佛罗里达州奥兰多，11月11日——美联储主席凯文·沃什对“前瞻性指引”的不屑一顾显而易见。不幸的是，填补这一沟通空白的，恰恰是任何别的东西。
ORLANDO, Florida, Nov 11 - Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's disdain for "forward guidance" is clear. Unfortunately, what is filling that communication void is anything but.
自5月接替杰罗姆·鲍威尔出任美联储主席以来，沃什一直致力于全面改革这家央行运作的几乎每一个方面，从减少每年的政策会议次数，到彻底重构其决策框架。混乱的信息传递已成为新面貌美联储的一个特征，而非缺陷。
Since replacing Jerome Powell as Fed chair in May, Warsh has been on a mission to overhaul nearly every aspect of how the central bank functions, from reducing the number of policy meetings each year to completely restructuring its decision-making framework. Muddled messaging has become a feature of the new-look Fed, not a bug.
沃什一再引导市场不要对单一数据点赋予过多权重，并主张美联储不应把自己与预测绑定。
Warsh has repeatedly steered markets away from putting too much weight on single data points and has argued that the Fed should not tie itself to forecasts.
然而，周二在伦敦，美联储理事克里斯托弗·沃勒却表现出恰恰相反的做法。他表示，如果昨日公布的10月核心消费者价格指数（CPI）环比涨幅为0.3%或更高，那么下个月加息50个基点就应被摆上桌面。几个小时后，该数据确认为0.3%。
Yet we saw precisely the opposite in London on Tuesday from Fed Governor Christopher Waller He said a 50-basis-point rate hike next month should be on the table if the monthly rise in core Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October due yesterday was 0.3% or more. A few hours later, it was confirmed at 0.3%.
沃勒这一鹰派意外之举引发美国国债收益率急剧飙升，并让投资者困惑于政策制定者的“反应函数”究竟是什么。
Waller’s hawkish curveball triggered a sharp spike in US bond yields and left investors confused about what policymakers' “reaction function” actually is.
沃勒被认为是美联储19人联邦公开市场委员会中最有影响力的成员之一。而他近期的政策立场经历了相当大的转变，凸显出美联储信息传递中更大的问题。
Waller is considered one of the most influential members of the central bank’s 19-strong Federal Open Market Committee. And he has been on quite a policy journey recently, underscoring the larger problems with Fed messaging.
他投票反对联邦公开市场委员会去年7月和今年1月维持利率不变的决定，两次都投下反对票，主张降息25个基点。就在3月20日，他还表示：“如果劳动力市场持续疲软，我会开始再次主张在今年晚些时候下调政策利率。”从那样的立场到短短七个月后就把加息半个百分点摆上台面，转变相当之大。作为参照，除了2022至2023年为对抗疫情和俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后历史性通胀爆发而进行的紧缩行动之外，过去30年里美联储仅有一次将政策利率上调50个基点。那是在2000年5月，此举帮助刺破了互联网泡沫。
He voted against the FOMC's decisions to keep rates on hold in July last year and again in January, both times dissenting in favor of lowering rates by 25 basis points. As recently as March 20, he said, "If the labor market continues to be weak, I would start advocating again for cutting the policy rate later this year." To go from that to putting a half-percentage-point hike on the table in barely seven months is quite a turnaround. For context, excluding the 2022-23 tightening campaign to combat the historic burst of inflation following the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine the Fed has raised its policy rate by 50 bps just once in the last 30 years. And that was in May 2000, a move that helped burst the dotcom bubble.
诚然，10月CPI报告显示通胀比官员们预想的更为顽固。数月来高企的能源价格似乎正在向整个经济蔓延。尽管如此，沃勒转向鹰派的时机颇为蹊跷。自美联储10月28日维持利率不变以来，油价下跌了近20%，一年期通胀互换已回落至2%以下，推动经济和华尔街的AI热潮也已乏力——纳斯达克指数下跌6%，半导体股上周四录得有记录以来第二大跌幅。
To be sure, the October CPI report showed inflation is stickier than officials have bargained for. Months of elevated energy prices seem to be spreading through the economy. Still, the timing of Waller's hawkish lurch is odd. Since the Fed left rates unchanged on October 28, oil prices are down nearly 20%, one-year inflation swaps have slumped back below 2%, and the AI boom driving the economy and Wall Street has sputtered — the Nasdaq is down 6%, and semiconductor stocks had their second-biggest fall on record last Thursday.
“目前很难理解他的框架是什么，”Spectra Markets的布伦特·唐纳利表示。“美联储……现在一片混乱，因为没人知道在供给冲击下该如何处理货币政策。”当然，还有另一种看待此事的角度。
"(It's) hard to understand what his framework is at this point," says Brent Donnelly at Spectra Markets. "The Fed ... is all over the place right now as nobody knows what to do with monetary policy in a supply shock." There is another way to look at this, of course.
沃勒那些针对通胀的意外之举，或许只是联邦公开市场委员会会议桌上激烈辩论的一种表现——沃什亲切地称之为一场老式的“家庭争吵”。政策制定者之间观点广泛多元是健康且可取的。
Waller's inflation-specific curveballs may just be one manifestation of the robust debate taking place around the FOMC table that Warsh warmly refers to as a good old "family fight." A wide range of views among policymakers is healthy and desirable.
但如果这导致信息混乱或自相矛盾，就可能成为问题。而这正是市场目前所得到的。
But if that leads to muddled or contradictory messaging, it can become problematic. And this is what markets are getting.
其他美联储官员近期的信号，甚至来自克利夫兰联储主席贝丝·哈马克这样的鹰派人物，都表明他们倾向于逐步收紧政策——而不是在暂停加息后的下一次会议上大幅加息。事实上，上周结束时，市场甚至没有完全消化本轮周期剩余时间内50个基点的加息。而现在他们预计会加息75个基点。
Recent signals from other Fed officials, even from hawks like Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, had indicated a preference for gradual tightening — not a jumbo hike at the meeting immediately following a pause. Indeed, at the end of last week, markets were not even fully pricing in 50 bps of rate hikes over the remainder of the cycle. They’re now expecting 75 bps.
如果10月核心CPI只上涨了0.246%而不是0.296%，从而四舍五入后低于沃勒的门槛呢？周二两年期美国国债收益率还会跃升20个基点，创下去年4月以来的最大涨幅吗？利率市场还会预期三次而非两次25个基点的加息吗？不太可能。
What if October's core CPI had risen by only 0.246% instead of 0.296% and thus been rounded down below Waller’s threshold? Would the 2-year Treasury yield have leaped 20 basis points on Tuesday, its biggest rise since April last year? Would rates markets be pricing in three more quarter-point hikes instead of two? Unlikely.
如此强调某一具体数据点的具体水平，让市场如履薄冰。这也违背了沃什的理念，即应对通胀“不是关乎某个孤立的数据点”，而且“趋势最重要”。如果真是那样，上个月加息25个基点会比12月加息50个基点更有道理。
Putting so much emphasis on specific levels of a specific data point leaves the market dancing on a pinhead. It also goes against Warsh's ethos that tackling inflation "is not about some isolated data point" and that "trends matter most." If that were the case, a 25 bps rate hike last month would have made more sense than a 50 bps one in December.