↖  美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录——动荡年代：勇闯新世界-90:LATIN AMERICA AND POPULISM-3..

美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录——动荡年代：勇闯新世界-90:LATIN AMERICA  AND POPULISM-3

The list is studded with policymakers of exceptional talent, most of whom I have had the privilege of working with during some very difficult times in recent decades: Pedro Aspe, 

Guillermo Ortiz, 

Jose Angel Gurria, 

and Francisco Gil Diaz in Mexico; 

Pedro Malan and Arminio Fraga Neto in Brazil; 

Domingo Cavallo in Argentina; and others. 

Most hold advanced degrees in economics from prestigious American universities. 

Some even went on to become heads of state—Ernesto Zedillo in Mexico and Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil. 

Most instituted productive market-freeing reforms and policies in the face of deep populist resistance, policies that enhanced their economies. 

Latin America would be in far worse shape without these able practitioners, in my judgment. 

But the deep divide between the worldview of most of these policymakers and the 

societies they serve, which remain prone to economic populism, is stubbornly persistent. 

Latin America's tenuous hold on economic stability was brought into sharp focus in 2006 by the presidential election in Mexico, which has the region's second-largest economy. 

Despite much success since the foreign-exchange crisis of late 1994 brought Mexico to the edge of default, a firebrand populist—Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—came within a hairbreadth of being elected president. 

Whether he would, in office, be more Lula than Chavez, I cannot guess. 

Can a society with deep economic populist roots change quickly? 

Individuals can and have. 

But can a developed economy's market structure—its laws, its practices, its culture—be imposed on a society bred on ancient antagonisms? 

Brazil's Piano Real suggests the possibilities. 

Since stabilizing in 1994, Brazil's inflation has been contained, except for a transitory price surge during its 40 percent exchange-rate devaluation in late 2002.

Its economy has performed well and standards of living have risen. 

To be sure, the failure of the devaluation to spark more than a short-term eruption of inflation may be tied more to global disinflationary forces than to domestic policy, but the Brazilian economy seems to be working for the Brazilian people. 

The experience of Argentina, on the other hand, is more sobering. 

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THE AGE OF TURBULENCE 

Its economy collapsed in 2002; as the decade-long constitutionally mandated 

one-to-one link of the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar broke, with vast disruption to employment and standards of living. 

The story of the debacle is instructive as to how far reform-minded policymakers can go without the implicit support of the population for the necessary fundamental policies. 

A society's drive to meet current needs, for example, cannot be thwarted by the imposition of a financial straitjacket. 

The society must experience progress and trust its leaders before it is willing to invest for the longer term. 

This change of culture typically takes a very long time. 

Argentina was, in most respects, a European culture prior to World War I. 

A succession of failed economic programs, and periods racked with inflation, 

created economic instability. 

Argentina lost ground in international economic comparisons, especially during the autocratic regime of Juan Peron. 

Its culture was gradually, but significantly, changing. Even the post-Peron regime of the well-intentioned Raul Alfonsin failed to stem the explosive inflation and stagnation of the heavily regulated Argentine economy. 

Finally, in 1991, the situation became so desperate that the newly elected president, Carlos Menem, who ironically ran under the banner of Peron, turned to his able finance minister, Domingo Cavallo, for help. 

With President Menem's backing, Cavallo tied the Argentine peso one-to-one to the American dollar. 

This extremely risky strategy could have blown apart within hours of implementation. 

But the boldness of the move and the seeming credibility of the commitment galvanized world financial markets. 

Argentine interest rates dropped sharply, inflation fell from 20,000 percent year over year in March 1990 to a single-digit annual inflation rate by late 1991.1 was amazed and hopeful. 

As a result, the Argentine government was in a position to raise large quantities of dollars in the international markets at interest rates only moderately higher than those required of the U.S. Treasury. 

The reform views of Cavallo sounded far more sensible to me than the uninformed rhetoric coming at the time from many Argentine legislators and provincial governors. 

Their views were too reminiscent of the fiscal irresponsibility of earlier decades. 

I recall looking across the table at Cavallo at another G20 meeting and wondering whether he was aware that the lending backstop to the peso would remain a source of support only if it was not used in excess. 

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LATIN AMERICA AND POPULISM 

Maintaining that large dollar buffer would likely have enabled the currency peg to hold indefinitely However, the political system of Argentina could not resist using the abundance of seemingly costless dollars in attempts to accommodate constituents' demands. 

Gradually but inexorably the buffer of dollar-borrowing capacity was drawn down. Dollars often were borrowed to sell for pesos in a futile effort to support the peso-dollar parity. 

The bottom of the barrel was reached at the end of 2001. 

Protecting its remaining reserve of dollars, the central bank withdrew its one-for-one offer of dollars for pesos in international markets. 

As a result, on January 7, 2002, the peso collapsed. By mid-2002, it took more than three pesos to buy one dollar. 

A massive default of Argentine debt induced an initial period of soaring inflation and interest rates, but much to my surprise, financial calm was restored relatively quickly. 

The sharp decline in the peso spurred export sales and economic activity. Inflation was far less a problem than past such episodes would have suggested. 

A decade from now, I suspect, economic historians will conclude that it was the disinflationary forces of globalization that eased the adjustment. 

What I found unusual about this episode was not that Argentine leaders in 2001 were unable to marshal the fiscal restraint required to hold the peso-dollar link, but that they had been able for a while to persuade their population to maintain the degree of restraint that a pegged peso required. 

It was clearly a policy aimed at inducing a seminal shift in cultural values that would restore the international stature Argentina had enjoyed in the years immediately preceding World War I. 

But cultural inertia proved, as it had many times before, too formidable a barrier. 

It's not that developed countries, such as the United States, have not had flirtations with economic populism. 

However, in my view, it is unlikely that populist leaders could change the U.S. Constitution or culture to wreak the devastation of a Peron or a Mugabe. 

William Jennings Bryan, with his stirring "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic convention, was, to me, the most effective voice of economic populism in U.S. history. ("You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns," he declared. "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.") 

Yet I doubt that America would have changed much had he become president. 

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(未完待续, To be contd)
 

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