This is what I read this morning : “The US Federal Reserve announced that it will lend AIG up to $85bn in emergency funds in return for a government stake of 79.9 per cent and effective control of the company - an extraordinary step meant to stave off a collapse of the giant insurer that plays a crucial role in the global financial system. Under the plan, the existing management of the company will be replaced and new executives will be appointed. It also gives the US government veto power over major decisions at the company.”
以下是我上周三早晨看见的新闻内容：“美联储(Fed)宣布，将借给美国国际集团(AIG)多达850亿美元的应急资金，以换取由政府持有该公司79.9%的股权，并获得该公司的实际控制权。这项不同寻常的举措，旨在防止这家在全球金融体系中扮演关键角色的保险巨头倒闭。根据计划，AIG现有管理层将被撤换，将任命新的高层管理人员。另外，美国政府还将对该公司的重大决策拥有否决权。”
I almost decided to go back to bed, convinced I must be dreaming.The proximate cause of the demise of AIG as a private firm were its ‘monoline' activities, its exposure to massive amounts of credit risk derivatives like CDS, many of them linked to the US real estate sector. The largest insurance supermarket in the world, with a balance sheet in excess of $1 trillion nationalised because it was deemed too big and too globally interconnected to fail! The fear that drove this extraordinary decision is that AIG's failure would increase counterparty risk, actual and perceived, throughout the financial system of the US and the rest of the world, to such an extent that no financial institution would have been willing to extend credit to any other financial institution.Credit to households and non-financial enterprises would have been the next domino to fall, and voilà! , financial Armageddon.
看完后，我差点决定回床睡觉，好让自己相信这一定是在做梦。AIG作为一家私营公司，其失败的直接原因在于它的信用保险业务；AIG在信用违约互换(CDS)等信用风险衍生品方面有巨大敞口，其中许多产品与美国房产行业相关。这家资产负债表规模超过1万亿美元的全球最大保险超市被实施了国有化，因为决策者认为其规模太大，与全球金融体系的关系太紧密，以至于不能让它倒闭！他们担心，AIG的倒闭将会在美国乃至世界金融体系增加实际或可能的交易对手风险，以至于没有一家金融机构愿意向另一家金融机构提供信贷，这一担心促使他们做出了特别决定。面向千家万户和非金融企业的信贷将会是下一张倒下的多米诺骨牌，那将是金融末日。
I cannot judge the likelihood of the disaster scenario, but if there ever was a case for applying the precautionary principle in economic analysis, then this is it. It was also done in the right way, by insisting on controlling public ownership, i.e. nationalisation, of the company.The existing management is gone - again as it should. We will find out whether they left with golden parachutes or with just a carton box packed with their personal belongings.
我无法判断出现灾难情景的几率，但如果说有任何情况应该在经济分析中运用预防原则的话，那么这一次就是这种情况。具体做法也是恰当的，比如坚持控制公司的公共所有权，即国有化，以及撤换现有管理层。我们将会了解他们是带着金色降落伞离开的，还是只带了装满个人物品的瓦楞纸箱。
The precise implication of the deal for the old shareholders will also matter for the ultimate judgement on its fairness and on what it does to incentives for future risk taking. Since the existing shareholders were obviously not completely wiped out by the deal, they do well out of it - probably too well. The public take-over appears to imply that all creditors other than the ordinary and preferred shareholders will be made whole. From the perspective of incentives for future excessive risk taking, this is regrettable.
这笔交易对原股东的具体影响，对最终判断其是否公平及其对激励未来承担风险的影响也相当重要。因为原有股东明显没有失去一切，他们从这笔交易中获益匪浅，或许获益太多了。政府接管似乎暗示，除普通股和优先股的股东外，所有债权人将得到完全补偿。就其对未来承担过度风险（行为）的激励来看，这是令人遗憾的。
A charge on the creditors, modulated according to the seniority of the debt, would have been preferable.But perhaps my concern about incentives for future risk taking is moot, because it assumes that private, profit-seeking enterprises will again, in the future, pursue the kind of financial activities engaged in by AIG.
根据债务偿还优先程度让债权人承受一定代价，将会更加可取。不过，我对这笔交易会刺激未来风险承担的担忧可能没有实际意义，因为这种担忧的前提是，以盈利为宗旨的私营企业，未来将会再次开展AIG从事的那类金融活动。
If financial behemoths like AIG are too large and/or too interconnected to fail but not too smart to get themselves into situations where they need to be bailed out, then what is the case for letting private firms engage in such kinds of activities in the first place?
如果像AIG这样的金融巨擘一方面因为太大和/或涉及面太广而不能倒闭，另一方面却不具有应有的智慧，以至于陷入需要纾困的境地，那从根本上说还有什么理由要让私营公司从事这样的活动？
Is the reality of the modern, transactions-oriented model of financial capitalism indeed that large private firms make enormous private profits when the going is good and get bailed out and taken into temporary public ownership when the going gets bad, with the tax payer taking the risk and the losses?
大型私人公司在经营良好时，会赚取巨额利润；在经营变差时，就会得到救助，被公共部门暂时接管，让纳税人承担风险和损失——难道交易导向型的现代金融资本主义模式就是这样的吗？
If so, then why not keep these activities in permanent public ownership?There is a long-standing argument that there is no real case for private ownership of deposit-taking banking institutions, because these cannot exist safely without a deposit guarantee and/or lender of last resort facilities, that are ultimately underwritten by the taxpayer.
如果确实如此，为什么不把这些活动一直保持为公有？有一个存在已久的主张认为，接受存款的私有银行机构根本没有理由存在，因为若没有存款担保和/或由纳税人买单的最后贷款设施的话，这些机构就无法安全存在。
Even where private deposit insurance exists, this is only sufficient to handle bank runs on a subset of the banks in the system. Private banks collectively cannot self-insure against a generalised run on the banks. Once the state underwrites the deposits or makes alternative funding available as lender of last resort, deposit-based banking is a license to print money.
即便有私营存款保险存在，那也只够应对体系中一部分银行遭遇挤兑。作为一个整体，私人银行无法针对全面挤兑进行自我承保。一旦政府承保了存款或者作为最后贷款人提供额外融资渠道，存款银行业务无异于印钱许可证。
That suggests that either deposit-banking licenses should be periodically auctioned off competitively or that depostit-taking banks should be in public ownership to ensure that the tax payer gets the rents as well as the risks.The argument that financial intermediation cannot be entrusted to the private sector can now be extended to include the new, transactions-oriented, capital-markets-based forms of financial capitalism.
这表明，要么存款银行执照应该被定期拍卖，要么存款银行应该实行公有，以确保纳税人不仅承担风险，也能得到租金收益。有关金融中介不能委托于私营部门的主张，现在可扩展到基于资本市场的、交易导向型的金融资本主义新形式了。
The risk of a sudden vanishing of both market liquidity for systemically important classes of finanial assets and funding liquidity for systemically important firms may well be too serious to allow private enterprises to play. No doubt the socialisation of most financial intermediation would be costly as regards dynamism and innovation, but if the risk of instability is too great and the cost of instability too high, then that may be a cost worth paying.
具有系统层面重要性的金融资产市场流动性的突然消失，以及同样在系统层面很重要的公司资金流动性消失的风险，可能都太严重了，不宜让私营企业经营。毫无疑问，就活力与创新而言，社会化多数金融中介的代价将是巨大的，但如果不稳定性的风险太大，不稳定性的代价又太高，那么这种代价的付出或许是值得的。
These are issues that must be pondered not just in Washington but everywhere modern financial intermediation has taken root or is threatening to do so - in the financial heartland (Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Tokyo and Dubai) and in the emerging markets that until recently were having their ears bent on the desirability of precisely the kind of financial institutions and markets that have now turned into trillion dollar collapsing dominos.
这些问题不仅仅是华盛顿必须思考的问题，同时也是现代金融中介已经或正在扎根的地区必须思考的问题——如华尔街、伦敦金融城、法兰克福、苏黎世、东京、迪拜等金融中心和新兴市场。新兴国家直到不久以前还愿意聆听建立西方式金融机构和市场的可取性，而如今这些西方机构和市场已经变成了一一倒塌的价值万亿美元的多米诺骨牌。
From financialisation of the economy to the socialisation of finance. A small step for the lawyers, a huge step for mankind. Who said economics was boring?
从经济的金融化到金融的社会化。律师的一小步，人类的一大步。谁说经济学枯燥无味？
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