圣诞老人也需要面对现实
Being Santa Claus is fun. Delivering the credit-card bills later is much less fun.And so it will be for U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. He will get to play Santa Claus at the outset of his term, telling people they can spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the name of stimulus. Later, of course, he'll have to play Scrooge, telling the country that the bill has come due.
The challenge for the Obama team is making sure Americans in general, and Congress in particular, remember that both roles lie ahead for the new president. The task, in the words of one senior Obama aide, is to make sure that people don't think the model for stimulus spending in coming months is 'backing in the Brink's truck and opening up the door.'
More broadly, Mr. Obama's team needs to figure out whether there are steps it can take at the outset to build its credibility on fighting deficits in the long run, even as it accepts them in the short run. Such measures are possible and would help calm financial markets as red ink spreads.
If you listened closely to Mr. Obama over the weekend, you could hear him warning people that big spending to stimulate the economy -- and 'big' now means a stimulus package something in the order of $500 billion by most estimates -- shouldn't mean mindless spending.
First, the stimulus message: The need for a big economic jolt means 'we can't worry short term about the deficit,' Mr. Obama said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'We've got to make sure that the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving.'
Then, the cold-water message: 'We are not going to simply write a bunch of checks and let them be spent without some very clear criteria as to how this money is going to benefit the overall economy and put people back to work,' the president-elect told reporters. The new administration's plans will be based on what is 'going to make the biggest difference in the economy and what will have some long-term benefits.'
In other words, if the country is going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on economic stimulus, it should have something to show for it when the crisis ends. Hence Mr. Obama's emphasis over the weekend on spending on 'infrastructure' -- build roads, modernize schools, expand Internet access, improve buildings' energy efficiency, put better technology in hospitals.
That's an attempt to frame how money will be spent. But how do you show seriousness about the budget deficit amid that spending?
Right now, the twin towers of stock-market declines and job losses have produced a remarkable bipartisan consensus that this simply isn't a time to worry about the deficit. As a result, Mr. Obama has the closest thing anyone in his job ever gets to a blank check. He thus has been given an enormous opportunity to shape the nation's priorities at the very outset of a presidential term, one probably matched only by the opening Franklin Roosevelt had in taking office in the depths of the Depression.
In fact, this opportunity is very much shaped by the experience of the pre-Roosevelt Depression years, when worrying about the budget deficit in a time of economic collapse had catastrophic results.
So the Obama team believes that for the next 18 months or so, it would be a mistake to let deficit concerns steer government fiscal policy. In that period, the deficit will rise to levels that once would have seemed alarming.
The $455 billion deficit for the fiscal year that ended Oct. 1 already is the largest on record in dollar terms. As a percentage of gross domestic product, though, it amounts to 3.2%, less than at the peak of the 1980s downturn.
But the deficit will be a lot worse next year, likely reaching between $750 billion and $1 trillion, depending on how costs of the financial-sector bailout are accounted for. The only real question is whether the deficit, as a percentage of GDP, cracks the postwar record of 6% set in 1983. If the red ink hits $900 billion or so, it will.
The Obama team's best guess is that, though stimulus spending will be spread over the first two years of the new president's term, the deficit will hit the high-water mark in the first year, with economic improvements in 2010 generating government revenue that starts to gradually bring it back down. If the Obama team gets lucky, and the government can start selling at a profit some of the assets it's buying up to rescue the financial system, the decline could be faster after that.
But counting on luck alone won't be sufficient. Wide deficits risk pushing up interest rates, interfering with the economic recovery down the road.
One possibility: The Obama team and its Democratic allies in Congress could resolve to work into their initial economic package some long-term deficit-reduction measures that automatically kick in later, ensuring spending cuts or revenue increases as the economy recovers. That would help give the new team credibility on the deficit, even if everyone else in Washington agrees to ignore it for now.
圣诞老人的确可爱。但如果接下来它送来的是信用卡帐单，那就不太讨人喜欢了。
对美国当选总统奥巴马来说也将如此。他将在其任期一开始就扮演圣诞老人的角色，告诉人们可以以刺激经济的名义花费数千亿美元。当然，随后他将不得不扮演吝啬鬼斯库奇，告诉这个国家帐单要到期了。
奥巴马团队面临的挑战是，确保全体美国人、特别是国会，要记得新总统接下来要扮演两种角色。用奥巴马高级助手的话来说，这项任务是为确保人们不会认为，未来数月刺激开支的这种模式是将打开救济品卡车的大门任由免费索取。
从更大范围讲，奥巴马团队需要考虑，在对抗赤字的长期战斗中，为在一开始建立威望，它是否还有其他措施可以采取，即使它只是短期采取这些办法。这些措施是可能的，并且在当前赤字扩大的情况下，它将有助于平息金融市场。
如果你这个周末仔细听了奥巴马的讲话，你会听到他警告人们说，刺激经济的大规模开支（“大”现在意味着大多数人估计的5,000亿美元规模的刺激方案）并不意味着盲目花钱。
首先，奥巴马的讲话传出的令人振奋的信息是：需要大规模经济刺激计划意味着“短期内我们不能为赤字担心”。奥巴马在NBC新闻频道的《会见媒体》节目中说：我们必须确保经济刺激计划的规模足以让经济动起来。
而给人泼冷水的信息则是，奥巴马对记者说：“我们不会只是填张支票，然后让他们在对如何让这些钱对总体经济发挥效用、让人们重新回到工作岗位的问题没有什么明确原则的情况下把它们花出去。新政府的计划将基于能给经济带来最大改变、能带来一些长期效益的原则。
换句话说，如果这个国家将花费数百亿美元来刺激经济，那么，当经济危机终止的时候，应该有些什么来显示一下。因此，奥巴马这个周末有关开支的讲话重点落在了“基础设施”上，比如修建道路、改造学校、扩大互联网接入、提高建筑物的能源效率、改善医院技术条件等。
这是在钱该怎么花的问题上所作的一个尝试。但你如何在这样的开支计划里显示对预算赤字的重视呢？
眼下，股市下滑和失业率上升两大困境使两党不同寻常地达成了一致，那就是：现在根本不是担心赤字的时候。因此，跟其他任何在他这个位子上的人相比，奥巴马跟空头支票最近。他因此得到一个在总统任期伊始就确定这个国家头等大事的机会。就这一点来说，只有在大萧条发展到最严重时期就任总统的罗斯福总统可有一比。
实际上，这个机会在罗斯福当政之前的大萧条岁月就已基本形成。那些年，对经济崩溃时期预算赤字的担忧带来了灾难性后果。
因此，奥巴马团队的人认为，在未来18个月左右时间，如果让对赤字的担忧牵制政府财政政策将是错误的。在那期间，赤字将升至以往所认为的惊人水平。
截至10月1日的财年高达4,550亿美元的赤字已是有记录以来的最高水平（以美元计），不过，其相对国内生产总值的比例为3.2%，低于上世纪八十年代经济下滑时的峰值。
但明年的赤字情况会更糟，有可能达到7,500万美元至1万亿美元（具体取决于在金融业救助计划上花的钱）。唯一一个真正的问题是，赤字占国内生产总值的比例是否会突破二战后在1983年创出的6%的最高水平。如果赤字达到9,000亿美元左右，这个纪录就要被刷新。
奥巴马团队最大的希望是，尽管刺激性开支将在新总统任期头两年逐渐发生，赤字将在头年达到高水平，2010年随着经济形势改善、政府收入增加，比例将开始逐渐下降。如果奥巴马团队够幸运，并且政府在金融救助计划中收购的资产中的一部分能够获利，赤字比例随后将有可能加速下降。
但仅仅指望运气是不够的。赤字扩大会推高利率，从而干扰正在复苏的经济。
一种可能性是：奥巴马团队及其在国会的民主党同盟可能会设法在最初的经济方案中加入一些之后能自动介入的长期性赤字削减措施。这将有助于提升新团队在赤字问题上的信誉，即使华盛顿其他每个人都认同眼下不用考虑赤字。
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