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The fragile four
脆弱四国
Which emerging markets are most vulnerable to American financial tantrums?
哪些新兴市场最易受到美国金融动荡的影响？
There are few greater honours than becoming finance minister of your country. But there are better and worse days to start the job. Chatib Basri became finance minister of Indonesia, the fourth-most-populous country in the world, on May 21st 2013. That was only a day before the start of a financial sell-off known as the "taper tantrum". Yields on American Treasuries rose abruptly after Ben Bernanke, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke about reducing (or tapering) the Fed's bond purchases. Higher American yields shattered the appeal of emerging markets, undermining their currencies, bonds and shares. "I had very little time to adjust," Mr Basri noted in 2016.
没有什么比成为贵国的财政部长更伟大的荣誉了。但是，这项工作的开始有好有坏。2013年5月21日，查提布·巴斯里成为世界第四人口大国印度尼西亚的财政部长。而就在一天前，金融抛售开始了，即所谓的“缩减恐慌”。在时任美联储主席本·伯南克谈到减少(或缩减)美联储的债券购买计划后，美国国债的收益率突然上升。更高的美国国债收益率粉碎了新兴市场的吸引力，削弱了它们的货币、债券和股票。“我几乎没有时间调整，”巴斯里在2016年指出。
Policymakers in emerging markets now fear a second such tantrum. As Treasury yields jumped at the end of last month, a broad index of emerging-market shares fell by over 7% in little more than a week. This is "shaping up to be a bruiser", wrote Robin Brooks of the Institute of International Finance, a bankers' group, on Twitter. Markets have calmed down in recent days. But if they again lose their composure, which emerging economies will be worst hit and why
现在，新兴市场的政策制定者担心再次出现这样的恐慌。随着上月底美国国债收益率的飙升，新兴市场股票指数在一周多一点的时间里下跌了7%以上。国际金融协会(一个银行家团体)的罗宾·布鲁克斯在推特上写道，这“正在成为一个彪形大汉”。最近几天市场已经平静下来。但如果它们再次失去冷静，哪些新兴经济体将受到最严重的打击，为什么？
One way to identify future casualties is to look at the characteristics of past victims. Back in 2013 Indonesia was one of an unfortunate group of emerging markets dubbed the "fragile five" by James Lord of Morgan Stanley, a bank. The group, which also included Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey, were all struggling with inflationary pressure, an overvalued exchange rate and a conspicuous current-account deficit (which measures a country's trade deficit among other things). A few months into the tantrum Indonesia reported that its deficit had increased to 4.4% of GDP. The "market went into shock", Mr Basri recalls.
确定未来受害者的一种方法是观察以往受害者的特征。早在2013年，摩根史坦利银行的詹姆斯·劳德就将不幸的新兴经济体称为“脆弱五国”，而印尼就是其中之一。其它国家还包括巴西、印度、南非和土耳其，它们都在同通货膨胀压力、汇率高估和明显的经常账户赤字(用以衡量一个国家的贸易赤字)作斗争。在动荡的几个月后，印尼报告其赤字已经上升到GDP的4.4%。“市场陷入了震荡”，巴斯里回忆道。
Similar factors were combined into a "vulnerability index" by the Fed's own economists in 2014. For the most part, the worse a country scored on the index, the more its currency fell in the taper tantrum. This kind of evidence has prompted Fed officials ever since to argue that the sensitivity of emerging markets to the Fed's words and deeds depends a lot on economic fundamentals in the emerging markets themselves.
美联储自己的经济学家在2014年将类似的因素组合成一个“脆弱性指数”。在大多数情况下，一个国家在该指数上的得分越低，其货币在“缩减恐慌”中下跌的就越多。这类证据促使美联储官员自那以后提出，新兴市场对美联储言行的敏感性在很大程度上取决于新兴市场自身的基本经济要素。
To the Fed's critics, that can sound like blaming the victim. But it is also a hopeful message. It implies that emerging markets have some control of their own fates. They are not "purely passive objects of the effects of Fed policy decisions", as Mr Bernanke put it in 2015. Mr Basri has recounted the numerous measures he and other policymakers introduced to make Indonesia less fragile. They narrowed the country's current-account deficit by raising interest rates, tightening credit regulations and cutting fuel subsidies, despite the political damage that would ensue. Cabinet discussions were very "dynamic", Mr Basri writes.
对美联储的批评者来说，这听起来像是在指责受害者。但这也是一条充满希望的信息。这意味着新兴市场在一定程度上控制着自己的命运。它们并非像伯南克在2015年所说的那样，是“美联储政策决定影响的纯粹被动对象”。巴斯里详述了他和其他政策制定者为使印尼不那么脆弱而采取的众多措施。它们通过提高利率、收紧信贷管制和削减燃料补贴来缩小该国的经常账户赤字，尽管这将带来政治上的损害。巴斯里写道，内阁讨论非常“活跃”。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
