HELPING POLICYMAKERS

Our economic and market principles were very different from most others, which accounted for ourdifferent results. I will explain these differences in Economic and InvestmentPrinciples and won’t digress into them now.

As former Fed chairman AlanGreenspan put it, “The models failed at a time when we needed themmost . . . JP Morgan had the American economy accelerating threedays before [the Lehman Brothers’ collapse]—their model failed. The Fed model failed.The IMF model failed . . . So that left me asking myself: Whathappened?” Bill Dudley, president of the New York Fed, homed in on the problemwhen he said, “I think there’s a fundamental problem in terms of howmacroeconomists look at the economic outlook, growth, andinflation . . . If you look at the big macro models, they don’thave a financial sector typically in them. They don’t admit the possibilitythat the financial sector could essentially melt down, and therefore themonetary policy impulse could be completely impaired. So I think the lesson ofthe crisis is to do a lot more work to make sure that the finance people aretalking to the macroeconomist people and building models that are more robust.”He was right. We “finance people” see the world very differently from the wayeconomists do. As a result of our success, policymakers reached out to us more,which led me to have a lot more contact with senior economic policymakers inthe U.S. and around the world. Out of respect for the privacy of our conversations,I won’t say much about them except to note that they became much more open toour nontraditional ways of looking at economies and markets, and more skepticalabout traditional economic thinking, which had failed to either signal or avertthe crisis.

Most of our exchanges wereone-sided; I generally answered their questions and didn’t ask any that wouldput them in the awkward position of having to avoid answering for fear ofcompromising confidential information. I met with these leaders without makingjudgments and without regard for their particular ideologies. I approached themlike a doctor, just wanting to make the most benefiial impact.

They wanted my help because myglobal macroeconomic perspective as an investor was very different from theirsas policymakers. We were both products of our environments. Investors thinkindependently, anticipate things that haven’t happened yet, and put real moneyat stake with their bets. Policymakers come from environments that nurtureconsensus, not dissent, that train them to react to things that have alreadyoccurred, and that prepare them for negotiations, not placing bets. Becausethey don’t benefit from the constant feedback about the quality of theirdecisions that investors get, it’s not clear who the good and bad decisionmakers among them are. They also have to be politicians. Even the mostclear-sighted and capable policymakers must constantly divert their attentionfrom the immediate problems they are dealing with to fight the objections ofother policymakers, and the political systems they must navigate are oftendysfunctional.

Whilethe economic machine is more powerful than any political system in the long run(ineffective politicians will be replaced and incapable political systems willchange), the interaction between the two is what drives economic cycles in thehere and now—and it’s often not pretty to watch.

译文：

我们的经济和市场原则与其他大多数国家存在非常大的不同，当然这样也导致了我们国家不同的结果。我将在经济和投资原则一书中解释这些不同，现在不过多纠缠。

就像前美联储主席格林斯潘说的”模型恰恰在我们需要的时候失效了，jp摩根在雷曼兄弟崩盘前连续三天增长 ，他们的模型都是失败的。美联储的经济模型失败了。国际货币基金组织模型失败，... 所以只能我自己问自己了：发生了什么？” 比尔杜德利， 纽约美联储主席将问题归为于“我认为在以微观经济的方式看待宏观经济比如前景、增长、通胀存在基础性问题”。。。 如果你观察宏观经济模型，是没有典型的这样的经济分支的。宏观经济不承认那样的经济分支的熔断机制的。所以货币政策一直鲁莽行事而完全失败。所以我认为危机的教训就是大量多余的工作都是在确认人们谈到的宏观经济学建立的模型是稳健的。“他是正确的，而我们这些经济人看待世界的方式与经济学家完全不同。结果就是我们成功了，决策者们更多的涌向我们，也让我们跟美国和全世界的更高经济决策者们有了更多的解除。”出于对我们谈话的隐私考虑，我不会太多透露内容除了她们开始变得更加开放对于经济和市场的非传统的看法。对于传统的经济理论保持怀疑，因为她们对于危机即没有预警也没有避免危机。

大多数我们之间的交易都是单边的，一般而言是我回答他们的问题，并不会问他们任何问题，那样可能会将他们陷入尴尬的境地，因为担心没有足够的信息而害怕妥协所以避免回答我饿问题。我和这些领导人会面并没有做判断，没有因为她们的特别思想而自以为是。我就像一个医生观察他们，就是要最大化有益的影响。

他们想要得到我的帮助因为我--作为一个投资人的的全球宏观经济视野和他们作为决策人的视野非常不同。我们都是彼此环境的产品。投资人喜欢独立思考，思考没有发生的预期的事情，拿真钱进行博弈。决策者们则来自充满一致性的环境，而不是分歧和异议，环境将他们对已经发生的事情做出反应，并准备为此协商、谈判，而不是博弈。因为决策者通常不会从决策的质量而获益而投资人可以，他们当中的强者弱者也是傻傻分不清楚。他们同时也是政治家。即使最有远见和能力的决策者也必须时常将注意力从他们正在处理的紧急问题上转换到其他决策者的争斗上，而他们驾驭的政治系统常常出现机能障碍。

而经济机器比政治机器在长期运行上更加有力（低效的政治家会被替换而政治系统会改变），两者之间的互动是此时驱动经济圈的动力---常常不那么明显。

读后感：

宏观经济学和微观经济学是现今经济学领域的两大主流理论。而宏观经济学更早出现，从大面上研究经济学规律，微观经济学是近代和现代发展起来的，因为可以借助现代的计算机和信息技术、大数据可以更好的分析经济学现象，更加微观、多维看待经济学问题，可以理解微观经济学是宏观经济学的补充和局部放大、细化、具象。

最后作者分析了政治家和经济学家之间的联系和区别，作者作为投资人当然是力挺经济学家更加聪明、智慧。不必苛求，因为作者的身份已经决定了答案。