欧元区物价指数下降引发通缩担忧

PARIS — Europe’s economy has reached a psychological inflection point.

巴黎——欧洲的经济已经到了一个心理转折点。

On Wednesday, an official report showed that consumer prices in the eurozone fell 0.2 percent in December from a year earlier, the first Time they have turned negative since the dark days of the global financial crisis in 2009.

周三，一份官方报告表明，欧元区12月的消费物价指数同比下降0.2％，是自2009年全球金融危机的黑暗岁月以来首次出现负增长。

It is an outcome that economists have been predicting for more than a year and a trend that has long been complicating Europe’s recovery.

在一年多的时间里，经济学家一直预测会出现这种局面，而且这种趋势也不断在让欧洲经济的复苏过程变得复杂。

Now, the latest data is adding concerns that Europe is headed for a new financial and economic crisis. Unemployment remains persistently high. The euro has been particularly weak. And the political upheaval in Greece is prompting talk about the stability of the 19-country euro currency union.

如今，这些最新数据让人们更加担心，欧洲正面临着一场新的金融和经济危机。失业率居高不下，欧元则是尤其疲软。此外，希腊的政治动荡也引发了对有19个成员国的欧元区的稳定性的讨论。

With the outlook deteriorating, pressure is mounting for the European Central Bank take more aggressive action to avoid a downward price spiral that could undermine the economy for years to come. Top officials have already been signaling that they could announce a major bond-buying program later this month.

随着前景恶化，欧洲央行(European Central Bank)也面临着越来越大的压力，需要采取更激进的措施来避免消费价格持续下跌，从而不给经济造成持续数年的破坏。高层官员已经表示，他们很可能会在本月晚些时候，宣布一项重要的债券购买计划。

But the question raised by many economists is whether the European Central Bank has waited too long to act, and whether its arsenal is powerful enough to address the eurozone’s fundamental problem — a dearth of demand from businesses and consumers for goods and services. Even the bank’s president, Mario Draghi, has said that it alone cannot shoulder the burden of restarting growth.

但是，许多经济学家的问题是，欧洲央行是否等待了太久才采取行动，它的措施又是否足够强大，能够解决欧元区的根本问题——企业和消费者对商品和服务缺乏需求。就连央行行长马里奥·德拉吉(Mario Draghi)都说，央行无法独立承担重启增长的责任。

“The eurozone is suffering from a profound malaise,” said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a think tank in London. “It’s already in a deflationary trap of the kind we saw in Japan in the 1990s, but it’s less well equipped than the Japanese to deal with it,” he added, citing the institutional challenges of managing a currency bloc of 19 nations.

“欧元区极其萎靡不振，”伦敦智库欧洲改革中心(Center for European Reform)的副主任西蒙·蒂尔福德(Simon Tilford)说。“它已经陷入了我们上世纪90年代在日本看到的那种通缩陷阱，但是在应对这个陷阱的问题上，它的准备没有日本那么充分，”他补充道，指出了管理由19个国家组成的货币集团需要面对的制度上的挑战。

The situation in Europe does not appear to meet the classical definition of deflation, a widespread, protracted and self-sustaining decline in prices. And the continued global collapse of crude oil prices contributed significantly to the decline, blurring somewhat the implications of the inflation report for the 19-country euro currency union.

欧洲的情况似乎并不符合通缩的传统定义，即消费价格出现大范围、长期的、具有内生动力的下跌。而且，原油价格在国际市场的持续暴跌也对经济衰退产生了重大影响，这个由19国组成的欧元货币联盟的通胀报告的意义也由此在某种程度上变得模糊不清。

But the trend is dangerous. The low inflation environment was already a signal of a listless economy, with consumers spending little despite low prices and companies having scant incentive to invest in their businesses.

然而，这种趋势是危险的。低通胀的环境已经预示了疲软的经济状况，虽然物价低廉，消费者的支出仍然很少，公司也缺乏对业务进行投资的动力。

If prices actually fall for an extended period, consumers might delay purchase in hopes of getting a better deal later, and businesses would see little reason to make products that would be worth less with each passing month.

倘若消费价格长时间下跌，消费者可能会因为希望以后能看到更划算的价格而推迟购买商品的时间。既然产品的价格不断在降低，企业也就觉得没有什么制造产品的理由。

"We’re not yet in a self-sustaining spiral,” said Gilles Moec, chief European economist at Bank of America in London. “But we’re close.”

“我们还没有陷入一个具有内生动力的漩涡，”美银美林(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)伦敦办公室的首席欧洲经济学家吉勒·莫埃克(Gilles Moëc)说。“但我们正在接近它。”

The labor market provides one illustration of what makes Europe’s situation particularly complicated to fix.

劳动力市场从一个方面说明了为何欧洲的情况会特别复杂，难以修复。

A separate official report on Wednesday showed that the eurozone jobless rate remained at 11.5 percent in November, around the level at which it has been for the last year. But overall numbers don’t give a complete picture of what’s happening in each country, where fortunes are diverging.

周三的另一份官方报告显示，欧元区11月的失业率仍为11.5%，与去年的水平差不多。但是，总体数据并不能详细说明每个国家的具体情况，而每个国家的形势各不相同。

In Germany, which has the bloc’s biggest economy, unemployment fell to 6.4 percent in December from 6.5 percent in November. But in the second- and third-largest of the eurozone economies, France and Italy, the jobless rates climbed, with Italian unemployment reaching a new high of 13.4 percent.

德国是欧元区最大的经济体，12月，其失业率从11月的6.5%下降到6.4％。但是在第二和第三大的欧元区经济体——法国和意大利——失业率却出现攀升，意大利的失业率达到13.4％，创历史新高。

And in Greece and Spain, about a quarter of the population remains without work, a level consistent with economic depression.

在希腊和西班牙，大约四分之一的人口仍然没有工作，与经济衰退的水平一致。

Analysts said on Wednesday that it was now a certainty that the European Central Bank would announce aggressive new measures when it meets in Frankfurt on Jan. 22. They expect the central bank to say it is ready to begin effectively printing money that it would use to buy eurozone government bonds, even if it does not put the measures into practice for several months.

分析人士周三表示，现在可以肯定，欧洲央行1月22日在法兰克福碰头的时候会宣布积极的新措施。他们希望央行能够表示，已准备好开始采取相当于印钞的行动，并借此购买欧元区国家的政府债券，即便它在未来几个月里都不会马上推行此类措施。

In doing so, the bank would follow an unconventional policy similar to the quantitative easing used by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the American economy.

假如这样做了，欧洲央行将遵循的政策会一反常态，与美联储(Federal Reserve)用于刺激美国经济的量化宽松类似。

But quantitative easing is a divisive issue in Europe because of questions about how to allocate the bond buying among eurozone countries, and who would pay if a government defaulted on bonds held by the central bank. That uncertainty is a main reason that Germany does not want to put its taxpayers at risk of having to bail out the bloc’s weaker neighbors.

不过，由于存在一些问题，量化宽松在欧洲争议极大。这些问题包括：如何在欧元区国家中间分配债券购买额？以及万一央行持有的债券遭一国违约的话将由谁来埋单？德国之所以不愿意将本国纳税人置于援助欧元区经济较弱的邻国的风险之中，一个主要原因正是源于这种不确定性。

The central bank has an official goal of trying to keep inflation at just below 2 percent, which it considers an optimal level for a healthy economy. But the bank has not met that target in two years.

欧洲央行设立了将通胀率保持在略低于2%的官方目标，并认为这是经济健康的最佳水平。不过，该行已两年未能达到这一标准。

Japan’s experience in the 1990s showed that traditional monetary policy instruments are largely ineffective with nominal interest rates at zero, as they essentially are now in the eurozone.

日本在上世纪90年代的经验表明，在名义利率为零的情况下，传统的货币政策工具基本不奏效。目前在欧元区，名义利率基本上就是零。

Another way to address the problem might be for eurozone countries to drop their insistence on balancing budgets and to instead use tax cuts and public spending to create demand.

应对这一问题的另一种方式或许是，欧元区国家放下对平衡预算的执念，转而用减税和增加公共开支的方式来创造需求。

So far, though, European officials appear to be holding their course.

不过，到目前为止，欧洲各国的官员似乎还在沿着既定路线走。

“Yes, the eurozone is going through a period of low inflation,” Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and president of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance officials, said in a statement in response to a New York Times query. “But one of the most important reasons for the current low inflation rate is the falling oil price. Core inflation — excluding oil prices — has recently slightly increased.”

“的确，欧元区正在经历低通胀期，”荷兰财政部长杰伦·戴塞尔布卢姆(Jeroen Dijsselbloem)在接到《纽约时报》问询后做出此番声明。他同时担任欧元区财长组成的欧元集团(Eurogroup)的主席。“不过，引发当前低通胀率的最重要的一个原因是不断下滑的油价。刨去油价的核心通胀率近期略有抬升。”

The core inflation rate, which excludes energy and food prices, ticked up to 0.8 percent in December from 0.7 percent the month before, according to Wednesday’s data.

核心通胀率不计算能源与食品价格。根据周三公布的数据，12月份的核心通胀率从头一个月的0.7%升至0.8%。

The German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which has taken a tough line against coordinated economic stimulus, indicated that the latest data had not altered its thinking. A spokesman for the Finance Ministry said in Berlin on Wednesday that Germany would not revise its analysis that there was no risk of deflation in the country. That statement came despite a report on Monday showing that German consumer prices rose 0.1 percent last month.

德国总理安格拉·默克尔(Angela Merkel)领导的政府一直对协同性的经济刺激措施采取强硬立场。她放出信号，表明最新的数据并未改变自身的想法。周三，德国财政部的一名发言人在柏林表示，不会修改关于本国并未面临通缩风险的评估结论。这一声明出台的背景是，周一的一份报告显示，德国的消费物价指数上月仅增长了0.1%。

Consumer prices in the eurozone had not contracted on an annual basis since October 2009, when the slack global economy made the bottom fall out of the market for oil and other commodities. December’s negative rate was down from the 0.3 percent increase in November.

自2009年10月以来，欧元区的消费物价指数就没有出现过同比降低的情况。那时，疲软的全球经济导致原油和其他大宗商品价格跌入谷底。去年12月的数据从11月的上扬0.3%转为了负增长。

Well before eurozone consumer prices tipped below zero, the region’s low inflation rate had been raising alarms.

在欧元区消费价格指数的增长率下探到负数之前，该地区的低通胀率早就拉响了警报。

Economists with the International Monetary Fund warned early last year that the difference between ultralow inflation, which they called lowflation, and outright deflation was mainly a matter of degrees, as the weak price pressures could “scupper the nascent recovery and pressure the most fragile countries.”

去年初，国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)的经济学家们警告，超低通胀——他们的用词是“低通胀”(lowflation)——与真正的通缩之间主要的区别在于程度高低，而疲软的价格压力可能会“让刚刚出现的复苏泡汤，并令最脆弱的那些国家承压”。

Mr. Draghi, the central bank president, said last week in an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt that the risk of deflation “cannot be ruled out completely, but it is limited.”

欧洲央行行长德拉吉上周接受德国《商报》(Handelsblatt)采访时表示，通缩的风险“不能完全排除，但较为有限”。

“We are not there yet,” Mr. Draghi said. “But we need to tackle this risk.”

“我们还没到那个地步，”德拉吉说。“但我们需要应对这一风险。”