【英语生活】打造“残渣”银行

I've been weighing up a very elegant treatment for the banking crisis that has been buzzing around the economics blogs - so elegant, in fact, that it took me several days to convince myself that it wasn't just a logical sleight of hand, the kind of subtle fallacy that mathematicians use to "demonstrate" that 1+1=1.

One way to understand the banking crisis is that the banks cannot raise new money and lend it to people who could use it. This is not because there is no money, or no deserving investment projects. It is because the banks, whose assets are worth less than they hoped, are now weighed down by their existing promises to repay depositors and other creditors. They cannot raise fresh money because nobody wants to lend money to a near-bankrupt bank.

So far, governments have been trying to raise or at least stabilise the value of bank assets, but an alternative is to reduce the burden of their liabilities.

The elegant approach I've been examining has been developed by long-time collaborators Jeremy Bulow and Paul Klemperer. They suggest splitting crippled banks such as Citigroup or RBS into a good "bridge" bank and a bad "rump" bank. The bridge bank gets all the assets, even the so-called "toxic" assets. These are not truly toxic, simply worth less than everyone hoped. The bridge bank also inherits sacred liabilities such as deposits. The rump bank gets no assets, only the debts the old bank used to owe to creditors.

With a leap and a bound, the bridge bank is well-capitalised and capable of raising new funds to lend out to good projects. Depositors feel secure and the economy acquires a functioning bank. The rump bank, of course, is a basket case, so one might think that the shareholders and creditors in the rump bank have suffered expropriation. They have not: Bulow and Klemperer propose giving all the equity in the bridge bank to the rump bank - this is full and fair compensation. The rump bank may well go bankrupt and the creditors will have to see what they can salvage - which will include shares in the bridge bank. But the bankruptcy process will not damage the bridge bank, nor prevent it from raising new money and making fresh loans.

The plan may not work, for a number of reasons. The most serious objection is that everything is now systemic, and that allowing creditors to lose a percentage of their claims - despite the fact that they lent money to the banks without any government guarantee - may cause further bankruptcies. Even so, the Bulow-Klemperer plan allows the government to pour further money into the banks in a more transparent way: to the bridge bank if the concern is to ensure well-capitalised banks; to the rump bank's creditors if the concern is to prevent a chain reaction of bankruptcies. Transparency, of course, may be the last thing governments want, given the possible sums involved.

If you are still blinking at the idea that one can produce a healthy bridge bank like a rabbit from a troubled-bank top hat, without injecting new funds and without resorting to expropriation, you should be. But it is true. The confusing thing about the financial crisis is that the physical economy is in the same shape as ever, but it can be paralysed if investment money cannot flow from those who have it to those who can use it. A tangle of - unpayable? - claims against the banks is, like some modern-day Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, stemming that flow. Bulow and Klemperer try to set the tangle to one side to be resolved while the banks continue their business. Put like that, the idea does not seem like such a conjuring trick.

我最近在琢磨一种处理银行业危机的别致做法，这一做法在一些经济类博客上流传。事实上，它如此别致，我花了几天时间才相信，与数学家们用以论证1+1=1的微妙谬论不同，这个做法并非一种逻辑花招。

对银行业危机的一种理解是，银行无法筹集到新的资金并贷给需要使用资金的人。原因不是没有钱，或者没有值得投资的项目，而是银行的资产已经不如它们希望的那么值钱，偿付储户及其他债权人的原有承诺已使银行不堪重负。它们无法筹集到新的资金，是因为没有人愿意把钱借给一家濒临破产的银行。

迄今为止，政府一直在努力提高或至少稳定银行资产的价值。但还有一种选择是减少银行的偿债压力。

我最近在研究的这一别致做法是由杰里米•布洛(Jeremy Bulow)和保罗•克伦佩雷尔(Paul Klemperer)——他们已在一起合作多年——提出的。他们建议，把诸如花旗集团(Citigroup)或苏格兰皇家银行(RBS)之类的受困银行分拆为好的“桥”银行(bridge bank)和坏的“残渣”银行(rump bank)。桥银行得到所有资产，甚至包括所谓的“有毒”资产——它们不是真的有毒，只是不如大家希望的那么值钱。桥银行还继承神圣的负债，比如存款。残渣银行得不到任何资产，只分到其前身对债权人欠下的债务。

这样一来，桥银行变得资本充裕，有能力筹集新的资金，向优质项目提供贷款。存款人吃下了定心丸，经济中也多了一家正常运营的银行。残渣银行当然毫无盼头，因此人们可能会认为残渣银行的股东和债权人被剥夺了资产。并非如此：布洛和克伦佩雷尔提议，把桥银行的所有股权给予残渣银行——这个补偿办法彻底而且公平。残渣银行很可能会破产，届时债权人还能拿到的东西将包括桥银行的股份。但破产程序并不会损及桥银行，也不会妨碍其筹集新资金和发放新贷款。

由于诸多原因，这个计划可能无法奏效。最严肃的反对意见是，由于任何事情在目前都会产生系统性影响，让债权人丧失一定比例的索偿权——尽管他们借给银行的钱不受政府担保——可能导致更多破产案。即便如此，布洛-克伦佩雷尔计划能让政府用更透明的方式向银行注资：如果目的是确保银行资本充足，则向桥银行注资；如果重在防止破产连锁反应，则向残渣银行的债权人注资。当然，考虑到可能涉及的资金总额，透明或许是各地政府最不想要的。

从受困银行的礼帽里，像变兔子一样变出健康的桥银行，无需注入新资金，也不涉及剥夺资产——如果你仍觉得这个主意难以置信，那是正常的。但它是千真万确的。金融危机让人费解的一点是：实体经济仍一如既往，但如果投资资金无法从拥有它的一方流向有能力使用它的一方，将导致实体经济瘫痪。对银行的各种索偿权——银行无力支付？——纠缠成一团乱麻，像现代版的詹狄士诉詹狄士案，堵住了资金的流动。布洛和克伦佩雷尔试图把这团乱麻放到一边单独解决，同时让银行维持日常运营。这样看来，这个主意似乎不像是个把戏。

译者/章晴