Cypriot finance minister Michael Sarris maintained this week that the capital controls accompanying the €10bn Cyprus bailout deal would last only a matter of weeks. 塞浦路斯财长迈克尔•萨里斯(Michael Sarris)本周坚称，伴随100亿欧元救助协议而来的资本管制仅会持续几周。

This reminded me of the days when the UK economy was still hedged about by exchange controls and of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson’s notorious statement after the 1967 sterling devaluation that “it does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket, in your purse or bank has been devalued”. 这让我想起以往英国经济仍然受到外汇管制束缚的日子，以及1967年英国货币贬值之后，工党首相哈罗德•威尔逊(Harold Wilson)曾经说过的那番臭名昭著的言论：“这并不意味着，在英国本土的英镑——你口袋里的、你钱包里的或者银行里的英镑——贬值了。”

Well, a definite consequence of the limits on transfers of bank deposits and cash withdrawals in Cyprus is that the euro in Cyprus has indeed been devalued. It is, in effect, a different currency to euros held in the rest of the eurozone. That flies in the face of the principle that a prerequisite of a monetary union is a free flow of capital across national borders. It also potentially weakens the stability of the retail bank deposit base of the eurozone periphery. For, while the circumstances of Cyprus, with an oversize financial system and a large Russian presence, are special, the horses will undoubtedly have been frightened all around the eurozone periphery. 塞浦路斯限制转移银行存款和提取现金，必然导致该国欧元事实上的贬值。实际上，塞浦路斯的欧元将变成不同于欧元区其他国家的欧元。这种做法完全无视于货币同盟存在的前提是资本可以跨境自由流动的原则。此举还有可能削弱欧元区外围国家零售银行存款基础的稳定。因为，尽管塞浦路斯的情况较为特殊（金融体系过于庞大，并且有大量俄罗斯人参与），但欧元区外围国家无疑将成为受惊之马。

As for the notion that these capital controls will be shortlived, it is worth remembering that Britain imposed exchange controls as a purely temporary measure at the outbreak of the second world war in 1939. A highly restrictive regime was in place until Margaret Thatcher’s incoming Tory government abolished them 40 years later. The longer such controls are in place the more uncertain the consequences of unwinding them become and the more dangerous, politically, it becomes to embark on a liberalising course. Note, too, that Iceland’s capital controls, introduced as a temporary measure in 2008, remain in situ. 至于资本管制只是短暂实行的说法，我们不妨回忆一下历史。1939年二战爆发时，英国实施了外汇管制，这本来纯属权宜之计。但这一极具限制性的机制一直存在了40年，直到玛格丽特•撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)领导的保守党政府上任后才予以废除。这种管制实施的时间越长，解除管制产生的后果不确定性越大，走上自由化道路的政治风险越高。还需要注意的是，2008年冰岛的资本管制只是作为权宜措施，但现在仍在实施。

The broader point is that capital controls in Cyprus, far from being an isolated instance, may be part of a wider trend that started back in the Asian crisis of 1997-98. Then, as it tried to cope with hot money outflows, Malaysia was excoriated by western policymakers for introducing capital controls. Yet for anyone who was not a fully paid-up subscriber to the Washington consensus, this was obviously a sensible move. Others in the region, such as China, which might otherwise have considered liberalising the capital account of their balance of payments, concluded they would be crazy to do so. 从更广泛的意义上来说，塞浦路斯资本管制绝非个案，而可能是一种更加广泛的趋势的一部分，其源头可追溯到1997-98年的亚洲金融危机。当时，马来西亚为应对热钱流出而实施了资本管制，并因此受到西方政策制定者的强烈指责。然而，除非你是“华盛顿共识”的缴了全款的订户，否则任何人都会觉得此举是很明智的。亚洲其他国家（如中国）原本可能会考虑推进资本账户自由化，结果却得出这样的结论：疯了才会这么做。

The background was that for most of the postwar period there was a general assumption that if trade was free, capital needed to be controlled to prevent market instability and exchange rate chaos. Everything then changed in the headlong rush to liberalisation in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet as the fetters were lifted the long period of postwar financial stability came to an end. The incidence of both currency and financial crises increased dramatically. Hot money had a great deal to do with it. As economist Paul Krugman has remarked in his New York Times column, the unrestricted movement of capital is looking more and more like a failed experiment. 此处的背景是，在战后的大部分时间，人们普遍认为，如果贸易是自由的，那么就必须管制资本，以防止市场不稳，汇率陷入混乱。到了20世纪七、八十年代仓促迈向自由化的时期，一切都改变了。然而，随着管制解除，战后长期的金融稳定局面也终结了。发生货币危机和金融危机的频率大为增加。热钱与此有很大关联。经济学家保罗•克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman)就曾在《纽约时报》(New York Times)的专栏上说过，不受限制的资本流动看起来越来越像一场失败的实验。

Steve Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University offers a counterblast with a quote from Friedrich Hayek in 1944 in The Road to Serfdom: “Nothing would at first seem to affect private life less than state control of the dealings in foreign exchange, and most people will regard its introduction with complete indifference. Yet the experience of most Continental countries has taught thoughtful people to regard this step as the decisive advance on the path to totalitarianism and the suppression of individual liberty. It is, in fact, the complete delivery of the individual to the tyranny of the state, the final suppression of all means of escape – not merely for the rich but for everybody.” 约翰霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)的史蒂夫•汉克(Steve Hanke)对此予以有力反驳，他引用了1944年弗里德里希•哈耶克(Friedrich Hayek)在《通往奴役之路》(The Road to Serfdom)一书中的话：“最初，国家管制外汇交易似乎对个人生活没有任何影响，因此多数人对管制措施无动于衷。然而，欧洲大陆多数国家的经历让有思想的人认识到，这无疑是在通往极权主义和压制个人自由的道路上迈出了决定性的一步。事实上，这是把个人置于国家暴政之下，是断绝一切出路的做法——不仅对富人，而是对所有人。”

There is something in this, especially where exchange controls restrict the movement of private individuals – all the more so in the 1930s and 1940s when Nazi Germany and fascist Italy punished exchange rate smuggling with the death penalty. Today the financial crisis has not brought back totalitarianism. And in the markets we have regulatory arbitrage. If memory serves, the pension fund of the Bank of England, guardian of the pound and administrator of exchange controls, had around a third of its assets in foreign securities financed by back to back loans before exchange controls were scrapped in 1979. In the 1980s a thriving derivatives business grew up in Chicago to provide Canadian pension funds with synthetic exposure to foreign equities, so bypassing regulatory curbs on foreign investment. And so on and so forth. 这种观点有一定道理，尤其是当外汇管制限制了个体流动的时候，在某些特殊情况下就更是如此——在20世纪三四十年代，纳粹德国和法西斯意大利以死刑惩罚违规携带外汇行为。今天的金融危机没有导致极权主义卷土重来。市场上还有监管套利。如果没记错的话，在1979年英国废除外汇管制之前，英国央行(BoE)——英镑卫士和外汇管制的管理者——的养老金基金约有三分之一的资产为外国证券，持有这些证券的资金来自背对背贷款。20世纪80年代，一种衍生品业务在芝加哥蓬勃兴起，专门为加拿大的养老金基金提供投资于外国股票的合成产品，从而绕开针对外国投资的监管限制。这种例子还有很多。

Thinking back, the real costs of longstanding capital controls were the resulting market distortions, not least to the cost of capital. In today’s world such distortions may be a lesser evil than extreme financial instability. 回首历史，长期资本管制的真实成本是会导致市场扭曲，特别是扭曲资金成本。在当今世界，这种扭曲的危害或许轻于极端的金融动荡。