Capitalism at bay
困境中的资本主义
Oct 16th 2008
From The Economist print edition
来源：http://www.ecocn.org/wordpress/?p=419
What went wrong and, rather more importantly for the future, what did not
弄清什么出了错固然重要，然而对未来更重要的还在于弄清什么没有错
ONE hundred and sixty five years ago, a Scottish businessman set out his plans for a newspaper. James Wilson’s starting point was “a melancholy reflection”: “while wealth and capital have been rapidly increasing” and science and art “working the most surprising miracles”, all classes of people were marked “by characters of uncertainty and insecurity”. Wilson’s solution was freedom. He committed his venture to the struggle not just against the protectionist corn laws but against attempts to raise up “barriers to intercourse, jealousies, animosities and heartburnings between individuals and classes in this country, and again between this country and all others”. Ever since, The Economist has been on the side of economic liberty.
165年前，一位名叫詹姆斯•威尔逊的苏格兰商人开始筹划创办一份报纸。他的出发点是“居安思危”：“尽管 财富和资本迅速增长”，科学和艺术“创造出叹为观止的奇迹”，各阶级的人们却是“踌躇未定，惶恐不安”。威尔逊的解决之道即是自由。他不仅敢于反对带有贸 易保护性质的谷物法，同时也勇于与妄图加深本国内部个体与各阶级之间，以及本国与其他各国之间交流的隔阂，猜忌，仇恨，嫉妒的行为针锋相对。从那时起，《经济学人》就站在了经济自由阵营一边。
Now economic liberty is under attack and capitalism, the system which embodies it, is at bay. This week Britain, the birthplace of modern privatisation, nationalised much of its banking industry; meanwhile, amid talk of the end of the Thatcher-Reagan era, the American government has promised to put $250 billion into its banks. Other governments are re-regulating their financial systems. Asians point out that the West appears to be moving towards their more dirigiste model: “The teachers have some problems,” a Chinese leader recently said. Interventionists are in full cry: “Self-regulation is finished,” claims France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. “Laissez-faire is finished.” Not all criticisms are that unsubtle (the more pointed ones focus on increasing the state’s role only in finance), but all the signs are pointing in the same direction: a larger role for the state, and a smaller and more constrained private sector.
现如今，经济自由受到抨击，体现经济自由的资本主义制度也正陷入困境。本周，作为现代私有化诞生地的英国将大部分的本土银行收归国有；与此同时，正当人们对撒切尔-里根时代的结束议论纷纷之时，美国政府承诺将2500亿美元投入到本国的银行业中。其他政府也正对他们的金融系统进行重新监管。亚洲人指出，西方国家似乎正在朝更加集中计划的模式发展。一位中国领 导人最近说道，“老师们有麻烦了。”经济干涉主义者对此大声疾呼：法国总统萨科奇宣称，“市场自行调节已经终结。”“经济自由放任时代已经结束”。 并不是所有的批评都是那么直接的（更加尖锐的批评将关注点放在了国家仅仅在财政金融中所发挥的更加突出的作用），但是所有的迹象都指向了同一个方向：即政 府应发挥更大的作用，私营经济的作用应更小并受到限制。
This newspaper hopes profoundly that this will not happen. Over the past century and a half capitalism has proved its worth for billions of people. The parts of the world where it has flourished have prospered; the parts where it has shrivelled have suffered. Capitalism has always engendered crises, and always will. The world should use the latest one, devastating though it is, to learn how to manage it better.
本刊衷心希望这一切都不会发生。在过去的一个半世纪里，资本主义制度向数十亿人证明了它的价值所在。资本主 义盛行之处皆繁荣昌盛；衰落之处无不落后萧条。资本主义制度总是导致各种危机，这也将一直持续下去。尽管最近的这次危机极具破坏性，但是世界应该利用这次 危机学会如何更好地驾驭和控制它。
Extreme measures in the defence of liberty
捍卫自由所采取的极端措施
In the short term defending capitalism means, paradoxically, state intervention. There is a justifiable sense of outrage among voters and business people (and indeed economic liberals) that $2.5 trillion of taxpayers’ money now has to be spent on a highly rewarded industry. But the global bail-out is pragmatic, not ideological. When François Mitterrand nationalised France’s banks in 1981 he did so because he thought the state would run them better. This time governments are buying banks (or shares in them) because they believe, rightly, that public capital is needed to keep credit flowing.
而矛盾之处就在于：就短期来看，捍卫资本主义制度就意味着采取国家干预。如今，纳税人的2.5万亿美元不得 不投入到高回报行业中，选民和商人（实际上是经济自由主义者）对此产生的愤怒之情无可厚非。但是，这次全球性的金融救援行动是为解决实际问题，而非出于意 识形态。密特朗在1981年将法国银行实行国有化是因为他认为国家能够更好地运营银行。这次各国政府收购银行（或购买银行的股票）是因为他们确信，要保持 信贷流通需要投入公共资本。
Intervening to prevent banking crises from hurting the real economy has a strong pedigree. Wilson’s son-in-law, Walter Bagehot, recommended that the Bank of England lend generously (but at a penalty rate) to illiquid banks (but not to insolvent ones). In modern times governments of every political stripe have had to step in. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher oversaw the rescues of Continental Illinois and Johnson Matthey. In the 1990s the Finns and Swedes nationalised banks—and privatised them again later. This rescue is on a different scale. Yet the justification is the same: the costs of not intervening look larger. If confidence and credit continue to dry up, a near-certain recession will become a depression, a calamity for everybody.
对经济事务进行干预，防止银行业危机伤及实体经济的历史由来已久。威尔逊的女婿–沃尔特•白芝浩曾建议英 格兰银行（以获取高额利息为条件）为资金周转不灵的银行（不是没有偿付能力的银行）慷慨解囊。在现代，各种不同政治派别的政府也不得不介入其中。罗纳德• 里根和玛格丽特•撒切尔当政时期，政府就曾对大陆伊利诺伊斯银行和庄信万丰的救援计划进行过监管。上个世界90年代，芬兰和瑞典将本国银行收归国有—随后 又将其私有化。这次金融救援行动的规模与过去并不相同。但是，采取这一行动的理由却和以前是一致的–即放任自由的损失看起来会更大。如果市场信心和信贷 持续下降，近乎必然的经济衰退将演变成经济萧条，对每一个人而言都将成为一场灾难。
Even if it staves off disaster, the bail-out will cause huge problems. It creates moral hazard: such a visible safety net encourages risky behaviour. It may also politicise lending.
即使这次的金融救援行动能够暂时避免灾难的发生，然而该行动也会带来巨大的问题。它引发了道德风险：即这样一个表露无遗的安全网助长了冒险行为的发生。它同样也会让借贷政治化。
Governments will need to minimise these risks. They should avoid rewarding the bosses and shareholders of the rescued banks. They must not steer loans to politically important sectors. And they should run the banks on a commercial basis with the explicit aim of getting out of the banking business as quickly as possible (and at a profit). From the taxpayer’s point of view, it might make sense to limit dividend payments to other shareholders until the government’s preference shares have been paid off. But governments need to avoid populist gestures. Banning bonuses, for instance, would drive good people out of companies that badly need them.
政府需要做的就是将这些风险最小化。他们应避免让这些受到救助的银行老板和股东们从中获利。他们不可以将贷 款引入到政治上的重要领域。与此同时，他们应该以尽快从银行业抽身（并获利）为明确的目标，在商业的基础上运作银行。在纳税人看来，只有在清偿了政府的优 先股之后，将股利发放给其他股东也许才是合理的。但是政府需要避免代表民众利益的政治姿态。例如，禁止发放红利会使得急需优秀人才的公司出现人才流失。
The politicians all claim they understand this. Of course, they have no intention of revisiting Mitterrand’s mistakes, of trying to run the banks themselves, or of taking stakes elsewhere. Yet already voices (including Lady Thatcher’s Tory heirs) are pushing to limit executive pay. It will be a brave president who goes to Detroit and explains why the 45,000 well-paid folk at Morgan Stanley should get $10 billion of taxpayers’ money, but the 266,000 people at General Motors should not. Brave too would be any politician who proposed deregulation as a solution to a public-sector problem.
政治家们都宣称自己深谙此道。当然，他们无意重蹈密特朗的覆辙，也无意于在经营银行上亲力亲为或在别处控制 股权。然而，有呼声（其中包括撒切尔夫人所在的保守党派的继任者们）已经要求对公司主管人员的薪酬实行限制。如果一位总统跑到底特律解释为什么摩根史坦利 的45,000名薪酬丰厚的员工能得到纳税人的100亿美元，而通用汽车公司的266,000 名人员却不能，那么这个总统将是一位勇敢的总统。同样，一个提议将放松经济监管作为解决公共部门经济问题办法的政治家也会是一位勇敢的政治家。
Smoot-Hawley in the rear mirror
前车之鉴—史慕特郝雷关税法案[注1]
Given this, it is inevitable that the line between governments and markets will in the short term move towards the former. The public sector and its debt will take up a bigger portion of the economy in many countries. But in the longer term a lot depends on how blame for this catastrophe is allocated. This is where an important intellectual battle could and should be won. Capitalism’s defenders need to deal with two sorts of criticism. One has much more substance than the other.
在这种情况下，政府与市场的关系在短期内将不可避免地倾向于前者。公共部门和它所担负的债务在许多国家的经 济中将占据更大的份额。但是长远来看，这在很大程度上取决于各方对这场灾难应承担什么样的责任。这就是一场重要的理性之争可以并且应该获胜的理由。资本主 义制度的捍卫者需要应付两种批评。一种批评所持的观点比另一种批评更具有实质性的内容。
The weaker, populist argument is that Anglo-Saxon capitalism has failed. Critics claim that the “Washington consensus” of deregulation and privatisation, preached condescendingly by America and Britain to benighted governments around the world, has actually brought the world economy to the brink of disaster. If this notion continues to gain ground, politicians from Beijing to Berlin will feel justified in resisting moves to free up the movement of goods and services within and between their economies. Arguments for market solutions in, for instance, health and education will be made with less conviction, and dismissed with a reference to Wall Street’s fate.
较难让人信服和普遍的观点认为，盎格鲁-萨克逊式资本主义已经寿终正寝。持有这种观点的批评家们宣称美英屈 高就下向世界范围内无知愚昧的政府宣扬的“华盛顿共识”–即放松经济监管以及私有化–已经将世界经济推向了灾难的边缘。如果这样的观点为更多的人所接 受，那么从北京到柏林的政治家们对限制货物和服务在国内以及国与国之间自由流动的举动会觉得天经地义。发挥市场机制解决诸如健康和教育领域问题的观点将难 以让人信服，而在有关华尔街的命运上，该观点也将被人不屑一顾。
In fact, far from failing, the overall lowering of “barriers to intercourse” over the past 25 years has delivered wealth and freedom on a dramatic scale. Hundreds of millions of people have been dragged out of absolute poverty. Even allowing for the credit crunch, this decade may well see the fastest growth in global income per person in history. The free movement of non-financial goods and services should not be dragged into the argument—as they were, to disastrous effect, in the 1930s.
事实上，资本主义制度非但没有衰落，过去25年来全面减少彼此之间互通有无的障碍创造出了巨大的财富和自 由。数以亿计的人们摆脱了绝对贫困。即使现在发生了信贷危机，这十年来全球人均收入增长速度也达到了史无前例的水平。非金融货物和服务的自由流通不应成为 这场论证的理由，这与上世纪30年代强行将非金融货物和服务的自由流通作为反驳的论据，从而带来了灾难性的后果如出一辙。
A second group of critics focuses on deregulation in finance, rather than the economy as a whole. This case has much more merit. Finance needs regulation. It has always been prone to panics, crashes and bubbles (in Victorian times this newspaper was moaning about railway stocks, not house prices). Because the rest of the economy cannot work without it, governments have always been heavily involved.
而另一群体的批评家则将焦点放在了放松对金融，而非整个经济体的监管上。这一批评有着更多的价值。金融需要 监管。金融行业总是伴随着恐慌，崩溃和泡沫（在维多利亚时代，本刊一直对铁路股价，而不是房价抱怨不已）。由于金融业对经济体其余部门的运作不可或缺，政 府一直以来也是大力介入其中。
Without doubt, modern finance has been found seriously wanting. Some banks seemed to assume that markets would be constantly liquid. Risky behaviour garnered huge rewards; caution was punished. Even the best bankers took crazy risks. For instance, by the end of last year Goldman Sachs, by no means the most daring, had $1 trillion of assets teetering atop $43 billion of equity. Lack of regulation encouraged this gambling (see article). Financial innovation in derivatives soared ahead of the rule-setters. Somehow the world ended up with $62 trillion-worth of credit-default swaps (CDSs), none of them traded on exchanges. Not even the most liberal libertarian could imagine that was sensible.
毫无疑问，现代金融业存在着严重的不足。一些银行似乎认为，市场处于持续的流通状态中。冒险的行为会获得巨 大的收益；谨慎则会遭到惩罚。即使是最好的银行机构也会做出疯狂的冒险举动。高盛银行绝不是最胆大鲁莽的，然而这一银行却以1万亿美元的资产担负起价值达 430亿美元的普通股权。缺乏监管怂恿了这一投机行为。金融衍生品的无限制蔓延超过了金融监管机构所管辖的范围。不知何故，全世界最终担负起了价值达62 万亿美元的信用违约互换（CDSs） [注2]，然而这其中却没有发生一笔交易。即使是最开明的自由主义者也无法想象这是合理的。
Yet the failures of modern finance cannot be blamed on deregulation alone. After all, the American mortgage market is one of the most regulated parts of finance anywhere: dominated by two government sponsored agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and guided by congressional schemes to increase home-ownership. The macro economic condition that set up the crisis stemmed in part from policy choices: the Federal Reserve ignored the housing bubble and kept short-term interest rates too low for too long. The emerging world’s determination to accumulate reserves, especially China’s decision to hold down its exchange rate, sent a wash of capital into America. There was something of a perfect storm in which policy mistakes combined with Wall Street’s excesses.
然而现代金融业的失败不能单单归咎于缺乏监管。毕竟，美国的抵押信贷市场是任何金融行业中最受监控的部分之 一：这一市场受到了政府赞助的两个机构—房利美和房地美的掌控，同时还得到了国会通过的一系列旨在增加房屋所有权方案的引导。引发这一危机的宏观经济 条件部分来源于政策选择：美联储忽视了房地产泡沫，将短期利率保持在低水平上的时间太长。新兴国家积累外汇储备的决心，尤其是中国压低汇率，使得大批资本 涌入美国。这差不多是一次由政策上的失误与华尔街的贪婪携手演绎的完美风暴。
Heavy regulation would not inoculate the world against future crises. Two of the worst in recent times, in Japan and South Korea, occurred in highly rule-bound systems. What’s needed is not more government but better government. In some areas, that means more rules. Capital requirements need to be revamped so that banks accumulate more reserves during the good times. More often it simply means different rules: central banks need to take asset prices more into account in their decisions. But there are plenty of examples where regulation could be counter-productive: a permanent ban on short-selling, for instance, would make markets more volatile.
加强监管并不能让世界防患于未然。最近在日本和韩国发生的两次严重的金融危机就出现在高度监管的体系中。真正需要的不是更多的管理，而是更好的管理。 在一些领域中，这意味着要采取更多的规则。资本需求需要进行完善，从而使得银行在经济良好发展的时期能够积累更多的储备。更多的时候，这仅仅意味着采取不 同的规则：中央银行在进行决策时需要更多地考虑资产价格。但是大量的事实证明，监管也会产生适得其反的效果：例如，永久性地禁止空头卖跌会使得市场更加弱 不禁风。
Indeed, history suggests that a prejudice against more rules is a good idea. Too often they have unintended consequences, helping to create the next disaster. And capitalism, eventually, corrects itself. After a crisis investors (and for that matter regulators) seldom make exactly the same mistake twice. There are, for instance, already plans for clearing houses for CDSs.
事实上，历史表明：对采取更多监管的做法抱有偏见是一件好事。采取更多的监管往往会产生意想不到的后果，促使下一场灾难的发生。资本主义制度最终将实现自我完善。危机过后，投资者（以及监管机构）很少再犯相同的错误。例如，已经有计划为信用违约互换提供结算场所。
Turning back the incoming tide
扭转即将到来的浪潮
Sadly another lesson of history is that in politics economic reason does not always prevail—especially when the best-case scenario for most countries is a short recession. “Barriers to intercourse, jealousies, animosities and heartburnings” loom.
令人难过的是，历史的另一个经验教训即是：在政治中，经济理性并不总是盛行于世—尤其对大部分国家而言，最佳状况就是短暂的经济衰退。“对交流的阻碍，猜忌，仇恨，嫉妒”正日渐显现出来。
But it need not be so. If the bail-outs are well handled, taxpayers could end up profiting from their reluctant investment in the banks. If regulators learn from this crisis, they could manage finance better in the future. If the worst is avoided, the healthy popular hostility to a strong state that normally pervades democracies should reassert itself. Capitalism is at bay, but those who believe in it must fight for it. For all its flaws, it is the best economic system man has invented yet.
然而事情不必如此。如果本次金融救援行动能够得以良好的实施，纳税人将最终从他们不情愿的银行投资中获利。 如果监管机构能从本次金融危机中吸取教训，他们也能在未来更好地管理金融行业。如果能够避免这次危机，对盛行于民主国家的强政府理念怀有有益的普遍敌意应 予以重申。资本主义制度处于困境之中，然而信奉这一制度的人们将为之奋斗下去。尽管存在着各种缺陷，但它却是人类迄今所创造出的最佳的经济制度。
[注1]：史慕特郝雷关税法案（Smoot-Hawley）：这是美国在1930年为挽救股市崩盘，遏制经济大萧条所通过的一个贸易法案。该法案将近两万多种进口产品的关税提高到了历史最高水平，由此引发了世界各国范围内关税贸易战，从而加深了30年代的经济危机。
[注2]：信用违约互换(credit default swap，CDS)：这是国外债券市场中最常见的信用衍生产品。在信用违约互换交易中，违约互换购买者将定期向违约互换出售者支付一定费用(称为信用违约 互换点差)，而一旦出现信用类事件(主要指债券主体无法偿付)，违约互换购买者将有权利将债券以面值递送给违约互换出售者，从而有效规避信用风险。由于信 用违约互换产品定义简单、容易实现标准化，交易简洁，自90年代以来，该金融产品在国外发达金融市场得到了迅速发展。 |
