分类：专栏

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
如想与译者本人对该文进行切磋，请到如下链接：http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=31080&extra=page%3D1&page=1

A special report on financial risk

Cinderella’s moment
灰姑娘的非常时刻

Risk managers to the fore
风头浪尖上的风险经理们

Feb 11th 2010
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Tim Marrs

IN A speech delivered to a banking-industry conference in Geneva in December 2006, Madelyn Antoncic issued a warning and then offered some reassurance. With volatility low, corporate credit spreads growing ever tighter and markets all but ignoring bad news, there was, she said, “a seemingly overwhelming sense of complacency”. Nevertheless, she insisted that the firm she served as chief risk officer, Lehman Brothers, was well placed to ride out any turbulence, thanks to a keen awareness of emerging threats and a rock-solid analytical framework.
2006年在日内瓦举行的金融会议上，Madelyn Antoncic作了一个演讲，其间她发出了警告但随后又给出了一些安慰。随着低波动率，企业的信用利差越来越小（紧），而市场几乎是忽略所有不利信息，正如她所说的：“似乎是一种压倒性的自满”。然而，她坚持她作为首席风险官所效力的雷曼兄弟公司，因着对可能出现的风险有敏锐的体察和坚如磐石的分析框架，是有能力渡过任何动荡。

Behind the scenes, all was not well. Ms Antoncic, a respected risk manager with an economics PhD, had expressed unease at the firm’s heavy exposure to commercial property and was being sidelined, bit by bit, by the firm’s autocratic boss, Dick Fuld. Less than two months after her speech she was pushed aside.
而幕后所有的一切皆不尽如人意。受人尊敬拥有经济学博士学位的Antoncic女士，对公司商业用房地产贷款存在的巨大风险敞口表达了不安但却被公司独裁的老板Dick Fuld逐渐边缘化。在她发言不到两个月后就被排挤冷落了。

Lehman’s story ended particularly badly, but this sort of lapse in risk governance was alarmingly common during the boom. So much for the notion, generally accepted back then, that the quality of banks’ risk regimes had, like car components, converged around a high standard. “The variance turned out to be shocking,” says Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.
雷曼的故事以无比恶劣的结局结束了，但这种风险管理的失误在繁荣期却是惊人地普遍。当年普遍存在一种观念， 认为银行的抗风险机制的质量就象汽车零部件一样达标甚高， 这个观念到此休矣。 因为结果发现， 有的银行距离高标准的差距大的惊人，正如摩根大通的行政长官Jamie Dimon所言。

The banks that fared better, including his own, relied largely on giving their risk-managing roundheads equal status with the risk-taking cavaliers. That was not easy. In happy times, when risk seems low, power shifts from risk managers to traders. Sales-driven cultures are the natural order of things on Wall Street and in the City. Discouraging transactions was frowned upon, especially at firms trying to push their way up capital-markets league tables. Risk managers who said no put themselves on a collision course with the business head and often the chief executive too.
那些经营好的银行，包括他自己的，都有赖于给圆颅党和保皇党以同等地位。那并非易事。在风险看似低的繁荣期时，当权者往往会从风险管理者转为交易商。以销售为主导的文化在华尔街和这座城市是正常运转制序。疲软交易是令人难以接受的，尤其是各公司都在为资本市场排名而角力时。风险经理们说不要把自己置身于与业务主管也常包括行政长官的冲突中。
At some large banks that subsequently suffered big losses, such as HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), credit committees, which vetted requests for big loans, could be formed on an ad hoc basis from a pool of eligible members. If the committee’s chairman, typically a business-line head, encountered resistance from a risk manager or other sceptic, he could adjourn the meeting, then reconstitute the committee a week or two later with a more pliable membership that would approve the loan.
在许多随后遭受巨大损失的银行中，比如苏格兰哈里法克斯银行和皇家苏格兰银行，对大额贷款进行审查的信贷委员会，是从有资格的成员队伍中临时性选拔组成的。如果委员会主席正好是业务线的领导，在遭遇风险经理或其他不信任者的阻挠时，他可以中止会议，然后在一两周后选择那些会同意借贷更圆通的人选重新组建委员会。
Another common trick was for a business line to keep quiet about a proposal on which it had been working for weeks until a couple of hours before the meeting to approve it, so the risk team had no time to lodge convincing objections. Exasperated roundheads would occasionally resort to pleading with regulators for help. In the years before the crash the Basel Committee of bank supervisors reportedly received several requests from risk managers to scrutinise excessive risk-taking at their institutions that they felt powerless to stop.
另一普遍的技俩就是业务线对他们做了几星期的提案始终保持沉默，直到举行审批会议前几小时才出示，这样风险小组就没有时间提出令人信服的反对意见。愤怒的圆颅党偶尔也诉诸管理者以求帮助。在金融崩溃的前几年内，巴塞尔银行监管委员会据说收到了好几起来自风险经理的审查请求，要求审查在他们机构内他们根本无力阻止的过度风险。

Many banks’ failings exposed the triumph of form over substance. In recent years it had become popular to appoint a chief risk officer to signal that the issue was receiving attention. But according to Leo Grepin of McKinsey, “it was sometimes a case of management telling him, ‘you tick the boxes on risk, and we’ll worry about generating revenue’.”
许多银行的倒闭揭示了重形式而不重实质的问题。近几年来，任命首席风险官逐级变得风行起来，但这只不过是对外表示风险问题正在受到重视。但据麦肯锡的Leo Grepin所言：“这种情况只不过是形式，管理层借此通知他（风险官）‘你只要给抗风险注意事项前头的空格通通打钩就行，赚钱的事我们来操心。’”

Since 2007 banks have been scrambling to convince markets and regulators that they will continue to take risk seriously once memories of the crisis fade. Some are involving risk officers in talks about new products and strategic moves. At HSBC, for instance, they have had a bigger role in vetting acquisitions since the bank’s American retail-banking subsidiary, bought in 2003, suffered heavy subprime-mortgage losses. “Everyone should now see that the risk team needs to be just as involved on the returns side as on the risk side,” says Maureen Miskovic, chief risk officer at State Street, an American bank.
自从2007年以来，银行纷纷说服市场和管理者一旦危机记忆淡化他们将继续实行高风险政策。在谈论新产品和战略举措时也提到了风险官。比如，在汇丰银行，自从2003年收购了美国零售子公司并饱受巨大的次级抵押货款损失后，风险官在审批收购时则扮演了重要的角色。“现今每一个人都要明白风险小组既需要利润方也需要风险控制方”，波斯顿金融街一家美国银行的首席风险官Maureen Miskovic如是说。

Glamming up
乱花渐欲迷人眼
Ms Miskovic is one of an emerging breed of more powerful risk officers. They are seen as being on a par with the chief financial officer, get a say in decisions on pay and have the ear of the board, whose agreement is increasingly needed to remove them. Some report directly to a board committee as well as—or occasionally instead of—to the chief executive.
Miskovic女士是这类新型更有权势的风险官之一。他们正被视为与首席财务官相提并论，在薪酬决策上有发言权，董事会听他们的话，要罢风险官的职务越来越多地要经过董事会的同意。风险官的有些报告不但呈递给CEO 也直接呈递给董事会——偶然情况下， 这些报告不呈递给CEO, 但是直接给董事会。
。

For many, the biggest task is to dismantle cumbersome “silos”, says Ken Chalk of America’s Risk Management Association. Risks were often stuffed into convenient but misleading pigeonholes. Banks were slow to refine their approach, even as growing market complexity led some of the risks to become interchangeable.
对许多风险官司而言，他们最大的任务是拆除繁琐的“孤岛”，美国风险管理协会的Ken Chalk如是说。风险常被轻易界定而误导方向。银行在修正方向是很迟钝的，日益增长的市场复杂性导致了一些风险交错产生。

Take the growth of traded credit products, such as asset-backed securities and CDOs made up of them. Credit-risk departments thought of them as market risk, because they sat in the trading book. Market-risk teams saw them as credit instruments, since the underlying assets were loans. This buck-passing proved particularly costly at UBS, which lost SFr36 billion ($34 billion) on CDOs. Many banks are now combining their market- and credit-risk groups, as HSBC did last year.
随着诸如资产保证证券和债务抵押构成的交易信用产品的增长，信用风险部门则把它们当成市场风险，因为它们属于正当交易类型。而市场风险小组认为它们是信用工具，因为标的资产是贷款。这种相互推诿让瑞士联合银行付出高昂的代价，在债务抵押项目上损失了360亿瑞士法朗（340亿美元）。现今许多银行都把市场风险团队和信用风险团队并在一块，就象汇丰银行去年所做的那样。

For all the new-found authority of risk managers, it can still be hard to attract talent to their ranks. The job is said to have the risk profile of a short option position with unlimited downside and limited upside—something every good risk manager should avoid. Moreover, it lacks glamour. Persuading a trader to move to risk can be “like asking a trapeze artist to retrain as an accountant”, says Barrie Wilkinson of Oliver Wyman, a consultancy.
所有新欣的风险经理机构依然难以吸引人才加入其中。这份职业本身的风险特征就像空头期权（头寸）一样，正回报有限， 负回报（即损失）无限，这是每一个优秀的风险经理人都应尽量避免的。此外，它缺乏魅力。说服一个交易员转而关注风险“犹如把一个空中飞人再培训成一个会计师。”，奥纬咨询的咨询师Barrie Wilkinson如是说。

A question of culture
文化建设
Besides, there is more to establishing a solid risk culture than empowering risk officers. Culture is a slippery concept, but it matters. “Whatever causes the next crisis, it will be different, so you need something that can deal with the unexpected. That’s culture,” says Colm Kelleher of Morgan Stanley. One necessary ingredient is a tradition of asking and repeating questions until a clear answer emerges, suggests Clayton Rose, a banker who now teaches at Harvard Business School.
此外，建立牢固的风险文化要比授权给风险官要难得多。文化是个难以把握的概念，但它重要。“无论是什么引起下轮的危机，那将是不同的。因此你需要一些对不可预知事项应变的能力，那就是文化。” 摩根斯坦利Colm Kelleher认为。“其中一个必要的因素就是要有询问和不断怀疑的传统，直到一个清晰答案出现”，Clayton Rose—现在哈佛商学院教书的银行家如此建议道。

The tone is set at the top, for better or worse. At the best-run banks senior figures spend as much time fretting over risks as they do salivating at opportunities (see article). By contrast, Lehman’s Mr Fuld talked of “protecting mother” but was drawn to the glister of leveraged deals. Stan O’Neal, who presided over giant losses at Merrill Lynch, was more empire-builder than risk manager. But imperial bosses and sound risk cultures sometimes go together, as at JPMorgan and Banco Santander.
这种声音出自高层也许更好也许更糟。在经营最好的银行内，高层们在面对令人垂涎欲滴的良好机会时也会花许多时间来考量风险。相反，雷曼的Fuld先生谈到“保护根源”时更多是为杠杆交易的光芒所吸引。对美林的巨大损失负责的Stan O’Neal，相对于风险管理者他更是一个狂热的帝国建造者。但是有时帝国老板也能和健全的风险文化融为一体，比如摩根大通和西班牙的坦桑大通银行。

A soft-touch boss can be more dangerous than a domineering one. Under Chuck Prince, who famously learned only in September 2007 that Citigroup was sitting on $43 billion of toxic assets, the lunatics were able to take over the asylum. Astonishingly, the head of risk reported not to Mr Prince or the board, but to a newly hired executive with a background in corporate-governance law, not cutting-edge finance.
优柔寡断的老板可能比独断专横的老板更为危险。Chuck Prince最为出名的教训源于2007年9月花旗集团涉及430亿美元的不良资产，在此管理下，疯子们都能接管精神病院了。令人惊讶的是，风险部门的领导既没有向Prince先生报告也没有向董事会报告，而向一位毫无高端金融背景仅有公司治理法案背景的新招主管作了报告。

Another lesson is that boards matter too. Directors’ lack of engagement or expertise played a big part in some of the worst slip-ups, including Citi’s. The “sociology” of big banks’ boards also had something to do with it, says Ingo Walter of New York’s Stern School of Business: as the members bonded, dissidents felt pressure to toe the line.
另一教训与董事会有关。主管们缺乏约束或专业素养在那些管理疏漏最为严重的公司占了主要原因，包括花旗集团。大银行董事会的社会关系学与此也有些关联，纽约斯特恩商学院的Ingo Walter认为：因为利益联盟，持不同政见者在那些循规蹈矩者中总要承受更大的压力。

Too few boards defined the parameters of risk oversight. In a survey last year Deloitte found that only seven of 30 large banks had done so in any detail. Everyone agrees that boards have a critical role to play in determining risk appetite, but a recent report by a group of global regulators found that many were reluctant to do this.
太少的董事会对风险监督的因素予以界定。在德勤去年的调查中30家银行仅有7家对此有详细的规定。大家都认为董事会在风险偏好中起决定作用，但在最近的全球临管组的报告中发现他们大都不愿意这么做。

Boards could also make a better job of policing how (or even whether) banks adjust for risk in allocating capital internally. Before the crisis some boards barely thought about this, naively assuming that procedures for it were well honed. A former Lehman board member professes himself “astonished”, in retrospect, at how some of the risks in the company’s property investments were brushed aside when assessing expected returns. The survivors are still struggling to create the sort of joined-up approach to risk adjustment that is common at large hedge funds, admits one Wall Street executive.
董事会还可以在制定政策上做得更好，比如在制定银行内部分配资本时如何调整分险。在危机发生前一些银行几乎没有考虑到这点，天真地认为那些程序已完美无缺。雷曼的一名前董事会成员承认自己事后回想起来深感吃惊，因在公司财产投资时仅对预期回报评估而根本没有考虑到有多少的风险存在。幸存者仍挣扎于是否加入风险调整的路径中，但在大型对冲基金中风险调整是很普遍的，华尔街的一名执行官司承认说。

Board games
董事会的游戏
Robert Pozen, head of MFS Investment Management, an American asset manager, thinks bank boards would be more effective with fewer but more committed members. Cutting their size to 4-8, rather than the 10-18 typical now, would foster more personal responsibility. More financial-services expertise would help too. After the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002 banks hired more independent directors, many of whom lacked relevant experience. The former spymaster on Citi’s board and the theatrical impresario on Lehman’s may have been happy to ask questions, but were they the right ones?
Robert Pozen是MFS投资管理公司的领导人，一个美国资产管理专家，他认为银行董事会需要数量更少但更为忠诚的成员从而能更加高效地运转。把人数减为4-8人，而不是现在的10-18个代表，也能够培养更多的个人职责。也能提供更多的专业金融服务。2002年通过塞班斯法案后，规定银行需要雇佣更多独立董事，他们中许多是缺乏相关经验。前花旗银行董事会的超级间谍和雷曼的戏剧表演家可能会很乐意提问，但又有哪些问题是提得恰当的？

Under regulatory pressure, banks such as Citi and Bank of America have hired more directors with strong financial-services backgrounds. Mr Pozen suggests assembling a small cadre of financially fluent “super-directors” who would meet more often—say, two or three days a month rather than an average of six days a year, as now—and may serve on only one other board to ensure they take the job seriously.
在监管压力下，比如象花旗和美洲银行等雇佣了更多有着强劲金融服务背景的董事。Pozen先生认为聚集这些娴熟的金融精英作为超级董事，相对于以前一年平均六天工作于董事会，现在每月工作二到三天的时间，如此以来他们仅能再多服务一家别的董事会，这样他们就会更加专注于董事会工作。

That sounds sensible, but the case for another suggested reform—creating independent risk committees at board level—is less clear. At some banks risk issues are handled perfectly well by the audit committee or the full board. Nor is there a clear link between the frequency of risk-related meetings and a bank’s performance. At Spain’s Santander the relevant committee met 102 times in 2008. Those of other banks that emerged relatively unscathed, such as JPMorgan and Credit Suisse, convened much less often.
那听起来似乎在理，但对另一项改革建议即在董事会层面上建立独立风险委员会一事却缺乏明晰性。在一些银行风险事项由审计委员会或全职董事完好操控。举行风险会议的频率和银行绩效间是否有关联依然不清晰。西班牙的桑坦德2008年开这种相关的会就达102次。其它那些受损相对较小的银行诸如摩根大通和瑞士信贷，它们就更常开会。

Moreover, some of the most important risk-related decisions of the next few years will come from another corner: the compensation committee. It is not just investment bankers and top executives whose pay structures need to be rethought. In the past, risk managers’ pay was commonly determined or heavily influenced by the managers of the trading desks they oversaw, or their bonus linked to the desks’ performance, says Richard Apostolik, who heads the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Boards need to eliminate such conflicts of interest.
此外，一些未来几年内最为重要的风险决策将取决于另一方向：薪酬委员会。这不光是投行银行家和高管的薪酬结构需要重构。过去，风险经理的薪酬通常是由他们所监管的交易柜台经理来决定或受其重大影响，或者他们的奖金与柜台的业绩挂钩，全球风险专业人士协会的领导Richard Apostolik介绍说。董事会需要剔除这种利益冲突的现状。
Meanwhile risk teams are being beefed up. Morgan Stanley, for instance, is increasing its complement to 450, nearly double the number it had in 2008. The GARP saw a 70% increase in risk-manager certifications last year. Risk is the busiest area for financial recruiters, says Tim Holt of Heidrick & Struggles, a firm of headhunters. When boards are looking for a new chief executive, they increasingly want someone who has been head of risk as well as chief financial officer, which used to be the standard requirement, reckons Mike Woodrow of Risk Talent Associates, another headhunting firm.
同时风险团队需要增强。比如摩根斯坦利，其队伍已增至450人，差不多是2008年的两倍。全球风险专业人士协会去年也看到风险管理认证增加了70%.在金融招募中风险部门是最忙碌的，猎头公司Heidrick & Struggles的Tim Holt说到。现今董事会寻找新的行政总裁，逐渐想要那种曾有风险管理经验的和首席财务官的人选，这已成为挑选标准，另一猎头公司风险人才协会Mike Woodrow认为。
The big question is whether this interest in controlling risk will fizzle out as economies recover. Experience suggests that it will. Bankers say this time is different—but they always do.
现今最大的问题是当经济复苏时对风险控制的兴起终会消逝。经验证明那是可能的。银行家们说这次是不同的，但他们总是这么说的。

译者：Fangsu
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Buttonwood
梧桐树专栏

Stimulating debate
经济刺激引激辨

The markets, and developed economies, are too dependent on government action
市场——以及发达经济体——均过分依赖政府行为。

Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Illustration by S. Kambayashi

AS JANUARY goes, so goes the year. That old stockmarket saying does not augur well for 2010, given that the MSCI World index fell by 4.2% in the month, the biggest decline since February 2009, and emerging markets dropped by 5.6%.

一月萧规，全年曹随。考虑到MSCI全球股指在该月失守4.2%——创下去年2月以来的最大跌幅——而新兴市场指数则跌掉5.6%，这句股市格言对2010年可不是什么好兆头。

Although markets rallied a bit in early February on better-than-expected economic data, the poor start to the year reflected an inherent contradiction to the rebound of 2009. That rally seemed to be dependent both on extraordinary stimulus measures by governments and central banks, and on a vigorous economic recovery. But both cannot co-exist for long: either the recovery will not last or, if it does, the stimulus will be taken away.

尽管市场由于经济数据好过期望而于2月初微幅上扬，年初的糟糕表现反映的却是对去年反弹的一次内在调整。此次上扬所倚赖的似乎是政府与央行超常的刺激举措，以及整体经济的强力复苏。然而，二者无法并行持久——要么是复苏难以为继，倘若真的挺住了，刺激措施也将被撤掉。

In addition, governments’ ability to provide that stimulus is dependent on the markets’ own willingness to fund huge deficits at very low yields. But why would investors accept meagre yields if they expected a vigorous recovery? In a sense, the market seemed to be hauling itself up by its own bootstraps.

此外，政府提供刺激措施的能力取决于市场自身在低收益水平为其赤字融资的意愿。只是如果投资者期望复苏强劲，为什么还要接受这样微薄的收益呢？某种意义上，市场的努力终将是徒劳的。

Sure enough, the bullish story has started to unravel, if only at the edges. In the developing world China has attempted to tighten monetary policy. That has caused some alarm because China was acting as the engine of global growth.

果不其然。这片牛市图景的瓦解已然开始——但愿无甚大碍。在发展中国家，中国已试图收紧其货币政策。这导致了些许惊慌，因为中国近来一直扮演着全球增长引擎的角色。

And in the developed world investors have started to question the ability of governments to keep financing their deficits. The obvious example is in Greece, where ten-year bond yields reached 7% late last month. At that level, which is well above likely Greek GDP growth, the country’s indebtedness would grow very rapidly. However unpopular it may prove to be, an austerity package is needed to prevent Greece from falling into this debt trap.

发达世界中的投资者同样开始怀疑政府赤字融资的能力。最明显的例子要属希腊，其十年期债券收益于上月末达到7%，远高于其GDP可能的增长速度。而在这样的高水平上，该国负债的增长将非常迅速。无论怎样的不受欢迎，事实或将证明，希腊需要一个节俭方案以免掉进债务陷阱。

So even in places where governments may wish to maintain fiscal stimulus, the markets may force them into corrective action. Britain, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and others have all indicated their determination to keep deficits under control, with varying degrees of conviction.

因此，即便是那些政府希望维持财政刺激的地方，市场依旧可能强迫他们改变行为。英国、法国、爱尔兰、西班牙、葡萄牙以及其他一些国家均表明了其控制赤字的决心，只是信念的程度有所不同。

But withdrawal of even small parts of the stimulus packages can send an economy back into the doldrums. As an example, American new-home sales slowed sharply after an initial end-of-November deadline for the expiry of a buyers’ tax credit. Although the credit has since been extended until April, December’s sales were just 342,000, compared with 329,000 in January 2009, at the height of the crisis.

然而，即便是从刺激方案中抽走一小部分，也可能将经济重新送进衰退。例如，在购房者税收抵免的原计截止日于11月末到来之后，美国新屋销售剧烈放缓。尽管该抵免措施已被延至4月，12月的新屋销售量也只有342,000，比危机顶点时的一月售房量（329,000）强不了多少。

The stimulus may have prevented the global economy from slipping into depression. In the medium term, however, academic studies suggest that higher government spending leads to slower economic growth. A 2008 paper by Antonio Afonso of the European Central Bank and Davide Furceri of the University of Palermo calculates that for every one-percentage-point rise in government spending as a proportion of GDP, the growth rate falls by 0.12-0.13 percentage points.

刺激措施或已阻止世界经济陷入萧条。然而从中期来讲，学术研究表明政府支出的上升会导致经济增长的放慢。据欧洲中央银行（European Central Bank ）的Antonio Afonso与巴勒莫大学（University of Palermo）的Davide Furceri在2008年的一篇论文中计算[1]，政府支出的GDP占比每增加一个百分点，整个经济增长率便会下降0.12到0.13个百分点。

What’s more, the packages have not really dealt with the problem of excessive debt, but merely transferred it from the private to the public sector. This buys time, but is akin to those debt-consolidation plans that are sold to consumers on TV. The pain is spread out over a longer period. But pain there will be, in the form of higher taxes, higher bond yields, slower growth or a combination of all three.

更糟糕的是，这些刺激方案并未真正解决超额债务的问题，而只是把它们从私人部门转移到了公共部门。此举赢得了时间，却无异于那些在电视上兜售的债务整合方案。短痛变成了长痛，但痛苦终究要来——要么是赋税高调，要么是债券收益率上涨，要么是增长放缓，要么是三者同来，祸不单行。

The authorities face a dilemma. Reduce the stimulus now and they risk plunging the economy back into recession, as happened in America in 1937 and Japan in 1997. But leave the stimulus in place for too long, and they risk damaging long-term growth prospects.

政府当局可谓左右为难。立马减少刺激，意味着冒险把经济重新送进衰退，正如1937年的美国以及1997年的日本。时间过长的留着刺激不动，又意味着冒险损害长期的增长前景。

The bulls hope that the economy can escape from this trap by the simple expedient of private-sector growth. That is why they welcomed the rise in manufacturing activity signalled in this week’s latest purchasing managers’ indices. If the private sector rebounds of its own accord, unemployment will fall and budget deficits will decline.

乐观派希望经济可以通过私人部门增长这样的简单出路来摆脱此类困境。本周最新采购经理指数所反映的制造业活动上升受到他们的欢迎正是出于这个原因。倘若私人部门凭借自身力量反弹，失业便会下降，预算赤字也会减少。

But hopes for a strong private-sector recovery are undermined by the data on credit growth. In the year to December, the broad measure of money supply fell by 0.2% in the euro zone and grew by just 3.4% in America. In Britain the annual growth rate is higher (6.4% in December), but David Owen, an economist at Jefferies International, estimates that quantitative easing (QE), whereby central banks create money to buy assets, has been boosting the figure by an annualised rate of 10%. If the Bank of England stops QE entirely, the credit-growth rate could collapse. For the stockmarket rally to resume properly in 2010, economies in the developed world need to show they can stand on their own two feet.

然而，对私人部门强劲反弹的希望却受到信贷增长数据的侵蚀。去年12月，广义货币供给在欧元区同比下降了0.2%，在美国也不过增长了3.4%。英国该项数据虽然略高（6.4%），但根据Jeferies International的经济学家大卫•欧文（David Owen）计算，按年记，定量宽松把该数据推高了10%。如果英格兰银行（Bank of England）完全退出定量宽松，信贷增长或可彻底崩解。由于股市上扬在2010年将适当恢复，发达经济体需要表明它们可以完全不靠政府刺激。
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译注
[1] 全文见 http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~depeco/wp/wp042008.pdf

译者：弓长贝恩
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Green.view
绿色观察

Conflict conservation
矛盾的自然保护区

Biodiversity down the barrel of a gun
枪口下的生物多样性

Feb 8th 2010 | From The Economist online

THERE was a time when conservation meant keeping people away from nature. America’s system of national parks, a model for similar set-ups around the world, was based on the idea of limiting human presence to passing visits, rather than permanent habitation.

自然保护区曾经意味着将人类与自然界隔离开。美国的国家公园就是分布于世界各地类似的系统中的典范，其理念就是在保护区内人类只是游客，而不能成为永久居民。

In recent years this way of doing things has come under suspicion. To fence off large areas of parkland is often impractical and can also be immoral—in that it leads to local people being booted out. These days, the consensus among conservationists is to try to manage nature with humans in situ. But there are still “involuntary parks”, to borrow a phrase from the writer and futurist Bruce Sterling, that serve to illustrate just how spectacularly well nature can do when humans are removed from the equation.

然而近些年来，这种方式受到了怀疑。要将大片的公园区用栅栏隔开常常不切实际，而且也不道德——这将导致当地人被逐出家园。目前，生态环境保护者们一致的意见是应该在保护区内居民仍然留住原处的条件下设法进行生态环境的保护。“无意中形成的公园”是作家、未来派学者布鲁斯•斯特林发明的一个术语，现存的这样一类“公园”向我们展示，一旦完全没有了人类的打搅，大自然将绘出多么神奇的一幅画卷。

Some such “parks” are accidents of settlement, or its absence. Nature is preserved in those rare places that people just have not got round to overrunning—for example the Foja Mountains in western New Guinea, an area of rainforest that teems with an astonishingly rich variety of plants and animals. Others are accidents of conflict: places from which people have fled and where the fauna and flora have thrived as a result.

在这类“公园”中有些是由于偶尔在某些地区无人居住而形成。在一些罕见的地区，人类没有四处扩散他们的活动范围，自然状态因而得以保存。例如新几内亚岛西部的福贾山地区就是一处这样的“公园”，这里是一片雨林区，动植物种类之多令人吃惊。另外一些这类“公园”则是由于人类的冲突而巧合出现。在这些地区，人类逃走了，结果一个动植物的王国形成了。

The demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is a good example. Over the past six decades this narrow and dangerous strip of land running 248km (155 miles) across the Korean peninsula has become a de facto nature reserve. As agriculture and industrialisation have moved ahead elsewhere, the thousand-square-kilometre DMZ, uninhabited and heavily mined, has been a refuge for two endangered birds: the white-naped and the red-crowned crane. It also contains Asiatic black bears, egrets and, according to some, an extremely rare subspecies of the Siberian tiger. The biggest threat to all this biodiversity is probably peace. There are already calls for the DMZ to be turned into a park in the event of reunification.

在南、北朝鲜间的非军事区（DMZ）就是一个很好的例子。这条横跨朝鲜半岛，长达248公里（155英里）的狭窄而危险的地带在过去60年里实际上成了一个自然保护区。当其它地区都在大兴农业与推进工业化的时候，这块无人居住、满布地雷的数千平方公里的非军事区倒成了两种濒危鸟类的避难所。这两种鸟分别时是白枕鹤和丹顶鹤。在这片区域内还有亚洲黑熊、白鹭。据说这里还栖息着西伯利亚虎的某个极稀有亚种。对这里的各类生物而言最大的威胁可能就是和平了。已经有人在呼吁一旦南北朝鲜获得统一，应该将这片非军事区变成一处自然公园。

The Chagos Islands of the Indian Ocean are a military zone, too. The locals were forcibly removed by the British government, starting in the late 1960s, to make way for an American base on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s main island. The Chagos Islands are thought to be home to some of the world’s healthiest coral reefs and the waters around them rank among the most pristine in the world. The Chagos Conservation Trust, a conservation group, would like to set up a reserve. The displaced islanders, however, plan to return one day, and if they do they will want to start fishing and building hotels and even an airport. Only military dominion keeps such activity at bay.

印度洋上的查戈斯群岛也是一个军事禁区，迪戈加西亚岛是这个群岛的主岛。上世纪60年代后期，英国政府强迫当地居民迁离这个群岛，为迪戈加西亚岛上建美军基地让道。查戈斯群岛拥有世界上发育最为良好的珊瑚礁，其周围的海水也位居地球上原生态保持最好的水域之一。查戈斯保护信托基金会是一个自然保护组织，计划把查戈斯群岛变成一个自然保护区。然而被迫迁离的岛民正谋划着某一天重返故土。如果他们的计划得以实现，他们将重新开始捕鱼作业，建筑旅馆，甚至还有可能建设一个机场。只有军事禁区内无法进行这些活动。

A little to the west of the Chagos, the Scotsman recently reported, the sea off Kenya’s northern coast currently has a profusion of fish because Somali pirates are keeping out all the big foreign fishing boats. Since the collapse of Somalia’s government in 1991, this part of the world has reportedly been plagued by illegal fishing. Now, goes the story, such boats are too afraid to enter the area because of the pirates.

《苏格兰人报》最近报道，查戈斯群岛以西一点的地方，肯尼亚北部海岸的外海现在鱼类充沛，其原因是索马里的海盗使所有外国的大型远洋捕鱼船都远离这里。1991年索马里政府倒台后，据报道这片海域非法捕鱼活动非常猖獗。而现在，同样是在这片海区，由于畏惧海盗这些船只完全不见了踪影。

The illegal dumping in the region of barrels of radioactive waste from European hospitals and factories, which has also been reported, has probably been similarly deterred, if it was taking place. This, though, is unlikely to bother the fish either way. Perhaps the most famous of the Earth’s involuntary parks is the evacuated area around Chernobyl, in Ukraine, where the burgeoning wildlife has been little affected by the risks of radiation.

过去曾有报道，一些船只在这片海域非法大量倾倒来自欧洲一些医院和工厂的放射性垃圾。而现在出于同样的原因，这些活动也都消失了。其时，倾倒这些放射物可能对鱼类的活动不会有任何影响。在地球上“无意中形成的公园”中最著名的可能要数位于乌克兰切尔诺贝利周围的撤离区，在这里迅速恢复的野生动物群落丝毫没有受到放射性的伤害。

Military conflict and the preparations that surround it are not, in themselves, good for the environment: far from it. Animals big enough to be eaten, or with body parts that can be sold for a profit, are well advised to stay out of war zones. It is depopulation that matters. Armed conflict and its knock-on effects simply happen to be one of the few forces on the planet that can cause quick and thorough depopulation. These areas struggle to survive when peace arrives. The nasty truth is that the likelihood of random and violent death is the cheapest form of conservation yet invented.

战争及战争准备活动本身不可能对环境产生什么益处，带来的只能是相反的结果。凡是大一点的可以作为人类食物的动物，或者是身体某一部分可以被出售卖钱的动物，建议你们最好还是远离战区。而战争引起了某个地区人口数量的锐减或消失才给当地环境带来了益处。事实已经告诉我们，战争及其影响是这个星球上少数几种能够造成局部地区人口迅速减少或灭绝的力量之一。一旦和平到来，这些地区的生态环境又将面临严峻考验。虽然令人不快，但事实上像战争这类带来随机和惨烈死亡的活动，却是制造自然保护区最廉价的方式。

译者：dqzxf
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Art.view
艺术.观点

In with the old（注1）
沉醉往昔

A cosmopolitan show of antiques in New York
纽约世界古董展

Jan 27th 2010 | From The Economist online

VISITORS to New York’s Winter Antiques Show, from January 22nd through the 31st, are greeted with what appears to be a large stained-glass window in many shades of purple. Close up, this work is in fact some two-dozen back-lit objects made of amethyst glass, arranged on shelves against a faux window (pictured in slideshow below). They come from Beauport（注2）in Massachusetts, one of 36 houses overseen by Historic New England（注3）, America’s first and largest preservation organisation. To celebrate the group’s centennial, an array of its treasures makes up the feature exhibition of this annual show.
1月22日至31日，参观者来到纽约冬季古董展，一扇巨大的彩色玻璃窗迎面而来，多种紫色，深浅不一。凑近细看，这件作品其实是由24个背景灯映照下的紫水晶玻璃制成，排列在以一扇人造窗户为背景的架子上（图见下方幻灯片）。这些东西来自马萨诸塞州的博波尔（Beauport）[博物馆]，该馆是美国第一个也是最大的[文物]保护组织——“古代新英格兰”（Historic New England）监管的36处房屋之一。为庆祝该组织百年诞辰，其拥有的一批宝物组成了这次年度特展。

Jason J. Weller

The Winter Show is owned by the East Side Settlement House, a social-service organisation that supports local families and community development. Profits from admissions and special events will benefit the organisation’s South Bronx education programme. That the Winter Antiques Show can comfortably bring together such disparate worlds and goals (historic preservation and urban literacy) makes this a true celebration of Americana.
本届冬季展属“东区慈善中心（the East Side Settlement House）”所有，这是一家支持本地家庭及社区发展的社会公益服务性组织。入场费及特别活动产生的收益，将有利于该组织的“南布朗克斯（South Bronx）”教育计划。本届冬季古董展，将根本不在一个领域、目的也不同的历史文物保护与教育促进计划自然地融合在一起, 使之成为了一场真正意义上的美国文物与史料盛会。

The fair is timed to coincide with Americana sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams. Recent auction results surely gave exhibitors hope. On January 22nd Sotheby’s sold a silver punch-bowl （注4）by Cornelius Kierstede, made in New York in the early 1700s, for a whopping $5.9m. This was more than ten times the low estimate and seven times the previous auction record for American silver.
本届展会正好与克里斯蒂、索斯比与宝龙拍卖行（Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams）的美国文物销售时间一致。最近的拍卖结果想必给参展者带来了希望。1月22日，索斯比拍卖行以590万美元天价，卖出了一件Cornelius Kierstede于18世纪早期在纽约制作的银质大酒杯。[这一售价]是最低估价的10倍多，也是此前美国银器拍卖纪录的7倍。

At the charity gala preview, around 150 smartly dressed guests queued patiently to be first through the door. (Their spirits were buoyed by the wine and canapés served by attentive staff.) Once inside they pounced. Attendance was up on last year, with more cheque-books in evidence. In the first half-hour Barbara Israel Garden Antiques sold ten pieces of statuary, including a doe and faun group （注5）for $135,000.
慈善晚会预展前，大约150名衣冠楚楚的客人耐心排队，以抢先进门。（工作人员细致周到地端上美酒点心，来宾激情澎湃。）一旦入内，他们就扑向[各处展品]。出席人数较去年有所上涨，支票簿增加即可佐证。“芭芭拉以色列花园古董展”（Barbara Israel Garden Antiques）开展半小时，就卖出了10件雕塑，包括一组母鹿与农牧神[雕像]，售价13.5万美元。

A year ago the show changed its definition of antique, from objects more than 100 years old to those made before 1960. Fortunately this allowed for the appearance this year of an eye-catching, whimsical chandelier from 1920 (pictured above), brought by Frank & Barbara Pollack, Americana dealers from Illinois. The piece consists of three wrought-iron arms, each cut into a silhouette of an elk, with hanging green-glass lights that look like gigantic acorns with “hats” of cast iron. It was love at first site for one visitor, who snapped it up for a five-figure sum soon after the opening.
一年前，该展会更改了其对于古董的定义，以前指超过一百年的物件，现在则指1960年前制造的东西。幸好如此，一件引人注目奇形怪状的1920年产枝形吊灯，今年才得以亮相（上图所示），这件古董是由伊利诺伊州来的美国文物商弗兰克&芭芭拉•波拉克带来的。它包括三只铁臂，每只切割成麋鹿状，[下]悬几个绿色玻璃灯，这些灯看起来就像头戴生铁“帽”的巨型橡果。有个参观者对它一见钟情，开展后不久，便以5位数的总价抢购了。

For all its fame as an American show, this year’s event is a cosmopolitan mix. London dealers include Daniel Katz, whose collection of Renaissance and 18th-century sculptures features a (quite literally) in-your-face gilded and painted stucco plaque of Beethoven’s head ($150,000, featured in slideshow below); and Nicholas Grindley, a private dealer in London and Beijing, who brought Chinese furniture, laquerware and works of art. Mr Grindley says that 30 years ago he bought in the East and sold in the West. Now the situation has reversed: he is buying back from his Western clients and selling in the East. He is making his Winter Show debut in the hopes of attracting new, young Western collectors.
[该展]尽管以美国展览著称，但今年的活动却混合了世界各地的[展品]。伦敦来的一些交易商，包括丹尼尔•卡茨和尼古拉斯•葛第礼。 前者收藏的文艺复兴和18世纪时期的雕塑中，尤以一件镀金并涂满石灰斑的贝多芬头像（售价15万美元，下方幻灯片所示）最为突出，（毫不夸张地说）咄咄逼人; 后者是一位往来于北京和伦敦之间的私人交易商，这次带来了中国家具，漆器和工艺品。葛第礼先生说，30年前，他在东方买进[宝物]而在西方卖出。现在情况逆转了：从西方客户手里回购而在东方售出。他在冬季展上亮相，希望借此吸引一些新的西方年轻藏家。

Hans P. Kraus, junior, a photography dealer based in New York, is exhibiting the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, a pioneering English photographer, with prices that range from $10,000 to $400,000 (depending on an image’s rarity). His stall is further enriched by objects from the archive of Lacock Abbey, the former home of Fox Talbot.
纽约摄影作品交易商小汉斯•P•克劳斯（Hans P. Kraus），展出了英国先锋摄影师威廉•亨利•福克斯•塔尔博特（William Henry Fox Talbot）的作品，（根据图像的稀有性，）其售价范围从1万美元至40万美元[不等]。来自福克斯•塔尔博特故居拉科克修道院（Lacock Abbey）档案库的[大师]作品，进一步丰富了他的展台。

There is a delightful selection of glittering jewellery at this show. Among the glamorous pieces exhibited by A la Vielle Russie, dealers on Fifth Avenue known for their superb Fabergé, is a charming example of sophisticated Americana: a diamond-centred flower brooch with petals of elongated Mississippi River pearls（注6）. Designed in the 1950s, it is priced at $4,800.
本届展会上，还有闪闪发光的珠宝荟萃，赏心悦目。位于第五街，以顶级法贝热（Fabergé）[珠宝]闻名的珠宝商甲•拉•维耶勒•露兹（A la Vielle Russie），展出了款款光彩夺目的饰品，其中一件，堪称美国文物做工精细的迷人典范：中镶钻石的花朵胸针，延伸出嵌有密西西比河珍珠的花瓣。20世纪50年代设计，售价达4800美元。

Sandra Hindman of Les Enluminures (which has offices in Chicago and a gallery in Paris) has brought illuminated manuscripts and early rings. A striking Roman ring, priced at $75,000, has the name of its original owner cut into its wide band. Another “Homonooea” is unlikely to happen by, but there is bound to be more than one woman visiting the Winter Antiques Show for whom the ring’s intaglio of victory would seem appropriate.
Les Enluminures（在芝加哥设有办公室并在巴黎开办了一家画廊），该公司的桑德拉•海得曼（Sandra Hindman）带来了泥金写本与古代指环。这个惊人的罗马指环，售价达7.5万美元，以其原始主人的名字命名，其指箍被切得宽宽的。[在本届展会上，] 未必那么巧有另一位[与这枚指环同名的] “Homonooea”[先生或女士到场买下，成为其新主人]。不过，前来参观这届冬季古董展的女士，肯定有不止一位会觉得这枚刻有凹字“胜利”的指纹，非常适合自己[，想成为其主人]。

译者：zhanyisky

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