【英语社会】奥巴马改革提议不彻底

The Obama administration's proposals for US financial regulation are pretty good, as far as they go. The problem is they do not go far enough.

Great care and intelligence went into the plan announced last week. It makes no stupid suggestions; recall Sarbanes-Oxley, a recent instance of unguided regulatory backlash, and you see this is no small achievement. But the plan's comprehensiveness is a bit of an illusion. It ignores many issues, and has more loose ends and suggestions for further review than actual innovations.

Also, as in other areas, the White House is unwilling to confront the political barriers to fuller reform. You can call this pragmatism, or you can call it timidity. A crisis of this order demands big new ideas, and the leadership to push them through. In finance, if not now, when?

The administration asks Congress, which will have to write new laws for the plan to work, to fill some of the biggest holes in the existing structure. Systemically important financial institutions, whether or not they are banks in the old-fashioned sense, should be more tightly regulated by the Federal Reserve, says Mr Obama.

In addition, a new intervention regime should cover all such firms, modelled on the scheme run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for ordinary banks, says the plan. The idea is to wind up a failing bank early and in an orderly way, rather than facing the choice of bailing it out or letting it collapse and maybe drag others down with it.

The administration is right: these are big and necessary changes. But the details are vague. How exactly the tighter regulation of these “tier one financial holding companies” will work – what their capital and liquidity requirements will be, for instance – is for further study. Firms in this category will pay a regulatory surcharge, as they should. And the plan seems to favour counter-cyclical capital requirements too, which would brake lending growth in credit booms. Again this is right; again there are no specific proposals.

The plan calls for tighter regulation of securities markets. It proposes, for instance, that issuers of credit-risk securities should retain a share of the risk. It wants many over-the-counter derivatives to be traded on exchanges, which is safer, and proposes to bring “all OTC derivatives and asset-backed securities into a coherent and co-ordinated regulatory framework”. Quite right.

But what about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the vast “government sponsored enterprises” that were instrumental in stoking the subprime boom? The plan bravely calls for a “wide-ranging initiative to develop recommendations”.

What about the credit-rating agencies, and the measurement of risk for regulatory purposes more generally? There is no point in telling financial institutions to set aside more capital if they are free to pump up their risks at the same time. The plan is thin. It wants better regulation of the rating agencies. Who doesn't? But what would better regulation of the agencies look like? That needs further study.

“The financial crisis highlighted the problems associated with compensation structures that do not take into consideration risk and firms' goals over the longer term,” says the plan. Indeed it did. The report says little on what to do about it, and next to nothing about wider bank corporate governance.

Fair-value accounting? Further review.

These are all complicated issues, and wide consultation is doubtless required to design the rules. So in a way it is unfair to complain about loose ends. It would be easier to feel that way if the administration had got things right at the organisational level. Unfortunately it has not. Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the plan is that it fails to address the bewildering complexity of the regulatory apparatus.

Unlikely as it may seem, the plan suggests a net increase in regulatory agencies. In the US, this requires real ingenuity. Recognising the issue of “jurisdictional disputes among regulators” – a problem that is going to get worse under these plans – it calls for a new Financial Services Oversight Council, chaired by the Treasury. This would advise the Fed on which firms should be regarded as systemically significant, and “facilitate information sharing and co-ordination”. Regulation by committee, atop a system of overlapping agencies unsure of their responsibilities, with financial firms still free to shop around for a regulator they like, does not inspire.

Crucially, it also militates against effective international co-ordination. Aside from poor oversight of the shadow banking system and the system-wide failure to account properly for risk, the biggest weakness in the existing regulatory scheme has been lack of cross-border co-operation by national regulators. The more complicated the domestic regulatory structure, the harder it will be for US regulators to work with their counterparts abroad.

Why no effort to streamline the structure? The answer seems to be that Congress would object. A simpler organisation chart would strip its oversight committees of responsibility, and their members of influence. The White House apparently regards this as too much to ask. On health reform, the administration has given control of the entire project to Congress. On financial regulation, it is still trying to direct the policy – but from the outset within limits that respect the legislature's preferences, however ill advised. That is a pity.

就目前的内容范围而言，奥巴马(Obama)政府有关美国金融监管的提议相当好。问题在于它们还不够深入。

最近宣布的金融监管改革计划，体现出在制定过程中非常小心，且富于智慧。它没有提出任何愚蠢的建议；想一想近年萨班斯-奥克斯利法(Sarbanes-Oxley)这一无导向的监管反弹的例子，你就会明白这是一个不小的进步。但该方案的全面性是一种幻觉。它忽略了许多问题，与真正的创新相比，有着更多的欠缺和有关进一步审议的提议。

而且，与其它领域一样，白宫不愿面对更全面改革的政治障碍。你可以称之为务实，也可以称之为胆怯。这种程度的危机，需要新的大创意，以及贯彻这些创意的领导力。在金融领域，如果现在不改革，那还要等到什么时候呢？

美国政府促请国会填补现有架构中一些最大的漏洞。国会将不得不为该计划付诸实施而制定新的法律。奥巴马表示，具有系统重要性的金融机构——无论是否传统意义上的银行——都应该受到美联储(Fed)的更严格监管。


此外，改革方案还提议效仿联邦存款保险公司(Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)对普通银行运行的方案，建立一个涵盖所有这些机构的新的干预机制。其思路是及早和有序地接管一家快要破产的银行，而非面临这样的选择：对其纾困还是任其倒闭，或许拖累其它银行一起倒闭。

奥巴马政府是正确的，这些都是重大而必要的改变。但细节方面还很模糊。对于这些“一级金融控股公司”将如何实施更严格的监管——比如它们的资本和流动性要求如何，还需要进一步研究。这类公司将支付监管费用，它们应当这么做。该计划似乎还偏爱反周期资本要求，这将抑制信贷繁荣时期的放贷增长。这也是正确的，但仍然缺乏具体建议。

改革方案呼吁对证券市场实施更严格的监管。比如，计划提议，信贷风险证券的发行商，应当保留一部分风险，由自己承担。计划还建议，许多场外衍生品在交易所进行交易，这样将更为安全，并提议将“所有场外衍生品和资产支持证券纳入统一协调的监管框架”，这非常正确。

但房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)这种规模庞大的“政府支持企业”怎么办？它们帮助带来了次级房贷的繁荣。监管改革方案大胆呼吁“广泛倡议，以开发各项建议”。

信用评级机构，以及出于监管目的的风险衡量这个更一般的课题会怎么样呢？如果一方面让金融机构保留更多的资本，另一方面允许它们随意加大自己的风险，这种做法将毫无意义。该计划在这方面缺乏细节，它提议改进对评级机构的监管，谁不希望呢？但对评级机构的更好监管应该是什么样子？这需要进一步的研究。

改革方案称，“金融危机突显出一些问题，涉及薪酬结构不考虑风险和公司更长期目标。”的确如此。方案对如何解决该问题言之甚少，也很少谈及更广泛的银行的企业治理问题。

采用公允价值会计记账法？进一步研究吧。

这些全部是复杂的问题，无疑需要广泛咨询来设计相关规则。因此在某种程度上抱怨存在欠缺是不公平的。如果奥巴马政府在组织层面上正确行事，就更容易这么理解。令人遗憾的是，它并未做到这一点。或许该计划最令人失望的地方，是其未能应对监管体制令人困惑的复杂性。

尽管看起来似乎不太可能，但该计划建议增加监管机构的数量。在美国，这需要真正的别出心裁。意识到“监管机构之间管辖权争执”的问题——在这些计划下将变得更为糟糕，它呼吁成立一个由财政部领导的金融服务监督委员会(Financial Services Oversight Council)。该委员会将就哪些公司应当被视为具有系统重要性向美联储提供建议，并“促进信息共享和合作”。在一个机构重叠、职责不清的体系之上成立委员会进行监管，而金融公司仍可以自由选择自己喜欢的监管机构，不能激发人们的信心。

至关重要的是，该计划还不利于国际间的有效合作。除了对影子银行体系监督不力，以及未能正确计算风险的系统范围失败外，现有监管制度的最大不足，就是缺乏各国监管机构的跨境合作。国内监管制度越复杂，美国监管机构就越难与外国同行合作。

为何不付出努力来理顺监管架构？答案似乎是国会将会反对。一个更简单的组织架构，将剥离监督委员会的职责及其成员的影响力。白宫显然认为向国会提出这个要求有点过分。在医疗改革方面，奥巴马政府将整个项目的控制权交给了国会。在金融监管方面，政府仍试图指导政策，但从一开始就局限于立法机构的偏好范围内，无论这有多么失策。这令人遗憾。

译者/君悦