【英语国际】始于美国的金融风暴

When enough banks have been nationalised or gone bust, when the last reputations have been properly shredded, and when prices of Fifth Avenue apartments and Mayfair town houses have fallen finally to earth, politicians are going to have to think hard about the lessons of the financial crash of 2008. Even now, someone somewhere is penning The End of Capitalism. Experience tells us snappy book titles should be treated with caution. The global financial system will never be the same again. But just as history survived the collapse of communism, so the market economy will weather the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch and HBOS.

Wise after the calamity, central bankers, market regulators and the rest are already saying what are needed are tighter rules, closer oversight and a premium on sobriety. The rest of us may ask why it has taken so long for these guardians of the system to stir from their complacency. Doubtless we will be told in turn that this is no time for recriminations. The people who presided over this mess must now be trusted to save the global financial system from their past mistakes.

Some of the conclusions are easily predicted. Investment bankers, to the extent there are any left, will see the odd million or five lopped from their salaries and bonuses. Capital ratio requirements for financial institutions will rise, and incentive structures will be re-calibrated to damp risk-taking.

The fiendishly complex products that seemed for a time to define a new financial capitalism will be seen for what they properly are: instruments of deception as much as of innovative genius.

Politicians, I suspect, will demand tough constraints on what more than one has called “the spivs and speculators” who have been short-selling bank shares. Someone somewhere will surely decide that insurance companies should not be allowed to treat pension savings as free chips in the financial casino.

How much good all of this will do is an open question. To the interested observer, it looks that the big mistakes of recent years have not been so much about the absence of regulation, but a failure to act. The central bankers and the regulators were simply asleep on the job.

It should be said that there were one or two honourable exceptions. Take the warnings of Edward Gramlich. A governor of the US Federal Reserve, Gramlich warned publicly in 2004 of the risks inherent in the explosion of subprime lending that fuelled the housing boom. Before his death last year, he said that he had been making the point privately at the Fed as long ago as 2000.

Alan Greenspan brushed the evidence aside, courting applause and celebrity as mortgage lenders advanced billions of dollars to people who would never be in a position to repay the loans. I am truly mystified as to why people still listen to the former Fed chairman.

For now, the only thing politicians can do is to ensure in so far as they can that just the bankers lose their shirts: that depositors and small businesses do not join the millions of homeowners already mired in mortgage debt as innocent victims.

It is horrifying to think that the huge liabilities of failing institutions have now been loaded on to the backs of taxpayers: a case, as far as speculators are concerned, of heads, we win; tails you lose. Given where we are, governments scarcely have much choice.

Even so, and for all the richly deserved humiliation suffered by those hollow titans Jimmy Cayne, Dick Fuld and Stan O'Neal, ordinary folk will suffer most. Unsurprisingly, they will blame governments. Political leaders took the credit for the economic boom; they cannot escape blame for the bust.

Yet once the storm abates – and FT colleagues better versed in these matters tell me that it will take some time – the task for politicians will be to ask some bigger questions. Putting aside the technicalities of collateralised debt obligations, capital ratios and the rest, what does the crisis tell us about the nature of the world in which we now live?

The messages are not straightforward; some appear contradictory. Overall, they speak to a growing tension between global integration and a shortage of credible international governance. Governments have been left with responsibility without power.

One big consequence of globalisation has been to weaken decisively the grip of individual states on the levers of economic management. Few political leaders outside the US were even vaguely aware of the degree to which their own banking systems were held hostage to the subprime loans made to American homeowners.

This loss of control has not been matched by any corresponding diminution of responsibility. Voters still hold their own politicians to account for the insecurities that flow from interdependence. Blaming someone else offers insufficient answer to the homeowners trapped in negative equity or to depositors or creditors in a failing bank.

The tensions, of course, do not apply solely to financial markets or indeed to economics. They are inherent in globalisation. Voters want the ease of movement across national borders that comes with cheap travel. But they also want governments to control immigration and cross-border crime. They want to buy cheap electronics from China – and to blame politicians when global supply chains threaten job security at home.

The credit crunch and the financial firestorm have also provided a neat metaphor for the big shift in economic power in the world. Financial crises used to start in the developing or emerging economies: in Latin America, Asia or Russia. All the west had to worry about was contagion.

This time the crisis was made in the US. It is the emerging powers of the east that fear contagion. So far, Asia's rising economies have been largely immune to the shocks, though the demise of the US insurance giant AIG, with its huge interest in China, is a warning that that could change.

The tensions are not susceptible to neat solutions. But all point in the same direction. Interdependence is no longer an abstract noun. Governments need to find ways to reclaim some of the sovereignty lost to globalisation. That means more global governance: credible international rules.

Capitalism will survive these financial shocks. The risk, though, is of a retreat to economic nationalism. The stresses of globalisation are visible everywhere. Ultimately, if the politicians want the liberal market system to work, they will have to make multilateralism work.

当太多的银行被收归国有或破产，当最后的声誉被完全撕碎，当纽约第五大道公寓和伦敦梅费尔豪宅的价格跌落到谷底，政客们将不得不认真思考2008金融危机的教训。即便是现在，某个地方的某个人还在写着《资本主义的终结》(The End of Capitalism)。经验告诉我们，吸引人的书名应该谨慎对待。全球金融体系永远不会恢复到从前了。但正如共产主义崩溃后历史仍在继续一样，市场经济也会平安渡过贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)、雷曼(Lehman)、美林(Merrill Lynch)和HBOS的破产危机。

灾难发生后，央行官员、市场监管者以及其他管理者变得聪明了，他们表示，现在需要的是更加严格的制度、更加紧密的监督和对保持清醒的奖励。其他人可能会问，为什么要花这么长时间才能让这些监管者从自满中清醒过来。无疑，我们将会被告知现在并不是反唇相讥的时候。主导了这场混乱的人现在还必须被委以重任，将全球金融体系从他们过往的错误中拯救出来。

有些结果不难预测。投资银行家（如果还有幸存的话）将会发现他们的工资和奖金会被去掉5个零。对金融机构资本充足率的要求会被提高，同时激励结构将会被重新调整，以控制冒险行动。

那些极度复杂的产品似乎一度定义了新金融资本主义，它们将会被恰当定位：既是创新天才的工具，但同时也是行骗的工具。

不止一个人把那些一直在卖空银行类股票的家伙称为“投机倒把分子”，我猜想，政客们将会要求对这些人严加约束。同时某地的某位管理人士也会毅然决定，不允许保险公司将养老储蓄当作金融赌场中的免费筹码。

这些措施将会带来多少成效仍有待回答。在一直跟踪形势的观察人士看来，近年来的主要错误与监管缺位的关系不是很大，而是执行不力。央行官员和监管者都在玩忽职守。

应该说，还是有一两个令人敬仰的例外人员。比如爱德华•格拉姆利克(Edward Gramlich)的警告。作为美联储(Fed)理事之一，格拉姆利克在2004年就公开警告了次贷激增的内在风险，这些贷款助长了房地产市场的繁荣。他在去年逝世前表示，早在2000年，他就在美联储内部提出了这一观点。

艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)全然不顾这些迹象，随着数百亿美元抵押贷款的发放，他赢得了喝彩和声誉，而那些借款人却可能永远都不会偿还贷款了。至于为何人们还是在倾听前任联储主席的看法，我真的很疑惑。

目前，政客唯一能做的就是尽可能地确保只有银行家们大受损失：储户和小企业不要加入已经陷入抵押贷款泥潭的数百万房主的行列，成为无辜的受害者。

想到接连倒闭的机构的巨额负债现在已经落到纳税人的肩上，不禁让人不寒而栗：目前的情况就像投机者在抛硬币，如果是正面朝上，我们就赢了；否则，我们就输了。鉴于目前的情况，政府几乎没有太多的选择。

即便如此，相对于吉米•凯恩(Jimmy Cayne)、迪克•富尔德(Dick Fuld)以及斯坦•奥尼尔(Stan O'Neal)所应受的羞辱，普通民众可能受害最深。不难预料，他们将会责怪政府。政治领导人抢走了经济繁荣带来的声誉，他们当然也逃脱不了因金融惨败而受到的责难。

不过，一旦暴风雨消退（在此领域颇有造诣的同事告诉我，这尚需时日）政客的任务将会是提出一些较大的问题。除去债务抵押债券(CDO)的专业技术、资本率等等不谈，关于我们现在所居住的这个世界的本质，这场危机告诉了我们什么？

这场危机传递出的信息并非一目了然，有些似乎还自相矛盾。总的来说，它们证明了全球一体化与缺乏可信的国际监管之间的矛盾日渐增大。政府现在被赋予了责任，却没有权力。

全球化的主要后果之一就是大大削弱了单个国家对于经济管理的控制。在美国之外，很少有政治领导人哪怕只是模糊意识到他们国家的银行系统受美国次贷挟制的程度。

这种控制权的丧失却没有伴随责任的相应减少。选民们仍然要求自己的政客对相互依赖所带来的不安全局面负责。对陷入负资产困境的房主或破产银行的存款人或债权人来说，怪罪另一个人也不不足以解决他们的问题。

当然，这种矛盾不单单存在于金融市场，或实际上存在于经济中，它们是全球化的固有产物。选民们希望政府放松跨境流动，这样旅游就会跟着便宜，但同时他们又希望政府控制移民和跨境犯罪。他们希望买到来自中国的廉价电子产品，但同时又会责怪政客让全球供应链威胁到国内的就业机会。

这场信贷危机和金融风暴也是全球经济实力重大转变的形象比喻。过去，金融危机一般先从发展中国家或者新兴经济体开始，比如拉美、亚洲或俄罗斯。所有西方国家不得不担心的是殃及自身。

这次的危机却始于美国，而东方的新兴经济体则在担忧它的蔓延。迄今为止，亚洲新兴经济体仍然没有受到这场震荡的太多影响，但在中国业务巨大的美国保险巨头AIG被接管，对可能发生的变化发出了预警。

这些矛盾难以找到很好的解决办法。但所有努力都是朝着相同的方向。相互依赖不再是一个抽象的名词。各国政府需要找到一些方法，收回在全球化中丢失的部分主权。这意味着更多的全球监管：值得信赖的国际规则。

资本主义将会从这些金融风暴中存活下来，不过可能会退回到经济民族主义的形态。全球化的压力随处可见。最后，如果政客们希望自由市场体系继续运行，那么他们必须让多边主义发挥作用。

译者/秦月