【英语生活】为何拯救银行？

Governments of the world are becoming major shareholders in their financial institutions. The British government owns two mortgage lenders – Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock – is likely soon to hold a majority of the capital of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and to be much the largest shareholder in the combined HBOS/Lloyds TSB. The US government has a dominant holding in AIG, one of the world's largest insurers, and will soon hold a similar position in Citigroup, making it the biggest financial institution of all. Fortis and ABN Amro are owned by Benelux governments. And so on.Early socialists must be chuckling in their graves. But this government control of the commanding heights does not represent the triumph of socialism over capitalism, but the necessity of pragmatism in the face of failures of capitalism. Governments do not want to own these stakes, and are not quite sure what to do with them.

Nationalised financial institutions have often been badly run businesses which served neither their owners nor their customers well. But recent experience has shown that privately owned financial institutions have often been badly run businesses which served neither their owners nor their customers well. One might argue that the private businesses served their customers better than their owners; while the state-owned ones served their owners better than their customers. Such are the inherent contradictions of capitalism, as Marx would have put it.

The British government has perhaps the clearest strategy. It has set up an organisation called UK Financial Investments. The intention is that UKFI should act as a relatively passive shareholder in these businesses with a view to a quick realisation. UKFI is modelled on the Shareholder Executive established five years ago to hold government stakes in other companies. The reports of the Shareholder Executive read rather like the updates a private equity house might prepare for investors.

But this answer is not adequate. The problems are evident in these reports from the Shareholder Executive. The government owns businesses such as Royal Mail and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for a reason. The rationale of public ownership is that there is a strong public interest, not just in the financial returns from these activities, but in what these businesses do and how they operate. The government does not, cannot and should not have the same kind of relationship with the companies it owns as a private equity owner.

That does not mean that the Shareholder Executive is a bad idea. Officials in government departments are often ignorant and na?ve when faced with issues that are the day-to-day concern of private equity professionals and investment bankers; their expertise needed reinforcement. But while the government has an interest as investor, that cannot be its only interest: if it were the only interest, then government should not be an investor at all.

So with banks. The government will not recapitalise Woolworths because it matters little to the wider economy whether or not Woolworths stays in business. The government does recapitalise banks because there is a vital public interest in the continued operation of the payment system and the availability of finance to small- and medium-size businesses. So the primary purpose of the investment is not to ensure that the taxpayer gets its money back – although that issue should certainly not be neglected – but to ensure that these ordinary banking functions operate well.

But no one who talks to small business owners today can believe that that objective is being met. If it was much too easy to get loans in the salad days, it is much too difficult to get them in the locust years. The consequences of the loan restrictions are plunging the non-financial economy into depression. If there are concerns over the availability of mortgage finance – and there should be – then it is absurd to run down the very efficient mortgage administration activities of the two mortgage banks the British government owns. We taxpayers have rescued these financial institutions for a specific purpose, and we should use our stakes in them to insist that this purpose is fulfilled.

各国政府正成为本国金融机构的主要股东。英国政府拥有两家抵押贷款机构——Bradford & Bingley和北岩(Northern Rock)、持有苏格兰皇家银行(RBS)多数股权，并可能成为哈利法克斯苏格兰银行(HBOS)与劳埃德TSB(Lloyds TSB)合并后集团的最大股东。美国政府持有全球最大保险公司之一美国国际集团(AIG)多数股权，并将很快获得花旗集团(Citigroup)类似规模的股权，这将令美国政府成为最大金融机构。富通银行(Fortis)和荷兰银行(ABN Amro)现在由比利时、荷兰、卢森堡政府所有，等等。



早期的社会主义者肯定在坟墓里窃笑。但政府绝对控股并不代表社会主义优于资本主义，而是意味着面对资本主义的失灵，实用主义是必要的。政府并不想持有这些股权，也不十分确定该如何处置这些股权。



被国有化的金融机构往往经营不善，不能很好地服务于所有者和客户。但最近的经验表明，私人所有的金融机构也往往经营不善，不能很好地服务于所有者和客户。有人可能辩称，私营企业对客户的服务好于对所有者的服务；国有企业对所有者的服务好于对客户的服务。马克思会说，这就是资本主义的内在矛盾。





英国政府可能拥有最清晰的战略。它成立了一个名为英国金融投资有限公司(UK Financial Investments)的机构。其用意在于：该机构应作为这些公司相对被动的股东，以便于将持股迅速变现。该机构以5年前成立的国有股东事务管理局(Shareholder Executive)为模板，持有政府在其它公司的股权。国有股东事务管理局的报告读上去有点像私人股本公司为客户编写的更新材料。







但这个答案还不够。国有股东事务管理局的这些报告存在明显的问题。政府拥有英国皇家邮政(Royal Mail)和核能除役管理署(Nuclear Decommissioning Authority)等公司是有原因的。实施国有化的理由是，这里涉及巨大的公共利益，不仅表现在从这些活动中得到的财务回报，还表现在企业经营什么和如何经营。政府与所控股企业的关系没有、不可能也不应该像私人股本所有者那样。



这并不意味着，成立国有股东事务管理局是一个糟糕的想法。在私人股本专业人士和投资银行家日常考虑的问题上，政府部门的官员通常表现得无知且天真；他们需要加强专业技能。但尽管政府有作为投资者的利益，但这不能成为其唯一的利益：如果这是唯一利益的话，政府就根本不应成为投资者。





银行也是如此。政府不会对Woolworths进行资本重组，因为该公司是否持续经营对广泛经济领域无关紧要。政府向银行注资是因为，支付体系的继续运作和中小企业获得融资关系到重要的公共利益。因此，政府入股的主要目的不是确保纳税人能够收回投资——尽管这个问题肯定不应忽视——而是确保这些普通的银行职能能够运转良好。



但如今与小企业所有者交谈过的人士都不可能认为，这个目的正得到实现。如果在光景好的时候，企业太容易得到贷款，那么在困难时期，它们就会太难得到贷款。贷款限制的后果正令经济中的非金融行业陷入衰退。如果人们对于获得抵押融资感到担忧——这种担忧应该存在——那么停止英国政府所有的这两家抵押贷款银行的非常高效率的抵押管理活动就是荒谬的。出于一个特定目的，我们纳税人已拯救了这些金融机构，我们应利用我们在这些机构的股权，坚决要求这一目的要得到实现。



译者/梁艳裳