John Stepek，2015.6.22
上週我在度假，並且沒有跟辦公室聯系。
就在我離開之前，我的同時Merryn給我發了一封郵件說：“我真不敢相信你會錯過希臘離開歐元區！”
我承認自己當時感覺到了一陣刺痛。迄今為止，我已經跟蹤了這個冗長的故事長達三年，我讨厭錯過故事的結局。
我沒有必要擔心。希臘在本週還會有另外一個“最後期限”。並且，如果誰能打賭說這是最終的一個期限，那麼我承認他比我勇敢。
但是，我們是否過分樂觀？
希臘的另外一天、另外一次危機
歐元區今天召開了緊急會議，這是試圖與希臘達成協議的另外一個“十一小時”。我已經沒有興趣了解整個辯論過程，我相信你也沒有興趣。但是以防萬一，我在下面列舉出了一些節選。
希臘無法償還自己欠下的債務。為了從歐洲其他國家獲得債務減免，希臘需要改革經濟。但是希臘不願意改革，同時它也不願意退出歐元區，而這如果它不能償還債務的話將很有可能發生。
所以，希臘面臨著兩難的境地。同樣的故事在過去三年中經常發生。
而市場不能就希臘選擇任何一種方式而對其進行譴責。正如John Auhter在金融時報（FT）中寫到的那樣，歐洲“自從希臘在一月份大選開始就一直沒有改變。”
什麼會觸發“明斯基時刻”？
市場因為上週列出的理由而自滿。事實是，我們從2009年3月份金融危機複蘇以來就有很多不愉快的經歷。但它們絲毫沒有削弱牛市的威力。投資者也由開始憤怒地懷疑演變為現在相信央行可以在水面上行走。即使熊市也流露出一種順從接受的態度——這看起來很糟糕。並且，央行仍然掌控者市場的發展，很難看出有什麼事情可以導致美夢破滅。
在這種大背景下，你打算如何投資？你可以辯論稱市場是非理性的，但是如果在全球央行都很好地掌控著經濟的情況下做空的話，這無疑是一種金融自殺。市場說：“不要與美聯儲做對”，這在過去六年中沒有被論證為完全正確的。
你可以對希臘退出歐元區的任何事情都感覺到害怕，但是希臘迄今已經在歐元區的邊緣至少三年了。如果你選擇將所有的時間都用於保存現金實力上，比如，等待下一個大事件，那麼你將錯過大量的收益。危機的疲勞感可以讓你忘卻整個市場——上帝知道我目前就處於這個階段，我只想這件事快點結束，這樣我們就能談論別的事情了。
問題就像我上週提到的那樣，這也是Hyman Minsky正確的地方。這完全是心理學。危機過後，我們都會興奮，每次市場喊“狼來了！”我們就會尋求資金安全之處。
但是如果市場一直喊狼來了卻什麼事業沒有發生。最終，我們發現自己忽略了市場關於狼來了的呼喊。相反，我們在最危險的地方進倉，因為這將會帶來最好的收益。直到有一天，市場上的狼真的來了，那時候我們已經遠離安全之處，市場開始了一場真正的殺戮。
是否存在央行無法解決的問題？
那麼，讓我們考慮一下潛在的觸發因素。接下來的危機是源於央行無法解決的一些棘手問題。
另外一個“雷曼兄弟”不足以對央行造成困難，因為我們都知道美聯儲不僅印刷紙幣而且進行資本重組——救助。LTCM（90年代末的大型對沖基金）和Lehman已經建立起處理主要金融機構崩盤的策略，它們應該能夠處理這類事情。
但是央行更為棘手的問題是處理主權債務。如果你所在的國家很明顯不能償還債務，並且通過印刷紙幣來解決，那麼你就是在“貨幣化國家債務”。央行不會允許國家這麼做。換句話說，救助一個國家比救助一個銀行要棘手得多。（如果你想知道，當前的量化寬松政策表面上是在提高貨幣供給，而不是給政府支出提供融資）。
假如希臘離開歐元區。那麼希臘本身或許不是一個問題。希臘計劃離開歐元區已經有很長一段時間，任何投資者都有時間對沖。也許真正的問題是，希臘退出歐元區顯示出了歐元的貨幣兌換機制而不是一個貨幣聯盟。這一點很重要是因為歐元區其他那些無法償還債務的國家也將面臨風險。它們向週邊國家出售債券推動了這一事件的發生。
事實上，市場給歐元區提出了最難的一個問題：你是一個聯盟，共享所有的債務，當弱小的成員需要幫助時，強大的成員會挺身而出？或者，你是一個由獨立的國家根據協議組成的聯盟，並遵循統一匯率？
英國讀者知道當市場對經濟保持在一個匯率機制的能力失去信心的時候將會發生什麼。它迫使改變，比如1992年英鎊的“白色星期三”。
對歐元區來說，債券收益很有可能再次分道揚镳。換句話說，與德國相比，較弱的國家所收取的利率將會上升。這是關於政治，不是歐央行權力範圍内可以抵禦的。歐元區最根本的政治問題是決策者往往與選民的意願相對。所以，這類問題進一步整合將對歐央行拯救歐元區造成很大困難。
歐洲問題的核心是民主赤字，一直以來是歐洲的最大弱點。歐洲正在緩慢但堅定地透露出它的赤字規模。
所以，希臘的退出本身並不值得害怕。事實是，它有可能導致民衆對西班牙或者意大利離開歐元區的多米諾骨牌效應。而這些國家對全球市場來說有非常大的重要性。
The real threat that a Greek exit poses to the eurozone
By: John Stepek22/06/20155 comments
I was on holiday last week, and out of touch with the office.
Just before I left, my colleague Merryn sent me an email saying: “I can’t believe you might miss Grexit!”
I’ll admit that I felt a stab of anguish. I’ve been covering this interminable story for three years or more now, and I’d hate to miss the denouement.
I needn’t have worried. The Greeks have yet another ‘last-minute’ deadline this week. And it’d be a braver man than me who bets on it being the final one.
But are we all getting a little too complacent?
Another day, another crisis in Greece
There’s a eurozone emergency meeting (funny how that phrase just trips off the keyboard these days) today. It’s yet another ‘11th hour’ attempt to reach a deal with Greece. I have no interest in running through the arguments again, and I’m sure you don’t either. But just in case, here’s the potted version.
Greece can’t pay back the money it owes. To get debt relief from the rest of Europe, it needs to reform its economy. But Greece doesn’t want to reform its economy. Nor does it want to leave the euro, which is very likely to happen if it defaults on its debts.
So either one side or the other blinks first, or Greece leaves the eurozone. Same story as it’s been for the last three years or so.
And markets, apparently, really couldn’t give a damn what Greece does either way. As John Authers notes in the FT, the euro is “virtually unchanged since January’s Greek election sparked this phase in the crisis”.
Is that wise?
What could trigger a ‘Minsky moment’?
Markets are complacent for the reasons I outlined last Monday. The simple truth is that we’ve been through any number of potentially nasty scenarios since the recovery from the financial crisis began in March 2009. So far none of them has made a dent in the bull market.
Investors have gone from raging scepticism to a belief that central banks can walk on water. Even the bears now exude a sort of resigned acceptance – things look ugly, but it’s hard to see what can upset the apple cart while central banks remain in control.
Given that backdrop, how are you meant to invest? You can argue that the market is irrational, but shorting it is financial suicide when the world’s central banks remain in printing mode. The market saying: “Don’t fight the Fed” has never been proved so right as over the last six years.
And you can fret all you want about Grexit, but Greece has been on the point of abandoning the eurozone for at least three years now. If you’d spent all that time sitting in cash, say, waiting for the next big one, you’d have missed out on plenty of gains.
Markets can be forgiven for feeling a bit of crisis fatigue – lord knows I’m most definitely at the stage where I just want it to be over with so we can talk about something else.
Trouble is, as I also pointed out last week, this is why Hyman Minsky was right. It’s all about psychology. After a crash, we’re all jumping at our own shadows, and every time the market cries ‘wolf!’ we rush for safety.
But the market keeps calling ‘wolf!’, and nothing happens. And eventually we find ourselves ignoring the cries of ‘wolf!’ – instead, we start to head for the most dangerous patches of pasture we can, because they offer the best pickings.
Then one day, the market cries ‘wolf!’ and this time it isn’t wrong. And by that point we’ve all wandered so far from safety that the result is sheer carnage.
Is there any problem that central banks cannot fix?
So let’s think about a potential trigger. The next crisis has to arise from something that is tricky for central banks to deal with.
Another ‘Lehman Brothers’ probably wouldn’t cut it, because we know now that the Fed would just print money and organise a recapitalisation – a bailout. The strategy for dealing with major financial institution blow-ups has been established by LTCM (the big hedge fund blow-up in the late 1990s) and Lehman. They should be able to contain that sort of thing.
But a far more ‘tricky’ problem for central banks to deal with is sovereign debt. If it becomes clear that your country cannot repay its debts, and you print money to allow it do so, then you are ‘monetising the national debt’. Central banks aren’t allowed to do that. In other words, bailing out a whole country is much trickier than bailing out a bank.
(In case you’re wondering, the current quantitative easing programmes are ostensibly all about driving up the money supply, not financing government spending. You can argue that this is all semantics and perception, but semantics and perception matter in this case.)
Let’s say Greece leaves the euro. Greece itself may not be a problem. Grexit has been on the cards for so long, that anyone with exposure has had plenty of time to hedge it.
But maybe the real problem is that a Greek exit reveals the euro as an exchange-rate mechanism, rather than a currency union.
That matters because then markets start to look at other eurozone countries that might be at risk of failing to repay their debts. They start to push the issue by selling off bonds in peripheral countries.
In effect, the market poses the hardest question for the eurozone to answer: are you a union, where liabilities are shared and the strongest members cough up as and when needed to bail out the weaker members, or are you a group of disparate countries united only by an agreement to stick to a one-size-fits-all exchange rate?
Fellow British readers know exactly what happens when the market loses faith in an economy’s ability to stay within an exchange rate mechanism. It forces a change, as per 1992’s ‘White Wednesday’ for sterling.
In the case of the eurozone, it’s likely to start with bond yields diverging again. In other words, the interest rates weaker countries are charged will rise compared to German bunds, say.
And this isn’t something the European Central Bank (ECB) can defend against without pushing its mandate beyond the limits. This is all about politics. And the fundamental problem with politics in the eurozone is that the people in charge tend to be going against the wishes of the voters. So further integration of the sort that would allow the ECB to ‘save’ the eurozone is likely to be hard to drive through.
The democratic deficit that lies at the heart of Europe was always its biggest weakness. The euro is slowly but surely revealing the scale of that deficit.
So while Grexit itself might be nothing to fear, the fact that it could lead to worries about Spain or Italy leaving the euro may trigger that domino effect that everyone worries about. And those countries are certainly significant enough to rattle global markets.
本文翻譯由兄弟財經提供
文章來源：http://moneyweek.com/greece-threat-grexit-poses-to-eurozone/#disqus_thread