bad news! The world economy will continue to deteriorate

US stocks are on track their worst December since the Great Depression. Financial stocks are already in a bear market. The central bank for central banks thinks it’s only going to get worse.
美国股市刚刚经历了几乎是大萧条之后最惨的一个12月。金融股已经进入熊市了。而中央银行觉得事态的发展只会更糟。
“It was not the first, and it will not be the last,” said Claudio Borio, head of the monetary and economic department at the Bank of International Settlements. “It was just another bump along the narrow path of monetary policy normalization.”
国际清算银行的财政及经济部主管 Claudio Borio 说：“这不是第一次，也不会是最后一次。这只是货币政策正常化这条狭窄道路上的又一次颠簸。”
He’s referring to interest rates returning to normal, as is now underway in Europe and continued in the US today with another rate hike from the Federal Reserve.
他说的正常化是指利率回归正常，这种情况目前正要在欧洲出现，并且已经在美国发生了，其间美联储又进行了一次提息。
Among the other causes for concern for investors: the inverting yield curve (which many take to be an indicator of an imminent recession), Brexit, the weakness of European banks, and the ongoing trade war between the US and China.
除了这些外，投资者们需要担心的事还不少：反向的收益曲线（很多人把这视为经济衰退在即的标志）、英国脱欧、欧洲银行的疲软，以及中美之间持续的贸易战。
Borio also noted that a lot of low-quality corporate debt “hovers like a dark cloud over investors,” which Quartz warned about in relation to the revelation that 90% of the debt issued by private-equity firms are the worst possible junk bonds.
Borio 还发现，有很多劣质的公司债务“像乌云一样纠缠着投资者们”，而《石英》杂志此前也对此做出过警告：这些债务里的90%都是烂到不能再烂的债券。
“Faced with unprecedented initial conditions—extraordinarily low interest rates, bloated central-bank balance sheets and high global indebtedness, both private and public—monetary policy normalization was bound to be challenging especially in light of trade tensions and political uncertainty,” Borio added. “The recent bump is likely to be just one in a series.”
Borio 还补充到：“这场最近发生的经济颠簸只是一连串颠簸中的一个，毕竟现在这么多不利因素史无前例地齐聚一堂：极低的利率、央行臃肿的资产负债表、全球性的高债务率（公债和私债都有）。这意味着货币政策的正常化会非常艰难，尤其是现在贸易上的摩擦和政局上的不确定性又这么大。”
After a year that saw a massive increase in risk and uncertainty, putting fears that the longest bull market in US history is coming to an end, investors might be wary to hear that 2019 is looking even worse. But Borio’s remarks did have one silver lining.
在这一年里，我们见证了风险和不确定性的大幅上升，恐怕美国史上最长的一次牛市就要终结了，而更让投资者们揪心的或许是：2019年的情况会更加糟糕。不过Borio的评论里还会有一点儿带来希望的东西。
Research conducted by Borio, Mathias Drehmann, and Dora Xia comparing recessions and financial cycles suggests that, at least since the early 1980s, economic downturns have typically been preceded by financial booms rather than higher interest rates. This suggests that we shouldn’t fear that inverted yield curve.
Borio、Mathias Drehmann和Dora Xia三位主导了一项研究，他们对比了数次经济衰退和金融周期，然后发现：至少在1980年代以后，经济下行之后基本都会是一次金融繁荣，而不会是利率升高。这告诉我们，其实不用太担心反向的收益曲线。