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美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录--动荡年代:勇闯新世界-134:The Delphic Future-2

成功的投资是困难的。 

一些历史上最成功的投资者，比如我的朋友沃伦·巴菲特，很早就意识到了现在有据可查的异常情况，即即使根据风险进行调整，股票的回报率也超过了风险较低的债券和其他债务工具的回报率， 

前提是人们愿意长期购买并持有股票。 

巴菲特在接受采访时表示：“我最喜欢的持有期是永远。” 

对于那些愿意忍受看着自己的净资产波动超出华尔街人士所谓的“睡眠点”的焦虑的人，市场会支付溢价。 

根据我的经验，最重要的是我们法治的根本。 

我不相信大多数美国人都意识到美国宪法对于我们国家的曾经繁荣并将继续昌明是如此重要。 

不满、权威崩溃、甚至大规模暴力都可能随之发生，从而危及经济增长所依赖的文明。

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Successful investing is difficult. 

Some of history's most successful investors, such as my friend Warren Buffett, were early to understand the now well-documented anomaly that the rate of return on stocks, even adjusted for risk, exceeds that on less-risky bonds and other debt instruments,
provided one is willing to buy and hold equities for the very long run. 

"My favorite holding period is forever," said Buffett in an interview. 

The market pays a premium to those willing to endure the angst of watching their net
worth fluctuate beyond what Wall Streeters call the "sleeping point."

The lessons of stock-market investing apply to the forecasting of whole economies. 

Because markets tend to steady themselves, a market economy turns out to be more stable and forecastable over the long run than in the short run—assuming, 

of course, that the society and institutions upon which it rests remain stable. 

Long-term economic forecasting is grounded in two sets of historically stable data: (1) population, which is the most forecastable statistic with which economists deal, and 

(2) productivity growth, the consequence of the incremental buildup of knowledge and the source of sustainable growth. 

Since knowledge is never lost, productivity will always rise.*

What, then, can we reasonably project for the U.S. economy for, say,
the year 2030? 

Little, unless we first specify certain assumptions. 

I need affirmative answers to the following questions to get started.

Will the rule of law still be firm in 2030?

Will we still adhere to the principle of globalized free markets, with protectionism held in check? 

(By protectionism, I mean not just barriers to international trade and finance but governmental restrictions against competition in domestic markets as well.) 

Will we have fixed our dysfunctional elementary and secondary school systems? 

Will the consequences of global warming emerge slowly enough so as not to significantly affect U.S. economic activity by 2030? 

And finally, will we have kept terrorist attacks in the United States at bay? 

Unsaid are those possibilities, such as a wider war or a pandemic, that could upset any forecast. 

This is a rather long list of preconditions, but unless I can assume them, it is futile to venture very far over the horizon.

*Output per hour, the conventional proxy for productivity, can and does decline at times.

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THE AGE OF TURBULENCE


In my experience, the most important is the nature of our rule of law.

I do not believe most Americans are aware of how critical the Constitution of the United States has been, and will continue to be, to the prosperity of our nation. 

To have had, for more than two centuries, unrivaled protection of individual rights, and especially property rights, for all participants in our economy, both native-born and immigrant, is a profoundly important contributor to our adventuresomeness and prosperity. 

To be largely free of fear of a secret police arbitrarily hauling us off for interrogation for "crimes" we never knew existed is something not to be taken for granted. 

Nor is freedom from the threat of arbitrary confiscation of a business to which we have devoted much of our life. 

The principle of individual freedom touches a deep cultural chord in Americans: 

the belief embodied in our Constitution of the basic equality of all citizens before the law. 

Reality has not always matched this ideal, and discrimination against African Americans in particular forces us periodically to revisit the early constitutional debates about slavery and its violent resolution in the Civil War; 

we've come a long way, but we have a distance yet to travel.

America's unrivaled protection of property rights has long attracted foreign investment to our shores. 

Some investors come in order to participate in a vibrant, open economy; 

others simply view the United States as a safe haven for their savings that is not available in their home country.

As I shall explain, the ability of the American legal system to extend those cherished
property rights to an economy predominantly driven by intellectual property will be a major challenge. 

And, of course, most detrimental of all to our standard of living would be a reemergence of protectionism and other policies that seek stability by preventing the change that is necessary for growth. 

Economic reregulation would be a distinct step backward in our quest for a prosperous future.

The impact that fixing our school system would have on our future levels of economic activity may not be easy to measure, but unless we do so and begin to reverse a quarter century of increases in income inequality,
the cultural ties that bind our society could become undone. 

Disaffection, breakdowns of authority, even large-scale violence could ensue, jeopardizing the civility on which growing economies depend.



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THE DELPHIC FUTURE


The timing of global warming's impact is even harder to foretell. 

Today's scientific consensus focuses on effects that are likely to emerge in the
second half of this century—a millisecond in climatological time but beyond
our forecast period. 

There is as yet little we can anticipate for the years immediately ahead. 

Nonetheless, I would expect the markets to respond even before the answers become clear—already insurers are rethinking storm and flood coverage, for example. 

The prospect of climate change is affecting energy markets as well.

Finally, there is the risk of a renewal of terrorist attacks. 

When engulfed in fear, people disengage from the normal daily market interaction that is an integral part of an economy based on the division of labor and specialization.

The terrorism of 9/11 was a defining moment that underscored the critical value of our highly flexible, largely unregulated economy, which weathered the shock with minimal longer-run consequences. 

We could probably absorb terrorist attacks like those being experienced today in the
Middle East and Europe. 

But larger-scale attacks* or more widespread warfare would surely be destabilizing.

I have been encouraged by the ability of market economies to persevere through violence and the threats of violence. 

World Bank data indicate that Israel has managed to create a per capita national income at nearly half the level of that of the United States and roughly equal to per capita incomes recorded in Greece and Portugal.+ Lebanon's GDP for 2006, despite
the confrontation between Hezbollah and the Israeli military, was down only 4 percent. 

Even Iraq has managed to maintain a semblance of a functioning economy through all its turmoil of recent years.

The long list of caveats does not inordinately tie our forecasting hands.

After all, such a list has always existed in one form or another, and yet the record of long-term forecasting of the U.S. economy overall in my experience has been reasonably impressive.

So given the presumed base of global, flexible markets protected by the rule of law, what can we project as our most likely future? 

What is the most likely level of overall activity we can expect in our arbitrarily chosen 2030 forecast year? 

We can project real GDP as long as we have projections of hours worked and productivity, proxied by real GDP per hour.

*A nuclear detonation on U.S. soil, I fear, could temporarily unhinge our economy.
U.S. aid accounts for only a small part of Israel's economy.

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(未完待续, To be contd)
 

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