历数全球金融危机（上）
作者：英国《金融时报》前任总编辑理查德•兰伯特(Richard Lambert)
2008年8月7日 星期四
每一次经济恐慌都有其与众不同的特点，但都有一个相似之处，即它们都紧接着一段表面上的繁荣期之后发生，从而暴露出这种繁荣的空洞。这种顺序屡试不爽，每当我们发现可以不必通过艰苦缓慢的实干，就能轻松大发其财之时，就可以十拿九稳地断言，恐慌时期即将来临。
可能过去就有人讲过这样的话。事实上，在1859年，它已被写进1857-58年商业危机的历史。金融动荡感觉上各不相同，但大多数几乎如出一辙。
让我们从一个显然极为相似的案例开始。北岩银行(Northern Rock)是英国自1866年欧沃伦格尼银行(Overend Gurney)关门以来第一家倒闭的大型银行。两家都是久负盛名的机构，有着审慎且令人敬佩的财务历史：北岩银行的前身是东北部一家共同所有的建房互助会，欧沃伦格尼银行则在东安格利亚贵格会拥有深厚根基。
渴望增长的新一代高管接掌了两家银行的领导权，他们急切想要迅速扩大他们的贷款规模：北岩在房价泡沫的顶峰陷在房屋抵押贷款里，而欧沃尼栽在一些显然有问题的企业上，包括造船、谷物贸易、铁路融资行业及许多其他行业的企业。这些企业都犯了致命错误，即依赖短期借款为他们快速扩张和风险越来越大的贷款账目提供资金。与北岩一样，欧沃尼为其有缺陷的业务模式付出了代价。一个重大的不同之处在于，英国央行让欧沃尼倒闭了，导致其他一些企业在接着引发的恐慌中倒闭。
最近，两位美国经济学家——马里兰大学的卡门•莱因哈特(Carmen Reinhart)和哈佛大学的肯•罗格夫(Ken Rogoff)发表了一份对当前金融危机的分析报告，在文中他们找出了二战以来发生在工业国家的前18次银行业危机，把当前的金融危机放到了这一背景下加以研究。他们发现了把单个事件转化成金融繁荣和萧条的整体图景的共同主题，他们称之为“诸多标准金融危机指标上惊人的定性和定量相似点”。他们重点对美国进行了研究，但如果你观察相关数字，他们分析中的大部分内容也适用于英国。
在每次重大金融动荡之前，住房价格都会快速上涨，股票价格也是如此。由于直到危机发生的前夜，资本流入加速，经常账盈余迅速扩大。公共债务上升是战后危机中一个几乎普遍的前兆。当问题隐约浮现时，总体经济增长开始逐渐放缓。此外，以往的金融冲击发生前，通常有一段放松金融管制的时期。
作为一位见识颇多的记者，我见证了1973年至1974年的次级银行危机，我们最强大的金融机构险些被拖垮。现在，我还仍然保留着由四大清算银行之一发布的否认它们身处困境的新闻稿。那次事件有几个不同的触发因素：其中之一是1971年底开始实施的《竞争与信贷管理条例》(Competition and Credit Control)，它放开了贷款的上限，降低了对银行的流动性要求，并终结了利率同盟。之后的两年里，对英国居民的信用垫款总额增加了2.5倍。
放松管制也在今天的事件中扮演着角色。引用前美联储主席保罗•沃克尔(Paul Volcker)的话，过去25年间“我们从一个以商业银行为中心的、高度监管的金融体系，转变为一个经过了高度设计、复杂得多的体系。今天，众多金融中介发生在有效的官方监管和监督之外的市场，全都装在不知有多少万亿规模的衍生品工具里。”
另一个共同特征是，资产价格泡沫通常接在一段时期的价格稳定后发生，最近英国《金融时报》一篇由查尔斯•古德哈特(Charles Goodhart)和阿维纳什•佩尔绍德(Avinash Persaud)撰写的文章指出了这一点。他们引用了1929年的美国、20世纪90年代的日本、1997-98年的亚洲，以及2007-08年次级住房抵押贷款危机作为案例。
低通胀导致低利率和真实资产的积累，继而导致投资者为了获得更高的投资回报而去冒更大风险。20世纪70年代就有一个经典案例，当时石油美元涌入国际资本市场并推动利率走低。银行流动性充足，正四处寻找新的出口。他们在中欧和拉美的发展中经济体找到了正在找寻的东西。但当1982年8月墨西哥政府暂停偿还外债时，这种情形便戛然而止。
过去数年中发生了很多同样的事件。甚至罗格夫和莱因哈特大胆地暗示，这一次大量资金事实上已被再循环至一个发展中经济体，但这回这个经济体存在于美国境内。逾一万亿美元被导入由最穷、信用最低的借款人构成的美国次级房贷市场。
此处的共同特征就是对风险的误判，对风险的定价错得离谱。1929年，问题出在投资资金被过度利用；1997-98年的亚洲金融危机则是与错配的货币敞口有关；互联网热潮时期，当时的想法就是互联网将导致永不休止的经济增长。在最近这次信贷泡沫中，想法就是把债务分开拆碎，然后分发到世界各地，垃圾债券能就这样奇迹般地转变为3A级投资对象。
这一次确实有什么不同之处吗？
然而，最近的这次事件与历史上其他相似片段共同的另一个特征是，其性质是真正的国际性的。几个世纪来一次又一次地的金融危机让世人明白一个道理，即乐观、贪婪、狂热和绝望是不分国界的。早在互联网之前，不断变化的市场情绪就以令人惊讶的速度席卷全世界。
1929年10月24日和29日的股价下跌，以及1987年10月19日再度上演的这一幕，简直是在除日本外的所有金融市场里同步发生的。用套利、资本流动或资金转移远不能解释这一现象。1720年的南海和密西西比泡沫是相关的，放松管制和在英格兰及法国的强力货币扩张助长了泡沫。紧跟泡沫发生的危机波及到了荷兰、意大利北部以及德国北部。此类国际性震荡的名单一眼看不到头。
当然，世界各地国家经济体之间总有着实体的联系，如国际贸易商品和金条、出口和进口、资本和资金流动，等等。但我发现，让我着迷的却是纯心理方面的联系，像是某国投资人的情绪在什么时候影响另一国投资人的情绪，有时候是距离非常远的两个国家。我们在考虑金融快感和恐惧时始终要牢记的是，理性行为总是不在考虑之列。历史上最伟大思想家之一的艾萨克•牛顿(Isaac Newton)在南海股票上大肆投机，结果输惨了。正如他沮丧地感言：“我能计算天体的运动，却不能计算人类的疯狂。”
重大金融震荡的结果是什么？
关于这个问题，大量知识来自于经济史学家查尔斯•金德尔伯格(Charles Kindleberger)，他1978年发表了经典著作《癫狂、恐慌与崩溃》(Manias, Panics and Crashes)。金德尔伯格用相当没有把握的方式所表达观点是，得到正确运用的最后贷款人所扮演的角色，是令通常紧接着金融危机之后发生的商业滑坡缩短的关键。他引用1720年、1873年、1882年、1890年、1921年和1929年的危机作为证据。这几次危机中，没有一次最后贷款人能真正出现。之后发生的萧条比之其他几次时间更长、程度更深。19世纪70年代和20世纪30年代发生的两次危机，均被称为“大萧条”。
最后贷款人角色的经典定义是由沃尔特•白芝浩(Walter Bagehot)所下的。他的伟大著作《伦巴第街》(Lombard Street)发表于1873年，书中阐述的一个理念此后就一直是央行在危机时刻的指导格言：凭良好抵押品以高利率自由放贷，也是从那本书开始的。自由放贷，用他的话来讲就是，“止住恐慌”。用高利率，目的是“没人可以不经过慎重考虑、用很低的代价就借到钱”。无限度地凭所有良好的银行业证券放贷——因为“造成惊恐的方式，就是拒绝持有优质抵押品的人”。
但是，不幸的是，生活并不那么简单。首先，央行官员们并不总是把他们的工作做得很好。人们普遍认为，英国央行在干预1825年恐慌时没起什么作用。城市历史学家戴维•基纳斯顿(David Kynaston)说明了英国央行的政策是如何在自满和过于剧烈的信贷紧缩之间急剧转向的。70多家银行倒闭了，据传，英国央行自己也是侥幸逃过一劫。正当5英镑和10英镑的纸币全部用光之际，有人发现了大量1797年后就一直留在金库里的1英镑的票子。这些纸币是得到政府许可发行的，并“创造了奇迹”。接着发生的萧条持续了几年时间：根据一份报告，直到1827年年底，“在商界，几乎人人都仍旧感觉得到1825年的高潮留给他们的损失所造成的伤痛——并且直到现在，由于害怕风暴后持续很长时间的汹涌波涛，甚至现在都远离海边”。
另一个问题是，过度热情的央行干预可能给未来造成实际麻烦。关于艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)所留下来的经济摊子的热议，背后体现的就是这个问题。2006年1月，艾伦•格林斯潘卸任美联储主席。美联储的经典角色一直是逆风而行，在艰难时期放松信贷，在局面失控之前紧缩信贷。威廉•麦克切斯尼•马丁(William McChesney Martin)曾担任过18年的美联储主席，直到尼克松总统时代，用他的话说：“美联储的功能，就是在聚会渐入佳境的时候，端走宾治盆。”格林斯潘的批评者声称，他非但没有端走宾治盆，而且在聚会快结束的苗头初步显露时，他又喝了一瓶白兰地，高兴得不想离场。
他们还说，不论出了什么问题，格林斯潘执掌的美储储总会通过创造足够多廉价货币收买的方法来化解困境。1987年10月市场崩盘后，美联储在六周内三次降息，股市迅速恢复。同样的情形也发生在1997-98年亚洲金融危机后，以及911事件之后。
但央行能走多远还是有限制的。随着时间推移，廉价货币和负的实际利率导致带来泡沫的投机和通货膨胀。这是央行行长们警告道德风险的危险时所要表达的意思，这种道德风险指的是，把银行家们从困境中拯救出来只会鼓励他们将来更加不负责任。当应该让一家机构倒闭时，试图把个人过失和可能导致极严重后果的系统性失效清楚地区分开来是十分困难的。
出于这个原因，多年来，常常是这样一个情况，银行当局下决心不干预，最终却发现自己被迫屈服于压力。利物浦勋爵(Lord Liverpool)1825年威胁说，如果投机者得到拯救，他将辞去财政大臣的职务，但最后投机者还是得救了。金德尔伯格发现类似的例子发生在1763年、1869年、1897年和1975年拯救纽约时。现任英国央行行长默文•金(Mervyn King)也对道德风险多次发出强有力的警告，直到几个月前英国央行准备进行一次看上去象经典白芝浩式的干预为止。
在给投机者一个教训和系统性失效之间取得平衡相当困难。只有历史才能够对格林斯潘和金的不同做法作出评判。
在对最近这场危机的反应中，美联储在很大程度上已经比他们的前辈们走得更远。华尔街投资银行贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)因在衍生品和证券化贷款市场上的巨大敞口而面临倒闭危险。面对这种情况，再次引用保罗•沃克尔的话，美联储判断有必要采取“把合法和默示的权利用到极致，跨越某些根深蒂固的央行准则和惯例”的措施。
同样，这种救援肯定必定导致美国证券监管的彻底重塑。如果美联储将来站到这些机构背后，那它需要的监督程度要远比当前规则下允许的要直接地多。难怪沃克尔言语之间有些担心。
经济低迷时间跨度可能有多长，影响可能有多深？
当然，任何回答都不得不受限于大量的变数。关键之一是最后贷款人的存在和表现。但还有许多其他变数，因为繁荣和萧条鲜有单一触发因素的。例如，1847年危机的触发因素有：铁路狂热、马铃薯病害、一年小麦歉收和第二年丰产以及欧陆接着发生的革命。1857年华尔街恐慌通过内战变成了一场持续很长时间的衰退。关于20世纪30年代大萧条的成因，著有众多的教科书，而《大崩溃》(Great Crash)绝不是其唯一的贡献者。
(待续)译者/红岭 阅读本文章英文,请点击 Crashes, Bangs & Wallops
Crashes, Bangs & Wallops
By Richard Lambert
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Each separate panic has had its own distinctive features, but all have resembled each other in occurring immediately after a period of apparent prosperity, the hollowness of which it has exposed. So uniform is this sequence, that whenever we find ourselves under circumstances that enable the acquisition of rapid fortunes, otherwise than by the road of plodding industry, we may almost be justified in auguring that the time for panic is at hand."
That could have been said yesterday. In fact it was written in 1859, in a history of the commercial crisis of 1857-58. Financial shocks all feel different, but most of them are pretty much the same.
Let's start with an obvious parallel. The run on Northern Rock was the first big bank failure in this country since 1866, when Overend, Gurney went down. Both were long-established institutions with histories of prudent and highly respectable finance: Northern Rock as a mutually owned building society in the north-east, Overend with its roots deep in Quaker East Anglia.
The leadership of both had been taken over by a new breed of growth-hungry executives, anxious to expand their loan books rapidly: Northern Rock in mortgages at the top of a house-price bubble, Overend in some decidedly dubious enterprises including shipbuilding, grain trading, railway finance and much else besides. Both made the fatal mistake of relying on short-term borrowing to fund their rapidly expanding and increasingly risky loan books. And just like Northern Rock, Overend paid the price for its flawed business model. The one big difference was that the Bank of England let Overend fail, and take down other firms with it in the ensuing panic.
Two American economists, Carmen Reinhart of Maryland and Ken Rogoff of Harvard, have recently published an analysis of the current financial crisis in the context of what they identify as the previous 18 banking crises in industrial countries since the second world war. They find what they call "stunning qualitative and quantitative parallels across a number of standard financial crisis indicators" - the common themes that translate these individual dramas into the big-picture story of financial boom and bust. Their study is focused on the US, but if you look at the relevant numbers, most of their analysis also applies to the UK.
Ahead of each big financial shock, house prices rose rapidly, as did equity prices. Current account deficits ballooned, with capital inflows accelerating up to the eve of the crisis. Rising public debt is a near universal precursor of other postwar crises. And overall economic growth started to fall away as trouble loomed. In addition, financial shocks in the past have often been preceded by periods of financial deregulation.
I witnessed as a wide-eyed reporter the secondary banking crisis of 1973-74, which came within a whisker of pulling down some of our most powerful financial institutions; and I still have in my possession the press release put out by one of the big four clearing banks denying that it was in difficulties. That drama had several different triggers: one was the Competition and Credit Control scheme introduced at the end of 1971, which removed the ceiling on loans, reduced banks' liquidity requirements and ended the interest rate cartel. Over the next two years, total credit advances to UK residents multiplied 2.5 times.
Deregulation has also played a part in today's events. To quote Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, over the past 25 years "we have moved from a commercial-bank-centred, highly regulated financial system, to an enormously more complicated and highly engineered system. Today, much of the financial intermediation takes place in markets beyond effective official oversight and supervision, all enveloped in unknown trillions of derivative instruments."
Another common feature, this one identified in a recent FT article by Charles Goodhart and Avinash Persaud, is that asset-price bubbles often follow periods of price stability. They cite as examples the US in 1929, Japan in the 1990s, Asia in 1997-98 and the implosion of subprime mortgages in 2007-08.
Low inflation leads to low interest rates and the accumulation of real assets. That in turn leads investors to take bigger risks in order to secure a higher return on their investments. A classic example came in the 1970s, when petrodollars flooded the international capital market and drove interest rates down. Banks were flush with liquidity and looking around for new outlets. They found what they were looking for in the developing economies of central Europe and Latin America. But things came to a grinding halt in August 1982, when the Mexican government suspended debt service.
Much the same has happened in the past few years. Indeed Rogoff and Reinhart rather cheekily suggest that this time round, a large chunk of money has effectively been recycled to a developing economy - but one that this time exists within America's own borders. More than a trillion dollars were channelled into the US subprime mortgage market, which is made up of the poorest and least creditworthy borrowers.
The common feature here is that risk is misunderstood, and so mispriced. In 1929, it was excess leverage in investment funds that went wrong. In the Asian crisis of 1997-98, it was about mismatched currency exposures. In the dotcom boom, the thought was that the internet would lead to everlasting growth. And in the recent credit bubble, the idea was that by slicing and dicing debt, and distributing it widely around the world, junk debt could be miraculously converted into triple-A investments.
Is it really any different this time?
Yet another feature that this latest drama has in common with other similar episodes in history is that it is truly international in character. Time and again over the centuries it has been clear that optimism, greed, euphoria and despair do not recognise national boundaries. Well before the internet, changing market moods swept across the world with astonishing speed.
The falls in share prices on October 24 and 29 1929, and again on October 19 1987, were practically instantaneous in all financial markets, except Japan. This was far faster than could be explained by arbitrage, capital flows or money movements. The South Sea and Mississippi bubbles of 1720 were related, stoked by deregulation and powerful monetary expansion in England and France. And the crisis that followed them rippled across the Netherlands and northern Italy, as well as northern Germany. The list of such international earthquakes is just about endless.
Of course there have always been physical connections between national economies around the world - internationally traded commodities and bullion, exports and imports, capital and money flows, and so on. But what I find fascinating are the purely psychological connections, as when the mood of investors in one country infects those in another, sometimes great distances away. And what we always have to remember when thinking about financial euphoria and panic is that rational behaviour can very often go out of the window. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds in history, speculated wildly in South Sea stock and ended up losing his shirt. As he observed glumly: "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
What are the consequences of big financial shocks?
The great source of knowledge on this is the economic historian charles kindleberger, whose classic book, Manias, Panics and Crashes, was published in 1978. Kindleberger's view, rather tentatively expressed, is that the role of lender of last resort, properly exercised, is the key to shortening the business slowdowns that normally follow financial crises. He cites as evidence the crashes of 1720, 1873, 1882, 1890, 1921 and 1929. In none of these was a lender of last resort effectively present. The depressions that followed them were much longer and deeper than others. Those of the 1870s and the 1930s were both known as "the Great Depression".
The role of lender of last resort was classically defined by Walter Bagehot. His great book Lombard Street was published in 1873, and set out what has become the guiding mantra for central banks in times of crisis ever since: lend freely at high rates against good collateral. Lend freely, in his words, "to stay the panic". At high rates, so that "no one may borrow out of idle precaution without paying well for it". And lend on all good banking securities to an unlimited extent - because the "way to cause alarm is to refuse someone who has good security to offer".
But, unfortunately, life is not as simple as that. For one thing, central bankers don't always do the job well. The Bank of England is generally thought to have played a poor hand in its intervention in the panic of 1825. City historian David Kynaston shows how its policy veered wildly between complacency and an over-sharp contraction of credit. More than 70 banks collapsed, and according to legend the Bank of England itself narrowly escaped disaster. Just as it ran out of £5 and £10 notes, someone discovered a block of £1 notes left in the vaults since 1797. These were issued with government approval, and "worked wonders". The ensuing depression lasted several years: by the end of 1827, according to one report, "in commerce, almost every one still smarting under the losses which the climax of 1825 had left them - and fearing from the long continuance of the swell after the storm even now to venture far from shore".
Another problem is that over-enthusiastic central bank intervention can store up real trouble for the future. This lies behind the energetic debate over the economic legacy of Alan Greenspan, who stepped down as chairman of the Federal Reserve in January 2006. The classic role of the Federal Reserve has been to lean against the wind, easing credit in hard times and tightening it before things get out of hand. In the words of William McChesney Martin, who served 18 years as chairman, up to the time of President Nixon: "The function of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punch bowl just as the party is getting good." Greenspan's critics claim that far from taking away the punch bowl, he was only too happy to chuck in an extra bottle of brandy at the first sign of the party coming to an end.
They also say that no matter what went wrong, the Fed under chairman Greenspan would save the day by creating enough cheap money to buy off trouble. After the crash of October 1987, the Fed cut rates three times in six weeks - and stocks quickly recovered. The same happened after the Asian crisis in 1997-98, and again after 9/11.
But there are limits to how far central banks can go. Cheap money and negative real interest rates lead over time to frothy speculation and inflation. This is what central bankers mean when they warn about the dangers of moral hazard - the risk that bailing bankers out of trouble will only encourage them to be even more irresponsible in future. The great difficulty lies in attempting to draw a distinction between individual culpability, when you should let an institution go bust, and the risk of systemic failure that might have desperately serious consequences.
For this reason, banking authorities over the years have often resolved not to intervene, only to find themselves forced to cave in under pressure. Lord Liverpool threatened to resign as chancellor of the exchequer in 1825 if the speculators were bailed out - but eventually they were. Kindleberger finds similar examples in 1763, 1869, 1897 and 1975, with the rescue of New York City. And Mervyn King, the present Bank of England governor, also made powerful warnings against the risks of moral hazard until the Bank was ready to make what looks like a classic Bagehot-style intervention a couple of months ago.
It's a difficult balance between teaching speculators a lesson and averting systemic failure. Only history will be able to judge the different approaches of Greenspan and King.
In its response to the latest crisis, the US Federal Reserve has gone considerably further than its predecessors. Faced with the threatened collapse of the Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, with its huge exposure to the derivative and securitised loans markets, the Fed, to use Paul Volcker 's words again, judged it necessary to take actions that "extend to the very edge of its lawful and implied powers, transcending certain long-embedded central banking principles and practices".
As such, this bail-out must surely lead to a radical reshaping of US securities regulation. If the Fed is to stand behind such institutions in future, it will require a much more direct degree of supervision than permitted under current rules. No wonder Volcker sounds concerned.
How long and deep is any economic slowdown likely to be?
Of course any answer has to be hedged around with lots of variables. The key one is the presence and performance of a lender of last resort. But there are many others, because booms and busts seldom have a single trigger. For example, the crisis of 1847 had the railway mania, the potato disease, a wheat crop failure one year and a bumper crop the next, followed on the continent by revolution. The Wall Street Panic of 1857 was turned into a prolonged recession by civil war. Libraries of textbooks have been written on the causes of the 1930s depression, to which the Great Crash was by no means the only contributor.
(To be continued)
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