The financial crisis
金融危机
A break in the clouds
黑云裂日，曙光显现
Sep 22nd 2008 | WASHINGTON, DC
From Economist.com
But questions abound over a $700 billion rescue plan for Wall Street
有关7000亿美元华尔街拯救计划的问题仍然不少
THE threat of impending financial disaster concentrates political minds wonderfully. On Thursday a group of Congressional leaders heard Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, paint a dire economic scenario if they did not approve a more sweeping remedy for the financial crisis. Student and car loans, not just mortgages, would all be harder to get. The economy would sink into a severe recession.
破在眉睫的金融灾难引起了相当多的政治关注。上周四，一群国会领袖听了财政保尔森和美联储主席伯南克所描述的，当国会不通过这项全面拯救金融危机的方案，经济上将会出现的可怕场面。那时，不仅仅是抵押贷款，甚至连助学贷款和买车贷款可能都很难获得。经济将陷入严重的衰退。
So by Sunday September 21st support was coalescing around the Treasury’s rescue proposal: that Congress authorise it to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage and other assets in an effort to resolve the root of the financial crisis, which is the mountains of illiquid and uncollectible mortgage debt on financial institution balance sheets. (One senator predicted $1 trillion would be needed.) Passage this week, before Congress breaks for the election, seems likely.
因此，周日（9月21日）国会议员大多支持财政部的拯救提案，国会授权使用多达7000亿美元来购买抵押贷款以及其它资产，从而解决这次金融危机中最根本的问题。这些资产正是金融机构资产负债表上堆积如山的非流动资产和抵押贷款坏账。一位参议员预计大约需要1万亿来处理这些东西。国会有望于本周–在因大选休会前–通过这项提案。
Democrats in Congress have two priorities in negotiations. They want mortgages written down so that homeowners can avoid foreclosure and that any firm selling assets to the Treasury accept limits on executive compensation. This is more contentious. If “it’s punitive…institutions aren’t going to participate,” Mr Paulson noted.
国会里的民主党人有两个优先考虑的问题。他们希望抵押贷款减记从而能避免房主断供，而且任何将资产卖给财政部的公司必须接受限制高管薪酬的规定。这很容易引起争议。保尔森说，如果”这是惩罚性质的…那么一些机构就可能不参与了。”
Mr Paulson’s plan is stunning in its brevity (two-and-a-half pages) and audacity. It would authorise him to purchase any “residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages,” implying the right to take over derivative positions. A fact sheet later distributed by the Treasury broadened it to include “other assets, as deemed necessary to effectively stabilise financial markets.” The government could, in effect, buy anything it wanted: student or car loans, loans, equities, entire companies.
保尔森计划的简洁（只有两页半纸）和大胆令人惊讶不已。这个计划授权他可以购买任何” 住房和商业抵押贷款和任何证券、债务，以及其它任何基于或者与抵押贷款有关的票据，”这暗示其有权购买衍生品头寸。稍后由财政部发布的情况说明书将范围扩大包括”其它任何被认为可以稳定金融市场的资产。”实际上，政府可以买任何它想买的东西：助学和购车贷款，贷款，股权，甚至整个公司。
The treasury secretary’s decisions “may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” He would report to Congress three months after the programme begins and every six months thereafter. It is now conventional wisdom that recent events have guaranteed a heavier regulatory hand for government in the economy. Mr Paulson’s programme raises the prospect of it becoming a huge player in the allocation of capital as well. The ability to purchase assets expires after two years, but its management of those assets would continue.
财政部长的决定”不会被任何法庭或者行政机构重新检阅。”他将在计划实施三个月后向国会首次报告，并在之后每六个月向国会报告一次。从传统判断来看，近期的事件确保政府有双更有力的手对经济进行宏观调控。保尔森的计划使政府成为市场中分配资本的重要参与者。政府购买资产的期限为两年，但是其对这些买到资产的管理将会继续。
Mr Paulson said that the lack of oversight gives future administrations “flexibility to run this any way they would like to run it.” And some experts say decisions must not risk being tied up in lawsuits, or confidence could suffer. But the great discretionary power seems to fly in the face of the original rationale for the programme, which was for a systematic rules-based approach to resolving the crisis rather than ad-hoc bailouts. Future administrations could find a $700 billion fund a potent tool for various policy goals.
保尔森说监察的缺失使得可能使得未来的管理”会非常灵活，使他们想怎样运营便怎样运营。”有些专家认为，这决定不要冒险过多使用法律诉讼，否则会让信心受损。但是太大的自行决定权却与这个计划的原意相悖。这个计划的原意是用一个系统的，基于法律的方法来解决危机，而不是使用特别的接管收购来解决问题。未来的管理可以建立一个7000亿美元基金的强大工具来解决各种问题。
To acquire mortgages the Treasury plans to use “reverse auctions”. But as Lou Crandall of Wrightson ICAP, a research firm notes, “Auctions work well when you have a group of bidders for a single set of identical assets. They work less well when you have a single bidder for a group of disparate assets.”
为了得到抵押贷款资产，财政部计划使用”倒拍卖”的方法。但是一家研究机构Wrightson ICAP的Lou Crandall认为：”拍卖在一群竞标人争夺一个单一的资产时比较有用，但是在一个竞标人却又一大堆不同的资产时就不太起作用了。”
Another problem is that it would reward the least deserving institutions the most. “Banks that stayed clear of this debt or sold such debt at cut-rate prices earlier this year in an effort to move beyond the crisis would receive no direct gain from such a programme,” notes Doug Elmendorf of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, while banks who had the most junk and had dragged their feet on writing it down would benefit most.
另一个问题是它必须给最不该得的机构最多。当拥有最多垃圾资产而且迟迟不愿减记的银行获益最多时，一家智库布鲁斯金学会的Doug Elmendorf 指出：”不接触这些垃圾资产的，或者今年早些时候低价卖出这些垃圾资产以远离危机的银行在这次计划中不会获得直接的收益。”
Mr Paulson has rightly noted that the cost of the programme should be well below $700 billion since some of the mortgages will be repaid. But it may be optimistic to expect it to turn a profit. Indeed, profit is inconsistent with the point of such a programme which is to socialise losses that would otherwise cripple the financial sector and toss millions of people out of their homes. The lack of an upside for taxpayers is one reason that some scholars, like Mr Elmendorf, favour the taking of direct stakes by the government in financial firms instead.
保尔森肯定地指出，这项计划的成本肯定比7000亿美元要低，因为有些抵押贷款会偿还的。但是想让这项计划转为有收益就太乐观了。而且，收益与其计划的原意有所违背，这项计划就是让金融业收到巨大冲击并让数百万的人失去房屋的损失成本由大家来共同承担。缺少对纳税人的好处，这正是有些学者，例如 Elmendorf，更倾向于用政府直接入股金融机构来取代上述计划的一个原因。
Profit is possible, of course. The market prices of many mortgage securities today reflect not just the likelihood of default, but a steep liquidity premium, because the paper no longer trades. The Treasury could conceivably buy something above market value but below fair value and hold it to maturity. But it could deepen the financial crisis by forcing institutions to recognise the assets’ deeply distressed prices.
当然，收益也是有可能的。许多抵押贷款证券今天的市场价格不仅反映了违约的可能性，也有过高的流动性风险溢价，因为这些证券不再交易了。财政部可以获得高于市场价值但是低于公平价值的债券，持有直至到期。但是强迫金融机构任何这些资产的过低的价格会加深金融危机。
Even if the program is designed perfectly, it’s no sure thing it will end the crisis. It does address the root problem, defaulting mortgages, and Mr Bernanke has long worried that bad debt would fuel a vicious circle of crippled lenders, constricting credit, weakening growth and more defaults. But that’s not what happened last week. Losses on Lehman debt forced several money-market funds to “break the buck”, triggering a flight out of short-term commercial paper. Banks, forced to contemplate redeeming hundreds of billions of dollars in maturing commercial loans, began hoarding liquidity. Interbank lending froze. This generalised loss of confidence was many steps beyond the root cause of the crisis. Announcement of bail-out plans helped ease things, but the effect was purely psychological.
即是这项计划设计的非常完美，但是并不能确定它就能够终结这场金融危机。它确实瞄准了根本问题，违约抵押贷款，而且伯南克一直担心这会引起贷方陷入困境，信贷紧缩，增长放缓从而更多违约的恶性循环。但是上周这些没有发生。雷曼债务引起的损失使好几家货币市场基金”跌破净值”，从而引发投资者大规模逃离短期商业票据。银行被迫考虑收回数千亿美元的到期商业贷款，从而囤积其流动性。银行间的拆借几乎停滞。信心的全面丧失使得危机从其引发原因开始扩散。接管的拯救计划有助于危机的缓和，但是其效果仅限于心理层面。
For this reason, ad hoc responses will still be critical, such last week’s federal guarantees for money-market funds, Fed loans to banks to purchase asset-backed commercial paper and, on Sunday, approval of the remaining two big independent investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, to become Fed-regulated bank holding companies whose investment bank units can now borrow from the Fed on the same terms as other banks.
基于这样的原因，特别的拯救措施仍然非常关键，上周对货币市场的联邦担保，通过美联储购买资产背景的商业票据对银行的贷款，以及在周日允许剩下的两家大型投行–摩根斯坦利和高盛变为美联储监管银行控股公司，使其投行部分现在也可以向其它银行一样向美联储借钱。
It could be some time before the Treasury is able to purchase mortgages en masse, and longer still before that starts to affect the broader financial system and economy. In the meantime, the crisis could claim other victims.
财政部可以购买所有的抵押贷款可能还需要一段时间，而且对整个金融系统和经济体作用也要好久。而在此其间，还会有其它的金融危机的受害者。
译者：rushor http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=14220&extra=page%3D1