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Investors are starting to imagine a financial system without the US at its centre, handing Europe an opportunity that it simply must not miss.
投资者开始设想一个不以美国为中心的金融体系，这为欧洲提供了一个绝不能错过的机会。
This exercise in thinking the unthinkable comes despite a cacophony of noise in markets. Mansoor Mohi-uddin, chief economist at Bank of Singapore, recently travelled to clients in Dubai and London. To his surprise, not one of them asked him about short-term issues like tech stocks or tweaks to interest rates. Instead, he says, “people were saying, ‘What’s going on?’ The free trade, free markets, globalisation era is over, and nobody knows what’s going to replace it.”
尽管市场上噪声不断，这种大胆设想的练习仍在进行。新加坡银行(Bank of Singapore)的首席经济学家曼苏尔•毛希丁(Mansoor Mohi-uddin)最近前往迪拜和伦敦拜访了客户。令他惊讶的是，没有一个客户询问他关于科技股或利率调整这样的短期问题。相反，他说：“人们在问，‘现在是什么情况？’自由贸易、自由市场、全球化时代已经结束，没有人知道将由什么来取代它。”
They refer, of course, to the new US administration. Within a month of retaking his seat at the White House, Donald Trump & co had all but trashed the transatlantic alliance, and ridden roughshod over the key checks, balances and institutions on which true US exceptionalism is built.
他们当然指的是新一届美国政府。在重返白宫不到一个月的时间里，唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)及其团队几乎摧毁了跨大西洋联盟，并无视了关键的制衡和体制——这才是真正的美国例外主义的基础。
“It’s such a momentous change going on. If it continues like this, capital allocators will wonder: ‘Do I want to stay allocated to the US?’” Mohi-uddin says.
“这是一场重大的变革。如果继续这样下去，资本分配者会想：‘我还想继续在美国配置吗？’”毛希丁说。
This cuts across asset classes. In stocks, the preference for Europe is clear — markets are streaking ahead of the US in a highly unusual pattern. But flighty stock markets are just the surface. The bit that really matters is the international use of the dollar, and dollar bond markets, as the supposedly risk-free bedrock of global finance.
这涉及到各类资产。在股票方面，对欧洲的偏好非常明显——欧洲市场以一种极不寻常的模式领跑美国。但波动的股票市场只是表面现象。真正重要的是，国际投资者是否还将美元以及美元债券市场用作全球金融的所谓无风险基石。
This is already starting to show. On Tuesday, for instance, despite the shock of new US trade tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the dollar is not climbing in its usual fashion. Deutsche Bank says this in part reflects “the potential loss of the dollar’s safe-haven status”.
这已经开始显现。例如，周二，尽管美国对加拿大和墨西哥实施了新的贸易关税，美元并没有像往常一样上涨。德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)表示，这在一定程度上反映了“美元避险地位的潜在丧失”。
“We do not write this lightly,” wrote currencies analyst George Saravelos. “But the speed and scale of global shifts is so rapid that this needs to be acknowledged as a possibility.” What was once outlandish is now becoming plausible.
货币分析师乔治•萨拉韦洛斯(George Saravelos)写道：“我们不会轻易这样写。但全球变化的速度和规模如此之迅猛，以至于必须承认这是一种可能性。” 曾经看似荒诞的事情现在正在变得可行。
Economists close to Trump have been clear that they view the dollar’s status as the world’s pre-eminent reserve currency as a blessing and a curse — “burdensome” as adviser Stephen Miran put it. It remains a possibility — again unthinkable just a few weeks ago — that the US could seek to pull the dollar lower in an effort to support domestic manufacturing. But the US could also dismantle its own exorbitant privilege through accident rather than design by pushing the big beasts of bond markets — foreign central banks and other official reserve managers — into the arms of other nations.
与特朗普关系密切的经济学家明确表示，他们认为美元作为世界首要储备货币的地位既是福也是祸——顾问斯蒂芬•米兰(Stephen Miran)称其为“沉重的负担”。仍然存在一种可能性（这在几周前还不可想象）：美国可能会试图压低美元，以支持国内制造业。但美国也可能意外而非有意地拆解其自身的过度特权，将债券市场的大玩家——外国央行和其他官方储备管理者——推向其他国家的怀抱。
The dollar makes up more than 57 per cent of global official reserves, according to benchmark data from the IMF, far in excess of the US’s slice of the global economy. The euro accounts for 20 per cent, and everyone else is picking up scraps.
根据国际货币基金组织(IMF)的基准数据，美元占全球官方储备的57%以上，远远超过美国在全球经济中的份额。欧元占20%，其他国家只能分捡剩余份额。
Starry-eyed optimists have argued for years that the euro’s slice of the pie should be bigger, but they have been fighting reality. Europe’s bond markets are fragmented into constituent states, with Germany at the centre. The monetary cohesion is there but not the fiscal or strategic cohesion. No national market is simultaneously large, safe and liquid enough to suit a reserve manager’s needs. Super-sized trades leave a mark and in an emergency, these big hitters find only the slick US government bond market will do.
多年来，满怀憧憬的乐观主义者一直辩称，欧元的份额应该更大，但他们一直在与现实作斗争。欧洲的债券市场被分割成各个成员国，中心是德国。货币是统一的，但财政或战略却没有统一。没有哪个国家的市场在规模、安全性和流动性方面都同时强大到满足储备管理者的需求。超大规模的交易会留下痕迹，而在紧急情况下，这些大玩家发现只有流畅的美国政府债券市场才能满足需求。
The EU has struggled to offer an alternative. That is where this moment in history comes in. Its urgent need for defence spending simply overwhelms the capacity of its individual national bond markets. Joint borrowing — easily said but devilishly tricky to do — is the obvious answer. The result could well be that Europe is thrust further to the centre of the global financial system.
欧盟一直很难提供一个替代方案。这就是历史时刻的意义所在。其对国防开支的迫切需求完全超出了各个国家债券市场的承受能力。联合借贷——说起来容易但实施起来极其困难——是显而易见的解决方案。结果可能是欧洲进一步被推向全球金融体系的中心。
The Covid-19 pandemic offered a taste of how pooling resources might work at scale. Then, bonds issued by the EU itself, rather than individual states, were met with enormous demand. The urgency of the present situation offers little choice but to move fast. “Collective action could be an answer, even if consensus has not built yet,” said analysts at rating agency S&P Global in a note last month.
新冠疫情让我们尝试了大规模资源整合的运作。随后，由欧盟而非单个国家发行的债券获得了旺盛的需求。目前形势紧迫，几乎没有选择，只能快速行动。评级机构标普全球(S&P Global)的分析师在上月的一份报告中表示：“即使尚未达成共识，集体行动也可能是一个解决方案。”
If the EU could seize this moment, it would tap in to a deep well of willing buyers keen to trim US exposure. “Plenty of reserve managers could shift very quickly,” says Mohi-uddin. “There would be huge take-up.”
如果欧盟能够抓住这一时机，它将能够吸引大量愿意减少对美国敞口的买家。“许多储备管理者可以非常迅速地转变。” 毛希丁表示，“需求将会是巨大的。”
US dominance of global debt markets does not have to end with a bang. Large, slow-moving investors would simply have to accumulate other assets rather than necessarily dumping their Treasuries. But over time, the result would be the same. Regime shifts of this kind do not happen often. But they do happen. Sterling was the global reserve currency once too.
美国在全球债务市场的主导地位不一定会戛然而止。规模庞大、行动缓慢的投资者只需积累其他资产，而不必急于抛售他们的美国国债。但随着时间的推移，结果将是相同的。这种类型的体制转变并不常见，但确实会发生。英镑曾经也是全球储备货币。