銀行業(yè)的真正危險

Poor Bernie Sanders. How can you expect to becomeUS president if you are not familiar with the relativespheres of competence of the Federal Reserve andTreasury department in the supervision of thenation’s banks? If you are not au fait with thedifferent roles of the Securities and ExchangeCommission, the Federal Deposit InsuranceCorporation and the Office of the Comptroller of theCurrency?

可憐的伯尼•桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)。如果你不了解負責監(jiān)管全美銀行的美聯(lián)儲(Fed)和財政部(Treasurydepartment)的相對勝任范圍，如果你不清楚證交會(SEC)、聯(lián)邦存款保險公司(FDIC)和貨幣監(jiān)理署(OCC)的不同職能的話，你怎么能夠當美國總統(tǒng)?

The senator from Vermont was part of the Congress that passed the Dodd-Frank Act extendingfinancial regulation. Yet he has not even mastered the thousand pages or so of the act, far lessthe regulations and explanatory documents that have been published since.

這位佛蒙特州參議員是通過了實施金融監(jiān)管的《多德-弗蘭克法》(Dodd-Frank Act)的國會的一份子。不過，他甚至看不懂該法大約1000頁的文本，自那以來發(fā)布的規(guī)定和解釋文件就更不必提了。

Mr Sanders’ recent stumbles illustrate a misdirection in his attack on the bankingestablishment. The central problem is not so much “too big to fail” but “too complex to fail”:Lehman was a systemically important financial institution but not an important financialinstitution. Nor was it a big one; it had fewer employees than Citigroup today has compliancestaff. Lehman’s collapse created major problems for the global financial system because of theextent of its interactions, with more than 1m outstanding contracts at the time of itsbankruptcy. Similarly, Long Term Capital Management was insignificant in size when it failedbut capable of massive impact by virtue of the exposure of other institutions to itsactivities.

桑德斯最近的錯誤表明，他對銀行業(yè)現(xiàn)有體制發(fā)起的攻擊在方向上是錯誤的。核心問題不是“大到不能倒”，而是“復雜到不能倒”：雷曼(Lehman)曾經(jīng)是一家具有系統(tǒng)重要性的金融機構(gòu)，而并非一家重要的金融機構(gòu)。雷曼也不是一家大機構(gòu);它的員工還沒有如今花旗集團(Citigroup)的合規(guī)人員多。雷曼倒閉給全球金融體系造成重大問題，是因為它與其他機構(gòu)的業(yè)務往來太廣，其破產(chǎn)時留下100多萬份未結(jié)合約。同樣，當年長期資本管理公司(LTCM)在倒閉時的規(guī)模也不大，但由于其他機構(gòu)對其活動的敞口之大，該公司的倒閉造成了巨大沖擊。

There is some force in the claim that size in banking has actually been conducive to stability.Britain had no banking crisis in the Great Depression because the sector was highlyconcentrated. The US had many failures because the fragmentation imposed by restrictionson interstate banking meant that many banks lacked sufficient geographical or sectoraldiversification to weather losses.

有種說法有一定的說服力，那就是銀行規(guī)模大實際上是有利于穩(wěn)定的。英國在大蕭條時期(Great Depression)沒有發(fā)生銀行危機，因為英國銀行業(yè)是高度集中的。美國有很多銀行倒閉，原因在于，限制跨州從事銀行業(yè)務帶來的分散化，意味著許多銀行在地理或行業(yè)方面缺乏多元化，無法抵御虧損。

Ahead of the global financial crisis, it was argued that the growth of securitisation and othercomplex instruments similarly contributed to financial resilience. The reverse proved to bethe case; trade between institutions represented concentration and multiplication of risksrather than diversification.

在全球金融危機之前，有人辯稱，證券化與其他復雜工具的發(fā)展同樣有利于增強金融彈性。事實證明情況恰好相反;機構(gòu)之間的交易代表著風險的集中與倍增，而不是分散。

Complexity is the enemy of stability. Financial conglomerates have become too diverse andsprawling for their chief executives or boards to understand what they do. The samecomplexity creates endemic conflicts of interest and is associated with cross subsidy betweenactivities. There are fundamental differences in the cultures required to trade derivatives, togive private financial advice to big corporations, to manage assets on behalf of savers and toprovide an efficient retail banking service.

復雜是穩(wěn)定的敵人。大型金融企業(yè)集團的業(yè)務變得太廣泛，規(guī)模變得太大，以至于它們的首席執(zhí)行官或董事會都搞不懂公司在做什么。這種復雜性還帶來普遍的利益沖突，并且與不同活動之間的交叉補貼有關。交易衍生品、向大企業(yè)提供專門金融建議、替儲戶管理資產(chǎn)和提供高效率的零售銀行服務所需要的文化存在根本差異。

And these conflicts and interdependencies undermine resilience. Vertical chains ofintermediation, which channel funds directly from savers to the uses of capital, can breakwithout inflicting much collateral damage. When intermediation is predominantly horizontal,with intermediaries mostly trading with each other, any failure cascades through the system, ashappened with Lehman. Today the assets of major financial institutions are predominantly theliabilities of other financial institutions; and vice versa.

這些沖突和相互依賴削弱了彈性。垂直的中介鏈——把資金從儲戶直接輸送至資金的使用者——可能在不造成太大附帶損害的情況下斷裂。當中介鏈變成基本上水平的形態(tài)時——中介主要在相互之間交易——任何失靈都會傳導至整個系統(tǒng)，正如雷曼倒閉時的情況那樣。如今，大型金融機構(gòu)的資產(chǎn)主要是其他金融機構(gòu)的負債;反之亦然。

These issues are compounded by the regulatory complexity that follows from attempts tomonitor behaviour in impossible detail. As the size of the Dodd-Frank legislation shows, wehave locked ourselves into a spiral in which regulatory complexity gives rise to furtherorganisational complexity and the construction of yet more esoteric instruments. Even iflegislators had better motives than the present corrupting structure that US campaign financeseems to allow, they cannot hope to have more than a basic knowledge of the rules theypromulgate or the workings of the regulatory institutions they have created.

監(jiān)管者企圖以不可能達到的程度監(jiān)視企業(yè)行為，由此造成的復雜性使問題變得更糟糕。正如冗長的《多德-弗蘭克法》所顯示的那樣，我們把自己鎖進了一個螺旋：監(jiān)管復雜性加劇了組織復雜性，并帶來更難懂的工具。相比美國競選資金募集似乎放任的現(xiàn)行腐敗體系，即便立法者有更好的動機，他們除了對自己頒布的規(guī)則或創(chuàng)建的監(jiān)管機構(gòu)的運作有個基本了解，也不能指望具備更深入的知識了。

So should we break up banks? Bring it on, Bernie.

那么，我們應該分拆銀行嗎?想試就試一試吧，桑德斯。