2018年左右美國市場的三大趨勢

January columns are full of predictions. Yet as any good journalist (or market participant) knows, making them is a risky business. So rather than tell you in this first column of the new year exactly when the market will crash or what the midterm elections will bring, I am going to say which are the most important topics to watch in business and economics in 2018. Regardless of which way they turn, the following three issues will move markets.

一月份的專欄充斥著各種預測文章。然而，任何一個好記者(或者市場參與者)都知道，預測是有風險的。所以，在新年的第一篇專欄里，我不打算告訴你市場會在什么時候崩盤，或者中期選舉會有什么結果，而是談一談2018年經濟和商業(yè)領域有哪些最重要的問題值得關注。無論走勢如何，以下3個問題將左右市場動向。

First and foremost, wages. Will they finally grow robustly and broadly or not? Over the past decade, the US has seen a jobless recovery followed by a wageless recovery. There are plenty of jobs now — just 4 per cent of Americans are unemployed — and, over the past 12 months, wages started to grow as well.

首先，也是最重要的一點是薪資。薪資是否終于要實現普遍而強勁的增長了?過去10年，美國先是經歷了就業(yè)不增長的復蘇，隨后則是薪資不增長的復蘇。現在有充裕的工作崗位——美國的失業(yè)率僅為4%——而且過去12個月，薪資也開始增長。

But it has been too little too late and, for the most part, too concentrated at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Lower-level workers (in home healthcare, hospitality and retail) and superstars in high wage fields (such as the financial services industry) have seen gains, but most of the rest of us have not.

但薪資增長幅度太小，來得太遲，而且在很大程度上集中于薪資水平的兩端。較底層的從業(yè)人員(家庭護理業(yè)、招待性行業(yè)和零售業(yè))以及高薪行業(yè)(如金融服務業(yè))中頂層人員的薪資已經上漲，但我們大多數人的薪資沒有增長。

Why is that? There are plenty of data-driven reasons that one could give, but I persist in thinking that a key reason for sluggish wage growth is psychological. In the US, baby-boomers and millennials are now the single largest cohorts in the workplace. I cannot quite imagine the 50-plus crowd, worried about ageism and being replaced by technology they do not understand, being quick to ask for a raise, even in a tightening job market. Most of them just want to hang on to their current position until retirement.

為何如此呢?人們可以給出大量有數據支撐的理由，但我堅持認為，薪資增長緩慢的一個關鍵原因在于心理。在美國，“嬰兒潮一代”和“千禧一代”是職場上最大的兩個群體。50多歲的人會擔心年齡大了受到歧視，擔心自己的工作被不了解的技術所替代，我想象不出他們會挺身而出要求加薪，即使在就業(yè)形勢好的時候。絕大多數50多歲的人只想保住目前的崗位干到退休。

Meanwhile, millennials are living and working in very different ways than their predecessors. They crave freedom and flexibility as much as higher wages. We will see if the trend holds once these 20-somethings start having kids and buying homes, but last week’s US Federal Reserve minutes noted that many employers are giving out additional benefits or non-traditional working arrangements rather than raises, even with 3 per cent growth and the tailwind of the largest tax cut in 30 years about to kick in. This would seem to support the idea that our conventional ideas about labour markets, like so many things in the economy today, need to be rethought.

與此同時，千禧一代的生活與工作方式與之前的幾代人大不相同。他們不僅看重高薪，還同樣看重自由與彈性。等到這些20多歲的年輕人將來開始買房生子，我們就能知道這種趨勢能否持續(xù)下去。但是，上周美聯儲(Fed)的備忘錄指出，即使在3%的經濟增長率和30年來最大規(guī)模減稅即將實施的利好背景下，很多雇主提供的是額外福利或者非常規(guī)工作安排，而非加薪。這似乎可以印證一種看法——就像對待當下經濟中的許多其它事物一樣——對勞務市場的傳統(tǒng)觀念需要重新審視。

The other thing to watch, of course, is corporate spending. With the public sector, hamstrung by partisanship, holding the majority of new debt created since the financial crisis, and more significant consumer demand constrained by the lack of serious wage hikes, it is up to corporations to buoy the economy.

另一個需要注意的問題自然是企業(yè)支出。金融危機以來產生的新增債務大部分來自因黨派政治而瀕臨癱瘓的公共部門，加上薪資增長幅度不大限制了更旺盛的消費者需求，因此拉動經濟增長的任務落到了企業(yè)的肩上。

According to Republicans, that was the whole point of the tax cut — to encourage companies to bring back their overseas cash hoard and invest it in productive capital expenditure. While we have seen a few post-tax cut announcements about bonuses and more hiring on the part of companies such as AT&T, CVS and FedEx, it is very likely that the majority of companies will spend the bulk of their tax savings on mergers and acquisitions, share buybacks and dividend payments, just as they did last year (indeed, the Fed minutes hint at just that).

共和黨認為，這便是減稅的意義所在——即鼓勵企業(yè)把海外現金儲備帶回美國，用于生產性資本支出。雖然我們看到AT&T、CVS和FedEx等部分企業(yè)在稅改法案通過后公布了一些關于獎金和增加招聘的計劃，但絕大多數企業(yè)很可能會把減稅節(jié)省下來的錢用于并購和收購、股票回購以及派發(fā)股息，就像他們去年所做的那樣(美聯儲會議紀要也暗示了這一點)。

Why would they do otherwise, when there are no quid pro quos in the tax bill to force them to, and more than half of corporate compensation is linked to share prices that are driven up by this sort of financial engineering?

他們有什么理由不這樣做呢?稅收法案中又沒有列出交換條件來強迫他們怎樣做，而且企業(yè)薪酬有一半以上與股價掛鉤，而股價會被此類金融工程所推高。

Pouring more money into the market (which is already three and a half times the size of the real economy, just like in 2007) may keep animal spirits high for a few more quarters. But this should be juxtaposed against the effect of the Fed’s balance sheet deleveraging (which will really be felt by mid 2018) and likely rate hikes. These two factors could start to puncture the record corporate debt bubble, flush out weaker players and trigger a correction.

向市場投入更多資金(市場規(guī)模已經是實體經濟規(guī)模的3.5倍，就像在2007年時一樣)可能會使“動物精神”繼續(xù)高漲幾個季度。但是這要與美聯儲資產負債表去杠桿(2018年中期將真正感受到其影響)以及可能加息的效應放在一起考慮。這兩個因素可能開始刺破創(chuàng)紀錄的企業(yè)債務泡沫、淘汰較弱的參與者并引發(fā)市場調整。

“I’m quite worried about corporate debt,” says Bricklin Dwyer, senior US economist at BNP Paribas. “I think you’ll see very different corporate and market behaviour when borrowing costs are, say, 5-7 per cent rather than 3-5 per cent.”

“我相當擔心企業(yè)債務，”法國巴黎銀行(BNP Paribas)高級美國經濟學家布里克林•德懷爾(Bricklin Dwyer)表示，“當借貸成本上升時，比如上升至5%-7%，而不是3%-5%的水平，我認為你會看到企業(yè)和市場行為變得截然不同。”

Finally, if a correction comes by the end of the year, where does it come from? On that score, and many others, I will be watching the tech sector. It has been the main driver of global equities over the past year, yet its business model is based on light touch regulation, something that looks likely to change.

最后一點，如果今年內出現調整，會首先發(fā)生在哪個領域?在這一點上，以及其他許多方面，我會關注科技行業(yè)。過去一年，科技板塊是全球股市上漲的主要驅動力，但這個行業(yè)的業(yè)務模式是基于“輕監(jiān)管”——這一點可能會改變。

Some of the trigger points in the next few quarters could be the EU’s reaction to Google’s efforts to comply with its rulings around anti-competitive behaviour (which competitors say do not go far enough), a restriction of bitcoin trading, state-by-state antitrust cases involving the FANGs — Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google — or new revelations about Russian election meddling involving social media.

未來幾個季度可能觸發(fā)改變的事情包括：歐盟對谷歌(Google)履行其裁決情況的反應(歐盟針對谷歌反競爭行為做出的裁決被競爭對手認為還遠遠不夠)，對比特幣交易的限制，各州涉及Facebook、蘋果(Apple)、Netflix和谷歌四大科技企業(yè)的反壟斷案件，或者社交媒體關于俄羅斯干涉大選的新爆料。

In the past week, we have seen the US government taking a firmer regulatory hand, with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US vetoing China’s Ant Financial bid for Money Gram, the US money transfer company, on the grounds that it would compromise the data safety of US citizens.

過去一周，我們看到美國政府正在采取更加嚴厲的監(jiān)管立場——美國外國投資委員會(CFIUS)否決了中國的螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)收購美國匯款公司速匯金(MoneyGram)的交易，理由是該交易會危及美國公民的數據安全。

Data are, after all, the new oil — the most valuable commodity of the digital age. Watch closely who gets to control it — they will be the winners, this year and for many more ahead.

畢竟數據就好比是當今的石油，是數字時代最具價值的商品。我們需要密切關注誰將掌控數據——他們將成為今年、乃至未來很多年的贏家。

[email protected] 譯者/何黎