研究预报 下轮危机将在2020年到来

It is not only hindsight that is 20/20. While other bond fund managers are explaining why they failed to see this year’s fall in interest rates, Jeffrey Gundlach, who did, is talking not about the past but about the future, and his next piece of foresight is focused on – believe it or not – 2020.

并非只有事后回看才能看清楚。在一些债券基金经理人解释他们为何没能预测到今年利率下跌的同时，预测到这一点的杰弗里•冈拉克(Jeffrey Gundlach)谈的却不是过去，而是未来，他的下一项预测主要聚焦于2020年。

“A lot of things seem to be pointing to the year 2020 as an interesting timeframe,” he says, sipping cool lemonade in the Los Angeles heat. Mr Gundlach is the founder of Double- Line, which went from a standing start in 2009 to $50bn in assets, becoming the fastest start-up in the fund management industry.

“大量情况似乎指向了2020年，那是值得关注的一年，”他在炎热的洛杉矶边喝柠檬汽水边说。冈拉克于2009年创立了DoubleLine，从无到有把资产做到了500亿美元，成为基金管理行业发展最快的初创企业。

When a bond market maven says “interesting”, be scared. What is good for fixed income is rarely good for the economy as a whole, and Mr Gundlach has a whole list of interesting:

当一位债市专家说“值得关注”时，就要警惕了。有利于固定收益业务的环境，很少有利于整体经济，冈拉克列出了一整张值得关注的情况清单：

a wall of high-yield debt that companies will need to refinance; soaring federal government deficits as baby-boomers drain social security and healthcare funds; ageing populations in China and other emerging markets; and the Federal Reserve’s Treasury holdings maturing too.

企业将需要为大量高收益债券安排再融资；二战后生育高峰期出生的人消耗社保和医疗资金，导致联邦政府赤字大幅攀升；中国和其它一些新兴市场人口不断老化；美联储(Fed)持有的美国国债也将到期。

His conclusion? By 2020 the Fed may well be resurrecting quantitative easing, its palliative for troubled markets. “It seems like one of the consequences of this zero interest rate policy is you’ve pushed out the problem of refinancing, of rolling over, but you’ve really compounded the magnitude of it and it seems to be focused around the 2020s.”

他的结论是？到2020年，美联储很可能重启量化宽松(QE)，这是其对付市场困境的缓和之计。“看来，这一零利率政策的后果之一，是你延后了再融资、债务滚转的问题，你真的加剧了问题的规模，似乎到2020年代前后将会集中体现。”

Mr Gundlach has agreed to squeeze an interview in before a trip to New York state, where he is circling the auction of his home town American football team, the Buffalo Bills, hoping to become a minority investor and to ensure they stay in the down-at-heel city on the US side of Niagara Falls.

冈拉克同意在出发之前挤出时间接受采访，他正要前往纽约州参加他家乡的美式足球队水牛城比尔(Buffalo Bills)队的拍卖，希望成为该队少数股东，以确保该队继续留在尼亚加拉瀑布美国一侧的这座破落城市。

Quantitative easing has been kind to Jeffrey Gundlach the art collector – Mondrian and Jasper Johns are among the personal holdings stolen and then returned after an art theft in 2012 – but it may not be so much for Jeffrey Gundlach the putative sports team owner. These are precisely the luxury assets, along with London and New York real estate and classic Ferraris, that have soared in value as money has been pumped into the system, he says.

量化宽松对身为艺术品收藏家的杰弗里•冈拉克还算不薄——2012年，他的个人藏品失窃随后又被找回，其中有蒙德里安(Mondrian)和贾斯帕•琼斯(Jasper Johns)的作品——但对于可能成为体育专业队老板的杰弗里•冈拉克来说可能不太一样。他说，这些绝对是奢侈资产，类似于伦敦和纽约的房地产以及经典法拉利(Ferraris)，随着大量货币被注入金融体系，这些资产的价值都已大涨。

Mr Gundlach’s star status, supreme self-confidence and strong record stretching back to his career in TCW, the investment management company, made him an obvious heir to the “bond king”, Bill Gross, even before the Pimco founder hit a period of poor returns and negative headlines this year.

冈拉克的明星地位、超级自信以及可追溯到他在投资管理公司TCW的出色业绩记录，使他成了“债券之王”比尔•格罗斯(Bill Gross)的显而易见的继承人，即使在太平洋投资管理公司(PIMCO)创始人遭遇一段糟糕回报时期、今年又成为头条负面新闻之前就是如此。

DoubleLine’s assets under management pale next to the $1.9tn at Pimco, and Mr Gundlach’s Total Return Fund and his smaller but more comparable Double- Line Core Fixed Income fund add up to $36bn versus the $223bn in Mr Gross’s flagship fund. But where Pimco called the bond market wrong at the start of the year, when the overwhelming consensus was for 10-year Treasury yields to march upwards from 3 per cent, Mr Gundlach reckoned on weak economic growth and weak housing and a slide in yields. Today they are below 2.5 per cent.

Pimco资产管理规模达1.9万亿美元，DoubleLine相对要逊色得多。冈拉克管理的总体回报基金(Total Return Fund)以及规模更小、但更具可比性的DoubleLine核心固定收益基金(Core Fixed Income Fund)资产总共为360亿美元，而格罗斯的旗舰基金资产规模达2230亿美元。但今年初，市场共识认为10年期美国国债收益率将从3%升高，Pimco误判了债市走势，而冈拉克则预测经济增长缓慢、住房市场疲软，以及债券收益率下滑。现在，10年期美国国债收益率低于2.5%。

“If you Google ‘interest rates will fall in 2014’ what pops up is a whole bunch of articles that say bond prices will fall in 2014 because yields will rise. It picks up the search in a convoluted way. There’s only a couple that actually specifically answer that request and one of them is ‘Gundlach says interest rates will fall in the first half of 2014’. But I thought it was one of the easiest calls.”

“如果你用谷歌(Google)搜索‘2014年利率将下降’，会搜出一大堆文章，说由于收益率上升，2014年债券价格将会下跌。谷歌以一种令人费解的方式提供搜索结果。只有两篇文章真正回应了搜索请求，其中一篇是‘冈拉克表示2014年上半年利率将会下降’。但我认为那是最容易作出的预测之一。”

Even after a 4 per cent print for second-quarter GDP (inflated, he says, by inventory stocking), he believes forecasters and equity investors will eventually be disabused of the idea that the US economy is reaching “escape velocity”.

甚至在媒体公布第二季度国内生产总值(GDP)增长4%之后（他说，增加库存的行为使这个数字有所膨胀），他认为，预测者和股票投资者最终将放弃美国经济正在接近“逃逸速度”的观点。

They cling to the idea, he says, “and then all of a sudden they won’t. It’s kind of like punching a pumpkin. It’s the same thing, the same thing, the same thing and then all of a sudden it all caves in. I would be surprised to see full-year 2014 GDP exceed 2 per cent.”

他说，他们仍在坚持这个观点，“接着，突然之间他们就会不再坚持了。就像是用拳头猛击南瓜。一下又一下，似乎毫无反应，然后突然间南瓜就被砸陷了。要是2014年全年GDP增长率超过2%，我会感到很吃惊。”

That does not mean DoubleLine is not positioning to capitalise on growth of sorts, at least in mortgages, where the government is trying to persuade private capital to fund loans without guarantees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mr Gundlach is close to signing a deal with a mortgage originator that will offer loans that do not qualify for those guarantees and can therefore be bundled into securities with a higher yield, which DoubleLine will place in its hedge fund.

这并不意味着DoubleLine不准备利用增长的机会，至少是在抵押贷款领域，政府正努力劝服私人资本出资支持未经房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)担保的贷款。冈拉克已接近跟一家抵押贷款发起机构签署协议，该机构将提供不满足上述担保条件、并因此可以被打包成高收益证券的贷款。DoubleLine将在其对冲基金中配置这类证券。

“I think people who are looking for the catalyst for the next mortgage meltdown are fighting the last war,” says Mr Gundlach, dismissing the notion that private-label mortgages would be subprime by another name. “I think the chance of that is really almost infinitesimal.”

“我认为，那些寻找下一次抵押贷款崩盘导火索的人，正在打上一场战争，”冈拉克说，他对私营部门的抵押贷款将成为又一种次贷的观点不屑一顾。“我认为，这种可能性真的几乎是微乎其微。”

No, the next crisis will be something else, he says. Something on that list. And something that requires 2020 vision.

他表示，不，下一场危机将不同于次贷危机。很可能会源于前述清单上的某种情况，需要我们准确预计到的某种情况。