美国前沿市场起源故事

欢迎收听《市场观点》。

Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

我是摩根士丹利全球固定收益研究主管谢茨。

I am Andrew Sheets, Global Head of Fixed Income Research at Morgan Stanley.

今天因为庆祝独立日，市场休市。

Today, markets are closed for the observance of Fourth of July.

随着美国即将迎来建国二百五十周年，我们回望早期美国，把它看作一个新兴市场。

As America approaches its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, we take a look back to look forward at early America as a frontier market.

现在是7月3日，星期五，西雅图时间上午9点。

It is Friday, July 3, at 9AM in Seattle.

如果你是18世纪末的全球投资者，想找一个稳定、低风险的投资去处，完全有理由避开当时刚成立的美利坚合众国。

If you were a global investor at the end of the eighteenth century looking for a stable, low risk home for your capital, it would have been entirely reasonable to avoid the newly minted United States Of America.

以现代金融的标准来看，这个年轻的共和国还远不是即将成熟的市场。

By the standards of modern finance, the young republic was not a developed market in waiting.

它是个边疆经济体，波动剧烈、债务沉重、制度脆弱、资源丰富、政治动荡，而且贫富差距极大。

It was a frontier economy, volatile, debt burdened, institutionally fragile, resource rich, politically combustible, and astonishingly unequal.

它的货币崩溃了，公共财政令人怀疑，民众抗拒纳税，但经济增长前景却异常广阔。

Its currency had collapsed, its public finances were suspect, its citizens resisted taxation, and its growth prospects were extraordinary.

1810年，全国70%的人口年龄不到25岁。

In 1810, 70% of the country was under the age of 25.

戈登·伍德的《自由的帝国》一书揭示了这一点，这本书聚焦于1789到1815年这个新生国家的早期阶段。

That is one of the revelations of Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty, which focuses on the early days of the new country from 1789 to 1815.

伍德笔下的美国，并非那种由雕像和神话构筑的大理石共和国。

Wood's America is not the marble republic of statues and myth.

它充满投机、混乱，而且生机勃勃。

It is speculative, messy and full of motion.

美国的成功，并不是因为它避开了我们通常认为新兴市场或前沿市场才有的那些问题，而是把这些问题转化成了优势。

The United States succeeded not by escaping the dysfunctions that we associate with emerging or frontier markets, but by turning them into sources of strength.

先从资本说起。

Start with capital.

当时的美国极度需要资本。

Early America needed it desperately.

修路、开运河、买地、政府运作，样样都得靠借贷，可钱怎么都不够用。

Roads, canals, land purchases, and government all required credit, and there was never enough of it.

这国家地多，但现金稀缺，典型的新兴市场困境。

The country was rich in land and poor in liquidity, a classic emerging market mismatch.

年轻人搞不定的借贷和投资，就直接抄作业——从老东家英国那儿偷技术、抢知识产权。

And what the young country couldn't borrow or event, it misappropriated, lifting intellectual property from its former masters in Britain.

亚历山大·汉密尔顿明白，在这种情况下，信任比什么都重要。

What Alexander Hamilton understood was the importance of confidence given this challenge.

债务一定还，强制执行，税再不受欢迎也得收上来。

The debts would be honored, enforced, and taxes, however unpopular, collected.

他的财政计划，其实是在‘新兴市场’这个词还没出现的时候，就提前解决了这问题。

His financial program was an attempt to solve the emerging market problem before the phrase existed.

怎么让投资者相信，一个刚从革命中诞生、差点被战争拖垮的国家，值得托付？

How to persuade investors that a new state born in revolution and nearly bankrupted by war could be trusted.

在汉密尔顿看来，国家信用，才是真正的独立根基。

To Hamilton, public credit was the foundation of independence.

然而，在许多杰斐逊派人士看来，这套体系像是想把英国的金融秩序偷偷带回刚为摆脱它而战的国家。

To many Jeffersonians, however, this system looked like an attempt to smuggle a British financial order back into the country that had just fought to expel it.

早期共和国关于债务、银行、投机和税收的争论听起来如此现代，因为背后的问题在边疆市场中始终存在。

The early republic's debates over debt, banks, speculation, and taxation sound contemporary because the underlying question is perennial in frontier markets.

一个社会能否在拥抱信贷和外国资本的同时，不被它们所控制？

Can a society embrace credit and foreign capital without being captured by it?

美国并不是从零开始的。

The US was not starting from zero.

它继承了法律传统、自治习惯，以及契约和财产权的文化。

It inherited legal traditions, habits of self government, and a culture of contract and property.

这些基础让人们相信，纠纷能被公正裁决，债务能被追讨，规则不会随意变动。

Those foundations gave confidence that disputes could be adjudicated, debts pursued, and rules would not be arbitrary.

早期的美国充满风险，但并非无法无天。

Early America was risky, but it was not lawless.

即便如此，这条路也并不顺畅。

And still, it did not go smoothly.

那时候还没有美联储，没有联邦存款保险公司，甚至连统一的国家货币都没有。

There was no Federal Reserve, FDIC, or even a uniform national currency.

商业往来靠的是外国硬币、私人银行发行的纸币、欠条，还有盲目的乐观。

Business was conducted with foreign coins, notes issued by private banks, IOUs, and blind optimism.

银行倒闭是家常便饭。

Bank failures were common.

1808年，罗德岛的农民兑换银行发行了超过六十万美元的纸币，而金库里的黄金还不到九十美元。

In eighteen o eight, the Farmers Exchange Bank of Rhode Island issued over $600,000 of notes against less than $90 of gold in its vaults.

你几乎得佩服这种胆量。

You almost have to admire the audacity.

但正是这种不稳定性，让早期的美国格外开放。

Yet the same instability that made early America risky also made it unusually open.

土地是这个国家最重要的资产，是移民、野心、投机和机遇的来源——至少对白人定居者来说是这样。

Land was the country's great asset class, a source of migration, ambition, speculation, and opportunity, at least for white settlers.

但它也带来了泡沫、行政压力、奴隶制的扩张，以及对原住民的暴力驱逐。

It also produced bubbles, administrative strain, the expansion of slavery, and the violent dispossession of native peoples.

1803年的路易斯安那购地案，本质上是一次高杠杆收购不良地产的冒险行为，还没等人们搞清楚最初的美国模式该怎么运作，国家规模就直接翻了一倍。

The Louisiana Purchase in eighteen o three was a risky leveraged acquisition of distressed real estate, doubling the scale of the American experiment before anyone had quite figured out how the original version was supposed to work.

伍德特别擅长描绘这个世界所释放出的那种熟悉的能量。

Wood is especially good on the familiar energy unleashed by this world.

美国增长的引擎，并不是什么波兰贵族式的精英阶层，而是所谓的‘中等阶层’。

The engine of US growth was not an aristocracy of Polish grandees, but the, quote, middling sort.

小店主、手艺人、酒馆老板、技工、农民、商人和投机者——很多人坚信，在美国，出身不如拼劲重要。

Shopkeepers, artisans, tavern owners, mechanics, farmers, merchants, and speculators, many convinced that in America, birthright mattered less than hustle.

当时的人们抱怨媒体堕落、政治极化、排斥专业意见，以及整个社会沉迷于发财致富而变得粗俗不堪。

Commentators of the time complained about the degraded press, political polarization, hostility to expertise, and the vulgarity of a society obsessed with getting ahead.

这些事儿听起来一点都不遥远。

None of this sounds especially distant.

真正让美国避开了边疆经济常见陷阱的，不是什么完美的稳定。

What saved America from the usual traps of frontier economies was not immaculate stability.

而是它的适应能力。

It was adaptability.

它的宪法被修改过。

Its constitution was amended.

尽管彼此敌对，政治权力依然顺利交接。

Political power changed hands despite animosity.

破产法允许失败。

Bankruptcy laws allowed for failure.

竞争异常激烈，经济权力通常过于分散，难以被轻易垄断。

Competition was ferocious, and economic power was generally too diffuse to be easily monopolized.

早期共和国的智慧不在于解决自身的矛盾，而在于创造了如何在不摧毁整体的前提下，激烈争论这些矛盾的方式。

The early republic's genius lay less in solving its contradictions than in creating ways to fight over them without destroying the whole.

这对二月的美国来说，是个很有用的教训。

That is a useful lesson for America at February.

我们总爱回头找安慰，以为国家曾经拥有过统一、审慎和制度稳固，而这些如今都丢了——但事实恰恰相反。

We tend to look backwards for reassurance, imagining that the country once possessed a unity, prudence, and institutional solidity that we have since lost, would suggest something different.

美国从一开始就是动荡不安的。

That The United States was turbulent from the start.

它的遗产充满争议，财政状况令人怀疑，政治氛围充满敌意，扩张与奴隶制紧密相连，亟需清算，未来也前途未卜。

Its legacy was contested, its finances distrusted, its politics venomous, its expansion intertwined with slavery in need of dispossession, and its future uncertain.

新兴市场之所以变成成熟市场，不是因为不再发生危机，而是因为在危机中建立了信誉。

Emerging markets become developed markets not because they stop having crises, but because they build credibility through them.

它们逐渐明白哪些制度真正重要，哪些协议能够持久，哪些债务必须偿还，哪些道德负债拖得越久代价越大。

They learn which institutions matter, which bargains endure, which debts must be paid, and which moral liabilities compound when deferred.

美国并非生来就井然有序、富裕或安全。

America was not born orderly, rich, or secure.

它诞生于泥泞之中，靠脆弱的信贷融资，靠投机推动，靠一种近乎非理性的对未来的信心维系。

It was born in the mud, financed on fragile credit, driven by speculation, and sustained by an almost irrational confidence in the future.

所以，好好享受焰火吧，让它们提醒你：国家的成熟，不是没有动荡，

So enjoy the fireworks, and let them be a reminder that national maturity is not the absence of volatility.

而是能把动荡转化为重生的能力。

It's the capacity to turn that volatility into renewal.

附言。

A postscript.

戈登·S·伍德

Gordon S.

伍德于今年六月初去世。

Wood died in early June of this year.

作为教授、作家，以及美国革命领域最杰出的学者之一，他为这个国家的建国历史带来了全新的视角和深刻的人性化解读。

As a professor, author, and one of the preeminent scholars of the American Revolution, he brought fresh insight and deep humanization to the country's founding.

如果你想更深入地理解美国在庆祝重大周年纪念时的现状，我们强烈推荐他的著作。

For anyone looking for a better understanding of America as it celebrates a big anniversary, we'd wholeheartedly recommend his work.

一如既往，感谢你的收听。

Thank you, as always, for your time.

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If you find Thoughts of the Market useful, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen, and also tell a friend or colleague about us today.

以上内容仅为信息参考，基于发布时可获得的信息。

The preceding content is informational only and based on information available when created.

它不构成任何投资要约或招揽，也不构成税务或法律建议。

It is not an offer or solicitation, nor is it tax or legal advice.

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It does not consider your financial circumstances and objectives and may not be suitable for you.