美联储主席耶伦：加息不应“过于渐进”

Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said policymakers ought to be careful of “moving too gradually” on monetary policy despite “significant uncertainties” over inflation.

美联储(Federal Reserve)主席珍妮特•耶伦(Janet Yellen)表示，政策制定者应该慎防在货币政策上“动作过于渐进”，尽管在通胀上存在“重大不确定性”。

Ms Yellen, speaking on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the National Association for Business Economics in Cleveland, Ohio, acknowledged that “some key assumptions underlying the baseline outlook could be wrong in ways that imply that inflation will remain low for longer than currently projected”.

耶伦周二在俄亥俄州克利夫兰举行的全美商业经济协会(National Association for Business Economics)年会上发言，承认“支撑基线前景预测的一些关键假设可能是错误的，而这意味着相比当前预测，通胀将在低位徘徊更久。”

But she cautioned against waiting too long to raise interest rates again, underscoring the signal from the Fed’s latest policy meeting last week that another rate rise may be on the cards before the end of 2017.

但是，她反对在再次加息之前等待太久，从而加强了美联储在上周最新政策会议上发出的信号，即在2017年底之前可能再次上调利率。

“A gradual approach is particularly appropriate in light of subdued inflation and a low neutral real interest rate, which imply that the [Federal Open Market Committee] will have only limited scope to cut the federal funds rate should the economy be hit with an adverse shock,” she said.

“在通胀低迷、中性实际利率较低的情况下，渐进的做法尤其适当，这意味着如果经济受到不利冲击，(联邦公开市场委员会)削减联邦基金利率的空间将是有限的，”她表示。

“But we should also be wary of moving too gradually. Job gains continue to run well ahead of the longer-run pace we estimate would be sufficient, on average, to provide jobs for new entrants to the labour force.”

“但是我们也应该对动作过于渐进抱有戒心。就业增长继续保持良好势头，远远超前于我们估计的、平均而言对于为劳动力队伍新加入者提供就业已经充足的较长期步伐。”

She said that without further modest increases in the federal funds rate over time, there is a risk that the labour market could become overheated, potentially creating an inflationary problem down the road that might be difficult to overcome without triggering a recession.

她表示，如果不随着时间的推移进一步适度上调联邦基金利率，劳动力市场会有过热的风险，可能在未来某时酿成一个通胀问题，而这个问题可能难以在不引发经济衰退的前提下克服。

The reason for persistently low inflation has become a matter of intense debate among rate-setters at the Fed. Some of Ms Yellen’s colleagues have offered theories that include structural drags on prices from technology.

通胀持续低迷的原因已成为美联储利率制定者之间激烈辩论的一个焦点问题。耶伦的某些同事提出了一些理论，包括科技给价格水平带来的结构性抑制。

Ms Yellen has pointed to other reasons for the inflation undershoots in previous years, among them spare capacity in the jobs market after the recession, falling energy prices and an appreciation of the dollar. On Tuesday she said that further idiosyncratic factors, including a dip in telecoms prices, meant that a recent decline in inflation was “probably temporary”.

耶伦曾指出过去几年通胀偏低的其他原因，包括经济衰退过后就业市场的富余供应、能源价格下滑以及美元升值。她在周二表示，更多的特殊因素，包括电信服务价格下滑，意味着近期通胀下降“很可能是暂时的”。

As Ms Yellen spoke, the yield on the two-year US Treasury note, which is considered most sensitive to monetary policy, was at its highest point since 2008 at 1.45 per cent, having inched ahead of a peak it reached shortly after last week’s Fed meeting.

耶伦发表讲话之际，被认为对货币政策最敏感的两年期美国国债收益率达到1.45%，这是自2008年以来的最高点，高于上周美联储会议后不久达到的一个峰值。

The dollar index, measuring the US currency against a basket of peers, pared its gains slightly before rising back up to 93.16, and stocks were largely steady.

衡量美元相对于一篮子货币汇率的美元指数最初回吐了部分涨幅，随后回升至93.16点，股价基本稳定。