Heads I win, tails you lose
正面我赢，反面你输

Oct 20th 2009
From Economist.com

Why Wall Street needs a new social contract
为何华尔街需要一个新的社会契约

EVER since Rolling Stone magazine described Goldman Sachs in July as a “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” the investment bank has emerged as the favourite piñata(1) for anyone who wants to give Wall Street a mighty thwack. Lloyd Blankfein, the investment bank’s chief executive, may be right, as he recently told The Economist, that vampire squids, which really do exist in the depths of the ocean, are “small and harmless”. Yet his firm and the industry of which it is now the reluctant face have a real image problem, which they need to deal with before it turns into something nastier.
自从《滚石》杂志7月份将高盛形容为“包裹在人类面部上的吸血乌贼，无情地将其吸血管插向任何带有钱味的物体”以来，这家投行对于任何希望给华尔街有力一击的人而言已然成了深受喜爱的皮纳塔玩具。高盛的首席执行官劳埃德·布兰克费恩也许是对的。他最近在接受《经济学人》采访时称，确实存在于海底深处的吸血乌贼“小而无害”。然而他的公司以及整个行业都存在形象问题，它们需要提早应对，以免形象变得更令人憎恶。

Among the wilder allegations the industry is facing is Michael Moore’s claim in his new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story”, that a deliberate Wall Street conspiracy resulted in a $700 billion raid by the banks on the Treasury (otherwise known as the Troubled Asset Relief Programme). Mr Moore’s film includes a stunt in which he attempts a citizen’s arrest of Mr Blankfein over this “crime”.
投行业界面临的强烈指责之一就是导演迈克尔·摩尔在其新片“资本主义：一个爱情故事”中称华尔街精心密谋使得7000亿美元的巨款落入接受财政部救助的银行手中（也就是众所周知的“问题资产救助计划”）。摩尔先生的电影包括一个引人注目的噱头，他试图以这项“罪名”逮捕布兰克费恩先生。

Ironically, investment banking’s image has been further stained by something that would have delighted many panicked observers in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September: the bumper profits announced by Goldman Sachs—$3.2 billion in the most recent quarter—and some other financial giants of late. Rather than being seen as welcome evidence of the recovery of the financial system, these have instead prompted widespread condemnation.
高盛（在最近一季度实现利润32亿美元）及其他一些金融巨头公布了丰厚的收益。自从去年9月份雷曼兄弟破产后，许多观察家纷纷恐慌，这个消息足以使他们欣喜。但讽刺的是，投资银行业的形象却因此进一步毁损了。这些收益非但没有被看作是金融体系复苏的迹象，反而激起了广泛的谴责。

It is not the fault of Goldman Sachs that it is now working in (at least temporarily) a less competitive market, thanks to the demise of Lehman and the merging of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch into JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America respectively. Part of its profits reflect the higher fees its bigger market share allows.
由于雷曼的倒闭，贝尔斯登与摩根大通，美林证券与美国银行各自合并，现在的市场竞争没那么激烈了（至少暂时是这样），这也不是高盛的错。高盛的部分利润反映了其更大的市场份额所获得的收益也更高。

Equally, much of the outrage over bonuses is unjustified. People who create wealth are entitled to be rewarded for their efforts. Certainly, bonus schemes need to be redesigned to reflect the fact that the old schemes encouraged too much short-term risk-taking—something that is clearly in the interests of shareholders. Yet Jeffrey Gordon, a professor of law at Columbia University, points out that Goldman set aside 50% of its profits for bonuses, in keeping with previous years. “There is no evidence that Goldman’s management has overreached shareholders in making this decision, or that bondholders have any basis for objection in light of their covenants or other expectations,” he says.
同样，许多对于奖金的愤怒也是不公正的。创造财富的人有权因为他们的付出而收到回报。当然，奖金机制也应当重新规划以反省旧体制刺激了过多的短期冒险行为——这些显然是为了股东的利益。然而，哥伦比亚大学的一位法学教授杰弗里·戈登指出，高盛留出其50%的利润作为奖金，这与其以往的做法并无二致。他说，“没有证据表明高盛管理层是越过股东做出这项决定的，而根据他们的契约或其他期望，债权人也没有任何反对的理由。”

Nonetheless, many things changed when the taxpayer bailed out the financial system last year, including Goldman Sachs (despite its implausible protests that it would have survived without government intervention). As Mr Gordon says, “In a very real sense, Goldman’s profits are attributable to the government’s many actions, meaning taxpayer investment in the financial sector generally and in Goldman specifically.”
但是，自纳税人去年救助了包括高盛（尽管其牵强地辩驳没有政府干涉也能生存下来）在内的金融体系之后，许多事情都变了。正如戈登先生说的，“从真正意义上讲，高盛的利润得益于政府的许多行动，也就是纳税人对于整个金融部门的投资尤其是对高盛的投资。”

Even if Goldman has repaid the $10 billion (plus fees and dividends) in TARP money it says it did not want to take in the first place, it continues to benefit from, among other things, the government’s ongoing offer of loans—whether it accepts them or not—and the revival in capital markets sparked by the government’s decision to pump money into the financial system.
即使高盛偿还了从问题资产救助计划中获得的100亿美元（加上了薪酬及红利）——高盛称其从一开始就不愿接受这笔救助金——它也继续受益于其他一些政府举措，如政府持续不断的贷款（不管它接受与否）以及由于政府决定注资金融体系而复苏的资本市场。

The shareholders and bondholders of those financial firms that survived last year’s meltdown have been the biggest winners from this government rescue—bigger even than the employees of these firms. Goldman’s share price is over 300% higher than in November last year, for example. It is they who should be the primary focus of taxpayer outrage (even if, thanks to the institutions that own shares to finance future pensions, these taxpayers and shareholders are to some extent the same people).
那些在去年金融危机中生存下来的金融公司的股东及债券持有人成了政府救助计划最大的受益者——甚至比这些公司的员工收益还多。比如说，高盛的股价比去年11月份高出3倍多。他们才应该是纳税人泄愤的首要对象（即使这样，由于有些机构拥有股票以为退休金筹措资金，这些纳税人和股东从某种程度上讲是同一帮人）。

The best solution would have been for the government to have taken an equity or equity-related stake in every financial firm it helped when it bailed out the system last year. Compared with the dividends and warrants associated with the TARP, this would have given the taxpayer a far greater exposure to the upside to the rescue, and would surely have eased some of the public outrage today.
对于政府而言最好的解决方式就是当去年救助金融体系时，在其帮助的每个金融公司都拥有一些股本或与股本相关的利益。与红利以及和问题资产救援计划相关的担保相比，这样就会使纳税人更清楚地了解到救助的情况，而现在也一定会缓解一些公愤。

The Treasury was unwilling to be seen taking an equity stake in any bank unless there was absolutely no alternative—as in the case of Citigroup, of which it now owns 30%. Apparently this was because the treasury secretary at the time, Hank Paulson, a former boss of Goldman, did not want to be seen as a nationaliser. As a result, the taxpayer has ended up nationalising both the worst of the banks it helped and some of the system’s most toxic assets, while missing out on much of the profit it could have made from a stake in the better firms that were saved.
财政部不愿被认为在任何银行拥有股权，除非是实在别无选择——花旗银行就是如此，财政部拥有其30%的股份。很显然这是因为当时的财政部长同时也是高盛前总裁汉克·保尔森不愿被看作是国有主义者。结果，这位纳税人停止国有化其救助的银行的最糟糕的部门，也没有国有化一些金融体系的有毒资产，同时也失去了从那些被救助的效益较好的公司的股权获得大量利润的机会。

What would Warren Buffett do?
沃伦·巴菲特会怎么做?
Warren Buffett would not have made such a mistake, as he showed when he invested in Goldman Sachs soon after the government did—negotiating a 10% dividend on $5 billion of preferred stock with warrants giving him the right to invest a further $5 billion in Goldman shares at what now looks like the bargain price of $115 each. Surely Mr Paulson could have negotiated far better terms than Mr Buffett. No wonder the public feels that Wall Street’s current fortunes are a case of heads I win, tails you lose. The question is, what can be done about it?
沃伦·巴菲特可不会犯这样的错，他在政府之后不久也投资高盛就表明了这点——协商其50亿美元的优先股享有10%的红利，还要保证他有权以现在看来是很廉价的每股115美元再次购买高盛50亿美元的股票。当然，保尔森先生要是谈判的话，可以获得比巴菲特先生更优惠的条件。难怪公众会觉得华尔街现在的命运如同丢硬币一样，正面我赢，反面你输。问题是，对此可以做些什么？

The opportunity to take an equity position at a bargain price has been missed. A windfall-profit tax is easier to justify in this case than it usually is—though there currently seems little appetite for one in Washington, and such taxes can distort banks’ behaviour in unpredictable and counterproductive ways.
以廉价获得股权的时机已经错失。在这种情况下，暴利税比平常更容易行得通——可是目前华盛顿不太愿意征收这样的税，而且这些税可能无法估计地，起反作用地扭曲银行的行为。

The more politically palatable options—regulating bonuses and cracking down on Wall Street’s risk-taking activities—could also make matters worse. Last week Citigroup was forced to sell Phibro, its commodity-trading arm, at an absurdly low price because of the political storm around the $100m bonus paid to its boss, Andrew Hall. This does not look like a good outcome for Citi’s part-owner, the taxpayer.
政治上更倾向的选择——监管奖金并遏制华尔街的冒险行为——也可能会使情况更糟。上周，花旗银行被迫以荒唐的低价出售能源贸易部门Phibro,主要是因为该部门高管安德鲁·霍尔1亿美元的巨额分红引发政治风暴。这无论是对花旗的共有人还是对纳税人而言都不是个好结果。

Nonetheless, if public anger continues to grow, politicians in Washington, DC, are more likely to impose burdensome regulation on financial firms. If they are wise, Goldman and its peers will do something soon to try to calm the public mood.
但是，如若公众的愤怒持续高涨，华盛顿的政府官员们有可能对金融公司实施更沉重的监管。如果高盛和其他金融公司明智的话，就应当有所作为尽量平复公众的愤怒情绪。

Though it will not do much to help taxpayers, the much-discussed idea of Goldman and others donating some of their profits to charity would be a start. This would be in keeping with the fine philanthropic tradition of Goldman in particular, which most recently has been funding an impressive “10,000 Women” initiative to send female entrepreneurs in developing countries to business school. Yet to be viewed as a genuine effort to repay the charity investment banks have received, the gifts would need to be large: in the billions of dollars, not the tens of millions.
尽管这对纳税人没什么帮助，经常讨论的高盛和其他投行将一些利润捐给慈善机构的主意也许是个不错的开始。这么做也极其符合高盛一贯的乐善好施的传统。高盛最近资助了一项令人印象深刻的“万千女性”活动，计划将发展中国家的女企业家送往商业学院进修。然而要想让大家认为投行真正努力将其收益回报慈善事业的话，应当投入大量资金：应是数十亿美元而不是区区几千万美元。

Shareholders would be wise to support such donations, if management proposes them. Shareholders can also play a constructive role in changing the mood by doing a better job of requiring management to ensure that bonuses are better designed, ideally mostly in the form of restricted stock that does not vest for several years.
股东明智的话就应当在管理层提出捐赠计划时，表示支持。股东也可以通过更好地要求管理层，确保红利得到更好的分配，理想的分配形式是期限较短的限制股票，从而对转变大众的态度发挥建设性的作用。

As part of establishing the new “social compact” that Larry Summers, Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser, says is urgently needed, Wall Street firms should also stop lobbying against the proposed Consumer Protection Agency, and instead support efforts to ensure it works. As Mr Summers mildly put it, given the help Wall Street firms have received from the taxpayer, some of their behaviour lately has been “a bit rich”.
作为建立新的“社会影响”的一部分（奥巴马的首席经济顾问劳伦斯·萨默斯认为这是急需去做的），华尔街公司也应当停止游说反对被提议的消费者保护机构，而应支持该保护机构的运行。正如萨默斯先生指出的，考虑到华尔街公司已经受到来自纳税人的帮助，他们近来的一些行为“有些过头了”。

注：
pinata是西方国家过节期间，尤其是圣诞节那一天最受拉美裔美国儿童欢迎的一种游戏。其最具代表性的形状是七角星，七个尖角分别代表人类的七宗原罪，而孩子们用棒子顺利打破七角星时，就意味着正义战胜邪恶，与此同时会有礼物从七角星中散落出来，象征着上帝对人类战胜邪恶的嘉奖。