法国农业信贷银行 2010年第三季度全球宏观经济展望.pdf

rd No. 129 – 3 quarter 2010 st Copy deadline: 1 July 2010 Thinking ‘outside the box’ on economic policy • The markets are currently imposing on Europe a more brutal tightening of fiscal policy earlier than expected. But that does not mean that the two other constraints have disappeared: central banks should normalise the settings of their monetary policy as soon as conditions are met, while there is a ‘strong obligation’ to maintain a certain level of growth. How this can be done is not at all clear, and there are fears that the markets will find it difficult to extract themselves from this new ‘Bermuda Triangle’ – not forgetting that the triangle can easily shift from one place to another within the region formed by the advanced countries. • Recent European experience shows that the management of fiscal policy appears to be a more complicated issue than previously thought: how is the decision made when to cut off stimulus and start coming back to fiscal discipline? Cutting it off too soon is taking the risk of the economy plunging into a new downturn; letting it run for too long could build more investor fears and create a hard landing scenario. Defining the main risk between Scylla and Charybdis is never easy. Perhaps the choic