Finance
金融
Taming the banks
馴服銀行
The public’s urge for revenge may not have been sated, but the new Basel rules make sense
公眾要求復(fù)仇的強(qiáng)烈愿望可能并未得到滿足，但是新的《巴塞爾協(xié)議》是合理的
Sep 16th 2010
2010年9月16日
TWO years ago the collapse of Lehman Brothers heralded a frightening period for the world economy. As one bank after another toppled, or came close to doing so, regulators worried that cashpoint machines would fail to operate and that companies would be unable to meet their payrolls. A second Great Depression seemed to beckon.
兩年前，雷曼兄弟的破產(chǎn)宣告世界經(jīng)濟(jì)步入了一個(gè)令人恐懼的時(shí)期。隨著銀行一家接一家地倒閉——或是接近于倒閉，監(jiān)管者擔(dān)心自動提款機(jī)無法運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)，公司也不能正常發(fā)放薪水。第二次大蕭條似乎再向人們招手。
Extraordinary efforts were made to bail out the banks, including state guarantees, partial nationalisations, near-zero interest rates and massive fiscal deficits. The public seethed at the banks’ profligacy. Surely finance would be reformed, as it was in the 1930s when America created a new regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and separated casino-like investment banking from retail banking?
人們?yōu)榫仍@些銀行付出了異乎尋常的努力，包括國家擔(dān)保、部分國有化、利率接近于零以及大規(guī)模財(cái)政赤字等。銀行肆意揮霍的行為引起民怨沸騰。金融部門肯定會像上世紀(jì)30年代那樣被改革嗎？當(dāng)時(shí)，美國創(chuàng)立了一個(gè)新的監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)——證券交易委員會，并且把賭場似的投資銀行業(yè)從零售銀行業(yè)中分離出來。
Two years on, the landscape of finance has altered somewhat. Take hedge funds: the crisis wiped out around a quarter of their assets and forced many mediocre ones out of business. Many private clients left in disgust when they found that these self-proclaimed superstars could lose money; the client base is increasingly dominated by institutions, which should insist on more transparency and better risk management. In private equity, the poor performance of the 2006-07 vintage of deals is making it harder for firms to raise money; one manager, Candover, is giving up the ghost.
兩年過去了，金融業(yè)的面貌略微有些變化。以對沖基金為例：金融危機(jī)讓它們的資產(chǎn)縮水了大約1/4，并迫使許多平庸的對沖基金倒閉。許多私人客戶發(fā)現(xiàn)這些自稱超級明星的對沖基金可能賠錢，因此滿懷厭惡地拂袖而去；客戶基礎(chǔ)越來越被機(jī)構(gòu)所掌控，它們應(yīng)該堅(jiān)持要求擴(kuò)大透明度和改善風(fēng)險(xiǎn)管理狀況。在私募股權(quán)行業(yè)中，2006到2007年的那些交易表現(xiàn)拙劣，導(dǎo)致這些公司更難募集資金；一家名為Candover的公司行將就木。
But it is the banks that matter most; and, in banking, it is remarkable how little has changed. Many banks are still “too big to fail” and the casino side of their activities remains mixed up with the mundane business of deposit-taking. Bankers are once more earning huge bonuses. How could this be?
但是，銀行是最要緊的；而值得注意的是，銀行業(yè)發(fā)生的變化何其之少！許多銀行仍是“大而不能倒”，銀行活動中賭博的一面仍與平常的吸儲業(yè)務(wù)相混淆。銀行家再次掙得巨額獎金。情況怎么能是這樣？
Breaking up the banks might have satisfied taxpayers’ desire for revenge, but it is not clear what problems it would have solved. Anglo Irish Bank and Northern Rock collapsed not because they were too big, nor because they were playing the markets: they were classic “narrow” banks which failed in the traditional fashion—borrowing short to lend long against property that turned out to be overvalued. The problems of the Spanish cajas show that a financial system with lots of small banks is not necessarily safer.
拆分銀行可能滿足納稅人復(fù)仇的愿望；但是，人們并不清楚這能解決哪些問題。盎格魯-愛爾蘭銀行和北巖銀行之所以倒閉，既不是因?yàn)橐?guī)模太大，也不是因?yàn)橥稒C(jī)倒把：它們屬于以傳統(tǒng)方式倒閉的典型的“業(yè)務(wù)范圍狹窄”銀行——它們以借入的短期存款發(fā)放長期貸款，而用作抵押的財(cái)產(chǎn)最終卻被證明是高估的。西班牙銀行業(yè)面臨的問題顯示出，擁有大量小銀行的金融系統(tǒng)不一定就更安全。
Still, the crisis made it painfully clear that the world’s banking system needed new international rules to impose lending discipline and guard against any temptation to migrate to the weakest regulatory regime. A new set, known as Basel 3, has been proposed. They will not satisfy radicals, but they will probably do the job.
然而，這場危機(jī)令人痛苦地認(rèn)清這樣一個(gè)事實(shí)：全球銀行系統(tǒng)需要新的國際準(zhǔn)則來規(guī)范借貸紀(jì)律，防止任何將業(yè)務(wù)轉(zhuǎn)移到監(jiān)管力量最弱的外國政權(quán)的誘惑。一套稱為《巴塞爾協(xié)議Ⅲ》的新規(guī)定已經(jīng)被提出來了。它們可能不會讓激進(jìn)分子滿意，但很可能會收到效果。
The purpose of the new rules is to ensure that banks have more capital when they face the next crisis, and are thus better able to cope with bad debts. The core Tier 1 ratio will rise to 7%, slightly less than expected but still a lot better than before the crisis (at the end of 2007, Royal Bank of Scotland had a ratio of just 3.5%).
這些新規(guī)則旨在確保各家銀行在面臨下一場危機(jī)前擁有更多資本，從而能夠更好地應(yīng)對壞賬問題。一級資本充足率將提高到7%，這一比率略低于人們的預(yù)想，但是仍然比這場危機(jī)發(fā)生前高出很多（在2007年底，蘇格蘭皇家銀行的一級資本充足率只有3.5%）。
The timing is more questionable. The new requirements are being phased in slowly, under pressure from those countries, such as Germany, which escaped the worst of the crisis. The final deadline is not till 2019. Regulators reckon the rules are fairly tough but critics think this deadline is excessively generous. The fact that bank shares rose in response to the Basel announcement will add to cynics’ suspicions that the banks have been given too much time.
時(shí)間安排方面較為可疑。德國等國逃過了金融危機(jī)最嚴(yán)重的打擊，在這些國家的壓力下，新規(guī)定將緩慢地分階段實(shí)施，最終期限定在2019年。監(jiān)管者認(rèn)為這些規(guī)定相當(dāng)嚴(yán)厲，但批評人士覺得最終期限定的太過寬松了。銀行股在《巴塞爾協(xié)議》宣布后應(yīng)聲而漲，這讓憤世嫉俗者更懷疑銀行得到了太多時(shí)間。
For the moment, the system does not look dangerously undercapitalised. Most large, internationally active banks in America, Britain and Switzerland already meet the new requirements. As for other banks that don’t, imposing higher capital ratios on them immediately might only discourage them from lending money to businesses, at a time when credit is already scarce.
