用硬币来解决问题

The platinum-coin option

硬币这条路

Toss a coin

用硬币来解决问题

A crackpot idea to circumvent America’s debt ceiling gains currency

为避美国债务上限，奇怪方法日渐流行

Jan 12th 2013 | WASHINGTON, DC | from the print edition

ARCH-CONSERVATIVES have long prescribed a return to the gold standard as th e answer to America’s fiscal and monetary excesses. Now liberals are looking t o precious metals to solve a fiscal bind.

保守党一直想重回金本位来解决美国财政货币过剩的问题。如今自由党想要利用稀有金属“铂”(译者注：制作硬币的金属)来解决财政困境。

Sometime between mid-February and early March, the Treasury will run out of legal authority to issue new debt. Republicans in Congress say they won’t rai se the debt ceiling without big spending cuts; Barack Obama says he won’t nego tiate over the country’s creditworthiness. Unless the impasse is broken, the T reasury will have to renege on billions of dollars of spending commitments—inc luding, possibly, bond-interest payments.

二月中旬到三月初美国财政部将失去发行债券的权限。国会中的共和党要求大幅削减财政支出，否则不同意提高债务上限，而奥巴马表示国家信誉问题不容谈判。若僵局无法打破，财政部不得不放弃上十亿美元的计划支出——有可能无法偿还债券利息。

That has prompted a search for loopholes. Mr Obama has already rejected one: invoking the 14th amendment to the constitution, which says the validity of Am erica’s debt “shall not be questioned”. But another has been gaining adheren ts in the blogosphere, who note that an obscure law allows the Treasury to issu e platinum coins of any denomination. Liberals now want Mr Obama to mint a $1 t rillion platinum coin, providing all the spending room the government needs to finance the budget for the coming year. At least one Democratic congressman fav ours the idea; a Republican congressman plans to introduce a bill to prohibit t he coin being minted.

于是人们开始寻找能解决问题的漏洞。奥巴马总统已经否定了一个：他援引了美国宪法第十四修正案，上面规定美国债务的有效性“不容怀疑”。而另一个方法在博客中得到了很多人的支持，有人指出那条模糊法律其实允许发行面额不等的硬币来解燃眉之急。自由党现在希望总统奥巴马能下令制造价值一万亿美元的硬币，这样便可给政府足够的支出空间来做来年的财政预算。至少有一名民主党国会议员支持这个想法，而一位共和党国会议员计划出台一项法案来阻止这种做法。

Wacky though it sounds, the proposal raises intriguing monetary-policy ques tions. Ordinarily the Federal Reserve purchases coins from the Treasury to meet demand from commercial banks, and pays for them by printing money that it then deposits in the Treasury’s accounts at the Fed. A $1 trillion coin would use the same mechanism on a vastly bigger scale. In economic terms the Fed’s purch ase would resemble “quantitative easing”, in which it prints money to buy bon ds.

尽管听起来挺怪，这项提议引发了有趣的货币政策问题。一般来说，美联储从财政部那里购买货币来满足商业银行的需要，并用印刷的纸币来支付，这些钱会存入美联储的财政部账户。这一万亿美元的硬币适用于相同的机制，就是规模要大得多。用经济术语来说，美联储的这次购买相当于“量化宽松”，也就是说通过印钞票来购买债券。

Monetarists would fret that creating $1 trillion of new money would spur in flation, but those fears are misplaced. Unlike bank notes, which are liabilitie s of the Fed and thus part of the monetary base, coins are liabilities of the T reasury. The money the Fed creates to pay for the coins does not become part of the monetary base until the Treasury spends it, and it ends up in a commercial bank’s reserves at the Fed. The monetary base could eventually expand by $1 t rillion in this way. But because the Fed has paid interest on reserves since 20 08, it would retain control of interest rates and therefore of inflation.

货币主义者会担心制造出一万亿美元会引发通货膨胀，这其实是多虑了。钞票隶属于美联储，是货币的基础，而硬币则不同，它属财政部管理。美联储印出钞票去购买硬币的那部分钱直到财政部将之支出并成为美联储商业银行准备金时才会成为基础货币的一部分。通过这种方法，基础货币会增加一万亿美元。因为美联储从2008年以来已经支付了准备金的利息，所以可以保持对利率水平的控制，这样也就控制了通货膨胀。

Apart from circumventing the debt ceiling, there might be other practical b enefits. Gary Gorton, an economist at Yale, says issuing the coins in smaller d enominations of, say, $50m could provide companies with a risk-free alternative to current accounts, easing the financial system’s shortage of sa fe assets.

这样做不但可以避开债务上限，还有一些别的好处。耶鲁大学经济学家Gary Gorton

认为发行面额再小一点的硬币，比如五千万美元，可以给企业提供流动账户之外的无风险资金，这样就可以弥补财政系统的资金短缺来确保资产安全。

The bigger problem is political. The Fed purchases bonds by choice to carry out monetary policy. Being forced to buy the $1 trillion coin would be a textb ook case of monetising the debt and a gross violation of the Fed’s independenc e. The manoeuvre would violate the intent of Congress in creating a debt ceilin g (daft though that is). In any case, the idea is just too weird to be taken se ri ously. When the answer to America’s debt problems is something that could be lost down the back of a sofa, it’s no answer at all.

政治是另外一个大问题。美联储选择性的购买债券来实行货币政策。美联储不得不购买一万亿美元的硬币将成为债务转化为货币的典型案例，这也极大的违反了美联储的独立原则。这种做法会扭曲国会设立债务上限的初衷(尽管很蠢)。不管怎样这个想法都太奇怪了，不应该被当回事。面对美国的债务问题，一枚可能会掉到沙发缝里消失不见的硬币根本不算是解决办法。