【英语生活】金融中心：纽约PK伦敦

How is the financial crisis affecting the race for global pre-eminence between New York and London? The latest Global Financial Centres report from consultants Z/Yen Group showed that London had lost its lead over New York, leaving the twin sisters of global finance level-pegging.

Yet this is a marathon, not a sprint. In the longer run, the overall shape of regulation and tax, and more particularly the future handling of institutions that are too big or too interconnected to fail, will dictate the outcome. Here the picture is far from clear.

One reasonably safe bet is that a new Basel agreement, however onerous, will provide the basis for a level playing field on capital and liquidity. The unpredictability starts with unilateral measures, where the US is currently making the pace. While the Obama bank levy initially looked a potential shot in the foot for New York, it looks less so now that the political mood in the UK and continental Europe is moving to a more hostile stance on bank taxation. But it is hard to believe that the 1,336-page Dodd Bill on US financial reform – compare and contrast with the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act's 17 pages – will not give rise to the law of unintended consequences.

The more interesting question is whether the Obama Administration's support for Paul Volcker's plan to downsize large complex financial institutions will have an adverse impact on New York. In this, the US is going back to the 1930s regulatory approach of prohibition as opposed to taxation, whether by capital requirements or levies, in the attempt to address systemic risk.

It is too soon to know how this will play out. The lobbying power of the US banks is phenomenal and there are powerful corporate treasurers who argue that they need large complex banks to provide services to their own complex international organisations. But there must be a possibility that if Mr Volcker has his way some corporate banking business would leak to Europe if the full universal banking model survives there.

It seems highly unlikely that the French or Germans would abandon this model. In the UK, all three main political parties will no doubt compete as to who has the most bloodcurdling plan to hang, draw and quarter top bankers in the run-up to the election. Yet Alistair Darling, the chancellor, has shown no great enthusiasm for going the prohibition route.

If the Tories have sounded more aggressive, it remains an open question whether they would have the appetite to take on the banks given the continued employment-generating capacity of the financial sector and the lack of enthusiasm of many Tory members of parliament.

The whole rationale of prohibition could anyway become redundant if the Basel-based Financial Stability Board's working group on cross-border crisis management comes up with a sound resolution regime for large complex financial institutions. The FSB has sponsored work to develop recovery and resolution plans for the top 25 such institutions.

In a recent speech, Paul Tucker, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, who heads the working party, said that resolution “could take its place alongside structure and regulation as one of the key elements of a reform package to strengthen the global financial system”.

Among the more interesting proposals under consideration is one to allow the authorities to impose haircuts on uninsured creditors in a going concern.

This would amount to compulsory recapitalisation and would cast the “too big to fail” issue in a different light. Yet the difficulty of achieving international agreement on such complex territory suggests that this is very much a long shot.

My suspicion is that the US will sustain some hard knocks from the politicians on the regulatory front, while in the UK it will be tax that does more damage. As Philip Booth of the Institute of Economic Affairs points out, the UK has the world's longest tax code, with the possible exception of India. Its recent rise in income tax and measures against non-domiciled folk has alienated much of the foreign business community in the UK. There is no surer way of pleasing the electorate, meantime, than taxing bankers.

Yet where the balance will fall between the two financial centres on all this is anyone's guess.

I doubt whether Frankfurt and Paris, ranked 13 and 20 respectively in the Z/Yen survey, will make big inroads into London's business.

More plausible is that Asian centres, where Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo are bunched closely together, will take market share from both New York and London.

The multi-trillion dollar question is whether winning this race will be anything more than a Pyrrhic victory. If there is no effective regulatory solution to the problem of systemic risk, that is all it will be.

金融危机对纽约与伦敦争夺全球卓越地位的竞赛影响如何？咨询公司Z/Yen Group发表的最新全球金融中心报告显示，伦敦已经失去了相对于纽约的领先优势，这对全球金融孪生姐妹目前不相上下。

不过，这是一场马拉松比赛，不是短跑。从较长期来看，监管与税收的总体格局，尤其是未来如何处理太大或互连程度太高而不能倒闭的机构，将决定比赛结果。从这个角度看，局面还非常不清晰。

一个相当保险的押注是，新巴塞尔协议（不管多么繁重），将会为两者在资本与流动性上的公平竞争提供基础。单边行动会带来不可预测性，而美国目前正在奠定这一步调。尽管奥巴马(Obama)银行业征税提案最初看上去像搬起石头砸纽约的脚，但现在看上去似乎不那么像了，因为英国与欧洲大陆的政治氛围正在转变，在银行业征税问题上，它们正转向更为敌意的姿态。但人们很难相信，有关美国金融改革的1336页《多德法案》(Dodd Bill)将不会产生意想不到的后果。这份法案堪比1933年的《格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法》(Glass-Steagall Act)，但后者只有17页。

更有意思的问题是，奥巴马政府对保罗•沃尔克(Paul Volcker)为大型金融机构集团瘦身计划的支持，是否将会对纽约产生不利影响。该计划将会使美国重归上世纪30年代的禁令式（而非征税）监管路线，试图通过资本金要求或征费来应对系统性风险。

想知道这将如何发展，现在还为时过早。美国银行业拥有非凡的游说能力，而且，还有许多具有影响力的企业财务主管辩称，他们需要大型复杂银行为他们所在的复杂国际企业提供服务。但一定存在这样一个可能性：如果沃尔克如愿以偿，一些企业银行业务将会渗漏至欧洲，只要全能银行模式在那里存活了下来。

法国或德国放弃该模式的可能性似乎非常小。至于英国，在大选前，三个主要政党无疑都将争相拿出最令人毛骨悚然的惩罚顶级银行家的计划。但财政大臣阿利斯泰尔•达林(Alistair Darling)迄今对禁令式路线并未显示特别大的热情。

如果说保守党听上去更加咄咄逼人，那么，鉴于金融业持续创造就业的能力，而且许多保守党议员对严格监管缺乏热情，该党是否真有意愿与银行摊牌，仍是一个很大的问号。

不管怎样，如果巴塞尔金融稳定委员会(Financial Stability Board)跨境危机管理工作组拿出一个稳妥的大型复杂金融机构解散机制，那么，禁令式监管的整个概念可能会变得多余。金融稳定委员会已赞助相关工作，为25家这类顶级机构设计复苏与解散计划。

在最近的一次演讲中，上述工作组负责人、英国央行(BoE)副行长保罗•塔克(Paul Tucker)表示，解散“与结构、监管一样，都是旨在加强全球金融体系一揽子改革方案的关键元素之一”。

在正被考虑的比较有意思的提案中，有一个是，监管当局将有权强制要求继续营业金融机构的未保险债权人分担一部分损失。

这将意味着强制性的资本结构再调整，相当于从不同的角度来解决“太大不能倒”的问题。不过，在这类复杂领域达成国际协议的难度预示着，这种尝试不太可能会成功。

我猜测，美国在监管方面将会遭受一些来自政界的沉重打击，而在英国，税收的破坏性将更大。正如经济事务研究所(Institute of Economic Affairs)的菲利普•布斯(Philip Booth)所指出的，英国拥有世界上篇幅最长的税法（印度可能除外）。英国最近提高所得税，以及一系列针对非定居人士的措施，已经疏远了相当大一部分驻英外国商界人士。与向银行家征税相比，没有什么方法更有把握让选民满意了。

不过，这两个金融中心间的天平将偏向于哪一边，谁也说不准。

我怀疑，在Z/Yen调查中分别排名第13位和第20位的法兰克福与巴黎，可能会夺走伦敦的相当大一部分业务。

更有可能的是，亚洲的金融中心——香港、新加坡与东京的集合体——将夺走纽约与伦敦的市场份额。

一个至关重要的问题是，赢得这场比赛是否只是一场得不偿失的胜利。如果拿不出有效的监管方案来解决系统性风险问题，那么，最多也只能得到这样的“惨胜”。

译者/何黎