IMF：当前经济形势掩盖较长期风险

The International Monetary Fund has warned that good times in the global economy mask longer-term risks, including a $135tn debt pile in G20 nations that companies and consumers are already finding difficult to service.

国际货币基金组织(IMF)警告称，当今全球经济的美好光景掩盖了更长期的风险，包括20国集团(G20)国家积累的135万亿美元巨额债务。公司和消费者已发现很难支付这笔债务的利息。

A day after upgrading its global growth forecasts for this year and next the IMF warned on Wednesday that benign economic conditions were fuelling an appetite for risk that, together with central banks’ response to the 2008 global crisis, appeared to be laying the ground for a new financial crunch.

就在上调今明两年的全球增长预测值一天之后，IMF周三警告称，良性的经济状况正在提高风险偏好，这一点加上各国央行应对2008年全球危机的措施，似乎正为一场新的金融危机奠定基础。

“While the waters seem calm, vulnerabilities are building under the surface [and] if left unattended, these could derail the global recovery,” said Tobias Adrian, of the IMF’s financial stability watchdog.

“尽管水面看似风平浪静，但水面以下的脆弱性正在增加，如果不加应对，这些脆弱性可能破坏全球复苏，”IMF金融稳定监督部门的托比亚斯•阿德里亚(Tobias Adrian)说。

The good times were breeding “complacency”, he said, that was “spawning financial excesses”.

美好时光正在助长“自满”，他说，这开始“催生金融过度行为”。

If these continued to build, the IMF said in its latest Global Financial Stability Report, they could lead to a crisis that, were equity prices to tumble 15 per cent and home prices to fall 9 per cent, would cut 1.7 per cent off global output.

IMF在其最新的《全球金融稳定报告》(Global Financial Stability Report)中表示，如果这些状况继续发展，可能会引发一场危机：假设股价大跌15%，房产价格下降9%，将使全球产出减少1.7%。

Such a crisis would be “broad-based and significant”, though it would be only a third as severe as the 2008 global crisis, the IMF said. The US, where the Fed has ended quantitative easing and is further along the path to normalising monetary policy, would probably be hit less hard than Europe and emerging markets, which would see $100bn in capital outflows.

IMF表示，这样一场危机将是“涉及面广和重大的”，尽管其严重程度将仅为2008年全球危机的三分之一。在美国，美联储(Fed)已终止了量化宽松，并且在货币政策正常化的道路上走在前面，因此美国受到的冲击将小于欧洲和新兴市场，后两者将遭遇1000亿美元的资本外流。

The IMF found cause to worry in the growing non-financial sector debt in G20 economies, which last year reached $135tn, or about 235 per cent of aggregate annual economic output.

IMF发现，G20经济体中不断增加的非金融行业债务是令人担忧的。去年这一债务达到135万亿美元，大约相当于这些经济体年度经济产出总和的235%。

The US and China each accounted for about a third of the $80tn increase in debt since 2006, the IMF said.

IMF表示，美国和中国分别占到了自2006年以来80万亿美元新增债务的三分之一。

The low interest rates that helped fuel the increase in leverage since the financial crisis had broadly made that debt relatively affordable to repay.

自金融危机以来帮助加大杠杆的低利率，总体上使债务相对容易偿还。

But in most G20 countries, companies and households had loaded up on so much debt that the debt service ratios — a measure of affordability — had increased, pointing to greater financial stress. Among the G20 countries where that issue is most acute are Australia, Canada and China, the IMF said.

但在多数G20国家，公司和家庭已积累了如此高的债务，以至于偿债率(debt service ratio)——衡量承受能力的指标——有所升高，指向了更大的金融压力。IMF表示，这个问题最突出的G20国家是澳大利亚、加拿大和中国。