Financial reform
金融改革

More to do
路漫漫

Jul 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Banking reform should aim at those regulated, not just the regulator
银行改革不要只盯着监管者，也要关注被监管者

“MR OSBORNE…has embarked on a half-baked plan of destruction,” thundered a London banker in a letter to the Financial Times. Not all City folk have been so scathing. But plans to abolish the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced by George Osborne, the Conservative shadow chancellor of the exchequer, on July 20th caused consternation among many of the regulated, as well as at the giant financial watchdog itself.

一位伦敦银行家在写给《金融时报》的信中大吼：“奥斯本正实行不成熟的毁灭计划”。不是所有的伦敦银行家都这么毫不留情。但是7月20日财政部保守党影子大臣乔治·奥斯本宣布废除金融服务局（FSA）的决议给众多被监管者一个措手不及，包括被废除的对象金融监管“大狗”自己。

Britain, like most big countries, is in the throes of reassuring taxpayers that the excesses which led to a global and national financial crisis will not be allowed to repeat themselves. Most of the proposals concentrate on revamping the regulators rather than the regulated, perhaps because it is easier. Only one party—the Liberal Democrats under their spokesman on economic affairs, Vince Cable—is calling for a break-up of the banks themselves. Mr Osborne prefers to scrap the FSA, while Alistair Darling, the incumbent chancellor, proposed on July 8th that an Über-Council for Financial Stability, chaired by himself, sit atop financial regulation.

像其它大国一样，英国也在忍痛向纳税人保证，金融过剩引起的全球和国家金融危机将不会再发生。多数提议都是针对监管者，而不是面对被监管者，也许因为修补前者更容易。只有自由共和党这一个党的发言人谈到经济事务时号召银行自身也有问题。奥斯本倾向于“粉碎”FSA，与此同时现任大臣阿利斯太尔·达林7月8日提议成立金融稳定委员会，此机构凌驾于金融监管之上并由其担任主席。

The Osborne plan is to give bank supervision back to the Bank of England and to add oversight of insurance firms. (The Bank of England supervised banks until 1998, when the FSA, set up by a Labour government, took over.) The rump of the FSA would then become a consumer-protection agency with some responsibility for ensuring competition in consumer credit, which today is handled by the Office of Fair Trading. Little mention is made of a big chunk of the FSA’s current duties: oversight of the markets and securities trading. Those duties may be spun off into a third regulator, as they are in France, Italy and Spain. If Mr Osborne’s party wins the next election, at the latest next June, then his plan is likely to become reality.

“奥斯本计划”是将银行监管权收归英格兰银行，并且增加对保险公司的监管。（英格兰银行对银行的监管持续至1998年，此后由工党政府成立的FSA接管）。此后FSA的职责主要是消费者保护比如维护消费者信用方面的竞争，这一职责今天主要是由公平交易办公室负责。但是关于FSA现在最重要的职责：市场和证券交易监管则很少提及。也许会像在法国，意大利和西班牙那样，这些职能将提交第三方监管。如果奥斯本所在党能够赢得明年六月的下一次大选，到时候“奥斯本计划”很可能付诸实施。

It means total upheaval at the FSA, although many will keep their jobs and simply reprint their business cards. It gives increased power to the Bank of England, though its decision-making would become more collegiate and less concentrated on the governor. Above all it addresses the need for a clear line of authority, allowing a single entity to foster macroeconomic stability and ensure that financial firms, individually or collectively, do not upset the applecart. An independent Financial Policy Committee would advise the central bank on measures to counter systemic risk, with its minutes made public. This is a real step forward, says Sir Andrew Large, a former serial regulator.

这意味着FSA彻底改头换面，虽然大多数人工作还在，只不过是重新印一次名片。虽然英格兰银行决策制定将更加程序化，但是英格兰银行的权力增加。总而言之，计划表明英国需要明确监管，单一监管机构能促进宏观经济稳定，并且个别上或者总体上保证金融公司不要造成“天下大乱”。独立的金融政策委员会将为中央银行应对系统风险提供决策建议，委员会的会议记录都将公开。前连载监管者安德鲁·拉奇爵士说这是真正的进步。

What it does not address is the problem, greatest in Britain and Switzerland, that the financial sector is increasingly dominated by a handful of banks too big and complex to be allowed to fail. The state has big stakes in two of them. Mr Osborne says an incoming Tory government would ask competition authorities to investigate this concentration. His plans stop short, as do Mr Darling’s, of cutting big and dangerous banks down to manageable size.

计划没有指出的是英国和瑞士面对的最大问题，就是金融机构渐渐被少数几家“太大太复杂而不能破产”的大银行控制。英国两者风险皆有。奥斯本说即将执政的托利党政府将指派竞争当局调查垄断。这一计划戛然而止，同时停止的还有达林要求减小规模巨大的“危险”银行的提议。

Both men hope that added capital requirements, foisted on big firms by their supervisors, will make the cost of unwieldy size and over-risky behaviour prohibitive. But this puts a heavy responsibility on the regulator, which must identify and quantify the risks in order to levy the charges. This was the regulatory Achilles heel that led to the present crisis. How much better, laments a Bank of England veteran, was the “Willie Osborn test”. Bankers wishing to do something “innovative” first had to explain it to Mr Osborn (no relation) in the supervision department. If he did not understand it, then it was too complex. FSA supervisors tried too hard to understand complexity (or assumed the bankers understood) rather than exercising their veto.

二人都希望增加资本要求，监管机构“渗透”到大公司可以阻止公司太大和冒险行为带来的成本。但是这就给监管者提出了高要求，为了承担责任必须认清并且衡量风险。这就是导致当今经济危机的“监管的阿基里斯之踵”。一位老银行家“哭诉”说，好不好要看“威利奥斯本测试”。如果银行家想推出点“新东西”，那首先必须得到监管部奥斯本（不是刚才那个奥斯本）的首肯。如果奥斯本不明白，那就是“太复杂”了。FSA监管人员曾经“尽心竭力”明白里面的复杂性（或者是假设解释复杂性的银行家也明白），而不是行使自己的否决权。

At what might be its 11th hour the FSA is beginning to make more of the right noises. Under its new boss, Adair Turner, it has been naming and shaming conduct-of-business offenders more actively and has threatened with severe punishment firms that are starting to offer dizzying pay packages. What matters is not how big the package is but whether it contains an incentive that might endanger the firm, the FSA holds; the size of bonuses, and whether they take too much of the cake, is for shareholders to decide, not supervisors. All the signs are that, whichever big party forms the next government, Britain’s financial sector will be seen as too important to tamper with seriously.

虽然可能“时日无多”，但是FSA已经开始采取更多“正确”的决策。在新负责人阿代尔·特纳的领导下，FSA已积极“点名”并“批评”经济法则违反者，并且威胁将对那些开始提供“眼花缭乱”的工资福利公司给予严惩。FSA坚持说严惩不在于工资福利的多少，而在于福利是否有危害公司的企图。奖金数额，是否太多都是由股东来决定，而不是监管者。所有迹象显示，不论下一届政府“花落谁家”，英国的金融机构改革非常重要以致“不可小觑”。