【英语财经】金融危机重返欧洲？ The toxic twins of European finance return

The rout in European financial markets last week was a wat-ershed event. What we witnessed was not necessarily the beginnings of a bear market in equities or an uncertain harbinger of a future recession. What we saw — at least here in Europe — is the return of the financial crisis.

Version 2.0 of the eurozone crisis may look less frightening than the original in some respects but it is worse in others. The bond yields are not quite as high as they were then. The eurozone now has a rescue umbrella in place. The banks have lower levels of leverage.

But the banking system has not been cleaned up, there are plenty of zombie lenders around and in contrast to 2010 we are in a deflationary environment. The European Central Bank has missed its inflation target for four years and is very likely to miss it for years to come.

The markets are sending us four specific messages. The first and most imp-ortant is the return of the toxic twins: the interaction between banks and their sovereigns. Last week’s crash in bank share prices coincided with an increase in bond yields in the eurozone’s periphery. The pattern is similar to what happened during 2010-12. The sovereign bond yields have not quite reached the same dizzy heights, though Portugal’s 10-year yields are almost 4 per cent.

The combination of high bond yields, expansionary fiscal policies, persistently high public and private sector debt and low growth rates is clearly un-sustainable. Italy’s position may be better than Portugal’s but it is still not sustainable. Italian 10-year yields rose to more than 1.7 per cent; German yields are a little over 0.2 per cent. The gap, or the spread, is the metric of stress in the system, which is rising again.

The financial markets are telling us that they are losing faith in Mario Draghi’s pledge of 2012 when he promised to do “whatever it takes” to defend the member states of the eurozone against a speculative attack. With this promise the ECB president ended the first phase of the eurozone crisis, but did so at a cost. The urgency to resolve the underlying structural problems suddenly disappeared.

The second message is that Europe’s banking union has failed. The banking union the EU ended up with was a foul compromise: joint bank supervision and a joint resolution regime, but no deposit insurance and no government backstop to bail out failing lenders.

It is no coincidence that bank share prices collapsed just as the European Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive entered into full force. The directive sets out a common bail-in mechanism for a failing bank. Italy applied this law last year in the bailout of four regional banks, causing losses to bondholders. Investors in other banks fear that they, too, may be bailed in. One of the reasons why investors in Deutsche Bank began to panic last week has been the large amount of contingent convertible bonds (cocos) issued by the bank. If the bank were to run into trouble these would convert into equities, and be immediately wiped out if a resolution procedure were to kick in.

The third message is the market ex-pectations of future inflation have suffered a permanent shift. The ECB is taking market-based estimates of future inflation seriously — perhaps too seriously. Its favourite metric is an inflation rate for a horizon of five to 10 years away from today. That measure last week fell to its all-time low of just over 1.4 per cent. It is telling us that the markets no longer believe that the ECB will hit its inflation target of less than 2 per cent even in the long run.

The fourth message is that the markets fear negative interest rates. This is because the vast majority of Europe’s 6,000 banks are old-fashioned savings and loans: they take in deposits and lend them out. The banks would normally adjust the rates they offer to their savers in line with the rates the ECB charges them, maintaining a profit margin between the two. But if the ECB imposes a negative rate on the banks, this no longer works. If the banks im-posed negative rates on savings accounts, small savers would take their money and run. The banks could, of course, reduce their reserves at the central bank and lend the money instead. Or they could invest in risky securities. But that prospect is not necessarily reassuring to bank shareholders either, especially if they do not see good lending and investment opportunities.

Looking back, the cardinal error committed by the European authorities was the failure in 2008 to clean up their banking system after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This was the original sin. Many other mistakes subsequently compounded the problem: pro-cyclical fiscal austerity, the ECB’s multiple policy failures and the failure to create a proper banking union. It is interesting that every single one of these decisions was ultimately the result of pressure brought by German policymakers.

上周欧洲金融市场动荡是一个分水岭事件。我们看到的未必是股市熊市的开始，或者未来衰退的一个不确定的先兆。我们看到的——起码在欧洲这里——是金融危机的回归。

欧元区危机2.0版在某些方面或许看起来没有1.0版恐怖，但在其他方面更加糟糕。目前，债券收益率没有第一次危机时高。欧元区如今已有了一部救护伞。银行业的杠杆水平也降低了。

但是银行体系并未清理干净，目前仍存在着大量的僵尸银行；与2010年不同的是，我们目前处于通缩环境之中。欧洲央行(ECB)已有四年未能实现通胀目标了，在未来几年里很可能仍不达标。

市场向我们发出四条具体信息。第一条、也是最重要的信息，是“有毒孪生兄弟”的回归：银行与主权债券之间的相互影响。上周，银行股价大跌的同时，欧元区外围国家的主权债券收益率在上升。这种情形跟2010年至2012年的情形相似。目前的主权债券收益率没有达到第一次危机时那种令人眩晕的高度，不过，葡萄牙10年期国债收益率已接近4%。

高债券收益率、扩张性财政政策、一直高企的公共和私人部门债务和低增长率，这一组合明显是不可持续的。意大利的状况或许比葡萄牙好一些，但仍是不可持续的。意大利10年期国债收益率上升至1.7%以上；德国国债收益率略高于0.2%。两者之间的差距（或叫利差）是整个系统的压力衡量指标。该指标正在再度上升。

金融市场告诉我们，它们对马里奥?德拉吉(Mario Draghi，见上图)在2012年作出的“不惜一切代价”保护欧元区成员国不受投机性攻击的承诺丧失了信心。凭借这一承诺，这位欧洲央行行长终结了欧元区危机的第一阶段，但为此付出了一定代价。解决深层次结构性问题的紧迫性突然消失了。

第二条信息，是欧洲银行业联盟失败了。欧盟的银行业联盟最终变成了一个丑陋的妥协产物：统一的银行监管和统一的处置机制，但没有存款保险制度或为即将倒闭的银行纾困的政府支援。

就在《欧洲银行复苏与处置指令》(Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive)全面生效之际，银行股大跌，这并非巧合。该指令规定了针对即将倒闭的银行的一般内部纾困机制。去年，意大利运用该指令，对四家地区性银行实施了纾困，给债券持有人造成了损失。其他银行的投资者担心，他们也可能成为内部纾困对象。上周，德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)投资者开始感到恐慌的原因之一是，该行发行了大量的应急可转债(contingent convertible bonds)。如果德银陷入困境，这些债券将转换为德银的股票，如果处置程序启动的话，将立即被全部减记。

第三个信息是市场对于未来通胀的预期遭受了永久性转变。欧洲央行正在认真对待市场对于未来通胀的预期——或许认真过头了。它最喜欢的指标是从今天起未来5-10年的通胀率水平。上周，该指标跌至略高于1.4%的历史最低点。这告诉我们，市场不再认为欧洲央行可以实现略低于2%的通胀目标，即使是从长远来看。

第四个信息是市场担心负利率。这是因为欧洲6000家银行中绝大部分经营的都是传统的储蓄和贷款业务：它们吸收存款，然后放贷。银行通常会根据欧洲央行向它们实行的利率来调整向储户提供的利率，保持两者之间的利润空间。但是，如果欧洲央行向银行施以负利率，这就行不通了。如果银行向储蓄账户实行负利率，小储户会取走存款然后逃之夭夭。当然，银行可以减少在央行的储备金，把钱用于放贷。或者，它们可以投资高风险的证券。但是该前景也不一定会让银行股东安心，特别是如果他们没看到好的放贷或投资机会的话。

回过头来看，欧洲当局犯下的主要错误是，在2008年雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)破产后，没能把其银行系统清理干净。这是原罪。随后还有很多其他错误让问题复杂化：加剧周期性波动的财政紧缩、欧洲央行的多重政策失败、以及未能建立真正的银行业联盟。有意思的是，每一个决定最后都是德国政策制定者施压的结果。

译者/何黎