【英语生活】聪明的局内人和天真的局外人

Financial history has nothing to compare in sophistication and complexity with the collateralised debt obligation. Yet the fevered discussion of the Securities and Exchange Commission's fraud charges against Goldman Sachs serves as a reminder that bubbles tend to follow archetypal patterns. While the courts will decide whether Goldman knowingly sold a CDO pup to IKB and others, there is a wider sense in which the recent credit bubble followed an age-old pattern whereby clever insiders are pitted against naive outsiders.

Economic historian Charles Kindleberger argued that in great financial aberrations such as the South Sea or Mississippi Bubbles a permanent group of expert insiders buys (or promotes shares) at the bottom, drives the price up and sells at the top, after which the market plunges. A larger, changing group of outsiders comes in late, buys high and sells low, before retiring hurt.

This was the refutation of Milton Friedman's famous argument that destabilising speculation is impossible in the long run because it would involve buying high and selling low. According to Friedman, anyone who did that would lose money and be wiped out. Since speculators continue to exist, they must buy low and sell high and act as stabilising speculators. Kindleberger's point was that speculators were not a single, homogeneous group: some won, some lost.

Certainly, in the latest credit bubble the big investment banks look like classic insiders, selling pups in the form of complex structured products that few really understood.

For its part, Goldman Sachs neatly fits the description of a permanent insider in the same (non-legalistic) sense. In the last great bust, it sold a gigantic pup called the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation to the public in late 1928 at $104 and saw the stock price collapse to $1.75 in the ensuing Crash. This time it was prescient in recognising the residential property market was overheating, positioning itself to profit from the bust while some clients remained bullish. It may have made losses on the now infamous CDO called Abacus 2007-AC1. But overall, it emerged better from the property crash than its peers.

The outsiders this time were the small German banks such as IKB. This was a bank that had expertise in lending to small- and medium-sized businesses in Germany. But like many German banks, it was partly state-owned; and German politicians have been notoriously reluctant to permit consolidation in a banking market suffering from excess capacity. Profitability in German banking was thus very low and because state-owned banks were losing their state guarantees in 2005 they raised capital in preparation for credit rating downgrades. The cash-rich banks were sitting ducks when Wall Street's finest came along with their incomprehensible products adorned with misleading credit ratings. They thus became naive outsiders in an alien market.

ACA was more sophisticated, yet a similar dynamic was at work. The monoline insurer found itself both investing and acting as the portfolio selection agent for Abacus 2007-AC1. Monoline insurance had become a commodity product and there were too many participants in the market. Hence the decision to move into the complex business of insuring CDOs and playing a role in their construction. ACA's losses of about $900m proved lethal.

The same syndrome was at work in the credit rating agencies. Their core market, rating company debt, had run out of growth. So structured products such as CDOs looked a promising diversification. And so, in the short run, they proved to be. Yet all these participants confronted the same lesson that the US military learnt in Vietnam: mission creep is the most dangerous of games.

Walter Bagehot said in his classic 19th century work Lombard Street: “Common sense teaches that booksellers should not speculate in hops, or bankers in turpentine; that railways should not be promoted by maiden ladies, or canals by beneficed clergymen . . . ”

What he would have said of Goldman we cannot know. But regardless of the legal outcome, more damage to the brand seems inescapable.

就成熟度和复杂性而言，金融历史根本无法与债务抵押债券 (CDO)相提并论。而围绕美国证交会(SEC)起诉高盛(Goldman Sachs)欺诈一事的热烈讨论则提醒人们，泡沫倾向于遵循自己的原始模式。高盛是否出于欺诈目的、有意将CDO产品卖给德国产业投资银行(IKB)及其它客户，将由法院裁决，但人们有一种较为普遍的感觉，即近来的信贷泡沫遵循着一种古老的模式：聪明的“局内人”算计天真的“局外人”。

经济历史学家查尔斯·金德尔伯格(Charles Kindleberger)认为，在诸如“南海泡沫”(South Sea)或“密西西比泡沫”(Mississippi Bubbles)之类的巨大金融畸变中，有一群成员稳定的专业“局内人”会在底部买进（或增持股票），推动价格上涨，然后在顶部抛售，之后市场大跌。而一群人数更多、但成员不断变化的“局外人”则下手较晚，在高点买进、低点卖出，随后带伤离去。

这是对米尔顿·弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)著名观点的反驳。后者认为，长期而言，影响稳定的投机不可能存在，因为这涉及了高买低卖。弗里德曼认为，任何人这样做的人都将会赔钱，并被清除出局。由于投机者持续存在，他们肯定是低吸高抛，扮演着有利于稳定的投机者的角色。金德尔伯格的观点是，投机者不是单一、同类的群体：它们中有输家也有赢家。

当然，在最近的信贷泡沫中，大型投行看上去像是典型的局内人：用没有几个人能真正理解的复杂结构性产品来糊弄人。

就高盛而言，在同样的（不尊重法律）意义上，该公司非常符合“稳定的局内人”的描述。在上一次大萧条中，它炮制了一个巨大的骗局：在1928年底，以每股104美元的价格将高盛交易公司(Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation)上市，在随之而来的大崩盘中，该股股价跌至1.75美元。这一次，它极富远见地认识到住宅市场过热，在一些客户仍然看多时，就调整自己的仓位，通过做空从萧条中获利。在如今臭名昭著的Abacus 2007-AC1 CDO产品上，高盛或许蒙受了损失。但总体而言，它在房地产崩盘中受到的冲击比同行们小得多。

这一次的“局外人”是德国产业投资银行这样的小型德国银行。这是一家专业向德国中小企业放贷的银行。但与许多德国银行一样，它部分属于国有；而众所周知，德国政客非常不愿意批准遭受产能过剩之苦的银行业市场的整合。因此，德国银行业的赢利能力很低，同时因为国有银行在2005年将失去国家担保，它们进行融资以避免信用评级被下调。当华尔街顶级银行带着饰有误导性评级、晦涩难懂的产品来到时，这些资金充足的（德国）银行轻而易举地上了当，由此成为了一个陌生市场上天真的局外人。

ACA资产管理公司的经验更为丰富，但还是犯下了类似的错误。这家单一险种保险商发现，自己既是Abacus 2007-AC1产品的投资者，又是该产品的投资组合筛选代理人。单一险种保险已经成为一种商品，并有着太多的市场参与者。于是该公司决定转而从事复杂的CDO业务，并在参与其构建工作。事实证明，ACA大约9亿美元的亏损是致命的。

同样的症状也出现在了信用评级机构身上。它们的核心市场——公司债务评级——已经失去了增长空间。因此，CDO等结构性产品就成了看似前途远大的多元化方向。而事实证明，短期内情况确实如此。然而，所有参与者都面临着美军在越战中的同样教训：游戏中最危险的是使命的蜕变。

沃尔特?白芝浩(Walter Bagehot)在19世纪的经典作品《朗伯德街》(Lombard Street)中写道：“常识告诉我们，书商不要投机啤酒花，银行家不要投机松节油；铁路不能由未婚女子，运河不能由领薪牧师来推销……”

他会针对高盛一事说些什么，我们不得而知。但不管法律结果如何，这个品牌无可避免地将受到更大的损害。

译者/诸彦青