【英语生活】保尔森接管“两房”应受赞扬

In July, explaining his contingency plan for emergency support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, told the Senate banking committee: “If you have a bazooka in your pocket and people know it, you probably won't have to use it.”

That is doubtless true, but once in a while you are obliged to prove you are not bluffing. So it proved with Fannie and Freddie.

July's announcement that the government was ready to lend without limit to keep the agencies going appeared to work at first. Certainly, the promise was credible. The Treasury knew, and the markets knew the Treasury knew, that the agencies could not be allowed to cease functioning.

Fannie and Freddie – hybrids that are privately owned but “government-sponsored” and that own or guarantee more than $5,000bn (€3,500bn, £2,825bn) of mortgage-backed securities – had made themselves indispensable to the US housing market. Keeping them running was vital to the prospects of a housing recovery; without them there was no floor in sight for house prices, and little likelihood of a broader economic recovery.

The Treasury's promise to back the agencies supported their share prices for a time, but then confidence ebbed again. The agencies' cost of borrowing moved to a growing premium over the Treasury rate. Mr Paulson's promise did not resolve the uncertainty owners and creditors faced about the soundness of their own investment. He had to move to resolve that uncertainty.

He deserves credit for doing so. It is not an easy thing for a Republican administration to nationalise two such colossal undertakings and take all of their assets and liabilities on to the public sector's balance sheet.

Under the new plan the Treasury itself will directly support the housing market by buying mortgage-backed securities. That too requires an ideological flexibility not usually associated with this administration.

Two months ago Mr Paulson stressed the importance of supporting Fannie and Freddie so that they could continue – as they must, he said – as privately owned entities. So much for that.

In the end, in spite of a cost to taxpayers in the tens of billions – and before this is over maybe hundreds of billions – yesterday's move was uncontroversial. Both presidential candidates back it, recognising the need to keep mortgage finance flowing. Differences are likely to arise over the terms of the nationalisation, however.

Shareholders in the entities should get nothing: the agencies have failed through their own incompetence. Both boards should be dismissed, as the Treasury's plan is reported to require. The longer-term goal – for the next administration, at the earliest – should be to get the government as far as possible out of the housing market.

That means breaking Fannie and Freddie into pieces small enough to fail, and privatising them. If the function they discharged – providing liquidity to the mortgage market – cannot be profitably undertaken without an implicit public subsidy, then it should not be undertaken at all.

今年7月，在解释紧急救助房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)的应急计划时，美国财长汉克•保尔森(Hank Paulson)对美国参议院银行业委员会(Senate Banking Committee)表示：“如果你口袋里揣着火箭筒，而且别人也都清楚这一点，那么你可能并不需要使用它。”保尔森所言无疑是真的，但有时候你不得不证明自己不是在唬人。房利美和房地美的情况就是如此。

美国财政部7月份表示，政府准备无限制提供贷款以维持两家机构的运转。声明最初似乎起到了效果。当然，这个承诺是可信的。美国财政部知道，市场也知道美国财政部知道，不能允许这两家机构停止运转。

房利美和房地美是两家私人所有但受“政府支持”的混合体，逾5万亿美元抵押贷款支持证券(Mortgage-Backed Securities)由其拥有或担保。它们在美国住房市场中已是不可或缺的。维持它们的运转对于住房市场的复苏前景至关重要；没有它们，房价触底将遥遥无期，广泛经济复苏也几乎没有实现的可能。



美国财政部支持这两家机构的承诺一度支撑了其股价，但随后市场信心再度消退。两家机构借贷成本相对于美国国债收益率的溢价不断上升。对于两家机构的所有者和债权人，保尔森的承诺并未解决他们对其投资合理性的困惑。他必须采取行动消除这种困惑。



保尔森在这方面的所作所为值得赞扬。对于共和党政府来说，将两个如此庞大的企业收归国有，并将其全部资产与负债计入公共部门的资产负债表，并不是件容易的事。

根据新方案，美国财政部本身将通过买入抵押贷款支持证券直接支持住房市场。这也需要一种本届政府通常不具备的思维灵活性。

两个月前，保尔森强调了援助房利美和房地美、使它们能够作为私有实体继续运营的重要性——因为他们必须这样，保尔森说道。此番论调已经成为过去。

最终，尽管纳税人负担达到数以百亿美元计（在一切结束前或许会达数千亿美元），但财政部昨日的举措并未引起争议。两党总统候选人都对此表示支持，承认需要保持抵押贷款融资的流动。不过，在国有化的条款上，他们可能会存在分歧。

两家机构的股东应当一无所获：这两家机构由于自身的无能而失败。两家机构的董事会均应解散——据报道，这正是美国财政部的要求。较长远的目标（最早可由下届政府实现）应是让政府尽可能远离住房市场。



这意味着要将房利美和房地美的规模分拆到足够小，足以承受破产的影响，并将它们私有化。如果没有隐性公共补贴，这些公司就不能在盈利的情况下履行其职能（向抵押贷款市场提供流动性），那么它们就根本不应该承担此项职能。

译者/汪洋