gordeeva_o_g_praktikum_po_perevodu_ekonomicheskih_tekstov_s

иных госструктур. Одобряют решения главные акционеры. А их интересы не всегда совпадают с интересами государства и народа. Акционерам нужна только прибыль.

Нынешний кризис часто сравнивают с Великой американской депрессией. Как все было, описывает экономист Сергей Егишянц в книге «Тупики глобализации».

«В 1927 году ФРС предприняла мощный накат кредитной эмиссии на экономику. Львиная доля дополнительных денег ушла на фондовый рынок, который полетел наверх со страшной силой. На бирже играли огромные массы народа: к осени 1929 года акциями владели около четверти американских семей... Росли цены на все акции без разбора.

В апреле 1929 года первый глава ФРС Пол Варбург (инициатор заговора на острове Джекиль! ) разослал олигархам секретное письмо с предупреждением о неизбежности грядущего кризиса. Крупнейшие банкиры США вывели все свои деньги с фондового рынка, переложив их в золото. После чего 24 октября 1929 года вообще перестали выдавать финансовым компаниям какие-либо кредиты со сроком погашения более одного дня. Наступил паралич финансово-кредитной системы, ответом на который стал обвал фондовой биржи Нью-Йорка 28 и 29 октября. Огромные сбережения людей вмиг обратились в пыль, а за этим с полугодовой задержкой случился крах всей кредитной пирамиды...

Зато крупнейшие олигархи тех времен (Ротшильды, Рокфеллеры, Морганы, Кеннеди, Барухи и т. д.) неплохо поднажились - например, состояние Джозефа Кеннеди с 1929 по 1935 год выросло в 25 раз».

Исход банкиров с биржи перед ее крахом вызвал подозрения. Моргана даже пригласили на специальную комиссию конгресса США. Но тот рассказал байку: дескать, чистильщик на улице драил Моргану обувку и ненароком спросил про акции железнодорожной компании. Тут-то якобы банкира озарило: если даже чистильщики сапог полезли в фондовый рынок, значит, крах уже совсем близко. Этой сказке в конгрессе поверили.

Ряд экономистов, в том числе нобелевский лауреат Милтон Фридман, считал, что к Великой депрессии приложила руку ФРС. С 1929 по 1933 год объем наличных денег в США уменьшился на треть! А кто стоял у печатного станка? ФРС. Когда же к власти пришел Рузвельт, наличность появилась. Рузвельт укрепил позиции ФРС, убрав из обращения внутри страны главного конкурента

172

бумажного доллара - золото. Все следующие президенты США также помогали ФРС строить пирамиду. Нашелся лишь один смельчак, посягнувший на монополию банкиров. Джон Кеннеди 4 июня 1963-го подписал указ, по которому Федеральное правительство впервые с 1913 года получило право печатать валюту, а не заимствовать деньги у Федерального резерва за проценты. Эта валюта была полностью обеспечена серебром. Вроде бы новые деньги даже были отпечатаны. Но осенью Кеннеди убили в Далласе. Банкноты изъяли. И, хотя указ Кеннеди не отменен, больше в Белом доме нет желающих печатать государственные деньги. Как только власть бакса оказывается под угрозой, в ход идет тяжелая артиллерия - войны, террор.

Конкурентов убирают

В1968-м с помощью бунтарей-студентов удалось убрать Де Голля, посягнувшего на доллар. И все равно в 1979-м появилась первая европейская валюта - экю. Сначала ее ввели 6 стран Общего рынка, затем число участников стало расти. Пришлось применять контрмеры. Многие помнят, как в 1992 году американский финансист Сорос обрушил английский фунт, заработав более $1 млрд. Ясно, что в одиночку он такое бы не провернул. А главной целью удара был экю. После операции Сороса он захирел. Перепуганная Англия, поняв «намек», вообще вышла из Европейского валютного союза. В 1997-м пришлось щелкнуть по носу «азиатских тигров», возомнивших о себе. Заодно и японской иене досталось.

В1999-м появился евро. Пришлось НАТО бомбить Югославию. Чтоб опустить конкурента ниже стоимости доллара. На какое-то время это помогло. И тут на сцене появился Саддам Хусейн. Если вы подумали про теракт 11 сентября, то ошиблись. Не участвовал. Доказано. И в связях с бен Ладеном не замечен. Смертный приговор себе Саддам подписал, когда решил перейти с долларов на евро в расчетах за нефть. Вот это был бы удар! Ирак ведь имеет вторые по величине запасы нефти в мире. А если и другие страны последуют его примеру? Месть США была жестокой. Заодно сорвали планировавшийся в 2003 году ввод золотого исламского динара в 23 странах.

Но в Ираке Штаты увязли и в Афганистане тоже. А тут Китай растет прямо на глазах. На него с войной не пойдешь. И другие страны поговаривают о строгом контроле за банками и даже новой мировой валюте. Такое предложение, кстати, внесет 2 апреля на

173

встрече «двадцатки» в Лондоне наш президент. Китай готов его поддержать. Ведь ФРС сейчас вкачивает в экономику триллионы новых долларов. Значит, бакс будет обесцениваться. А с ним и капиталы Китая, вложенные в гособлигации США. Что, эпохе бакса приходит конец?

Кому выгодно?

И тут возникает вопрос: что же все-таки стоит за мировым кризисом? Международные олигархи выпустили джинна из бутылки, и процесс стал неуправляемым? Или все было запланировано? Не зря же главным виновником кризиса называют не Буша с Клинтоном, а бывшего главу ФРС Алана Гринспена. В прошлом году его даже приглашали на специальную комиссию, расследующую причины кризиса. Обычно уверенный Гринспен тут беспомощно развел руками. Дескать, не могли предвидеть беду, такой крах случается раз в сто лет. Чем-то напоминает это историю с Морганом и чистильщиком сапог.

Любопытна статья бывшего министра финансов США Полсона в The Financial Times. Он согласен с тем, что нужна реформа финансового регулирования, в том числе в США. И даже придумывать ничего не надо! Все уже придумано! Год назад Полсон сам участвовал в разработках. Нужно три ведомства. Одно будет следить за стабильностью финансового сектора в целом, другое займется оценкой надежности отдельных компаний, а третье - защитой прав потребителей. В качестве первого органа может выступить ФРС, считает Полсон. Представляете? У них уже все запланировано. Сначала в США. А когда всем будет еще хуже, могут и в мировом масштабе ФРС утвердить. Вот тогда-то ФРС себя покажет. И юань прижмет к ногтю, и евро с иеной, и динар золотой с российским рублем. Может, именно на это и был тайный расчет?

Поживем - увидим. Пока в руках ФРС печатный станок, банкиры будут пытаться смотреть на мир у своих ног с высоты той самой пирамиды на долларе. И монополию свою так просто не уступят. Но хочется надеяться, что на этот раз их тайные планы сорвутся.

Еженедельник КП, март 2009

174

Searching for value

Where might the bottom for shares prove to be?

Every time the stock market rebounds, as it has recently, commentators wonder whether this at last marks the bottom for share prices. Valuation ought to provide a clue. Given the speed of last autumn’s collapse and the terrible performance of equities over the past decade, you might think that shares were dirt cheap. Alas, history suggests they have been a lot cheaper.

Start with the obvious measures. The historic dividend yield on the American stock market is around 3%. That may be higher than it has been since the mid-1990s, but it is a long way short of the 8.7% the market was offering back in 1950. Anyway, payouts are likely to be slashed this year.

How about the price/earnings ratio, the measure that compares share prices with profits? The latest p/e for the S&P 500 is around 10.5 (based on reported historic earnings). That is a long way above the low for the ratio of around six, recorded back in 1949. And this is probably a generous measure; reported earnings ignore write-offs, which have recently been huge.

But these measures need not necessarily be a good guide at extremes. Wall Street traded on a high p/e in 1932, because earnings had collapsed so far during the Depression. Profits and share prices rebounded strongly in 1933. Robert Shiller uses a cyclically adjusted p/ e that averages profits over ten years to smooth out fluctuations. On that basis, the American market is now trading on a p/e of 12; that is a long way below the 44 recorded in 1999, but is well above the 1921 low of around 5. You have to turn to relative valuations to make shares look cheap. This is a controversial subject. Clearly, investors have a choice between holding their portfolios in shares, bonds or cash, and can switch to the cheapest asset. But such approaches assume that low bond yields are good news for equities.

The reasoning is usually based on a discounted-cashflow model; a lower bond yield means a lower discount rate and thus a higher present value for shares. But that approach fails to consider why bond yields have fallen. The answer is normally that expectations for inflation or economic growth have declined. And that means expectations for

175

nominal or real profits growth should be falling in line. In Japan the very low bond yields of the past 15 years have not been good news for equities at all.

A more sophisticated argument revolves around the equity riskpremium, the extra return investors should demand for holding shares. Since 1900 this has been around 4% a year, according to Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton at the London Business School. A rough calculation for the forward-looking risk premium would add the dividend yield of 3% to expected long-term nominal dividend growth (in line with GDP) of 5% and then subtract the ten-year bond yield of 2.7%. The result is a risk premium of 5.3%. That may be higher than the historical average but may simply reflect the expectation that dividends may be cut sharply this year, and will thus rebound from a much lower base.

Chris Watling of Longview Economics points to another measure, the relation between the earnings yield and the real return on cash. Over the past 50 years, the earnings yield has averaged around five percentage points higher than the return on cash. The gap is now around eight points and has only ever briefly been in double digits.

Part of the aim of central banks in driving down interest rates is to encourage a greater risk appetite among investors. One of the bulls’ hopes for the equity market is that American investors simply get tired of earning virtually zero on the estimated $13 trillion they hold in money-market mutual funds.

Again, Japan’s example is not encouraging—zero rates have coincided with dismal equity performance for years. But Larry Kantor of Barclays Capital argues that the global authorities have been a lot more active than Japan’s were, supplying everything from quantitative easing to huge fiscal packages in the first 18 months of this crisis. Just as the Greenspan put buoyed investors in the 1990s, investors must trust in a Bernanke/Geithner put that keeps shares from falling to the lows seen in the past.

The Economist March 2009

Exercise 8. Translate the following into Russian.

To eliminate budget deficit, sluggish economic growth, to look vulnerable, economic meltdown, in trade-weighted terms, tight fiscal policy, peg with the dollar, profit squeeze, yields on treasury bonds.

176

UNIT IX

GLOBAL ECONOMY AND INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

What Rich Nations Must Do

To Compete with China and India

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans could reasonably dream of a world dominated by a single superpower: the U.S. No longer. The rapid transformation of China into an economic powerhouse, and the likelihood that India will follow in its footsteps, means the U.S. must prepare for a far different future, one where it must learn to share economic power as never before.

This new triparite world order will be tough for the U.S. to accept since it likely threatens millions of Americans jobs. But the challenge to America’s economic dominance – China could surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by mid-century, with China and India combined accounting for roughly half of all global output – doesn’t have to portend crisis. The rise of China and India could benefit the U.S. if the two Asian nations drive global growth and produce hundreds of millions of new middle class consumers that American firms can serve for decades to come. Indeed, if all three nations can manage prickly internal political, security, and trade pressures, this needn’t be a zero-sum game.

To prosper in this new reality, America must renew its commitments to innovation, giving the U.S. companies the financial, regulatory, and infrastructure support to keep creating new products or services that customers around the world want. The U.S. has long shown a knack for producing the kind of high-margin manufactured goods (aircraft, construction gear), branded consumer products (Coca-Cola), and smart intellectual property (movies, drugs) that are hot sellers all over the world. But today’s Asian competitors are quickly acquiring technical skills that underlie much of American innovation. For instance, China and India graduate a combined half-million engineers and scientists a year, vs. 60,000 in the U.S. It’s the same lopsided story in life sciences. Even if training in the U.S. is better – a debatable point – the sheer amount of low-cost brainpower that China and India will have at their disposal will eventually give them an edge.

177

That’s why it’s time for Washington and the states (which are responsible for education in the U.S.) to set more rigorous standards for instruction in such key subject areas as science and math, where Asian students consistently outperform. It will take years to see the payoff there. In the meantime, the U.S. government needs to rethink visa changes that, since the September 11 attacks, have made it more difficult for foreign students majoring in technology fields to attend colleges or graduate schools in the U.S. Many of those students go to work for American companies after graduation, invaluably bolstering America’s technical competitiveness.

To be sure, the ascendancy of China and India is not a done deal. Both countries face a host of challenges that could have big destabilizing effects on the global economy if not handled smoothly.

Despite these risks, counting on China and India’s development to falter would be foolhardy. Beijing has proven surprisingly adept at managing its economy, tripling per capita income in a generation and attracting tens of billions annually in foreign investment. Likewise, India seems intent on reducing bureaucracy and putting in place the infrastructure improvements needed to shift it from a serviceoutsourcing specialist into a broad-based manufacturer in the China mold.

That’s why the emergence of China and India as economic giants must be viewed as an opportunity for America and the developed world. The “Chindia” region’s mix of cheap skilled labor, capital-friendly governments, and huge domestic markets can help Western economies keep inflation in check and raise living standards – but only if those nations continue to invest heavily in human capital at home and to find innovative ways to sell to the burgeoning Eastern markets. And the growing interdependence caused by free trade could eventually make the world a safer place for everyone. For that payoff, this new world order may be worth the risks.

Business Week August 2005

178

America drops, Asia shops

Thanks to the vigour of Asia’s consumers,

it is a good time for the American economy to slow

It is a common place that American consumers have kept the world economy spinning. Asians are frugal, Europeans are gloomy, so if Americans do not keep spending as fast as they have been lately, the world economy is in trouble.

That view will be tested over the next couple of years as Americans adjust to the end of their housing bonanza. By virtually every measure America’s housing market is in trouble. Home sales and residential construction are tumbling, the overhang of unsold homes has soared and, according to some statistics, house prices have started to slide. And despite an odd bit of good news, such as this week’s figures showing that housing starts rose unexpectedly in September and builders’ gloom had lifted slightly, the painful truth is that America’s housing adjustment probably has a lot further to go.

The effect of that adjustment on Americans’ spending has yet to be felt. So far, the housing bust has hit builders most. America’s GDP growth slowed to a crawl over the summer as builders cut back. Consumers have barely noticed, mainly because unemployment remains low and tumbling fuel prices have boosted their bank balances and buoyed their spirits. Petrol prices have fallen by almost 30% over the past two months. The strength of consumer spending has led many economists to argue that America is headed for a soft landing. Perhaps, but as the housing bust deepens, even the most spendthrift Americans will keep a tighter grip on their wallets. America may avoid recession, but it won’t avoid a slow-down. Will it drag the world economy with it?

The reason it will not is that the common view of the American consumer as the engine of the world economy is flawed. IMF figures show that Asia, not America, has been the main driver of global demand, powering the world economy through its fastest five-year period of growth since the early 1970s. That is not just because Asians are producing so much more, but because they’re buying so much more. Asian consumers are on a spending spree, splashing out on anything from mobile phones to designer clothes.

179

They know how to spend

Asia is the world’s fastest-growing consumer market. The IMF forecasts that total household spending there will rise by almost 7% in real terms this year. In comparison, the 3% growth in American consumption looks almost parsimonious. Although America’s consumer spending is still larger than the whole of Asia’s in current dollars, the growth in Asian spending this year will be half as big again as that in America. Asia’s consumer market already exceeds America’s if converted at purchasing-power parity (PPP), which makes sense, because housing and domestic services are much cheaper in poorer countries, leaving more of a given sum to spend on consumer durables and the like. No wonder Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, is eager to expand in China. This week it agreed to buy the country’s secondlargest hypermarket chain. International retailers are battling to get a stake in China as rising living standards and rapid urbanizations create masses of new consumers. On today’s trends, the consumer market there, measured in PPP, will overtake America’s by 2020.

Economists, who tend to be less excitable than retailers, point out that Asian consumption levels are still fairly low. In Asia, household consumption accounts for only around 55% of GDP on average, compared with 71% in America. But it is the pace of the increase in consumer spending as much as its share of GDP that determines overall growth. And the lower consumption’s current share of GDP, the more scope there is for it to grow.

Still, however bouncy Asian consumers are feeling, slowing growth means that America will buy fewer goods from the rest of the world. So the big question is how much the rest of the world depends on exporting to America. And the answer is: less than is generally thought. Smaller Asian economies, notably Taiwan, are heavily exportdependent. But the bulk of growth in China, India and Japan in recent years has been driven by domestic demand.

It is true that China runs a large current-account surplus with America and rising net exports have contributed almost two percentage points of China’s growth over the past year, but even without that boost, China’s GDP growth would still have been an impressive 8.5%. Moreover, America is not the only importer. Indeed, its share of world imports has fallen from 21% to 16% over the past five years – further proof that demand is strong elsewhere. If America imports less, Asia’s GDP growth will slow, but by less than doomsters predict.

180

Buoyant Asian demand should help keep Europe afloat, too, for European exporters are a lot more dependent on Asia, and a lot less dependent on America, than they used to be. Exports to Asia last year were 244 billion euros, 44 billion euros higher than in 2001. Those to America were, at 185 billion euros, only a little more than they were four years ago.

Europe cheers up

European demand should also do its bit for the world economy. Europe’s recovery is not, as is widely held, purely export-driven. Most of the euro area’s current growth comes from domestic demand, as spending by firms and households has perked up. Third quarter GDP figures are likely to show the euro-area economies outpacing America’s for a second consecutive quarter. The euro zone has a reasonable amount of spare capacity, which could allow it to grow above trend for a few years. And European consumers have not been as profligate in recent years as American ones, so they have the scope to reduce their saving and spend more. As a result, the euro area is likely to make a bigger contribution to global growth over the next few years than it has of late.

Asia’s growth has changed the global economy in a lot of ways, mostly for the better. One of them concerns the rest of the world’s vulnerability to the vagaries of the American economy. In the past, American recessions meant global recessions. But this time round, even if America drops sharply, the world won’t stop.

Downwonder

Australia may lie towards the bottom of the map, but its economy has been top of most rankings of developed countries in recent years. Despite the deflation of its housing bubble and a severe drought, the kangaroo economy keeps bouncing along. It is now in its 16th year of

181