저자: NourielRoubini · 외국인
요약 보기
로비니는 세계 경제가 '스태그플레이션성 부채위기'로 갈 가능성이 크다고 본다. 부채 측면: 전 세계 민간+공공 부채비율이 1999년 약 220%에서 현재 360%대로 상승했고, 선진국 420%, 중국 330%, 신흥국 250% 이상으로 계속 늘고 있다. 지금은 금리가 낮아 이자부담이 낮아 보이지만 구조적으로 정부지출은 줄지 않을 것이다. 정책 측면: 재정·통화정책이 계속 완화적일 것이며, 결국 인플레이션을 통해 명목고정금리 부채의 실질가치를 낮추는 것이 최소저항 경로다. 중앙은행의 목표는 과도하게 확대됐고(성장, 소득불평등, 기후변화 등), 정책수단도 제로·마이너스금리, 양적완화, 수익률곡선통제, 헬리콥터머니, CBDC까지 비정상화됐다. 공급충격 측면: 탈세계화, 공급망 분절, 인구 고령화, 이민 제한, 미중 기술 디커플링, 기후변화(물 부족·석유 공급 감소), 사이버전, 국방비 증가, 소득불평등 반발 등 9가지 요인이 1970년대식 음(-)의 공급충격을 만든다고 본다. 대만 반도체 공급 차질은 석유 충격보다 클 수 있다고 경고했다. 결론: 1970년대식 스태그플레이션과 현재의 4배 높은 부채부담이 결합하면 실질금리 상승과 자산가격 재평가로 부채위기가 온다는 것이다. 단기(3~6개월) 시장 예측이 아니라 향후 2~3년의 주요 리스크라고 강조했다. 질의응답: 공급충격 일부는 정치적 해결이 가능하다는 질문에 대해, 로비니는 지정학적 긴장이 오히려 악화되고 있으며 미중 분절이 계속될 것이라고 답했다.
다듬은 글
I have to say that Nuriel and I have already been talking for 10-15 minutes , so I am already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So if I suddenly cry, you'll know why. Nuriel, thank you for joining us. In your recent work, you have talked about a certain economic “trinity” of challenges: extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies on the one hand, high debt on the other, and supply shocks on the third.
Let's start with how these three elements come together and where this leads us. Yes. Well, the result of this is what I eventually called a stagflationary debt crisis. And the logic of the argument is this. If you look at debt ratios, both private and public, in the global economy in 1999 they were around 220% of GDP.
Today it is 360% of GDP, and the figure is growing. In developed economies, it is 420% and continues to grow. In China, it is 330% of GDP, and the figure is rising. A typical emerging market has 250% and above, with most of it in foreign currency. And this is not only public, but also private debt. Debts were piling up for households, corporations, financial institutions, anyone; The Evergrande problem in China is just one example of how much private and public debt there is.
And the question is, how are you going to solve this problem? Of course, interest rates are low, zero, or negative right now . Long-term rates are also low. So debt ratios are high, debt service ratios are low, and everything looks stable. But things will change, and over time I don't see a situation in which government spending as a share of GDP will fall; most likely, they will grow.
There is such great inequality in income and wealth that the US, Europe, or anywhere else in the world has to spend more on social protection because of the damage from trade, migration, globalization, and technology. The willingness and ability to significantly raise taxes on the wealthy are politically limited, and of course, raising them too much will hurt economic growth.
Therefore, in my opinion, the path of least resistance is to essentially devalue the real value of the nominal fixed- rate debt through gradual, higher, and unexpected inflation . So, we have huge private and public debts. Central banks are neither stupid nor evil. Economists have previously worried about fiscal dominance— a situation where government debt is so large that the central bank is forced to monetize it.
But now it's not just about public debt. This is also private debt. This is unprecedented. And if you were to try, say, during a period of rising inflation to tighten monetary policy and abandon unconventional measures, you would get a bond market crash, a credit market crash, a stock market crash, an economic crash—and the choice between that and continuing to monetize debt and destroying its real value.
I think this will be the path of least resistance. The second point: monetary policy has become very unconventional in both its goals and instruments. As for goals, we were previously only concerned with inflation. Now, most places have a dual mandate: growth and inflation. We care about financial stability, but financial stability means that in good times we do not tighten measures to avoid bubbles.
And when trouble comes, we support everyone, increasing the national debt as a way to bail out banks, corporations, households— whoever, over and over again. We now care about income and wealth inequality. This is the goal of the Federal Reserve. This means an overheated economy. We say we are concerned about employment asymmetry when it is below the target level.
We care about that more than when it is higher than the target. We say we won't fight inflation until we see it "in the eye" instead of using the Phillips curve, and now we're also worried about climate change—which means the central bank will start buying green bonds and so on. So, there has been a massive blurring of goals, and some of them, such as income inequality or climate change, cannot be achieved by monetary policy, and as for the instruments, everything has become unconventional.
You know, 20 years ago I taught macroeconomics. The only policy rate was the short-term overnight rate—the Fed rate, and you conducted open market operations. Now we have moved on to zero rates, negative rates, quantitative easing, credit easing, forecast management, yield curve control, and now there is real, not just verbal, practice of variants of modern monetary theory, "helicopter money." We will move on to central bank digital currency.
We will even go to even more negative rates with increased financial repression. So we live in a world where monetary and fiscal policies are becoming increasingly loose, and the temptation to destroy the real value of debt through inflation will be constant. And why ca n't this be done in a more or less favorable, relatively stable long-term process, where we " warm up" the economy a bit, get some growth, but have enough inflation so that the debt burden gradually decreases over time?
What prevents this? To reduce such high and unstable debt ratios, first of all, moving from 2% to 3% inflation will not be enough. Significant and unexpected inflation is needed . This eliminates some of the real cost of long-term fixed- rate debt. And by the way, a significant portion of the debt will eventually become short-term and will need to be revalued.
Some part of the debt is denominated in foreign currency. So for emerging markets , the option of writing off due to inflation does not work, and default has to be declared; Even if central banks do not keep up and tighten policy enough so that real rates do not rise, but only inflation expectations rise, over time, with high and volatile inflation, inflation risk premiums increase, so real rates rise, and eventually these debt ratios become unstable.
Some of the nominal fixed rates will be written off, but the remaining assets will be revalued with higher inflation risk premiums, ultimately leading to a debt crisis. That's why I believe that inflation is not a solution to the debt problem, but a tool to be used in conjunction with a certain degree of financial repression.
But the other point I want to make is the third part of the argument: while in the short term people are worried about slower growth and higher inflation due to short-term supply bottlenecks in the goods and labor markets, a kind of “mini- stagflation” where growth is lower and inflation is higher, at least in this quarter.
In my opinion, there are actually some forces that indicate that in the medium term there will be negative supply shocks that, like in the 1970s, will lead to stagflation, when negative supply shocks occur and central banks and fiscal authorities implement loose monetary and fiscal policies. In the 70s, as you may recall, there were two sudden shocks : the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arab states in 73, and then the Iranian revolution in 79.
I have identified nine forces that are the opposite of the factors that have kept inflation low over the past 30 years. Those factors restrained inflation and were structural and global. Now they are changing to the opposite. Factor number one: we are in the process of deglobalization. Protectionism and restrictions on trade in goods, services, capital, labor , data, and information technology are gradually increasing, but this is due to a multitude of reasons why there is a backlash against trade, migration, and globalization.
Secondly, we have this fragmentation of global supply chains, and not just because of pandemics, but also because of factors that are partly geopolitical. Third, we have aging populations both in developed economies and in large emerging markets like China, Russia, Korea, and parts of Asia. An increasing labor supply from China joining the global labor market and a still-young population in the West have kept inflation in check over the past 30 years.
There was a U-turn. Fourth , we are now restricting migration from the poor North to the rich South. In the US and Europe, Biden's migration policy will not differ from Trump's. We are not going to allow millions of refugees from social strife, political, economic, or climate change to enter the United States.
This will be limited in the US, in Europe, everywhere around the world. And this migration held back wage growth . On top of that, we have this cold war between the US and China, a disconnect in technology, trade, data and information. And I'll give just one example of how this becomes a negative supply shock.
Let's say we decide we don't want to use Huawei's 5G because it's a "black market" for the Chinese government and they will eavesdrop on us. But you use Nokia and Ericsson; The Nokia-Ericsson system is 30% more expensive and 20% less efficient, so building the same 5G network will cost you 50% more.
This is a negative supply shock. We are currently in a fight for semiconductors: 50% of the world's supply comes from Taiwan, and 80% of high-tech ones also come from Taiwan. You know, the FT had a cover story this summer: "What's the most dangerous place in the world ?"— a map of Taiwan and a target .
And now the Chinese are buying up all these semiconductors because they know we're going to cut them off, and now they're having supply problems—from cars to consumer electronics. If the tensions of this Cold War were to escalate, you could literally have a supply shutdown of semiconductors—that would be a bigger shock than the oil shock.
Therefore, the separation of the US and China leads to another fragmentation of the global economy; in a sense, it's a negative supply shock. Then we have global climate change, which I believe has a negative stagflationary impact for three reasons. First, there is a shortage of water, and not just in sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East.
Look at what's happening in the western United States. In California, farmers resell water rights to other people. A third of all fruit is grown in California. And if you take all the vegetables, then two-thirds of the fruits and nuts are also from California. There are disputes between counties and states over water rights.
This is a 40-year drought. It will be the same with livestock and everything else. The second element of climate change that will lead to an oil shock: we are rightly critical of carbon and fossil fuels, and now funding for investment in them is being cut. And all the oil giants say, okay, I have to invest less in fossil fuels.
But, in my opinion, the growth in the share of green energy and renewable sources will be very slow compared to the growth in demand. So if you attack oil companies and they don't produce enough fossil fuels and renewable energy doesn't grow properly, eventually we'll get, for example, an oil shock.
Pandemics, of course, lead people to seek self-sufficiency, limit exports, and fragment supply chains. Cyberwarfare is becoming a huge problem . Almost every day, a pipeline or beef producer stops operating, which is a negative shock to supply. The situation will get worse, or if you want to control it, you will have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense, which will increase the cost of production.
The ninth factor is a mass backlash against income and wealth inequality, because the gap has become too wide. I mean, of the $1.9 trillion in Biden's first relief package, 90% went to the unemployed, the underemployed, and minorities, and that's right, because rising inequality ultimately leads to social conflict, but if the reserve wage keeps rising, yes.
This will lead to wage growth and then to the beginning of a wage-price spiral, which will also contribute to stagflation. So, these are shocks that happen gradually, not overnight. But if you combine a bunch of negative supply shocks in the medium term, along with the loose monetary and fiscal policies needed to avoid a market crash, this combination of overheating demand and supply shocks eventually leads to stagflation.
And the last point about this is the following. In the 1970s, we had stagflation due to loose monetary and fiscal policies and a negative supply shock, but debt ratios were three times lower than they are now. After the global financial crisis, we had a debt crisis because too much private and public debt had accumulated in the world.
But because it was a demand shock and a credit crunch, we had low inflation, if not deflation. So, we didn't have inflation. Today, I fear that we will get the worst combination of 1970s stagflation due to loose policy and a negative supply shock with debt levels four times higher than in the 1970s.
And only inflation will be able to partially offset it. Once the revaluation occurs, real rates will increase. Therefore, we will get stagflation and a debt crisis. This is what I call a stagflationary debt crisis. Now this is not an argument for the next growth killer. It is the debt crisis that kills economic growth .
You know, you know, what, well, negative supply shocks by themselves can kill growth. If they become significant enough, growth could slow significantly amid rising inflation. So this is already stagflationary. And if debt ratios are so high, inflation doesn't cover them, and assets are overvalued due to real rates and inflation risk premiums, then you also get a debt crisis.
So, the combination of the worst of the 70s in terms of inflation and the worst of the post-crisis in terms of debt burden is an uncontrollable disaster in slow motion. This is not a forecast of what will happen to the market in the next three or six months, but over the next two to three years I see this as the main risk to the global economy.
Um, does anyone need another drink, or am I going to uh uh , okay, I'll try to be optimistic. Yes. It seems like some of the supply shocks you've discussed are related to deglobalization, uh, the Cold War, the semi-Cold War with China, supply chains, uh, balkanization, and even migration—all of these are connected.
All of these problems are purely political and tied to the overall global political climate. And now these problems seem quite acute. But unlike some other problems, these are political issues that have political solutions. In other words, a positive risk to your thesis could be that we will do better politically and mitigate some of these potential supply shocks.
Well, you know, from a political perspective, I would say that geopolitics, unfortunately, is causing the Cold War between the US and China to become even colder, and some even fear a real war over Taiwan or the South China Sea. I don't know if there will be a real war, but all trends certainly point to a disconnect between the US and China.
This will mean fragmentation of the world economy, deglobalization of global supply chains, and disconnection, certainly in the field of technology. But I will give you an example of how the disconnection in technology also leads to the disconnection in trade. Today, we will not use the Chinese 5G network, as I said, because of the "backdoor" for the Chinese government, and that's a good thing, because otherwise they would be able to listen to our conversations.
But tomorrow, think about a system of autonomous vehicles that have to move together without colliding; it's a combination of AI, machine learning, the Internet of Things with sensors collecting data, and then 5G or 6G systems that ensure these machines don't collide. Now, in a world where technological disconnection is taking place, the Chinese are already telling Tesla: I don't want you to collect data on Chinese drivers because you can hand it over to the NSA.
And in the US, we say to the Chinese: we don't want you to use or control TikTok or Grindr because you can blackmail gay people or manipulate young people . So the future of commerce is no longer about traditional goods and services, it's about data. Data will be key to the future. And when we start restricting trade because of politics, because of geopolitics in Europe, because of privacy, etc.
, that is again a form of disconnection that harms global supply chains and the integration of the world economy. By the way, today it's 5G in a mobile phone. Tomorrow it will be 5G driving our autonomous vehicles. But tomorrow, every consumer electronics device, even your average Chinese toaster, microwave, or coffee maker, will have a 5G chip because it will be the Internet of Things.
We will be able to remotely turn on our coffee maker or microwave, etc. All of these billions of different types of consumer electronic products, even the most basic ones, will have a 5G chip. So even your coffee maker could become a listening device for the Chinese government if it has a Huawei 5G chip.
So, once you restrict 5G in telecommunications, eventually you will have to say "no to Chinese toasters, no to Chinese coffee makers." I mean extremes, but in a world where everything runs on 5G, everything is integrated, everything is data, everything has sensors, you already know that Chinese drones pose a risk.
But it's a slippery slope: restricting trade in technology means restricting trade in everything else, and then we end up with two different worlds, a complete disconnect between the West and... How are we there? This is the direction you are moving towards as time goes on. Do we have five more minutes or are we done?
Good. Well, the optimists in the audience will be relieved. Thank you very much, Nuriel. OK. Very useful. I was glad to encourage you. It was wonderful. It's a pity that we didn't have enough time.
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