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发信人: mikec (最远的你是我最近的爱), 信区: English
标 题: 二月十七号格林斯潘发表的国情报告1(GRE水平)
发信站: 紫 丁 香 (Thu Feb 24 14:09:34 2000) WWW-POST
Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan
The Federal Reserve's semiannual report on the economy and monetary policy
Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of
Representatives
February 17, 2000
Chairman Greenspan presented identical testimony before the Committee on
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, on February 23, 2000
I appreciate this opportunity to present the Federal Reserve's semiannual
report on the economy and monetary policy.
There is little evidence that the American economy, which grew more than 4
percent in 1999 and surged forward at an even faster pace in the second half
of the year, is slowing appreciably. At the same time, inflation has remained
largely contained. An increase in the overall rate of inflation in 1999 was
mainly a result of higher energy prices. Importantly, unit labor costs
actually declined in the second half of the year. Indeed, still-preliminary
data indicate that total unit cost increases last year remained
extraordinarily low, even as the business expansion approached a record nine
years. Domestic operating profit margins, after sagging for eighteen months,
apparently turned up again in the fourth quarter, and profit expectations for
major corporations for the first quarter have been undergoing upward
revisions since the beginning of the year--scarcely an indication of imminent
economic weakness.
The Economic Forces at Work
Underlying this performance, unprecedented in my half-century of observing
the American economy, is a continuing acceleration in productivity. Nonfarm
business output per workhour increased 3-1/4 percent during the past
year--likely more than 4 percent when measured by nonfarm business income.
Security analysts' projections of long-term earnings, an indicator of
expectations of company productivity, continued to be revised upward in
January, extending a string of upward revisions that began in early 1995. One
result of this remarkable economic performance has been a pronounced increase
in living standards for the majority of Americans. Another has been a labor
market that has provided job opportunities for large numbers of people
previously struggling to get on the first rung of a ladder leading to
training, skills, and permanent employment.
Yet those profoundly beneficial forces driving the American economy to
competitive excellence are also engendering a set of imbalances that, unless
contained, threaten our continuing prosperity. Accelerating productivity
entails a matching acceleration in the potential output of goods and services
and a corresponding rise in real incomes available to purchase the new
output. The problem is that the pickup in productivity tends to create even
greater increases in aggregate demand than in potential aggregate supply.
This occurs principally because a rise in structural productivity growth has
its counterpart in higher expectations for long-term corporate earnings.
This, in turn, not only spurs business investment but also increases stock
prices and the market value of assets held by households, creating additional
purchasing power for which no additional goods or services have yet been
produced.
Historical evidence suggests that perhaps three to four cents out of every
additional dollar of stock market wealth eventually is reflected in increased
consumer purchases. The sharp rise in the amount of consumer outlays relative
to disposable incomes in recent years, and the corresponding fall in the
saving rate, has been consistent with this so-called wealth effect on
household purchases. Moreover, higher stock prices, by lowering the cost of
equity capital, have helped to support the boom in capital spending.
Outlays prompted by capital gains in excess of increases in income, as best
we can judge, have added about 1 percentage point to annual growth of gross
domestic purchases, on average, over the past five years. The additional
growth in spending of recent years that has accompanied these wealth gains as
well as other supporting influences on the economy appears to have been met
in about equal measure from increased net imports and from goods and services
produced by the net increase in newly hired workers over and above the normal
growth of the work force, including a substantial net inflow of workers from
abroad.
But these safety valves that have been supplying goods and services to meet
the recent increments to purchasing power largely generated by capital gains
cannot be expected to absorb an excess of demand over supply indefinitely.
First, growing net imports and a widening current account deficit require
ever larger portfolio and direct foreign investments in the United States, an
outcome that cannot continue without limit.
Imbalances in the labor markets perhaps may have even more serious
implications for inflation pressures. While the pool of officially unemployed
and those otherwise willing to work may continue to shrink, as it has
persistently over the past seven years, there is an effective limit to new
hiring, unless immigration is uncapped. At some point in the continuous
reduction in the number of available workers willing to take jobs, short of
the repeal of the law of supply and demand, wage increases must rise above
even impressive gains in productivity. This would intensify inflationary
pressures or squeeze profit margins, with either outcome capable of bringing
our growing prosperity to an end.
As would be expected, imbalances between demand and potential supply in
markets for goods and services are being mirrored in the financial markets by
an excess in the demand for funds. As a consequence, market interest rates
are already moving in the direction of containing the excess of demand in
financial markets and therefore in product markets as well. For example, BBB
corporate bond rates adjusted for inflation expectations have risen by more
than 1 percentage point during the past two years. However, to date, rising
business earnings expectations and declining compensation for risk have more
than offset the effects of this increase, propelling equity prices and the
wealth effect higher. Should this process continue, however, with the
assistance of a monetary policy vigilant against emerging macroeconomic
imbalances, real long-term rates will at some point be high enough to finally
balance demand with supply at the economy's potential in both the financial
and product markets. Other things equal, this condition will involve equity discount factors high enough to bring the rise
in asset values into line with that of household incomes, thereby stemming
the impetus to consumption relative to income that has come from rising
wealth. This does not necessarily imply a decline in asset values--although
that, of course, can happen at any time for any number of reasons--but rather
that these values will increase no faster than household incomes.
Because there are limits to the amount of goods and services that can be
supplied from increasing net imports and by drawing on a limited pool of
persons willing to work, it necessarily follows that consumption cannot keep
rising faster than income. Moreover, outsized increases in wealth cannot
persist indefinitely either. For so long as the levels of consumption and
investment are sensitive to asset values, equity values increasing at a pace
faster than income, other things equal, will induce a rise in overall demand
in excess of potential supply. But that situation cannot persist without
limit because the supply safety valves are themselves limited.
With foreign economies strengthening and labor markets already tight, how the
current wealth effect is finally contained will determine whether the
extraordinary expansion that it has helped foster can slow to a sustainable
pace, without destabilizing the economy in the process.
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