2021年经济学人 美国的通货膨胀开始飙升(2)（在线收听）

The Fed and the White House both expect any pickup in inflation this year to be temporary. Financial markets are less sure. They are pricing in both a growing risk of a prolonged period of inflation above the Fed's target and the possibility of higher interest rates in 2022—whereas at the Fed's most recent meeting in March the median monetary-policymaker did not forecast lift-off until after 2023. The central-banking view stems chiefly from the state of the labour market, which is about 8.4m jobs short of the level of employment in February 2020 and even further behind where it would have been had the pre-pandemic trend continued. That amount of economic slack should keep inflation subdued.

美联储和白宫都预计，今年通胀率的任何上升都将是暂时的。金融市场就不那么确定了。他们在定价中既考虑到了高于美联储目标的通胀持续时间越来越长的风险，也考虑到了在2022年加息的可能性——然而在美联储3月份的最近一次会议上，货币政策制定者的中值并没有预测加息——在2023年之后才会加息。央行的观点主要源于劳动力市场的现状，与2020年2月的就业水平相比，约有840万个就业岗位，甚至比大流行趋势持续之前的水平还要低。这样的经济萧条应该会抑制通货膨胀。

Yet investors could be forgiven for asking questions of the economists' models. These have consistently underestimated the pace of America's jobs rebound. In the second quarter of 2020 the median respondent to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's survey of professional forecasters thought unemployment two quarters later would average 11%; in fact it turned out to be only 6.8%. That was the biggest overestimate in the history of the survey and more than three times the next highest such error. In February this year forecasters expected unemployment in the second quarter to average 6.1%, only for it to fall below that rate in March. If the labour market continues to outperform expectations the economy will eat up slack and push up inflation sooner.

然而，投资者对经济学家的模型提出质疑也是情有可原的。这些人一直低估了美国就业反弹的速度。在2020年第二季度，在费城联邦储备银行对专业预测人士进行的调查中，受访者中值认为两个季度后的失业率将平均为11%。事实上，这个数字只有6.8%。这是该调查历史上最大的高估，是次高错误的三倍多。今年2月，预测者预计第二季度的平均失业率为6.1%，而3月份的失业率才会低于这个水平。如果劳动力市场的表现继续好于预期，经济将更快地消化疲软并推高通胀。

At that point the Fed will face a choice. Its new policy framework seeks to overshoot its 2% target temporarily after recessions, in order to make up lost ground. But it has been vague about what this "average-inflation targeting" means in practice. Some recent speeches by officials have suggested that the central bank needs to compensate for lost inflation since last spring. Others have implied that August is the starting point for catch-up policy, as that is when the framework changed. But there has been no inflation shortfall since August. If the springtime bump in inflation does not melt away, the central bank will be forced to decide precisely what it wants.

到那时美联储将面临一个选择。它的新政策框架试图在衰退后暂时超过2%的目标以弥补失去的份额。但对于“平均通胀目标”的实际含义它一直含糊其辞。官员们最近的一些讲话暗示，央行需要弥补去年春天以来失去的通胀。其他人暗示，8月份是追赶政策的起点，因为框架就是在8月份发生变化的。但自8月份以来，通胀水平一直没有下降。如果春季通货膨胀的冲击没有消失，央行将被迫准确地决定它想要什么。