TE||Fear of the lira
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导读
土耳其里拉危机
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听力|精读|翻译|词组
Fear of the lira
里拉危机
英文部分选自经济学人Finance and economics版块
Emerging markets
新兴市场
Fear of the lira
里拉危机
Turkey’s crisis is not fundamentally contagious
土耳其危机从根本上不具蔓延性
IN 1546 Girolamo Fracastoro, a doctor and poet, published an elegant theory of contagion. Infections spread in three ways, he argued: by direct contact, via an intermediary, or at a distance, through the air. In medicine, his theory is now considered quaint. In economics, however, it still works pretty well.
著名的医生及诗人—吉罗拉摩·法兰卡斯特罗（Girolamo Fracastoro）在1546年发表了一篇关于传染病的论文（《传染－－传染疾病和它们的治疗》）。论文中他陈述了疾病的三种传染途径：可以经由直接接触而传染，或是经由(衣物、毛巾、床单等)媒介而传染，甚至可经远距离通过空气传染。 从医学的角度看，这个理论被认为有些离奇， 然而从经济学来看，却合乎情理。
注吉罗拉摩·法兰卡斯特罗（Girolamo Fracastoro, 1478-1553）出生在意大利的维洛那，除了医学的论述外，在数学、地质学、占星学、以及植物学等方面都有很深的造诣。1521 年，他写了一篇极为著名的拉丁文长诗，共三册，叫《西佛里斯──法国疾病（Syphilis sive de morbo Gallico）》（正式发表于西元 1530 年）。这首诗篇是描述一位名叫西佛里斯（Syphilis）的年轻牧羊人，被太阳神阿波罗以疾病陷害的故事。在诗文中，他详细地描述了这个疾病的病症，以及如何造成这位牧羊人全身溃烂的情形，人类最早对梅毒病的完整描述，而诗中主角西佛里斯的名字－－Syphilis，也因此成为梅毒的正式英文名称。
On August 10th President Donald Trump sent a pathogenic tweet, announcing a doubling of tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium. It followed earlier sanctions on two Turkish ministers involved in detaining Andrew Brunson, an American pastor, on dubious charges. The lira, which had already lost 38% of its value since the start of the year, shed another eight percentage points in the tweet’s aftermath.
8月10日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）发布推文宣布将土耳其的钢铁和铝产品进口关税提高一倍。此前，因两名土耳其部长以莫须有罪名扣押美国牧师安德鲁·布朗森(Andrew Brunson)，土耳其已受到一系列制裁。里拉自年初以来已经贬值38%，而在推文发布后又下跌了8个百分点。
Early medical scholars believed gluttons were more susceptible to disease than cleaner-living folk. Similarly, Turkey has become vulnerable to financial disorder through macroeconomic intemperance. Businesses have borrowed heavily in foreign currencies. The government, which has manageable debt of its own, has guaranteed large amounts of private credit.
早期的医学学者坚信暴食者比轻食者更容易患上疾病。同样，土耳其由于宏观经济（刺激）过度而更容易受到金融波动的影响。企业举借大额外债。政府虽然自身债务可控，但为大量私人信贷提供了担保。
Inflation is now over 15%, far above the central bank’s target. But the monetary authority’s freedom to respond has been hampered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s distaste for higher interest rates. The current-account deficit exceeds 5% of GDP. To fill that growing gap, Turkey relies on foreign capital inflows. But rising interest rates in America make capital harder to attract.
目前土耳其通货膨胀率已超过15%，远超于央行（5%）的目标。总统雷杰普·塔伊普·埃尔多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)厌恶加息，因此货币当局对此应作出的反应受到牵制。。严重的经常账户赤字已超过国内生产总值的5%。为填补这一日益增长的缺口，土耳其不断吸引外币投资，但如今美国不断加息，导致土耳其很难再吸引投资资本。
Turkey must now cut back. The country’s new finance minister, Berat Albayrak, who also happens to be the president’s son-in-law, says the government will strengthen fiscal discipline and narrow Turkey’s current-account deficit. Turkey’s central bank has also tightened monetary policy indirectly, suspending some of its regular auctions of cash, thereby forcing banks to borrow overnight at an interest rate higher than its declared policy rate.
土耳其现在必须削减开支。土耳其新任财政部长贝拉特·阿尔巴拉克（Berat Albayrak）是总统的女婿。他表示，政府将加强财政纪律并缩小土耳其经常账户赤字。土耳其央行也间接收紧了货币政策，暂停了部分公开市场业务，从而迫使银行以高于其已宣布政策利率的隔夜拆借利率融资。
The slowdown in import spending will pass some of Turkey’s sickness on to its trading partners. This is a direct form of transmission, akin to one rotten grape touching and tainting another, in Fracastoro’s analogy. The countries that export the most to Turkey, relative to their GDP, include Bulgaria, Iran and Georgia. But Turkey is not otherwise a big part of the global fruit bowl, buying 1.3% of the world’s traded goods.
进口支出的放缓将土耳其的部分问题转嫁给其贸易伙伴。就像弗拉卡斯托洛(Fracastoro)所说的那样，这是一种直接接触传染，类似于腐烂了的葡萄接触并腐蚀其他的葡萄。GDP占比而言，对土耳其出口最多的国家包括保加利亚、伊朗和格鲁吉亚。但土耳其进口额只占全球贸易的1.3%，在全球“水果”市场的份额并不大。
The more worrying form of transmission is the second: via an intermediary. In Turkey’s case, the intermediaries of concern are its foreign lenders, which are also important sources of credit to many other markets.
更令人担忧的第二种传染方式是媒介传播。就土耳其而言，令人关注的是其外国贷款机构，它们同时也是许多其他市场的重要信贷来源。
Most foreign lending to the country flows through the local subsidiaries of European banks. On August 10th, reports suggested that the European Central Bank was worried about the exposure of some of the euro zone’s financial institutions. That prompted a noticeable fall in the Euro STOXX bank stock-price index. As The Economist went to press, shares of the two most exposed lenders were over 9% lower.
土耳其多数外国贷款机构来自欧洲银行的当地分行。8月10日，有报道称，欧洲央行(ECB)担心欧元区一些金融机构的风险敞口，这导致欧洲STOXX银行股价指数明显下跌。截至本期《经济学人》付印时，两家风险敞口最大的银行的股价跌幅均超过9%。
Euro-area banks have lent about $150bn to Turkey, amounting to about 10% of their combined equity. The majority of those loans ($80bn) belong to Spanish banks, especially to BBVA, which owns half of Garanti, Turkey’s second-largest private bank. Other exposures are mainly scattered among the subsidiaries of Italy’s UniCredit and France’s BNP Paribas.
欧洲地区银行已向土耳其借款1500亿美元，大约占其总资产的10%。这些贷款中绝大多数（800亿美元）来自西班牙银行，尤其是西班牙对外银行，其拥有土耳其第二大私人银行担保银行一半的股份。其他借贷资金主要来自意大利联合信贷银行和法国巴黎银行的分支机构。
For this handful of banks, the immediate risk is that Turkish borrowers struggle to repay foreign-currency debts that are now worth much more in lira terms. Thus far, the country has relatively few non-performing loans (around 3%). But defaults are expected to rise sharply.
就这几个银行而言，其即将面临的风险便是，（里拉贬值）外债对应了更多金额的里拉，使得土耳其借款人还款更加困难。迄今为止土耳其已只有相对较少的不良贷款（大约3%）。但预计违约将急剧上升。
The infection should, however, remain minor. In a worst-case scenario, European parent banks would walk away from their local affiliates and write off the equity losses. That would cost them between 1% and 12% of group equity, according to Deutsche Bank. Such costs would certainly hurt the banks’ shareholders and perhaps oblige them to strengthen their capital buffers. But it would not threaten their solvency or require outside intervention, says Alexandre Tavazzi from Pictet Wealth Management. He thinks “the market is selling before looking at the numbers.”
不过，违约的影响应该甚微。最坏的情况下是欧洲总行撤销土耳其分行并核销股权损失。德国银行表示可能需要付出总资产的1%到12%。这样的代价定将使银行股东受损并促使他们增强自身资金缓冲能力。“但不会影响其偿付能力也不需要外部介入”，来自百达资产管理的亚历山大如是说。他认为“在看这些数字之前市场早已抛售”
That tendency to sell before looking represents the third, and perhaps most worrying, mode of transmission in emerging-market epidemiology. Fracastoro worried about “noxious air” transmitting disease across distances. Economists, mustering equal precision, worry that the dampened “spirits” of investors can transmit a crisis across countries, undeterred by the fundamental economic distinctions between them.
也许最令人担忧的是，“看前出售”的趋势代表了新兴市场“流行疾病”第三种传播模式。弗拉卡斯托罗担心这“败坏的环境”会远程传播疾病。经济学家们也一直抱着同样的担忧，投资者的动物精神会无论国家间的基本经济状况如何不同，都会在国家间传递经济隐患。
On August 13th, India’s rupee weakened to a record low (70 to the dollar) despite the country’s modest inflation and light foreign-currency debt. Argentina’s central bank hiked interest rates from 40% to 45% to demonstrate its commitment to stabilising prices and the peso. And South Africa suffered horrible palpitations in its currency. The rand fell by almost 10% after Mr Trump’s tweet before settling down.
8月13日，印度卢比跌至历史新低（70卢比对1美元）尽管该国只有温和的通货膨胀和较轻的外币债务。阿根廷中央银行将利率从40%提高到45%以展示其稳定物价和比索的承诺。南非亦遭受了令人心悸的本币贬值。特朗普发布推文之后，兰特贬值近10%。
But that day’s mania did not persist. Turkish regulators eased reserve requirements, giving banks greater access to the dollars on their balance-sheets, and curtailed currency-swap deals, making it harder for foreign speculators to target the lira. The government also said that Qatar will make $15bn of direct investments in the country, though the details were hazy.
但是这些日子的狂热并未持续下去。土耳其监管者降低了存款准备金率，为银行资产负债表注入更多的美元流动性，减少货币互换交易，增加外国投机者以里拉作为标的的难度。而且政府宣布卡塔尔将对本国进行150亿美元的直接投资，尽管相关细则尚未明确。
The effect on Turkey’s currency was surprisingly powerful. Having traded at over seven to the dollar at the start of this week, the lira was hovering closer to six by August 15th. Global investors moved on to other worries, such as the disappointing earnings of Tencent, a Chinese tech firm that weighs far more heavily in most emerging-market investors’ portfolios than all of Turkey’s shares combined. Turkey’s crises, sadly, are more communicable than its rallies.
此举对土耳其货币的影响出乎意料地强大。本周初，1美元可兑换超过7里拉，但截止8月15号，里拉兑美元已徘徊接近于6。全球投资者已经转向担忧其他问题，诸如中国科技公司腾讯令人失望的营收表现，腾讯在新兴市场投资者的投资组合中的比重远比所有土耳其股票总和所占比重都要高。说来遗憾，土耳其的危机比它的复苏反弹更易传播。
翻译组：
Olivia，教育从业者，经济学人粉丝
Jasmine，税务，爱笑爱生活爱经济学人
Forest，女，意义之网编织中，经济学人爱好者
Vivian，国际商务研究生，爱猫爱动漫更爱经济学人
校核组：
Emily，食物链底端金融民工，经济学人粉丝
Jessie Lulu, 金融从业者，爱阳光，爱细雨，爱经济学人
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观点|评论|思考
本次观点由Alan全权执笔
Alan，男，金融工程硕士，经济学人粉丝
土耳其的高利率算是伊斯兰意识形态与资本主义机制格格不入的典型之一了。
土耳其总统埃尔多安信奉伊斯兰教，而伊斯兰世界认为利息是罪恶的。鉴于土耳其央行不独立于政府，政府可以给央行政策施加许多行政干预，埃尔多安要求央行长期保持低利率。
问题是，通货膨胀超过15%，如果再不提高名义利率压住通胀率，通胀会越跑越高，土耳其准备好面对南美各国的经济问题了么？另一种很小的可能，假设埃尔多安真的愿意提高利率，土耳其也会应声进入萧条的经济周期，届时需要相对扩张的财政政策相平衡，但是在四到五年的时间里经济也会十分阵痛。（假设名义利率提高到20%）
通胀率如此之高，货币贬值是必然，但是资本市场的骚动会影响到汇率的波动，鉴于土耳其外债以外币计价，债务的巨大波动并不利于经济发展，这个时候央行最好出面稳定汇率。可是土耳其并没有什么太多贸易顺差，因而也没什么外汇储备。关于外汇与贸易，土耳其依靠外商直接投资，带动了国内的汽车制造产业链，越来越有成为欧洲汽车制造中心的趋势，但是其他部分的商品不少会从欧洲进口，所以一进一出，贸易顺差自然也不指望了，而最近更是达到了贸易逆差越来越多的程度。
其实，土耳其对他国经济的影响比较有限。并不像美国中国两个体量巨大的国家，经济的波动随时会传导到世界和亚洲各国。土耳其的主要贸易对象还是欧洲，但是相对整个欧元区的体量土耳其还是相当小一部分。主要受影响的是借钱给土耳其公司的欧洲各银行。资本市场的唱衰做空混合着投资者的非理性会到来羊群效应。但是看上去欧洲银行足够应对。
土耳其从03年开始长期低利率的环境下，养活了太多不具竞争力的企业，虽然经济数据好看，但是经济产出的质量低。提高利率以免债务越滚越多引发更深层次经济问题是第一步，央行独立、稳定资本市场情绪才是应对之策。
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