%，比預期更加糟糕。的確，日本去年全年增長率低於之前兩年0.6%的平均值。如果零利率未能提振企業或者消費者的情緒，很難看出負利率如何達到這一效果。
By contrast, corporate profits reached record levels in the first half of 2015 but that was almost entirely a benefit of the cheap yen combined with lower global energy prices — important for a big importer such as Japan.
與此形成反差的是，日本企業利潤在2015年上半年達到裏創紀錄水平，但這幾乎完全是廉價日元和全球能源價格走低的利好所致——後者對日本這樣的能源進口大國而言很重要。
This brings us to another “arrow”: structural and corporate reform. That cheap yen, like so many other gifts from the central banks, has the unintended consequence of making companies less likely to reform — raising salaries, for example, or increasing diversity at senior levels — because they rely on a cheap currency rather than innovation to make them competitive. It is a sign of the times that the market for drones, the current must-have consumer electronic product , is dominated by DJI, a Chinese company , rather than a Japanese group.
這指引我們看到另一支“箭”：結構性改革和企業改革。就像央行的其他許多“禮物”一樣，廉價日元帶來了意料之外的結果——讓企業更不可能進行改革，比如提高薪酬、或者提升高層人員的多元化程度。因爲企業依賴廉價日元而非創新來取得競爭優勢。作爲當前熱門的消費電子產品，無人機市場由中國公司大疆創新(DJI)主導，而非日本的公司，這是一個新時代的徵兆。
The average worker has been less fortunate. Total earnings are expected to have declined in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile economists expect consumption to fall by 2 per cent on the back of weaker-than-expected retail sales and household spending.
一般的勞動者沒那麼幸運。預計去年第4季度勞動者總收入將下降。與此同時，經濟學家們預計，遜於預期的零售銷售和家庭支出將使消費下降2%。
In other words, while the government and the central bank are trying to engineer a rise in inflation, it appears that they have not yet managed to extend it to the sort of wage and income growth that could lift economic prospects in a sustainable way.
換言之，儘管日本政府和央行試圖促成通脹率上升，但它們似乎未能將其延伸至有望以可持續方式改善經濟前景的那種薪資和收入增長。
As for fiscal policy, that, disappointingly, remains more of the same: largely resource transfers to the construction sector, traditionally a big donor to the ruling Liberal Democratic party. Even the commissions from the politically privileged builders are of the wrong sort, though. Japan should be building nursing homes for its ageing population rather than Olympic stadiums, which will have negligible multiplier effects on the economy. They will, however, put the government deeper into debt — and its sovereign bonds will not always be able to be sold at negative yields.
令人失望的是，財政政策大致保持原樣：基本上就是把資源轉移到建築業，而後者傳統上是執政的自民黨(Liberal Democratic party)的大金主。然而，享有政治特權的建築商就連承接的建設項目也是錯誤的。日本應該爲日漸老齡化的人口建造更多養老院，而不是奧林匹克體育場館，後者對經濟的乘數效應微不足道，它們只會讓政府更深地陷入債務泥潭——而日本的主權債券不會永遠能在負收益率的情況下售出。
The latest measures from the BoJ have ceased to reliably lead to a rise in the price of more risky assets such as equities. The Nikkei stock index dropped 15 per cent in the wake of the policy shift, with bank shares especially hard hit. That is because negative rates crush net interest margins on what little lending banks undertake, since their corporate customers cannot see the point of expanding capital investment while their customer base shrinks. Meanwhile, despite Tokyo’s intentions, the yen has risen against the dollar, damaging exporters’ prospects.
日本央行的最新舉措不再是提升股票等較高風險資產價格的可靠手段。日經(Nikkei)股指在政策轉變後下跌了15%，銀行股領跌。這是因爲負利率摧毀了銀行尚存的少量放貸的淨息差。銀行的企業客戶認爲，在顧客羣體萎縮的背景下，擴張資本投資沒有意義。同時，和東京方面的意願相左的是，日元相對於美元升值，破壞了出口商的前景。
It used to be that it was the private sector that engaged in financial engineering while central banks condemned such money games. Now the central banks themselves have turned into financial engineers. Their success, like that of Japan’s golf courses, is bound to be fleeting.
過去的情況是私營部門進行“金融工程”，央行則譴責這種金錢遊戲。現在央行自身變成了金融工程師。就像日本的高爾夫球場一樣，它們的成功必將是短暫的。
