凯恩斯救不了欧洲败家子

    在几个陷入困境的欧洲国家，它们的领导人——从意大利的马里奥•蒙蒂到法国的弗朗索瓦•奥朗德无不将经济问题归咎于“紧缩”，呼吁实施促“增长”政策。

    如何定义“紧缩”和“增长”很重要。“紧缩”意味着要减少支出、增加税收或者双管齐下，实现预算赤字缩减。促“增长”举措在美国被称为“刺激”政策，包含旨在减少衰退冲击、加快经济复苏的短期财政政策。“刺激”政策的效应与“紧缩”正好相反，此类被视为应急手段的政策会扩大预算赤字。如今，南欧多国领导人正在倡导主要通过大幅增加政府支出，扩大政府收支缺口，为萎靡的经济重新注入活力。

    这一复兴观点有两大瑕疵。第一，陷入困境的这几个国家，除极个别外，根本都没试过削减赤字的“紧缩”政策，就在大喊紧缩令他们的境况每况愈下。第二，自2008年底此轮经济衰退开始以来，这些国家就一直维持着庞大的赤字，但这样持续的“刺激”对减缓衰退或加速复苏都毫无帮助，主要的后果是让这些财力薄弱的国家背上了不可持续的巨额债务。如果欧洲听从了增加支出、扩大赤字的建议，情况只会更糟。

    要衡量这些政策哪里出了问题，让我们来看看欧洲“六个败家子”——法国、意大利、西班牙、爱尔兰、希腊和葡萄牙的表现。简单起见，我们把这“六个败家子”的赤字、支出、债务、GDP增速和其他数字合在一起，当做一个大的国家来分析。

    这轮“刺激”政策始于2009年。从2008年底到2011年，“六个败家子”的预算赤字总计近1.4万亿美元（我们把所有的欧元数字都折算成了美元），约每年4500亿美元，占GDP比重高达7.3%。但所有这些“刺激”政策创造了多少增长？三年里，“六个败家子”的GDP总量经通胀调整后，下降了5%。

    公共部门实际支出保持稳定，即便是在税收收入大幅下降的情况下——导致赤字大幅攀升。为什么经济整体表现如此之差？GDP的组成包括四部分，分别是政府支出、消费者支出、私人或企业投资、净出口额或净进口额。在经济衰退期间维持政府支出的理由是，它不仅保持了政府支出一项，还会带动其他三项，（相比没有刺激政策）能让国民经济明显加快增速或放缓减速。比如，雇佣更多公共交通客运员工，提高失业金，能提高“总需求”，因为消费者会用政府支付的薪水和联邦福利金外出就餐、支付话费和公寓租金。

    The leaders of distressed European nations, from Italy's Mario Monti to France's Francois Hollande, are blaming "austerity" for their economic woes, and championing policies that promote "growth."

    It's important to define the two terms. Austerity stands for shrinking budget deficits, by lowering spending, raising taxes, or a combination of the two. The pro-growth measures are what's known in the U.S. as "stimulus." It comprises short-term fiscal policies designed to limit the damage from a recession and speed recovery. Stimulus works in precisely the opposite direction of austerity by raising budget deficits, supposedly as an emergency measure. Today, southern Europe's heads-of-state, applauded by the Obama administration, advocate recharging their flagging economies by swelling the gap between revenues and expenses, chiefly by lifting government outlays.

    This blueprint for revival has two glaring flaws. First, the ailing nations, except in rare instances, haven't even attempted the deficit-slashing "austerity" that's supposedly causing their decline. Second, these countries have been deploying enormous deficits since the recession began in late 2008, and yet this constant "stimulus" has done absolutely nothing to cushion the recession or hasten a recovery. Their principal legacy is saddling the weaker nations with unsustainable levels of debt, a situation that would become far worse if Europe heeds the current calls for more spending and deficits.

    To gauge where these policies went wrong, we'll examine the performance of what we'll call Europe's "Six Spenders:" France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece, and Portugal. To simplify, we'll treat the Six Spenders as if they were one big country by combining their deficit, spending, debt, GDP growth and other numbers.

    The big push for stimulus began in 2009. From the end of 2008 to 2011, the Six Spenders had combined budget deficits of almost $1.4 trillion (we'll translate all euro numbers into dollars). That's approximately $450 billion a year, or an enormous 7.3% of GDP. So how much growth did all that "stimulus" create? Over those three years, the Six Spenders' combined output shrank by 5%, adjusted for inflation.

    Public sector spending stayed steady in real terms, even though tax revenues fell sharply -- hence the big jump in deficits. So why did the economies overall perform so poorly? GDP has four components: government expenditures, consumer spending, private or business investment, and the surplus of exports over imports, or vice versa. The rationale sustaining government spending in a recession is that it sustains not just that category, but also boosts the other three, so that the economy expands far faster, or shrinks a lot less, than it would without the stimulus. For example, hiring more public transit workers and raising unemployment payments would lift "aggregate demand" as consumers spend their government paychecks and federal benefits on restaurants, cell phones, and condos.