It would be an understatement to say that economic forecasts are a constant disappointment to investors. The trouble arises because the forecasters’ models are fundamentally flawed.
如果有人说，经济预测反复令投资者失望，这将是一种客气的说法。之所以出现这个问题，是因为预测者的模型存在根本瑕疵。
Many are over-reliant on extrapolations of the recent past, while the so-called New Keynesian models deployed by professional economists rarely pick up big economic shifts, such as the 1970s oil shock or the rapid rise of China.
许多模型过于依赖外推法（基于不久前的过去推断未来），同时专业经济学家运用的所谓“新凯恩斯”模型很少注意到重大的经济转变，比如上世纪70年代的石油冲击或者中国的快速崛起。
Such shifts are inherently unpredictable. Yet there are some fundamental regime changes that ought to be predictable and which forecasters may now be overlooking. The most obvious, which will be hugely important for capital markets, relates to demography and the impending shrinkage of the global workforce.
此类转变从本质上说是不可预测的。然而，有一些理应可以预料到的根本性机制变化，现在可能被预测者们忽视了。对资本市场至关重要的最明显的改变，与人口特征和即将出现的全球劳动人口缩减有关。
The experience of the past 35 years has been one of labour oversupply arising from the postwar baby boom in the advanced economies and the incorporation of the emerging markets into the global economy. This has put downward pressure on wages. At the same time, excessive global saving, notably in Asia and northern Europe, has helped cause low or negative real interest rates.
过去35年是劳动力供应过剩的35年，这一方面源于发达经济体战后的“婴儿潮”，另一方面源于新兴市场融入全球经济。这让薪资承受下行压力。与此同时，全球（尤其是在亚洲和北欧）储蓄过剩，催生了较低或为负值的实际利率。