凯恩斯救不了欧洲败家子

    但这种情况没有出现。虽然政府支出保持高位，私营部门支出依然锐减，这解释了GDP总量的下降。从2008年到2011年，以经通胀调整的欧元计，私人投资、净出口和消费者支出总和下降近10%。这减少的1400亿美元，不多正好是这三年里合计增加的赤字。不难得出结论，旨在拉动经济增长的刺激政策根本就是拆东墙补西墙，对经济增长并无直接影响。

    为什么刺激政策无效？必须要借更多的钱来支撑不断膨胀的赤字。这些钱大多来自本国公民。不购买新发行的股票和债券，不把现金存在储蓄账户中、为企业贷款提供资金，意大利或希腊公民购买政府债券。过去流向私人投资的钱，如今流向了政府。钱没有花在采购机器人、电脑和其他资本设备上，而是流向了新雇佣的政府员工（花在了用车或度假上）或者提高失业福利。

    短期内，欧元是流向私人投资、还是政府支出，对经济增长的影响很小。需要重申，这也只是拆东墙补西墙。截留本可用于提高生产力的资金用于政府支出，这样的做法几年后就会显现弊端，经济增速将放缓。

    事实上，“六个败家子”在经济衰退期间的糟糕表现是它们前些年大手大脚的必然结果。2004-2008年，这些国家将来自于消费和房地产泡沫（得益于德国式的低利率）的税收红包用于大幅提高政府支出在国民经济中的比例。与此同时，私营部门占GDP的比重持续下降，西班牙从62%降至了58.5%，希腊从54.7%降至了52.5%，意大利从52.5%降至了51.3%，爱尔兰从66%降至了57.2%。（由于经济衰退，如今这些比例更低了。）

    如果没有高额赤字的支撑，经济会不会变得更糟？我们怎么知道是私营部门的萎缩让这些国家在经济衰退中如此脆弱，表现如此糟糕？幸运的是，欧元区提供了实验对照“控制组”，即欧元区最大的国家——德国。从2008年到2011年，德国的赤字支出相对较小，只部署了很少的刺激政策。但在这三年内，它成功地实现了GDP增长1%，而“六个败家子”为下降5%。

    需要指出的是，正是经济衰退前几年德国私营部门的增长，解释了德国经济的韧性。从2004年到2008年，私营经济占GDP比重从53%升至56%，政府支出高度控制。由此，腾出了更多的资金能让企业投资于工厂和研究设施，带来的经济活力让德国能安然渡过经济衰退。相比之下，“六个败家子”将更多的资源给了政府。

    It didn't happen. While governments held their spending at already elevated levels, the private sector shrank drastically, explaining that fall in total output. From 2008 to 2011, the sum of private investment, net exports and consumer spending dropped almost 10% in inflation-adjusted euros. That fall of $140 billion is almost exactly the same as the increase in combined deficits over the same three years. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that stimulus designed to boost growth simply moves the same money around, with no immediate effect on growth.

    Here's why stimulus doesn't work. The extra money needed to support ever-increasing deficits must be borrowed. A large portion of those borrowings flow from the nations' citizens. Instead of buying newly issued stocks or bonds, or placing cash in savings accounts where the euros are loaned to businesses, Italians or Greeks purchase government securities. Money that used to flow to private investment is now going to the government. Rather than being spent on robots, computers and other capital equipment, it's now channeled to newly-hired government workers, who spend it on cars or vacations, or to more generous unemployment benefits.

    In the short-term, whether the euros go to private investment or government spending has a minimal effect on growth. Once again, it's the same money just changing categories. But over several years, shifting productivity-enhancing investment to government spending slows growth.

    In fact, the Six Spenders' poor performance in the recession is an outgrowth of the heavy spending policies they pursued in the preceding years. From 2004 to 2008, the governments used the tax windfall from a boom in consumption and real estate bubbles, both courtesy of low, German-style interest rates, to substantially raise government spending as a share of the economy. At the same time, the private sector shrank, going from 62% of GDP to 58.5% in Spain, 54.7% to 52.5% in Greece, 52.5% to 51.3% in Italy, and 66% to 57.2% in Ireland. (Those numbers are now even lower because of the recession.)

    How about the argument that growth would have been even worse without the support of big deficits? And how do we know that the shrinking private sector is what made these nations so vulnerable, and perform so badly, in the recession? Fortunately, the Eurozone provides the equivalent of a "control group," for this experiment. It's the largest Eurozone economy, Germany. From 2008 to 2011, Germany did relatively little deficit spending, and thus deployed minimal stimulus. Yet it managed to actually increase GDP by 1% in total over that three-year period, versus a 5% drop for the Six Spenders.

    Once again, it was the growth of the private sector in the years before the recession that explains Germany's resilience. From 2004 to 2008, the private economy expanded from 53% to 56% of GDP, and government spending was highly restrained. That freed more money for companies to invest in plants and research facilities, creating a dynamism that served Germany well in the recession, while the Six Spenders were channeling more resources to the government.