【金融市场】黄金牛市行情的第二波正开始3/3

As readers know, I do not believe the eurozone is a fully workable currency union over the long run. There was a momentary "convergence" when the currencies were fixed in perpetuity, mostly in 1995. They have diverged ever since. The rift between North and South was not enough to fracture the system in the first post-EMU downturn, the dotcom bust. We have moved a long way since then. The Club Med bloc is now massively dependent on capital inflows from North Europe to plug their current account gaps: Spain (10pc), Portugal (10pc), Greece (14pc). UBS warned that these flows are no longer forthcoming. 正如读者们所知，我确实不相信欧元区在长期是一个完全运转良好的货币联盟。当这些货币被永远的固定下来，特别是在 1995年，那时曾存在暂时的“融合”。但从那以后它们将会互相背离。北欧与南欧的差距在后欧元联盟的第一次衰退（即互联网经济泡沫的破灭）中还不足以摧毁这个体系。从那时起我们走了很长的路。地中海俱乐部集团（The Club Med bloc）现在很大程度上依赖来自北欧的资本流入以弥补他们经常帐户的亏空：西班牙为10％，葡萄牙为10％，希腊为14％。瑞银警告说，这些资本流入将难以为继。 The central banks of Asia, the Mid-East, and Russia have been parking a chunk of their $6 trillion reserves in European bonds on the assumption that the euro can serve as a twin pillar of the global monetary system alongside the dollar. But the euro is nothing like the dollar. It has no European government, tax, or social security system to back it up. Each member country is sovereign, each fiercely proud, answering to its own ancient rythms. 亚洲、中东和俄罗斯的央行已经将价值6万亿美元的储备投入到欧洲债券，他们认为欧元能作为抵抗美元在全球货币体系中扮演另一大支柱。但欧元完全不同于美元。欧元没有欧洲政府、税收或社保体系作为它的支撑。每个成员国都是完全独立的、有强烈的自豪感，也符合它们的一贯传统。 It lacks the mechanism of "fiscal transfers" to switch money to depressed regions. The Babel of languages keeps workers pinned down in their own country. The escape valve of labour mobility is half-blocked. We are about to find out whether EMU really has the levels of political solidarity of a nation, the kind that holds America's currency union together through storms. 欧元区缺乏“财政转移”机制来将货币转移到衰退地区。语言的差别将工人限制在他们自己的国家，因此劳动力流动的阀门是半锁的。我们正计划去考察欧盟是否真在政治上联合成一个国家，性质就像通过风暴联合起来的美洲货币联盟。 My guess is that political protest will mark the next phase of this drama. Almost half a million people have lost their jobs in Spain alone over the last year. At some point, the feeling of national impotence in the face of monetary rule from Frankfurt will erupt into popular fury. The ECB will swallow its pride and opt for a weak euro policy, or face its own destruction. 我的猜测是，政治上的主张将在下一阶段的日程中被提出。在西班牙，仅去年一年就有近50万人失业。从某种程度上来说，在面对法兰克福的货币政策时，民族感的失落将爆发出来转变为普遍的愤怒。欧央行将它的自尊心隐藏起来，选择弱欧元政策，或者，面对欧洲的毁灭。 What we are about to see is a race to the bottom by the world's major currencies as each tries to devalue against others in a beggar-thy-neighbour policy to shore up exports, or indeed simply because they have to cut rates frantically to stave off the consequences of debt-deleveraging and the risk of an outright Slump. When that happens - if it is not already happening - it will become clear that the both pillars of the global monetary system are unstable, infested with the dry rot of excess debt. 我们将要看到的是一场世界主要货币争前恐後贬值到底部的比赛——你邻居的政策支撑了出口，或者确实仅仅因为它们不得不大幅贬值来避免降低杠杆债务的结果和彻底步入萧条的风险。 当这些发生了（如果它不是已经开始发生），那么很清楚，全球货币的两大支柱都将是不稳定的，经济将被过度的债务榨干的情况将到处出现。 The Fed has already invoked Article 13 (3) - the "unusual and exigent circumstances" clause last used in the Great Depression - to rescue Bear Stearns. The US Treasury has since had to shore up Fannie and Freddie, the world's two biggest financial institutions. 美联储已经调用13.3条款来挽救贝尔斯登，13.3条款是“异常和紧迫的环境”条款，上一次在“大萧条”中曾使用过。美国财政部在此之后支持了全球两个最大的金融机构：房利美（Fannie）和房地美（Freddie）。 Europe's turn will come next. We will discover that Europe cannot conduct such rescues. There is no lender of last resort in the system. The ECB is prohibited by the Maastricht Treaty from carrying out direct bail-outs. There is no EU treasury. So the answer will be drift and paralysis. 接下来轮到了欧洲。我们会发现欧洲无法进行象美国那样的救援。因为欧洲的体系中没有“最后借款人”。欧央行在《马斯特里赫特条约》中被禁止进行直接债务“释保”(bail-outs)。当然，也没有欧盟财政部（会采取措施）。因此，结果就不言而喻了。 When EU Single Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy was asked at a dinner what Brussels would have done if the eurozone faced a crisis like Bear Stearns, he rolled his eyes and thanked the Heavens that so such crisis had yet happened. 当欧盟的单一市场委员会委员Charlie McCreevy在一个午餐会上被问及如果欧元区遇到象贝尔斯登这样的危机，布鲁塞尔将怎么做时，他转了转眼睛并感谢上帝，那样的危机已经发生过了。 It will. 但是，危机还将发生。 Gold bugs, you ain't seen nothing yet. Gold at $800 looks like a bargain in the new world currency disorder. 金甲壳虫，你现在看起来并非无关紧要。在新的世界货币乱流中，800美元的金价看起来还是很低的。 译后记：我翻译这篇文章的时候雷曼还没有倒闭，金融危机还没有开始。快2年了，黄金价格也随着危机一路而上。 把这篇旧文再帖出来是想说，黄金价格还会涨，否则全世界的“流动性”该怎么办？！！