早在1997年IMF的香港年会上，IMF就已经开始尝试着修改章程，以增强敦促各国走向资本市场自由化的能力。

这个时机选得令人叫绝：当时亚洲金融危机刚刚开始酝酿，而导致此次危机的一大主因，正是在一个根本不需要资本市场自由化的高储蓄率地区，积极推行资本市场自由化。

鼓吹推行资本市场自由化的幕后推手，正是西方的金融市场和为它们卖命的西方各国的财长们。而对于2008年的全球性金融危机来说，导致它产生的主要原因，则是美国的金融去监管化，以及能够将“美国制造”的创伤传播到全世界其他地区资本市场的金融全球化。

2008年的危机表明，自由且无束缚的市场既不高效，也不稳定。在设定价格（看看地产泡沫）和汇率（无非是一种货币对另一种货币的价格）等方面，这个市场的表现也不尽如人意。

冰岛在处理本国危机时的经验表明：以实施资本管制作为应对危机的手段，将有助于小国处理金融危机所带来的冲击。而美联储的“量化宽松”政策则证明，“无束缚的市场”这种思想是注定要失败的：资金将流向市场眼中回报率最高的地方。

新兴市场出现繁荣，而美国和欧洲则变得停滞。显而易见的是，大部分新创造出来的流动性将想方设法流向新兴市场。在美国信贷渠道依然不畅、大量的社区及地区性银行仍然在苦苦挣扎的时候，情况尤其如此。

随之而来的，则是资金大量地涌入新兴市场。这意味着，即使在思想上反对进行干预的财长和央行行长们，也不得不采取这项措施。事实上，已经有一个又一个的国家采取了这样或者那样的干预方式，以避免让本币币值急速提升。

如今，IMF要为这些干预措施大开绿灯了，但它同时也依旧认为：干预只能作为无奈之下的情急之选。相反的是，我们应该从此次金融危机中得到这样 的教训：市场需要监管，跨界的资本流动非常危险。对其进行监管应该作为维持金融稳定性的关键部分，不到无可奈何的时候不动用监管，这样只能让不稳定的局势 更加恶化。

进行资本账户管理的工具多种多样，如果能够进行综合采纳，效果会更好。即便是这些工具最终未必能够完全有效，但至少也比不进行管制要强。

更重要的变化是，IMF终于认清了不平等和不稳定之间的联系。这场危机的主因之一，是美国试图提振疲软不堪的经济，而其所使用的手段，却是低利率和放松管制。这种过度负债行为的后果需要很多年才能消除。但正如IMF的另一项研究所显示出来的那样，这并不是什么新伎俩。

这场危机还考验了长期存在的另一个教条——将失业归咎于劳动力市场缺乏弹性。像美国这样的工资具有较高弹性的国家，比包括德国在内的北欧经济体的表现要差得多。事实上，随着工资的减少，上班族们会更加难以偿还其所欠下的债务，从而让房地产市场的问题进一步恶化。

大萧条之前，美国经济的不平等性十分严重。而2008年的危机以及为了应对它所采取的措施，所造成的收入方面的不平等性，则有过之而无不及。这会使复苏难上加难。美国正把自己引向一蹶不振，正如曾经的日本一样。

但走出这种两难困境，并不是不可能完成的任务。可行的方法包括加强集体工资讨价还价能力、重组按揭贷款、用“胡萝卜+大棒”政策促使银行恢复借贷等一系列政策措施。

现如今，美国最顶端的1％打工者们掌握着全美四分之一的收入以及四成的财富。美国早已不再是“机会之地”，甚至连“老”欧洲都不如了。■

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund’s effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Slightly more than 13 years earlier, at the IMF’s Hong Kong meeting in 1997, the Fund had attempted to amend its charter in order to gain more leeway to push countries towards capital-market liberalization. The timing could not have been worse: the East Asia crisis was just brewing – a crisis that was largely the result of capital-market liberalization in a region that, given its high savings rate, had no need for it.

That push had been advocated by Western financial markets – and the Western finance ministries that serve them so loyally. Financial deregulation in the United States was a prime cause of the global crisis that erupted in 2008, and financial and capital-market liberalization elsewhere helped spread that “made in the USA” trauma around the world.

The crisis showed that free and unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable. They also did not necessarily do a good job at setting prices (witness the real-estate bubble), including exchange rates (which are merely the price of one currency in terms of another).

Iceland showed that responding to the crisis by imposing capital controls could help small countries manage its impact. And the US Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” (QEII) made the demise of the ideology of unfettered markets inevitable: money goes to where markets think returns are highest. With emerging markets booming, and America and Europe in the doldrums, it was clear that much of the new liquidity being created would find its way to emerging markets. This was especially true given that America’s credit pipeline remained clogged, with many community and regional banks still in a precarious position.

The resulting surge of money into emerging markets has meant that even finance ministers and central-bank governors who are ideologically opposed to intervening believe that they have no choice but to do so. Indeed, country after country has now chosen to intervene in one way or another to prevent their currencies from skyrocketing in value.

Now the IMF has blessed such interventions – but, as a sop to those who are still not convinced, it suggests that they should be used only as a last resort. On the contrary, we should have learned from the crisis that financial markets need regulation, and that cross-border capital flows are particularly dangerous. Such regulations should be a key part of any system to ensure financial stability; resorting to them only as a last resort is a recipe for continued instability.

There is a wide range of available capital-account management tools, and it is best if countries use a portfolio of them. Even if they are not fully effective, they are typically far better than nothing.

But an even more important change is the link that the IMF has finally drawn between inequality and instability. This crisis was largely a result of America’s effort to bolster an economy weakened by vastly increased inequality, through low interest rates and lax regulation (both of which resulted in many people borrowing far beyond their means). The consequences of this excessive indebtedness will take years to undo. But, as another IMF study reminds us, this is not a new pattern.

The crisis has also put to the test long-standing dogmas that blame labor-market rigidity for unemployment, because countries with more flexible wages, like the US, have fared worse than northern European economies, including Germany.  Indeed, as wages weaken, workers will find it even more difficult to pay back what they owe, and problems in the housing market will become worse. Consumption will remain restrained, while strong and sustainable recovery cannot be based on another debt-fueled bubble.

As unequal as America was before the Great Recession, the crisis, and the way it has been managed, has led to even greater income inequality, making a recovery all the more difficult.  America is setting itself up for its own version of a Japanese-style malaise.

But there are ways out of this dilemma: strengthening collective bargaining, restructuring mortgages, using carrots and sticks to get banks to resume lending, restructuring tax and spending policies to stimulate the economy now through long-term investments, and implementing social policies that ensure opportunity for all. As it is, with almost one-quarter of all income and 40% of US wealth going to the top 1% of income earners, America is now less a “land of opportunity” than even “old” Europe.

For progressives, these abysmal facts are part of the standard litany of frustration and justified outrage. What is new is that the IMF has joined the chorus. As Strauss-Kahn concluded in his speech to the Brookings Institution shortly before the Fund’s recent meeting: “Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF’s mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.”

Strauss-Kahn is proving himself a sagacious leader of the IMF. We can only hope that governments and financial markets heed his words.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in Economics, and the author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy.