FT社评

FT社评：央行无力阻止投资者恐慌
Leader_There is much to fear in fear itself
Central banks can only delay market price adjustments.
央行无法改变，只能延迟市场价格的调整。

Only days ago, policymakers were executing their responsibility for the economy by fighting one another. Now the battle has been joined with securities traders in central banks’ effort to stamp out a combustion of market panic. The firefighting is unlikely to be any more effective than the infighting.
就在几天前，政策制定者通过斗争，履行了自己的经济责任。

现在，证券交易商也加入进来，与央行一道努力扑灭市场恐慌的“大火”。

与内斗相比，救火的成效也不太可能强到哪儿去。

International financial markets have been upended by three sweeping shifts in just a few weeks. The first is in stock markets, which have been sliding fast. The S&P500 has fallen on eight of the past nine trading days, losing almost one-10th of its value in the process. Europe looks no better: the FTSE100 is down by almost seven and the DAX by 11 per cent since the beginning of the month.
短短几周内的三个重大变化，令全球金融市场天翻地覆。

第一个变化是股市迅速下滑。

在过去9个交易日里，标普500指数有8天下跌，期间跌幅接近十分之一。

欧洲看上去也同样糟糕：自本月初以来，富时100指数下跌近7%，而德国DAX指数则下跌了11%。

Second, currency markets have seen their own shifts. For weeks, the yen and the Swiss franc, traditional havens for fearful investors, had been pushing upward relative to the world’s major currencies. The appreciation did not stop until the two countries’ central banks abruptly acted to halt it on Wednesday and Thursday.
其次，外汇市场也出现了变化。

几周来，传统上作为投资者避险工具的日元和瑞士法郎对全球主要货币汇率不断上升。

在上述两国央行分别于本周三和周四突然出手干预之后，日元和瑞士法郎才停止了升势。

Third, markets for bank funding are sputtering, particularly in Europe. With falling prices for Italian and Spanish government debt, those countries’ banks find it hard to finance themselves in private debt markets, and their share values have sunk lik e stones. Overnight deposits at the European Central Bank have doubled in less than a week: banks are nervous about lending excess funds to their peers in the interbank market.
第三，银行融资市场摇摇欲坠，尤其是在欧洲。

随着意大利和西班牙政府债券价格不断下跌，这些国家的银行发现自己很难在私人债券市场融资，同时这些银行的股价也直线下跌。

欧洲央行(ECB)的隔夜存款在不到一周时间内增长了一倍：各家银行对银行间市场同行的过度拆借感到不安。

If these swings were due to shallow liquidity of August markets, as some say, one might expect things soon to return to normal. But this seems unlikely. In some markets – for big American stocks, for instance – volumes have grown in step with prices falling. In others –notably sovereign debt markets –information on volumes is hard to get. And foreign exchange markets are the most liquid of all.
如果这些变化像一些人所说的那样，是8月份市场流动性不足所引起的，那么人们或许会指望情况将很快恢复正常。

但这似乎不太可能。

在某些市场——比如，美国大盘股——交易量随着价格下降而增长。

而在另一些市场——特别是主权债务市场——则很难获得有关交易量的信息。

在所有市场中，外汇市场的流动性最强。

Instead, the market shifts seem plainly driven by a wave of pessimism and fear about the economic outlook. This seems justified given hapless policy responses to US and eurozone debt woes and accumulating evidence of slowing growth.
相反，这些市场变化似乎显然是由一波对经济前景的悲观和担忧情绪所推动的。

鉴于针对美国和欧元区债务问题糟糕的政策回应、以及日益明显的增长放缓迹象，这种观点似乎是合理的。

Except for easing liquidity conditions for banks, central banks can hardly stop market prices from reflecting market sentiment. Swiss and Japanese attempts to stem currency appreciation will at best delay price shifts; the same is true for the ECB’s ret urn to buying stressed sovereign debt. Only politicians?and?the?Treasuries?they?control have tools to turn economic fear into hope. Their recent form is reason enough to remain scared.
除了放松银行的流动性条件，央行几乎无法阻止市场价格反映市场人气。

瑞士和日本旨在抑制本币升值的努力，顶多能够延迟价格的变化；而欧洲央行恢复购买压力重重的主权债务的努力亦是如此。

只有政治家和他们控制的财政部才有办法将对经济的担忧转化为希望。

但它们最近的表现足以让人们继续恐慌。