Credit Diverts Production

第6章 政府信贷扭曲生产

Government “encouragement” to business is sometimes as much to be feared as government hostility. This supposed encouragement often takes the form of a direct grant of government credit or a guarantee of private loans.

政府拿钱出来”扶持”企业，有时和政府征敛民财一样可怕。扶持的形式通常是政府直接贷款，以及对私人贷款提供政府担保。

The question of government credit can often be complicated, because it involves the possibility of inflation. We shall defer analysis of the effects of inflation of various kinds until a later chapter. Here, for the sake of simplicity, we shall assume that the credit we are discussing is noninflationary. Inflation, as we shall later see, while it complicates the analysis, does not at bottom change the consequences of the policies discussed.

政府信贷的问题往往是很复杂的，因为它涉及到通货膨胀的可能性。对于通货膨胀造成的各种影响，我们留待后面的章节再去分析。在这里，为了简单起见，我们假设所讨论的政府信贷不引起通货膨胀。我们以后会进一步讨论，通货膨胀虽然会使问题的分析过程复杂化，但不会从根本上改变这里讨论的政府信贷政策的后果。

A frequent proposal of this sort in Congress is for more credit to farmers. In the eyes of most congressmen the farmers simply cannot get enough credit. The credit supplied by private mortgage companies, insurance companies or country banks is never “adequate.” Congress is always finding new gaps that are not filled by the existing lending institutions, no matter how many of these it has itself already brought into existence. The farmers may have enough long-term credit or enough short-term credit but, it turns out, they have not enough “intermediate” credit; or the interest rate is too high; or the complaint is that private loans are made only to rich and well-established farmers. So new lending institutions and new types of farm loans are piled on top of each other by the legislature.

国会中最常见的政府信贷提案是增加对农民的贷款。在大多数国会议员的眼中，农民根本得不到足够的贷款，私人抵押贷款公司、保险公司或乡村银行提供的贷款从来谈不上“充足”。不管有多少的贷款机构就是国会刺激建立起来的，国会总是能不断挖掘出现有的贷款机构还没有满足的新缺口。农民可能获得的长期贷款和短期贷款已经够多了，而议员们又发现，”中期”贷款还不够多，或者利率太高，或者抱怨私人贷款只贷给了家道殷实及有可靠经验的农民。于是，这个立法机关中关于设立面向农民的新贷款机构和新贷款类别的提案层出不穷。
 
The faith in all these policies, it will be found, springs from two acts of shortsightedness. One is to look at the matter only from the standpoint of the farmers that borrow. The other is to think only of the first half of the transaction.

不难发现，有两类短视行为导致人们对这些政策充满信任。一类是只从借钱的农民的立场来考虑问题，另一类则是只关心交易的前半部分。

Now all loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually be repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first.

要知道，在诚信的借款人眼里，所有的贷款最终都是要偿还的，所有的信贷都是债务。国会提高信贷额度的提案不过是加重债务负担的提案的代称。要是我们习惯使用第二个名称，而不用第一个名称，那些提案就不会再那么受欢迎。

We need not discuss here the normal loans that are made to farmers through private sources. They consist of mortgages, of installment credits for the purchase of automobiles, refrigerators, TV sets, tractors and other farm machinery, and of bank loans made to carry the farmer along until he is able to harvest and market his crop and get paid for it. Here we need concern ourselves only with loans to farmers either made directly by some government bureau or guaranteed by it.

我们不必在这里讨论私营机构提供给农民的常规贷款，其中包括抵押贷款，让农民用于购买汽车、电冰箱、电视机、拖拉机和其他农用机械的分期付款贷款，以及供农民在收获和销售谷物前用于资金周转的银行贷款。我们这里要讨论的只是政府机构提供给农民的直接贷款，以及由政府担保的贷款。

These loans are of two main types. One is a loan to enable the farmer to hold his crop off the market. This is an especially harmful type, but it will be more convenient to consider it later when we come to the question of government commodity controls. The other is a loan to provide capital—often to set the farmer up in business by enabling him to buy the farm itself or a mule or tractor, or all three.

这些政府贷款往往有两类用途。一类用以帮助农民把谷物囤积下来，暂不上市销售。这是一类特别有害的贷款，让我们留待后面讨论政府实施商品管制问题时再做具体分析。另一类贷款是为农民立业提供资金——让他们买得起农场本身、或者一部小拖拉机、或者一辆大牵引车、或者所有这些东西。

At first glance the case for this type of loan may seem a strong one. Here is a poor family, it will be said, with no means of livelihood. It is cruel and wasteful to put them on relief. Buy a farm for them; set them up in business; make productive and self-respecting citizens of them; let them add to the total national product and pay the loan off out of what they produce. Or here is a farmer struggling along with primitive methods of production because he has not the capital to buy himself a tractor. Lend him the money for one; let him increase productivity; he can repay the loan out of the proceeds of his increased crops. In that way you not only enrich him and put him on his feet; you enrich the whole community by that much added output. And the loan, concludes the argument, costs the government and the taxpayers less than nothing, because it is “self-liquidating.”

乍一看，这类政府贷款似乎很有必要。有人会站出来说，这里有个贫困家庭，缺乏谋生手段。让他们靠领取救济金生活是一种冷酷和浪费的解决办法。给他们买座农场、使其自力更生、让他们成为有自尊与自食其力的公民，让他们为国家的GDP尽一分力，并用自己的产出来偿还贷款。要不这里有位农民 生活艰难，买不起拖拉机，还在使用原始落后的方式耕种土地。借钱给他买部拖拉机吧，让他提高生产力，他能够靠增产所赚来的钱还本付息。这样一来，既能让他靠劳动致富，又能增加产出，使整个社会更加富有。况且，这类贷款是“自偿性”的贷款，根本不需要政府和纳税人来负担成本。

Now as a matter of fact that is what happens every day under the institution of private credit. If a man wishes to buy a farm, and has, let us say, only half or a third as much money as the farm costs, a neighbor or a savings bank will lend him the rest in the form of a mortgage on the farm. If he wishes to buy a tractor, the tractor company itself or a finance company, will allow him to buy it for one-third of the purchase price with the rest to be paid off in installments out of earnings that the tractor itself will help to provide.

事实上，这正是私人信贷机构每天都在做的事情。倘若某人想买农场，手头的积蓄只够农场售价的一半或三分之一，储蓄银行或邻居们会以抵押贷款的方式借钱给他凑够买价。倘若某人想买拖拉机，农机公司或金融机构可以允许他首付三分之一的货款，其余的欠款靠产出的增加分期偿还即可。

But there is a decisive difference between the loans supplied by private lenders and the loans supplied by a government agency. Each private lender risks his own funds. (A banker, it is true, risks the funds of others that have been entrusted to him; but if money is lost he must either make good out of his own funds or be forced out of business.) When people risk their own funds they are usually careful in their investigations to determine the adequacy of the assets pledged and the business acumen and honesty of the borrower.

然而，在私人提供贷款与政府提供贷款之间存在着一个根本性的区别。每个私人放贷者都是在用自己的资金承担风险。（确实，银行家是利用别人委托给他的钱去冒险，但一旦有损失，也必须拿自己的钱去赔付，否则只有破产出局。）当人们拿自己的钱去冒险时，通常会严格审查借款人是否有足够的资产做抵押，审查其经营能力和诚信如何。

If the government operated by the same strict standards, there would be no good argument for its entering the field at all. Why do precisely what private agencies already do? But the government almost invariably operates by different standards. The whole argument for its entering the lending business, in fact, is that it will make loans to people who could not get them from private lenders. This is only another way of saying that the government lenders will take risks with other people’s money (the taxpayers’) that private lenders will not take with their own money. Sometimes, in fact, apologists will freely acknowledge that the percentage of losses will be higher on these government loans than on private loans. But they contend that this will be more than offset by the added production brought into existence by the borrowers who pay back, and even by most of the borrowers who do not pay back.

倘若政府依照同样严格的标准来经营贷款业务，那政府根本没有必要涉足这一行。为什么要去做私人机构已经在做的事呢？不过，政府一向是以不同的标准来从事经营的。政府之所以涉足贷款业，就是要向那些从私人机构借不到钱的人提供资金。这其实是说，私人放贷者不肯拿自己的钱去冒的风险，政府放贷者却愿意拿别人（纳税人）的钱去冒险。事实上有时这种措施的辩护者也明确地承认政府放贷的坏账率高于民间放贷，但他们坚持认为，此种损失由增加的产出可以弥补，且有盈余，增加的产出来自那些有借有还的人，甚至大部分借了不还的人。

This argument will seem plausible only as long as we concentrate our attention on the particular borrowers whom the government supplies with funds, and overlook the people whom its plan deprives of funds. For what is really being lent is not money, which is merely the medium of exchange, but capital. (I have already put the reader on notice that we shall postpone to a later point the complications introduced by an inflationary expansion of credit.) What is really being lent, say, is the farm or the tractor itself. Now the number of farms in existence is limited, and so is the production of tractors (assuming, especially, that an economic surplus of tractors is not produced simply at the expense of other things). The farm or tractor that is lent to A cannot be lent to B. The real question is, therefore, whether A or B shall get the farm.

我们若只注意那些拿到政府贷款的生产者，而忽略掉那些由于政府贷款计划而丧失了获得生产资本的人的时候，上述辩护才会显得有些道理。因为，政府真正借出去的并不是钱，而是资本，钱不过是交易的媒介。（前面已经提醒过，我们稍候再谈通货膨胀性信贷扩张而引发的复杂性问题）。政府真正借出去的是农场或拖拉机本身。农场的数目有限，拖拉机的产量也有限（只要不是牺牲其他产品去生产过剩的拖拉机），那么政府把农场或拖拉机借给某乙，就没办法再借给某甲。因此，真正的问题在于：到底是甲，还是乙，应该得到农场？

This brings us to the respective merits ofA and B, and what each contributes, or is capable of contributing, to production. A, let us say, is the man who would get the farm if the government did not intervene. The local banker or his neighbors know him and know his record. They want to find employment for their funds. They know that he is a good farmer and an honest man who keeps his word. They consider him a good risk. He has already, perhaps, through industry, frugality and foresight, accumulated enough cash to pay a fourth of the price of the farm. They lend him the other three-fourths; and he gets the farm.

这就要靠比较甲与乙各自的价值，各自对生产的贡献，或者有能力做什么贡献。假设政府不干预，甲会得到农场。当地的银行家和邻 居都了解他，对他知根知底。他们希望自己手上的资金得到合理有效的利用。他们知道甲是诚实守信的人，值得在他身上冒险。也许因为勤劳、节俭、有远见，他已经积攒了购买农场所需资金的四分之一，他们借给了他其余的四分之三，这样他就得到这个农场。

There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing. He feels assured of repayment. He is merely exchanging a more liquid form of asset or credit for a less liquid form. Sometimes he makes a mistake, and then it is not only the banker who suffers, but the whole community; for values which were supposed to be produced by the lender are not produced and resources are wasted.

有一个奇怪的说法很流行，是所有造钱学派学者的主张【译者注：monetary cranks，指迷信通货膨胀的经济学者】，说信用是银行赋予某个人的。事实恰恰相反，信用是人已经拥有的东西。一个人有信用，或许是因为他拥有资产折合成现金来计算，其价值大于他想取得的贷款。或许是因为个人品行与信用记录让他获得了信用。他带着本身具备的信用到银行去，银行家才愿意借钱给他。银行家绝不会随随便便地借钱给别人，他需要得到偿还的保证。银行只是把借款人的资产或信用从流动性较低的形式转换成流动性较高的形式而已。有时银行也难免失误，这样一来，不但银行家自己受损失，整个社会也会受损失，因为借款人没能创造出预期的价值，资源被浪费了。

Now it is to A, let us say, who has credit that the banker would make his loan. But the government goes into the lending business in a charitable frame of mind because, as we say, it is worried about B. B cannot get a mortgage or other loans from private lenders because he does not have credit with them. He has no savings; he has no impressive record as a good farmer; he is perhaps at the moment on relief. Why not, say the advocates of government credit, make him a useful and productive member of society by lending him enough for a farm and a mule or tractor and setting him up in business?

可以看出，具备信用的甲是银行愿意借钱的对象。但抱着施舍心态的政府更关怀乙的处境。缺乏信用的乙没办法从私人放贷者那里取得抵押贷款和其他贷款，他没有储蓄，没有信用记录支持他可以作为一个成功的农民，当时他还可能是靠领救济金生活。提倡扩大政府信用的人争辩说，为什么不借给他足够的钱，让他购买农场、小拖拉机、大牵引车，助其立业，使他成为有价值也有生产效益的社会成员呢？

Perhaps in an individual case it may work out all right. But it is obvious that in general the people selected by these government standards will be poorer risks than the people selected by private standards. More money will be lost by loans to them. There will be a much higher percentage of failures among them. They will be less efficient. More resources will be wasted by them. Yet the recipients of government credit will get their farms and tractors at the expense of those who otherwise would have been the recipients of private credit. Because B has a farm, A will be deprived of a farm. A may be squeezed out either because interest rates have gone up as a result of the government operations, or because farm prices have been forced up as a result of them, or because there is no other farm to be had in his neighborhood. In any case, the net result of government credit has not been to increase the amount of wealth produced by the community but to reduce it, because the available real capital (consisting of actual farms, tractors, etc.) has been placed in the hands of the less efficient borrowers rather than in the hands of the more efficient and trustworthy.

也许就个别的案例来说，这种愿望能够很好地得到实现。但整体而言，按政府的标准选定的信贷对象，风险显然高于按私人放贷标准选定的信贷对象。投给乙们的贷款越多，损失越大，他们中间失败的比例会高出很多。乙们的效率会比较低，更多的资源会被他们浪费掉。可是，获得政府贷款的人将买到农场和拖拉机，本来可望获得私人贷款的人就反而得不到。乙有了农场，甲就被剥夺了拥有这个农场的机会。甲被排挤出去，可能是因为政府信贷导致的利率提高，或因为农场的价格因之上涨，或因为邻近地区也没有剩余的农场可买了。这样一来，政府信贷所造成的净效果是减少而不是增加了当地所能创造财富，因为可用的实体资本（由实际的农场、拖拉机等构成）没有交给效率更高的、值得信赖的人，而是落到了低效率的借款人手里。