OWNED BY PARROT01

Thirteen years ago, we set ourselves a goal to end poverty. After some success, we’ve hit a big hurdle. The aftermath of the financial crisis has begun to hit aid payments, which have fallen for two consecutive years. My question is whether the lessons learned from saving the financial system can be used to help us overcome that hurdle and help millions. Can we simply print money for aid?

十三年前 我们设了一个目标， 要结束贫困 在取得一些小成功后 我们遇到了瓶颈 财政危机的后果 开始冲击救助款项 而且连续两年都在减少 我的问题就是， 从挽救财政系统中 得到的这些教训 能否用来帮助我们克服这瓶颈 也帮助数以百万的人民 我们是否能直接印钞以提供救助呢？

"Surely not." It’s a common reaction. (Laughter) It’s a quick talk. Others channel John McEnroe. "You cannot be serious!"

“当然不可以。” 这是人们正常的反应 （笑声） 这是一个短对话 人们和约翰·麦肯罗的对话 “你开玩笑的吧！”

Now, I can’t do the accent, but I am serious, thanks to these two children, who, as you’ll learn, are very much at the heart of my talk. On the left, we have Pia. She lives in England. She has two loving parents, one of whom is standing right here. Dorothy, on the right, lives in rural Kenya. She’s one of 13,000 orphans and vulnerable children who are assisted by a charity that I support. I do that because I believe that Dorothy, like Pia, deserves the best life chances that we can afford to give her. You’ll all agree with me, I’m sure. The U.N. agrees too. Their overriding aim for international aid is to strive for a life of dignity for all.

我没办法模仿他的口音， 但我是认真的 多亏了这两个孩子 等下你们就会知道， 他们是我这个演讲 的中心 左边这个女孩，名叫皮娅 她住在英格兰 她的双亲都很和蔼可亲 其中一个，就站在这里 桃乐茜，右边的孩子 住在肯尼亚农村 她是一万三千孤儿 和弱势儿童中的一员 她在接受我所资助的 一个慈善机构的帮助 我这么做，是因为我相信 桃乐茜，像皮娅一样 值得拥有我们能给予她的 最好的生活条件 我相信你们会同意我的话的 联合国也这么认为 他们对于国际援助 的最高目标 就是为所有人争取生命的尊严

But — and here’s that hurdle — can we afford our aid aspirations? History suggests not. In 1970, governments set themselves a target to increase overseas aid payments to 0.7 percent of their national income. As you can see, a big gap opens up between actual aid and that target. But then come the Millennium Development Goals, eight ambitious targets to be met by 2015. If I tell you that just one of those targets is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty, you get a sense of the ambition. There’s also been some success. The number of people living on less than $1.25 a day has halved. But a lot remains to be done in two years. One in eight remain hungry. In the context of this auditorium, the front two rows aren’t going to get any food. We can’t settle for that, which is why the concern about the eighth goal, which relates to funding, which I said at the beginning is falling, is so troubling.

但，这儿出现了瓶颈 我们能负担得起这样的援助渴望吗？ 历史告诉我们，不能 在1970年，政府们给自己定了个目标 要增加海外的救助款项 增加到占国民收入 的0.7% 在这里你能看到， 在实际救助和目标之间 出现了一个大的空缺 接着，出来了“千年发展目标” 要在2015年前 要完成八大目标 如果我告诉你们，其中一个目标 就是要消除极度饥饿和贫困 你们会觉得这雄心勃勃 还是取得一些成功的 每天生活费低于1.25美金的人数 已经减少了一半 当然未来的两年还有很多的事要做 还有八分之一的人口处于饥饿的水平 拿这个讲厅打个比方 前两排的观众将得不到任何食物 这点我们没法满足 这就是为什么第八个目标 是如此的麻烦 因为它涉及到资金 就是我开头说的开始在减少的资金

So what can be done? Well, I work in financial markets, not development. I study the behavior of investors, how they react to policy and the economy. It gives me a different angle on the aid issue. But it took an innocent question from my then-four-year-old daughter to make me appreciate that.

那么，我们能做什么呢？ 嗯，我从事金融市场工作 不是发展研究 我研究投资者的行为 研究他们如何应对政策和经济 这在救助问题上给我新的启迪 但是当时我年仅四岁的女儿 问的一个童真的问题 让我对此心有感激

Pia and I were on the way to a local cafe and we passed a man collecting for charity. I didn’t have any change to give him, and she was disappointed. Once in the cafe, Pia takes out her coloring book and starts scribbling. After a little while, I ask her what she’s doing, and she shows me a drawing of a £5 note to give to the man outside. It’s so sweet, and more generous than Dad would have been. But of course I explained to her, "You can’t do that; it’s not allowed." To which I get the classic four-year-old response: "Why not?" Now I’m excited, because I actually think I can answer this time. So I launch into an explanation of how an unlimited supply of money chasing a limited number of goods sends prices to the moon.

当时皮娅和我正在去 当地一家咖啡厅的路上 我们经过了一个 为慈善募捐的男人身边 我当时没有给他零钱 她就有些失望了 到了咖啡厅， 皮娅拿出她的图画本 开始涂画 过了一会儿， 我问她在干什么 她给我看了她画的 一张5欧元的钞票 要给外面的那个男子 非常温馨 远比她爸爸要慷慨得多 当然我跟她解释 “你不能这么做，这行不通得。” 结果我得到的是四岁小孩经典的回答： “为什么啊？” 现在我有点激动了， 因为我觉得 我现在可以回答这个问题了 所以我开始解释 无限量供应的货币 去购买限量供应的商品 是会把价格抬高到离谱的地步的

Something about that exchange stuck with me, not because of the look of relief on Pia’s face when I finally finished, but because it related to the sanctity of the money supply, a sanctity that had been challenged and questioned by the reaction of central banks to the financial crisis. To reassure investors, central banks began buying assets to try and encourage investors to do the same. They funded these purchases with money they created themselves. The money wasn’t actually physically printed. It’s still sort of locked away in the banking system today. But the amount created was unprecedented. Together, the central banks of the U.S., U.K and Japan increased the stock of money in their economies by 3.7 trillion dollars. That’s three times, in fact that’s more than three times, the total physical stock of dollar notes in circulation. Three times!

这次的交流让我久久不能忘怀 并不是因为在我快要结束的时候 皮娅脸上露出安心的表情 而是因为 它涉及到货币供应的神圣性 这种神圣性一直被中央银行 对财政危机的反应 所挑战和质疑 为了使投资方安心 中央银行开始购置资产 尝试鼓励投资者也这么做 他们用他们自己造出来的钱 去投资这些购置 而这些钱并没有真正被印刷出来 在今天这笔钱仍处于 被“锁”在银行系统的状态 但造出来的这笔钱的数量却是空前的 各国的中央银行，美国 英国和日本 都一起增加了各自经济的货币存量 增加了3.7万亿美金 （人民币约22.2万亿元） 这是三倍，其实不止三倍 实际流通中的美金货币存量总和 三倍啊！

Before the crisis, this would have been utterly unthinkable, yet it was accepted remarkably quickly. The price of gold, an asset thought to protect against inflation, did jump, but investors bought other assets that offered little protection from inflation. They bought fixed income securities, bonds. They bought equities too. For all the scare stories, the actual actions of investors spoke of rapid acceptance and confidence.

在经济危机之前 这是完全不能想像的 但它还是非常快就被接受了 黄金的价格 黄金是被当作用来抵御通货膨胀的 确实下跌了 但投资者购买了其他的资产 而这些资产却基本无法抵制通货膨胀 他们购买固定收益证券，债卷 他们也买普通股 对于那些吓人的报道 投资者真正的行为 显示出快速的接受和信心

That confidence was based on two pillars. The first was that, after years of keeping inflation under control, central banks were trusted to take the money-printing away if inflation became a threat. Secondly, inflation simply never became a threat. As you can see, in the United States, inflation for most of this period remained below average. It was the same elsewhere.

这种信心建立在两个支柱上 第一个就是 在控制通货膨胀的多年后 中央银行被人们所信任 如果通货膨胀构成威胁时 他们可以停止钞票的印刷 第二，通货膨胀单纯来说时不会成为威胁的 正如你所见到的，在美国 这个阶段大部分时间的通货膨胀 都低于平均数 在别的地方也一样

So how does all this relate to aid? Well, this is where Dorothy and the Mango Tree charity that supports her comes in. I was at one of their fundraising events earlier this year, and I was inspired to give a one-off donation when I remembered that my firm offers to match the charitable contributions its employees make. So think of this: Instead of just being able to help Dorothy and four of her classmates to go through secondary school for a few years, I was able to double my contribution. Brilliant.

那么所有的这一切是怎么 和救助这个事儿挂钩的呢？ 这就是桃乐茜 和资助她的芒果树慈善机构 开始出现 在今年年初的时候 我在一个募捐活动上 我当时受到了鼓舞，捐了一笔捐款 然后我想起我的公司 答应会根据自己员工捐款的数额 再捐同样的数额 所以这么想： 我不单能帮助到桃乐茜 还有她的四个同学 帮助他们完成中学几年的学业 我能够让我的贡献翻倍 这真是太棒了

So following that conversation with my daughter, and seeing the absence of inflation in the face of money-printing, and knowing that international aid payments were falling at just the wrong time, this made me wonder: Could we match but just on a much grander scale? Let’s call this scheme "Print Aid." And here’s how it might work. Provided it saw little inflation risk from doing so, the central bank would be mandated to match the government’s overseas aid payments up to a certain limit. Governments have been aiming to get aid to 0.7 percent for years, so let’s set the limit at half of that, 0.35 percent of their income. So it would work like this: If in a given year the government gave 0.2 percent of its income to overseas aid, the central bank would simply top it up with a further 0.2 percent. So far so good.

所以想着我和女儿的对话 看着面临钞票印刷时 消失的通货膨胀 以及知道国际救助款项 在不恰当的时间被减少了 这让我好奇： 我们能否 在规模上提高一个等级？ 让我们把这个计划成为“印救” 下面解释一下它的运作 假设这样做基本没什么通货膨胀的风险 中央银行需被强制采取措施 以达到政府的海外救助款项 所设定的一个限度 政府这几年来都试图 让救助款项达到0.7%的数额 那么我们就把限制定在一半吧 就是收入的0.35% 所以它会这样运作：如果在某一年 政府把收入的0.2% 拨给海外救助 那么中央银行只要把它的款项 提高多0.2％就可以了 目前感觉还不错吧

How risky is this? Well, this involves the creation of money to buy goods, not assets. It sounds more inflationary already, doesn’t it. But there are two important mitigating factors here. The first is that by definition, this money printed would be spent overseas. So it’s not obvious how it leads to inflation in the country doing the actual printing unless it leads to a currency depreciation of that country. That is unlikely for the second reason: the scale of the money that would be printed under this scheme. So let’s think of an example where Print Aid was in place in the U.S., U.K. and Japan. To match the aid payments made by those governments over the last four years, Print Aid would have generated 200 billion dollars’ worth of extra aid. What would that look like in the context of the increase in the money stock that had already happened in those countries to save the financial system? Are you read for this? You might struggle to see that at the back, because the gap is quite small. So what we’re saying here is that we took a $3.7 trillion gamble to save our financial systems, and you know what, it paid off. There was no inflation. Are we really saying that it’s not worth the risk to print an extra 200 billion for aid? Would the risks really be that different? To me, it’s not that clear. What is clear is the impact on aid. Even though this is the printing of just three central banks, the global aid that’s given over this period is up by almost 40 percent. Aid as a proportion of national income all of a sudden is at a 40-year high. Now, we don’t get to 0.7 percent. Governments are still incentivized to give. But you know what, that’s the point of a matching scheme.

这样做的风险有多大？ 它其实涉及到制造货币 去购买商品，而非资产 听起来有点通货膨胀了，对吧 但这里有两个重要的缓解因素 第一个，就是从定义上说 印制出来的钞票会被投放到海外 所以印刷钞票对国内而言 不大可能会导致通货膨胀 除非它导致了这个国家的货币贬值 这也不大可能出现，因为有第二个原因： 取决于在这个计划下 印刷钞票的规模 举个例子 比如“印救”计划在 美国，英国和日本实施 为了达到政府们在过去四年里 在救助款项达到的数目 “印救”会提供 额外的两千亿美金给救助款项 会出现怎样的情况？ 当这些国家 为了拯救财政系统 已提高货币储存量 准备好听答案了吗？ 在后面你可能会看不清 因为这个空缺很小 所以我们这里说的 是我们拿了3.7万亿美金孤注一掷 去缓解我们的财政系统压力 结果呢，它见成效了 没有通货膨胀 那么，为了救援而额外印多2千亿钞票 这样的风险真的不值得去承担吗？ 这些风险真的会有很大区别吗？ 对我来说，这是比较模糊的概念 而对救援产生的影响则是清晰的 哪怕印钞仅仅只是 三家中央银行的事 但是这个阶段给出的国籍援助 也已经上升了接近40个百分点 援助作为国民收入的一部分 突然就上升到了40年来的最高点 那么，假设我们没有达到0.7%那个点 政府也会被要求付诸行动 但你们知道吗，那个点就是和计划匹配的点

So I think what we’ve learned is that the risks from this money creation scheme are quite modest, but the benefits are potentially huge. Imagine what we could do with 40 percent more funding. We might be able to feed the front row.

所以我觉得，我们了解到的是 这个印钞计划中潜在的风险 是相当温和的 但是收益呢 则是非常庞大 想像一下这多出来的40%的资金， 我们能做多少事情 我们估计可以养得起 前排的观众了

The thing that I fear, the only thing that I fear, apart from the fact that I’ve run out of time, is that the window of opportunity for this idea is a short one. Today, money creation by central banks is an accepted policy tool. That may not always be the case. Today there are universally agreed aims for international aid. That may not always be the case. Today might be the only time that these two things coincide, such that we can afford the aid that we’ve always aspired to give.

我担心的事情， 且唯一担心的事情 除了我已经没什么时间这个事实外 就是实施这个想法的时间机会 非常短暂 今天，中央银行的货币创造 是一个公认的政策工具 但这并不是一直都这样 如今在国际援助上 我们有世界普遍认可的目标 但这也并不是一直都这样 现在可能是这两种事物 同时被认可实行的唯一时机 这样我们就能负担起这些援助 这些我们一直都很想给予的援助

So, can we print money for international aid? I seriously believe the question should be, why not?

所以，我们能为国籍援助而印刷钞票吗？ 我坚决相信这是可行的 为什么不呢？

Thank you very much.

非常感谢

(Applause)

（掌声）