A special report on financial risk
财经风险特别报告
Blocking out the sirens’ song
不要被海妖之歌蛊惑
Moneymen need saving from themselves
金融家们需要自救
Feb 11th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
RISK antennae twitch after a crisis. Bankers, regulators and academics, shaken from their complacency, jostle to identify the next tempest. Right now gusts are blowing from several directions. Many countries’ fiscal positions are deteriorating fast after costly interventions to shore up financial systems and restore growth. There is talk of demanding collateral even on deals with formerly unimpeachable sovereign entities. Recent terrorist incidents have raised the spectre of external shocks.
危机之后， 风险天线开始四处探指。银行家，市场监管者和学者们从他们的洋洋得意中惊醒过来，争论着下一轮金融风暴将如何到来。而今风暴的气息来自多个方面。在运用代价高昂的抢救金融系统措施过渡干预金融系统和支持恢复经济增长之后，很多的国家的财政状况开始急剧恶化。传说现在即使和之前未陷入经济危机的国家之间的交易也开始需要抵押。而新近的恐怖袭击事件也引发了对海外股权市场的恐惧。
Yet at least a fragile sort of optimism has surfaced, born of ultra-cheap money and relief at having avoided a depression. In some markets fresh bubbles may be forming. Stockmarkets have rebounded sharply. America’s, though still well off their peaks, are up to 50% overvalued on a historical basis. Banks are once again throwing money at hedge funds and private-equity firms (though with tougher margin requirements). Issuance of structured-loan funds, which a few months back looked dead, is booming. Investment banks’ profits, and bonus pools, are back near pre-crisis levels. International regulators have been issuing warnings to chief executives about a return of irrational exuberance. Banks have been ordered to run stress tests involving a sudden jump in interest rates, in preparation for central banks’ withdrawal of monetary adrenaline.
至少现在一种不切实际的乐观主义正在浮出水面，因为他们实施超低息政策来避免经济衰退。这在一些市场中正在形成新的泡沫。股市已经大幅回升。尽管美国股市指数比他们的巅峰值低的多，但是从历史数据看来仍然被高估百分之50.银行一再的向对冲基金和私募主权（基金）公司投资（尽管额定保证金率已经上调）。几个月前看起来已经死亡的结构化贷款基金也在扩大发行。投资银行的利润和分红池也回到接近经济危机前的水平。国际监管者们已经向高管们发出关于非理性繁荣回归的警告。银行界已经被命令进行关于突然上调银行利率的压力测试，为央行取消货币刺激政策做准备。
Many will already be doing this as they try to show that they have learnt their lessons. Like the best chess players, bankers insist that they are now concentrating as hard on avoiding mistakes as on winning. Those that sidestepped the worst mortgage-related landmines now top the industry’s new order. Blackrock’s Mr Fisher defines risk as “deviation from objective”, on the upside as well as the downside. If your models tell you that a security is safer than its returns imply, as with CDOs, that might just suggest hidden risks.
很多人都准备好了应付着一切，正如他们在尽量表现得已经从过去吸取了教训。就好像最优秀的国际象棋选手那样，银行家们声称如今他们对于避免发生错误的重视程度等同于对于成功的追求。绕过次贷地雷区逃过一劫的公司现在都成了行业翘楚。黑石集团的费舍尔先生将风险定义为“偏离目标”，过高过低都算。如果你的模型告诉你某一债券比其回报率所暗示的安全性要高，比如担保债权凭证，那么你就得假设其中有隐藏的风险。
Fancy mathematics will continue to play a role, to be sure. But finance is not physics, and markets have an emotional side. In their struggle with the quants, those who would trust their gut instinct have gained ground.
顶级的数学家们将毫无疑问继续扮演重要的角色。但是经济并非物理学，而市场也有它感性的一面。在和这些金融数学工程家们的对抗中，那些相信自己直觉的人们开始得势。
Learning to tie knots
自己学会系鞋带
Governments are taking no chances. Bloomberg counts some 50 bills and other serious proposals for financial reform in America and Europe. Leaders in America’s Senate hope to pass new rules by March. But there are limits to what can be expected from regulators and supervisors. Like bankers, they have blind spots. As the mortgage fiasco showed, they are vulnerable to capture by those they police.
政府不想冒任何风险。 根据彭博社的统计， 欧美各国政府一共通过了50多个法案和其他重要的议案。美国参议院的领导人希望在3月前通过一些新的法案。.我们期望监管者能干的事毕竟还是有限度的。比如银行业，监管者们就有自己的盲区。像在抵押贷款危机中所体现出来的那样，监管者很容易被那些接受监管的人所俘虏。
Their job will be made easier if new rules tackle incentives for the private sector to take excessive risk. It is human behaviour, more than financial instruments, that needs changing, says Mr Mauboussin of Legg Mason. Like Odysseus passing the sirens, bankers need to be tied to a mast to stop them from giving in to temptation. Pay structures should be better aligned with the timescale of business strategies that run for a number of years and should not reward “leveraged beta”, unremarkable returns juiced with borrowed money. In securitisation, originators will have to disclose more information about loan pools and hold a slice of their products.
如果新的规矩能打消（tackle）私人部门过分承担风险的激励动因，那么他们（参议院）的工作也许会简单很多。就像美盛集团的马博新先生所说，需要改变的与其说是金融工具， 不如说是人的行为。像奥德赛经过塞壬海妖时所做的那样，银行家们需要被绑在桅杆上来避免他们屈从于诱惑。薪酬结构最好跟行之数年的企业战略的时段互相挂钩， 而不是拿来酬庸“杠杆贝塔”，酬庸那种用借来的钱灌水的原本稀疏平常的回报。在证券行业，发起人将必须披露关于贷款池的更多信息而且自身必须持有一定该产品。
Some of the worst abuses in securitisation stemmed from the use of credit ratings. Rating agencies systematically underestimated default risk on vast amounts of debt, resulting in puffed-up prices and a surfeit of issuance. Paid by issuers, they had every incentive to award inflated ratings and keep the market humming: average pay at the agencies rose and fell in tandem with the volume of asset-backed issuance (see chart 7).
证券业一些最严重的错弊起源于信贷评级的使用。信贷评级机构常常低估大额贷款的违约风险，致使价格不切实际的上涨和大规模发行。由证券发行商们支付佣金，他们尽一切可能来获得高的信贷评级同时保持市场信心：平均支付给信贷评级机构的佣金的高低和资产抵押贷款的发行规模直接相关。（见下图7）
An obvious way to deal with this would be to eliminate the agencies’ official “nationally recognised” status, opening the business to unfettered competition. Raters would then have to persuade investors of their competence, rather than relying on a government imprimatur. This, in turn, would force investors themselves to spend more time analysing loans. Oddly, proposed reforms fall far short of this, with no sign of anything tougher on the horizon. CreditSights, a research firm, awarded ratings firms its “Houdini was an Amateur” award for 2009.
一种解决此事最直观的方法就是取消这些代理商的官方“国家承认”的地位，将此行业推向自由竞争。评级者们就必须使投资者们信任他们的自身能力而不是依赖于他们的官方背景。这么做同时也使得投资者必须让自己花费更多的时间分析贷款。奇怪的是，预期的改革在这方面落后很多，且该方面的改革并无太大困难。信贷视野，一家研究公司，给信贷评级公司颁发了他设立的2009年度“外行的胡迪尼”奖。
Nor, alas, is there much appetite to tackle some of the public policies that contributed to the crisis. The non-recourse status of mortgages in large parts of America, for instance, gives the borrower a highly attractive put option: he can, in effect, sell the house to the lender at any time for the principal outstanding. An even bigger problem is the favourable tax treatment of debt relative to equity. Phasing this out would discourage the build-up of excessive leverage. But the idea has little political traction.
唉，其实解决一些助长经济危机的公共政策更为合适。举例来说，在美国多数地区无追索权抵押贷款具有法律地位，这对借款人来说是极具吸引力的看跌期权：事实上，他可以在任何价格合适的时候将房子卖给借款者。而更大的问题是对于权益性负债的税收优惠。或许取消这些会打击过度使用杠杆的趋势。但是这些观点几乎没什么政治影响。
There are, to be sure, risks to rushing reform. Post-crisis regulation has a long history of unintended consequences, from the pay reforms of the early 1990s (when new limits on the deductibility from corporate tax of executive salaries merely shifted the excesses to bonuses) to key parts of the Sarbanes-Oxley act on corporate governance. Another danger is the pricing of risk by regulation, not markets. The credit-card act passed in America last year leaves providers with a choice between underpricing for some products, which is bad for them, or restricting their offerings, which is bad for consumers.
激烈的改革肯定会有风险。过去的经济危机中，变革常常带来意想不到的后果，从1990代初期的工资改革（当时给可抵扣公司税的管理人员工资额设定了新的上限，而这部分超过新上限的二队就被转移到了奖金中去了）到萨班斯奥克斯里法案在公司治理方面的核心变革皆是如此。另一项危险来源于管理而非市场带来的风险定价。去年美国通过的信用卡法案留给供应商们两种选择，要么降低某些商品的价格–这对他们自身不利，要么限制他们的供应量–这对消费者不利。
Most would agree, however, that markets need both tighter rules and better enforcement. The biggest question mark hangs over the fate of those institutions whose collapse would threaten the system. America’s proposal to cap banks’ size and ban proprietary trading has fortified those calling for radical measures to tackle the “too big to fail” problem.
但是多数人都认为，市场既需要严格的管理规则也需要良好的推动力。当前最大的问题就是那些行业巨头们的命运，他们的垮台将会危及到整个系统。美国计划设立银行规模上限同时取消所有权交易，就是在对解决“因为太大而不能倒闭”问题的呼声做出的回应。
The virtues of scepticism
怀疑态度的可贵
By itself, though, the plan does little to back up Barack Obama’s promise to stop such firms from holding the taxpayer hostage. Proprietary trading and investments are a small part of most big banks’ activities and played only a minor role in the crisis. Nor does the plan cover brokers, insurers or industrial firms’ finance arms, all of which had to be bailed out. To persuade markets that the giants no longer enjoy implicit state guarantees, whether they are banks or not, policymakers will need to present a cocktail of solutions that also include tougher capital and liquidity standards, central clearing of derivatives and credible mechanisms to dismantle firms whose losses in a crisis would overwhelm even a strengthened safety buffer.
尽管这些计划本身并不能帮助巴拉克 奥巴马兑现他的诺言，奥巴马总统曾承诺不会再让大公司把纳税人作为牺牲品。所有权交易和投资仅仅是大银行业务中很小的一部分而且在经济危机中也不扮演什么重要的角色。而那些必须被取缔的经纪人，保险家，或者产业公司们的经济武器却不在此列。为了向市场证明这些产业巨头们（无论他们是不是银行）不再享受暗中的政府支持，政策的制定者们需要推出一项混合计划，该计划必须包含严格的资本和流动性标准，衍生产品的中央结算。以及可靠的机制来取消那些无论安全缓冲机制多么完善遇到危机便一败涂地不可收拾的大公司的出现。
Together, intelligent regulatory reforms and a better understanding of the limitations of quantitative risk management can help to reduce the damage inflicted on the financial system when bubbles burst. But they will never eliminate bad lending or excessive exuberance. After every crisis bankers and investors tend to forget that it is their duty to be sceptical, not optimistic. In finance the gods will always find a way to strike back.
总而言之，当经济泡沫破裂时，智能化监管系统的革新和对风险管理模型局限性的理解可以帮助我们降低其对金融系统的影响。但是这些永远不能消除坏账和过度活跃。每当经济危机过去，银行家和投资者们都容易忘记他们应该保持怀疑的态度，而不是乐观。在经济上，上帝将随时反戈一击。
译者：pandaren
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