[2008.10.11]信贷危机: 拯救系统

The credit crunch
信贷危机

Saving the system 拯救系统
Oct 9th 2008
From The Economist print edition

At last a glimmer of hope, but more boldness is needed to avert a global economic catastrophe
最后还有一线希望，为避免一场全球经济大灾难发生，还需要更大胆

CONFIDENCE is everything in finance. Until this week the politicians trying to tackle the credit crunch had done little to restore this essential ingredient. In America Congress dithered over the Bush administration’s $700 billion bail-out plan. In Europe governments have casually played beggar-my-neighbour politics, with countries launching deposit-guarantee schemes that destabilize banks elsewhere. This week, however, saw the first glimmers of a comprehensive global answer to the confidence gap.
对金融而言，信心就是全部。到本周为止，那些努力应对信贷危机的政要们在重建信心这一基本因素上作为甚少。在美国，国会犹豫不决地通过了布什政府7000亿美元的救市计划。在欧洲，政府间随意地玩着以邻为壑的政治游戏，各国纷纷对本国存款进行担保，没有顾及这样会动摇其他国家的银行。然而，还是让人们看到了第一束希望的曙光——全球将一致行动弥合信心裂缝。

One clear sign was an unprecedented co-ordinated interest-rate cut on October 8th by the world’s main central banks, including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and (officially a coincidence) the People’s Bank of China. Various continental European countries also set about recapitalizing their banks. But the most astounding developments were in America and Britain. The Fed doubled the amount of money available to banks on a short-term basis to $900 billion and announced that it would buy unsecured commercial paper directly from corporate borrowers. More surprisingly, Gordon Brown’s government, hitherto the ditherer par excellence, produced the first systemic plan for dealing with the crisis, not just providing capital and short-term loans to banks but also offering to guarantee new debt for up to three years.
一个明确的信号是10月8日全球主要央行空前地联合降息，其中包括美联储、欧洲央行、英国央行（英格兰银行）和中国央行（官方称是巧合）。许多欧洲大陆国 家也开始计划调整银行资本结构。但最令人惊骇的进展发生在美国和英国。美联储将对其短期内对银行提供的贷款规模扩大到9000亿美元，为原来的两倍，并宣布将直接从企业购买未担保的商业票据。更令人惊讶的是，迄今为止不知所措到极点的戈登•布朗政府采取了应对危机的第一个系统的计划，不仅向银行提供资本和 短期贷款，还对三年内到期的新债进行担保。

This is certainly progress, but it is not enough (see our extended finance section). The world’s finance ministers and central bankers, gathering in Washington, DC, this weekend for the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank, should deliver a simple message: more will be done. The world economy is plainly in a poor state, but it could get a lot worse. This is a time to put dogma and politics to one side and concentrate on pragmatic answers. That means more government intervention and co-operation in the short term than taxpayers, politicians or indeed free-market newspapers would normally like.
这的确是个进步，但还不够。本周末，国际货币基金组织（IMF）和世界银行的年会将在华盛顿召开，与会的世界各国财长和央行行长应该传递出一条简单的信 息：还会有更多行动。世界经济很显然处于糟糕的境地，但它很可能会更糟糕。现在正是将教条和政见搁到一旁，集中寻找实实在在的解决方式的时候。意即，就眼前来说政府干预和合作更重要，而不是报纸通常所青睐报道的纳税人、政客或是对自由市场的质疑（诸如此类问题）。

The patient writhing on the floor
在地板上痛苦挣扎的病人

If the panic that has choked the arteries of credit across the globe is not calmed soon, the danger will increase that output in rich economies will not simply shrink, but collapse. The same could happen in many emerging markets, especially those that rely on foreign capital. No country or industry would be spared from the equivalent of a global financial heart attack.
如果阻塞了全球信贷大动脉的恐慌不能迅速被平息，发达国家经济面临的风险将会增加，其产出不会只是收缩，而是崩溃。同样的危机还会发生在新兴市场，尤其是那些依赖外资的地区。没有一个国家或是产业会在全球金融心脏病发作时毫发无伤。

Stockmarkets are in a funk. But the main problem remains the credit markets. In the interbank market the prices banks pay to borrow money from each other are still near record highs. Meanwhile corporate borrowers have found it hard to issue commercial paper, as money-market funds have fled from all but the safest assets. In emerging markets bond spreads have soared and local currencies plunged. And whole countries have begun to get into trouble. The government of Iceland has had to nationalise two of its biggest banks and is frantically seeking a lifeline loan from Russia. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, says there could be balance-of-payments problems in up to 30 developing countries.
各国股市都处在恐慌之中。但主要的问题仍在信贷市场。银行间拆借市场的利率继续创出新高。同时，随着货币市场资金纷纷逃离到最安全的资产上，企业借贷者发 现商业票据难以发行。新兴市场上，债券价格飞涨，本国货币贬值。有些国家已经开始陷入困境。冰岛政府被迫将其最大的两家银行国有化，并发狂似的向俄罗斯寻求续命贷款。世界银行主席罗伯特•佐立克表示，超过30个发展中国家将出现国际收支差额问题。

The damage to the real economy is becoming apparent. In America consumer credit is now shrinking, and around 159,000 Americans lost their jobs in September, the most since 2003. Some industries are hurting badly: car sales are at their lowest level in 16 years as would-be buyers are unable to get credit. General Motors has temporarily shut some of its factories in Europe. Across the globe forward-looking indicators, such as surveys of purchasing managers, are horribly gloomy.
实体经济受到的损伤正在逐渐显现。美国消费信贷在收缩，9月失业人数高达159,000人，创2003年以来最高。一些产业也被严重挫伤：因为意愿购车消费者无法取得贷款，汽车销售量降到16年以来最低。通用汽车临时关闭了数家欧洲工厂。全球经济展望的指标，如采购经理人指数等，都表现得十分低迷。

If the odds of a rich-world recession have risen towards a near certainty, the emerging world as a whole is slowing rather than slumping. China still seems fairly resilient. Taken as a whole, though, growth in the world economy seems likely to slow below 3% next year—a pace that many count as recessionary. So the prospects are grim enough, but a continuing credit drought would make this much worse.
如果说发达经济衰退的可能性已经渐成定局，新兴经济体集体增长下滑的可能性则高于衰退。中国经济的复原能力看起来仍然非常强劲。整体而言，全球经济明年的增速极有可能下滑到3%以下，普遍将这一速度视为经济进入衰退期。因此，前景可谓十分严峻，但信贷市场持续干涸可能将情况变得糟糕得多。

Lessons old and new
新旧教训
The lesson of history is that early, decisive government action can stem the pain and cost of banking crises. In the 1990s Sweden moved to recapitalise its banks quickly and recovered quickly; in Japan, where regulators failed to tackle toxic debt, the slump lasted for most of the decade. The twist is that this credit crisis is deeper (it affects many more types of markets) and broader (many more countries). Any solution has to be both more systemic and more global than before. One country trying to mend one part of its banking system will not work.
历史的教训是，政府及早、决断采取措施能够减轻危机造成的痛苦和付出的代价。20世纪90年代，瑞典政府快速地向银行注资，其恢复的速度也很快；而在日本，执政者未能处理坏死债务，经济陷入长达近10年的衰退。与以往不同的是，这次信贷危机更严重（影响到各类市场），范围更广（波及到更多国家）。任何解决办法都必须比以往更系统化、更全球化。单一国家试图修正其银行系统某一方面的问题是徒劳的。

The idea of a comprehensive solution sounds simple, if expensive. But politicians have found it hard to grasp. Europeans have remained stubbornly wedded to the notion that the mess was “Made in America”; John McCain and Barack Obama talk as if it was all down to the greed of modern bankers. But financial excesses existed centuries before a brick had been laid on Wall Street. As our special report this week lays out, today’s bust—and the bubble that preceded it—had several causes besides dodgy lending, including a tide of cheap money from emerging economies, outdated regulation, government distortions and poor supervision. Many of these failures were as evident outside America as within it.
全面的解决之道听起来很简单，虽然代价昂贵。但政要们未能领会这一点。欧洲各国始终顽固地执着于这场麻烦是“美国制造”的理念。约翰•麦凯恩和巴拉克•奥巴马则将一切都归咎于现代银行家的贪婪。然而，早在建造华尔街数个世纪之前，金融过剩的问题就存在了。我们在本周的特别报道里指出，造成今天的失败和此前的泡沫的原因不仅只有高风险地借贷，还包括来自新兴经济体的廉价资本潮，过时的规则，体制扭曲和监管不力。这些失误在美国和其他地方都很明显。

With a flawed diagnosis of the causes of the crisis, it is hardly surprising that many policymakers have failed to understand its progression. Today’s failure of confidence is based on three related issues: the solvency of banks, their ability to fund themselves in illiquid markets and the health of the real economy. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to hefty credit losses: most Western financial institutions are short of capital and some are insolvent. But liquidity is a more urgent problem. America’s decision last month to let Lehman Brothers fail—and the losses that implied to money-market funds that held its debt—prompted a global run on wholesale credit markets. It has become hard for banks, even healthy ones, to find finance; large companies with healthy cash flows have also been cut off from all but the shortest-term financing. That has increased worries about the real economy, which itself adds to the worries about banks’ solvency.
鉴于对这场危机症结的诊断有误，许多决策者未能把握其进展也就不足为奇了。今天的信心崩溃建立在三个相互关联的问题上：银行的偿付能力，银行在流动性冻结的市场上融资的能力，实体经济是否健康。房地产市场泡沫的破裂造成严重的信贷损失：大多数西方国家金融机构资金短缺，部分已经破产。但流动性的问题更急迫。美国上个月让雷曼兄弟破产加速了全球大规模信贷市场的流动性问题，其破产造成的损失牵连到持有其债券的货币市场基金。银行融资难度越来越大，即使是健康的银行。现金流良好的大型企业也得不到贷款，只能获得最短期的融资。对实体经济的担忧由此增加，反过来又进一步增加了对银行偿付能力的担忧。

This analysis suggests that governments must attack all three concerns at once. The priority, in terms of stemming the panic, is to unblock clogged credit markets. In most cases that means using central banks as an alternative source of short-term cash. This week the Fed took another step in that direction: by buying commercial paper, it is now in effect lending direct to companies. The British approach is equally bold. Alongside the Bank of England’s provision of short-term cash, the Treasury says it will sell guarantees for as much as £250 billion ($430 billion) of new short-term and medium-term debts issued by the banks. That is risky: if left for any length of time, those pledges give banks an incentive to behave recklessly. But a temporary guarantee system offers the best chance of stemming the panic, and if it were internationally co-ordinated it would be both more credible and less risky than a collection of disparate national promises.
基于上述分析，政府应该立刻对这三个问题全面出击。首先，在阻止恐慌方面，是为堵塞的信贷市场清除障碍。在大多数情况下，这意味着将中央银行作为一个能够 提供短期资金的来源。本周美联储朝着这个方向又迈进了一步：通过购买商业票据，美联储现在可以直接向企业提供有效的贷款。英国的举措也是同样大胆。除英格兰银行（英国央行）提供短期资金外，财政部还表示将为银行发行的新短期和中期债券提供2500亿英镑（4300亿美元）的担保。这种做法存在风险：如果没有限定期限，这些保证会给银行不顾风险地经营提供动机（道德风险）。但暂时的担保系统是阻止恐慌的最佳选择，如果是全球一致行动，则比大量国家各自的承诺更加可靠、风险更低。

The second prong of a crisis-resolution strategy must aim to boost banks’ capital. A new IMF report suggests Western banks need some $675 billion of new equity to prevent banks from rapidly reducing the number of loans on their books and hurting the real economy. Although there is plenty of private capital sloshing around, there is a chicken-and-egg problem: nobody wants to buy equity in an industry without enough capital. It is becoming abundantly clear that government funds—or at least government intervention—will be necessary to catalyse the rebuilding of banks’ balance sheets. Initially, America focused more on buying tainted assets from banks; now it seems keener on the “European” approach of injecting capital into their banks. Some degree of divergence is inevitable, but more co-ordination is needed.
解决危机战略的第二击是增加银行资本金。IMF的一份最新报告指出，西方国家银行需要大约6750亿美元的新增资本，以阻止其账面上贷款数量快速减少，避免损害到实体经济。尽管还有大量的私人资本四处流窜，但这是一个鸡生蛋蛋生鸡的问题：没有人愿意在一个缺乏足够资本的行业里购买股权。很显然，政府必须注资——或至少是政府干预，加速重建银行的资产负债表。最初，美国更多地集中在从银行购买问题资产，现在更青睐“欧洲”作法——向银行注入资本。一些分歧不可避免，但还需要更多的协调。

Third, policymakers should act together to cushion the economic fallout. Now that commodity prices have plunged, the inflation risk has dramatically receded across the rich world. With asset prices plummeting and economies shrinking, deflation will soon be a bigger worry. The interest-rate cuts are an important start. Ideally, policymakers would not use only monetary policy. For instance, China could do a lot to help the rest of the world economy (and itself) by loosening fiscal policy and allowing its currency to appreciate more quickly.
第三，决策者应该联合行动帮助经济软着陆。如今，大宗商品价格跳水，通货膨胀的风险已经戏剧化地从发达国家消退了。随着资产价格垂直下落和经济收缩，通缩将很快成为更大的担忧。各国纷纷降息是一个重要的开端。理想状态下，决策者不应该仅仅使用货币政策。举例而言，中国可以通过放松财政政策和加速人民币升值来帮助其他国家经济（和中国自身）。

A long wait
长久等待

Even in the best of circumstances, the consequences of the biggest asset and credit bubble in history will linger. But if the panic is stemmed, it could be a manageable problem, cushioned by the economic strength in the emerging world. Efforts at international economic co-operation have a patchy record. In the 1980s the Plaza and Louvre accords, designed respectively to push the dollar down and to prop it up, met with mixed success. Today’s problems are deeper and more countries are involved. But the stakes are also much higher.
即使在最佳的环境里，史上最大的资产和信贷泡沫破灭的后续效应也将延续很久。但是，如果恐慌能够消除，在新兴市场经济力量的缓冲下，这场危机会是一个容易解决的问题。国际间经济协作的成就有着一页斑驳的记录。在20世纪80年代，广场协议和卢浮宫协议的制定分别促成美元贬值和升值，取得了相互混杂的成功。 今天的问题更加严重，牵涉的国家更多。但赌注也高得多。

译者：kahlen  http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=14575&extra=page%3D1