经济形势可能比大家想的更糟

美国经济滑坡的速度可能超过了华尔街和美联储意识到的水平。今后的情况也许会再次让人失望。

本周，美联储主席珍妮特•耶伦将和公开市场委员会的同事们再次召开会议。与六周前他们开会时相比，情况已经有了巨大变化。国际油价再次直线下坠，部分原因是人们对中国经济迅速放缓感到担心。欧洲和美国股市投资者也因此担惊受怕。

不过，美联储官员一直在设法安慰投资者。他们表示，美联储今年及以后缓慢而坚定地提升利率的计划没有改变。上周，纽约联储行长威廉•达德利称，尽管最近的一些经济指标没有达到预期，但他仍认为2016年美国经济增速将“略高于长期趋势值”，失业率将继续下降。

然而，美联储和整个华尔街或许都低估了近期经济增长率回落的幅度。

The economy could be falling apart faster than Wall Street and the Federal Reserve realize.Disappointment may be ahead, again.

Janet Yellen and her colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee are meeting again this week. A lot appears to have changed since they last met six weeks ago. The price of oil has taken another nose dive, driven by in part by fears of a quickly slowing Chinese economy. And that’s spooking investors in European and American stock markets.

Nonetheless, Fed officials have tried to reassure investors that the central bank’s plan to slowly-but-surely raise rates over the course of this year and beyond hasn’t changed. Last week, New York Fed President William Dudley said that while some recent economic indicators have been softer than expected, he still expects to the economy to grow “slightly above its long-term trend” in 2016, and that the unemployment rate will continue to drop.

But the Fed, and Wall Street in general, might be underestimating the recent downturn in growth.

上图由亚特兰大联储提供。2014年，该行推出了一种实时估算GDP增长率的工具。他们希望这个工具发现经济拐点的速度能超过经济学家一直在使用的模型。

这个新模型显示，美国经济形势在2015年第四季度急剧恶化，仅增长了0.7%。从图中的绿线可以看出，这样的增速低于一些经济学家做出的最悲观的预期。

这个模型囊括了哪些经济学家忽略的东西呢？首先是出口。美国的出口一直比预期的弱。这印证了海外经济缺乏活力可能给美国经济带来实质性影响的观点，而且这种情况可能让美国离衰退更近了一步。其次，消费品零售数据也一直不够抢眼。这表明消费者同样态度悲观，进而决定把低廉汽油价格给他们省下来的钱存起来，而不是挥霍一空。

并不是所有人都认为如果周五公布的GDP数据令人失望就意味着衰退。High Frequency Economics美国首席经济学家吉姆•奥沙利文在最近的一篇分析报告中提醒客户，“GDP的季度波动幅度远高于就业数据”，而且企业的招聘意愿并未减弱。尽管经济季度同比增长有时会大幅波动，但奥沙利文指出，近几年美国经济年增长率一直稳定在2%-2.5%。

尽管这样的增速不高，但确实足以让失业率保持下降态势，从而最终推动工资上升，至少理论上是这样。工资水平会因失业率下降而上升的预期让美联储相信，尽管全球市场暴跌，逐步提高利率才是正道。

同时，就连奥沙利文也承认，就业增长和GDP数据是滞后指标。股市总是向前看，因此似乎可以认为，市场的波动预示着新一轮的经济衰退。至少，之前的几个新年前后总能出现的乐观情绪确实已经荡然无存。

CNBC最近对经济学家的调查表明，后者预计今年美国经济只能增长2.17%。这实际上和近几年的经济增速相同，但低于过去几年经济学家一直预测的约3%的年增长率。换句话说，要么是经济学家们从此前的预期失误中汲取了教训，要么我们就得为更为艰难的情况做好准备。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

校对：詹妮

The above chart comes from the Atlanta Fed. Back in 2014, the regional Fed bank rolled out a tool that estimates GDP growth in real-time. The idea is that it will pick up turns in the economy faster than the models that economists have traditionally used.

And what the model is predicting is that the economy turned significantly worse in the fourth quarter, rising just 0.7%. And as you can see from the green line, that’s lower than some of the most pessimistic predictions from economists.

What is the model picking up that the economists are missing? First of all, exports. They have been weaker than expected. That gives support to the idea that the weak economic activity abroad could have a meaningful affect on the U.S. economy, possibly pulling us closer to recession. Second, retail sales numbers haven’t been impressive either. That suggest consumers are pessimistic as well, decided to pocket the savings they are getting from cheap gas, rather running out and spending.

Not everyone thinks that the likely disappointing GDP release on Friday is a sign of a coming recession. Jim O’Sullivan, Chief U.S. economist with High Frequency Economics, reminded clients in a recent analyst note that “GDP is much more volatile than than employment from quarter to quarter,” and we’ve seen no let up yet in employers desire to hire workers. Despite sometimes wild swings in quarter-by-quarter growth, O’Sullivan points out, the U.S. economy has steadily grown in recent years at 2 to 2.5% annual rate.

While this is not spectacular growth, it’s certainly strong enough to keep the unemployment rate falling, and theoretically at least, that will eventually push up wages. This anticipation of higher wages due to lower unemployment is what has the Fed convinced that gradual rate increases is the way to go, despite turmoil in global markets.

At the same time, even O’Sullivan admits that job growth and GDP data are lagging indicators. Stock markets are forward looking, and so it’s plausible that the volatility we’re seeing is foreshadowing another recession. At the very least the optimism that has been around at the start of the past few years is certainly gone.

A recent survey of economists by CNBC showed them expecting growth of just 2.17% this year. That’s in line with what the economy has actually grown for the past few years, but it’s lower than the roughly 3% annual economists had been predicting in years past. In other words, either the economics profession is learning from its forecasting failures, or we should prepare for even bumpier roads ahead.