VOLATILITY is back. A long spell of calm, in which America’s stockmarket rose steadily without a big sell-off, ended abruptly this week. The catalyst was a report released on February 2nd showing that wage growth in America had accelerated. The S&P 500 fell by a bit that day, and by a lot on the next trading day. The Vix, an index that reflects how changeable investors expect equity markets to be, spiked from a sleepy 14 at the start of the month to an alarmed 37. In other parts of the world nerves frayed.
波动又回来了。在相当长的平静期，美国股市稳步上升，没有大幅下跌，这一平静期在本周戛然而止。终止的催化剂是2月2日发布的一份报告，报告显示美国的工资增长加速。标准普尔500指数当天下跌了一点，在接下来的一个交易日下跌了很多。波动率指数，反映投资者对股票市场变化的预期的指标，在本月初从低迷的14点飙升至令人担忧的37点。世界其他地方，也是神经紧张。
Markets later regained some of their composure. But more adrenalin-fuelled sessions lie ahead. That is because a transition is under way in which buoyant global growth causes inflation to replace stagnation as investors’ biggest fear. And that long-awaited shift is being complicated by an extraordinary gamble in the world’s biggest economy. Thanks to the recently enacted tax cuts, America is adding a hefty fiscal boost to juice up an expansion that is already mature. Public borrowing is set to double to $1 trillion, or 5% of GDP, in the next fiscal year. What is more, the team that is steering this experiment, both in the White House and the Federal Reserve, is the most inexperienced in recent memory. Whether the outcome is boom or bust, it is going to be a wild ride.
市场后来恢复了一些镇静。但是更多的肾上腺素刺激阶段还在后面。这是因为令投资者最担心的转变正在酝酿，即全球经济的快速增长导致的通胀将取代经济萧条。这一期待已久的转变正因全球最大经济体的一场非同寻常的赌博而变得复杂起来。由于最近实施的减税政策，美国正加大财政刺激力度，以刺激已经成熟的扩张。下一个财年，公共债务将增加一倍，达到1万亿美元，相当于GDP的5%。更重要的是，在白宫和美联储进行这项实验的团队，在近期记忆中是最缺乏经验的。无论结果是繁荣还是萧条，都将是一场疯狂的旅程。
Fire your engines
The recent equity-market gyrations by themselves give little cause for concern. The world economy remains in fine fettle, buoyed by a synchronised acceleration in America, Europe and Asia. The violence of the repricing was because of newfangled vehicles that had been caught out betting on low volatility. However, even as they scrambled to react to its re-emergence, the collateral damage to other markets, such as corporate bonds and foreign exchange, was limited. Despite the plunge, American stock prices have fallen back only to where they were at the beginning of the year.
最近股市由于其自身引起的波动并没有引起人们的担忧。在美国、欧洲和亚洲同步加速的推动下，世界经济仍处于良好状态。重新定价的危害，是由于错误的押注于低波动性的新方法。然而，尽管它们争相采取行动以促使它的重新显现，对其他市场(如公司债券和外汇)的附带损害是有限的。尽管股价暴跌，美国股市却只跌回年初的水平。
Yet this episode does signal just what may lie ahead. After years in which investors could rely on central banks for support, the safety net of extraordinarily loose monetary policy is slowly being dismantled. America’s Federal Reserve has raised interest rates five times already since late 2015 and is set to do so again next month. Ten-year Treasury-bond yields have risen from below 2.1% in September to 2.8%. Stockmarkets are in a tug-of-war between stronger profits, which warrant higher share prices, and higher bond yields, which depress the present value of those earnings and make eye-watering valuations harder to justify.
然而，这一事件确实预示着未来可能会发生什么。在投资者依赖央行的支持多年之后，极度宽松的货币政策的安全网正在慢慢瓦解。自2015年末以来，美联储已经五次提高利率，并将在下个月再次加息。10年期国债收益率从9月份的不足2.1%升至2.8%。股票市场正处于更高的利润和更高的债券收益率之间的拉锯战，前者保证了更高的股票价格的，后者压低了这些收益的现值，使得大量的估值更难被证实。
This tension is an inevitable part of the return of monetary policy to more normal conditions. What is not inevitable is the scale of America’s impending fiscal bet. Economists reckon that Mr Trump’s tax reform, which lowers bills for firms and wealthy Americans—and to a lesser extent for ordinary workers—will jolt consumption and investment to boost growth by around 0.3% this year. And Congress is about to boost government spending, if a budget deal announced this week holds up.
这种紧张是货币政策回归到更正常情况的不可避免的一部分。可以避免的是美国即将到来的财政赌注的规模。经济学家们认为，特朗普的税制改革将刺激消费和投资，使今年的经济增长率提高约0.3%，而这一改革减少了企业和美国富人的账单，而普通工人的税负也会降低。如果本周宣布的预算协议能维持下去，国会将会增加政府开支。
Democrats are to get more funds for child care and other goodies; hawks in both parties have won more money for the defence budget. Mr Trump, meanwhile, still wants his border wall and an infrastructure plan. The mood of fiscal insouciance in Washington, DC, is troubling. Add the extra spending to rising pension and health-care costs, and America is set to run deficits above 5% of GDP for the foreseeable future. Excluding the deep recessions of the early 1980s and 2008, the United States is being more profligate than at any time since 1945.
民主党将获得更多的儿童保育基金和其他福利；两党的鹰派人物都为国防预算赢得了更多的资金。与此同时，特朗普仍想着他的边境墙和基础设施计划。在华盛顿，财政漫不经心的情绪令人不安。增加额外的支出以增加养老金和医疗成本，在可预见的未来，美国的赤字将占GDP的5%以上。除去上世纪80年代初和2008年的严重衰退，美国现在的挥霍程度比1945年以来的任何时候都要大。
A cocktail of expensive stockmarkets, a maturing business cycle and fiscal largesse would test the mettle of the most experienced policymakers. Instead, American fiscal policy is being run by people who have bought into the mantra that deficits don’t matter. And the central bank has a brand new boss, Jerome Powell, who, unlike his recent predecessors, has no formal expertise in monetary policy.
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