What’s wrong with the banks 银行都怎么了？

Only ten days ago, you might have thought that the banks had been fixed after the nightmare of the financial crisis in 2007-09. Now it is clear that they still have the power to cause a heart-stopping scare. A ferocious run at Silicon Valley Bank on March 9th saw $42bn in deposits flee in a day. SVB was just one of three American lenders to collapse in the space of a week. Regulators worked frantically over the weekend to devise a rescue. Even so, customers are asking once again if their money is safe.

仅仅十天前，你可能会认为银行在经历了2007-09年金融危机的噩梦后已经得到了修复。现在很明显，他们仍然有能力引起一场惊心动魄的恐慌。3月9日，硅谷银行（Silicon Valley Bank，以下简称SVB）发生了一场凶猛的挤兑，一天之内就有420亿美元的存款外逃。SVB只是一周内倒闭的三家美国银行之一。监管机构在上周末紧张地工作，以制定一项救助计划。即便如此，顾客们还是一再发问：他们存在银行的钱还安全吗？

Investors have taken fright. Fully $229bn has been wiped off the market value of America’s banks so far this month, a fall of 17%. Treasury yields have tumbled and markets now reckon the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates in the summer. Share prices of banks in Europe and Japan have plunged, too. Credit Suisse, which faces other woes, saw its stock fall by 24% on March 15th and on March 16th it sought liquidity support from the Swiss central bank. Fourteen years since the financial crisis, questions are once again swirling about how fragile banks are, and whether regulators have been caught out.

投资者受到了惊吓。本月到目前为止，美国银行的市值已经蒸发2290亿美元，降幅17%。美国国债收益率大幅下跌，目前市场预计美联储将在夏季开始降息。欧洲和日本的银行股价也出现了暴跌。面临其它困境的瑞士信贷在3月15日股价下跌24%；至3月16日，它开始寻求让瑞士央行提供流动资金。金融危机爆发14年后，人们再次质疑银行有多脆弱，以及监管机构是否存在过失。

《经济学人》3月15日文章配图：“恐慌心理横扫股市，瑞士信贷股价跳水”（“Credit Suisse’s share price plunges, as fear sweeps the market”）

The high-speed collapse of SVB has cast light on an underappreciated risk within the system. When interest rates were low and asset prices high the Californian bank loaded up on long-term bonds. Then the Fed raised rates at its sharpest pace in four decades, bond prices plunged and the bank was left with huge losses. America’s capital rules do not require most banks to account for the falling price of bonds they plan to hold until they mature. Only very large banks must mark to market all of their bonds that are available to trade. But, as SVB discovered, if a bank wobbles and must sell bonds, unrecognised losses become real.

SVB的高速崩溃让人们看到了银行系统内存在未被重视风险的真相。当利率低而资产价格高的时候，加州银行大量购买长期债券。随后，美联储以40年来最快的速度提高利率，债券价格暴跌，该行蒙受巨大损失。美国的资本规则并不要求大多数银行在到期前对它们计划持有的债券价格下降做出解释。只有非常大的银行才必须将所有可交易的债券按市值计价。但是，正如SVB所发现的，如果一家银行摇摇欲坠，必须出售债券，那么被忽略的损失就变成了现实。

《经济学人》3月10日文章配图：“SVB股价暴跌60%”（SVB’s share price plunged by 60%）

Across America’s banking system, these unrecognised losses are vast: $620bn at the end of 2022, equivalent to about a third of the combined capital cushions of America’s banks. Fortunately, other banks are much further away from the brink than SVB was. But rising interest rates have left the system vulnerable.

在美国的银行体系中，这些“被忽略的损失”是巨大的：在2022年底为6200亿美元，相当于美国银行缓冲资本总额的三分之一。幸运的是，与SVB相比，其它银行距离危机边缘要远得多。但不断上升的利率已使金融体系不堪一击。

The financial crisis of 2007-09 was the result of reckless lending and a housing bust. Post-crisis regulations therefore sought to limit credit risk and ensure that banks hold assets that will reliably have buyers. They encouraged banks to buy government bonds: nobody, after all, is more creditworthy than Uncle Sam and nothing is easier to sell in a crisis than Treasuries.

2007-09年的金融危机是不计后果放贷和房地产泡沫破裂的结果。因此，后危机时代的监管试图限制信贷风险，确保银行持有的资产能够稳妥地找到买家。他们鼓励银行购买政府债券：毕竟，没有人比山姆大叔更有信誉，在危机中没有什么比美国国债更容易出售。

Many years of low inflation and interest rates meant that few considered how the banks would suffer if the world changed and longer-term bonds fell in value. This vulnerability only worsened during the pandemic, as deposits flooded into banks and the Fed’s stimulus pumped cash into the system. Many banks used the deposits to buy long-term bonds and government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities.

多年的低通胀和低利率意味着，很少有人去考虑：如果世界发生变化，长期债券价值下跌，银行会经受什么。这种脆弱性在新冠流行期间进一步恶化，因为存款大量涌入银行，美联储的刺激计划也向金融系统注入现金。许多银行用这些存款购买长期债券和政府担保的抵押贷款支持证券。

You might think that unrealised losses don’t matter. One problem is that the bank has bought the bond with someone else’s money, usually a deposit. Holding a bond to maturity requires matching it with deposits and as rates rise, competition for deposits increases. At the largest banks, like JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America, customers are sticky so rising rates tend to boost their earnings, thanks to floating-rate loans. By contrast, the roughly 4,700 small and mid-sized banks with total assets of $10.5trn have to pay depositors more to stop them taking out their money. That squeezes their margins—which helps explain why some banks’ stock prices have plunged.

你可能会认为，未变现亏损并不重要。一个问题是，银行已经用别人的钱（通常是存款）购买了债券。持有债券至到期需要将其与存款相匹配，随着利率上升，对存款的竞争也会加剧。在最大的银行，如摩根大通或美国银行，客户是忠诚的，所以利率上升往往会提高他们的收入，这要感谢浮动利率贷款。相比之下，总资产为10.5万亿美元的约4700家中小银行不得不向储户支付更多，以阻止他们取出自己的钱。这挤压了他们的保证金，这有助于解释为什么一些银行的股票价格暴跌。

The other problem affects banks of all sizes. In a crisis, once-loyal depositors could flee, forcing the bank to cover deposit outflows by selling assets. If so, the bank’s losses would crystallise. Its capital cushion might look comforting today, but most of its stuffing would suddenly become an accounting fiction.

另一个问题影响着各种规模的银行。在危机中，曾经忠诚的存款人可能会逃离，迫使银行通过出售资产来弥补存款流出。如果是这样，银行的损失就会具体化。它的资本缓冲可能今天看起来很令人欣慰，但是它的大部分填充物突然就成了一个核算虚构。

That alarming prospect explains why the Fed acted so dramatically last weekend. Since March 12th it has stood ready to make loans secured against banks’ bonds. Whereas it used to impose a haircut on the value of the collateral, it will now offer loans up to the bonds’ face value. With some long-term bonds, this can be more than 50% above market value. Given such largesse, it is all but impossible for the unrealised losses on a bank’s bonds to cause a collapse. And that means that the bank’s depositors have no reason to start a run.

这一令人担忧的前景解释了美联储为何在上周末采取如此戏剧性的行动。自3月12日以来，它已经做好准备，以银行债券为抵押发放贷款。尽管它过去曾对抵押品的价值进行过“剃头”，但是现在它所提供的贷款将最高达债券面值。对于一些长期债券，这可以超过50%以上的市场价值。考虑到如此慷慨，银行债券上的未变现亏损几乎不可能导致崩溃。这意味着银行储户没有理由开始挤兑。

The Fed is right to lend against good collateral to stop runs. But such easy terms carry a cost. By creating the expectation that the Fed will assume interest-rate risks in a crisis, they encourage banks to behave recklessly. The emergency programme is supposed to last only for a year but, even after it has expired, banks competing for deposits will search for high returns by taking excessive risks. Some depositors, knowing that the Fed has stepped in once, will not have much reason to discriminate between good risks and bad.

美联储这样做是正确的：以优质抵押品作为抵押发放贷款以阻止挤兑。但如此宽松的条件是有代价的。通过制造美联储将在危机中承担利率风险的预期，他们鼓励银行鲁莽行事。这个应急计划应该只持续一年。但是，即使在存款到期后，竞争存款的银行也会通过承担过度风险来寻求高回报。一些存款人知道美联储已经介入过一次，他们没有太多理由去鉴别好的风险和坏的风险。

Regulators must therefore use the year ahead to make the system safer. One step is to remove many of the odd exemptions that apply to mid-sized banks, some of which were the result of post-crisis rules being rolled back amid much lobbying in 2018 and 2019. The rescue of depositors in SVB demonstrates that policymakers think such banks pose systemic risks. If so, they should face the same accounting and liquidity rules as the megabanks—as they do in Europe—and be required to submit to the Fed plans for their orderly resolution if they fail. In effect, this would force them to increase their safety buffers.

因此，监管机构必须利用未来一年的时间，使金融体系更加安全。其中一个环节是取消许多适用于中型银行的反常豁免，其中一些是在2018年和2019年的大量游说中，后危机时代规则被取消的结果。对SVB储户的救助表明，决策者认为这类银行会带来系统性风险。如果是这样，它们就应该接受与大银行相同的核算与流动性规则——就像它们在欧洲所做的那样——如果失败了，就应该要求它们向美联储提交计划有序地解决问题。实际上，这将迫使它们增加安全缓冲。

Buffering, please wait

正在缓冲，请稍候……

Regulators everywhere must also build a regime that recognises the risks from rising interest rates. A bank with unrealised losses will be at greater risk of failure during a crisis than one without such losses. Yet this disparity is not reflected in capital requirements. One idea is to stress-test what might happen to a bank’s safety cushion were its bond portfolios marked to market, and if rates rose further. Policymakers could then consider whether on this measure the system has enough capital.

各地的监管机构还必须建立一个机制，认识到利率上升带来的风险。在危机期间，有未变现亏损的银行比没有此类亏损的银行面临更大的倒闭风险。然而，这种差异并没有反映在资本需求上。一个想法是做应激试验，把银行的债券投资组合按市场价计价，看一看如果利率进一步上升，银行的安全缓冲可能会发生什么变化。然后，政策制定者可以在这一措施基础上，考虑金融体系是否有足够的资本。

Bankers will hate the idea of yet more capital buffers and rulemaking. But the gains from safety are vast. Depositors and taxpayers from Silicon Valley to Switzerland are facing a mighty scare. They should not have to live with the fear and fragility they thought had been consigned to history years ago.

银行家们会讨厌更多的资本缓冲和规则制定。但是安全带来的收益是巨大的。从硅谷到瑞士，存款人和纳税人都面临着巨大的恐慌。他们本不应该生活在恐惧和脆弱之中，他们认为这些恐惧和脆弱本应该早在几年前就已消失在历史的滚滚河流中。

王不留注

柳下婴老师是我认识的英语大佬之一，擅长外文翻译，爱看《经济学人》。

根据不少考研朋友的建议，现在将其翻译作品，上传到百度网盘，在“柳下婴精翻系列”中，以PDF方式免费分享。欢迎下载。谢谢。

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