经济学人:学生贷款 迅速赚大钱

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　　Students Loans: A Quick Buck¹ 学生贷款：迅速赚大钱

　　The government plans to sell out part of the student loan book. 英国政府计划廉价处理部分学生贷款账单

　　Disposing of government assets is a risky² business. 处理政府资产是一笔有风险的买卖。

　　Despite his claim to have “saved the world” in 2008 by averting³ the collapse⁴ of the British banking⁵ industry,  即使戈登-布朗声称在2008年通过避免英国银行业的崩溃来拯救世界，

　　many voters instead remember Gordon Brown as the dupe who flogged Britain’s gold when prices were at a historical low. 许多选民反而把他看成当金价于历史最低点时把英国黄金抛售的骗子。

　　Now Jo Johnson, the universities minister, must hope for better luck. 如今，教育部长乔-约翰逊一定期望好运。

　　On February 6th he set out a plan to sell a slice of the student debt held by the government. 在2月6日，他开始计划卖掉一部份政府持有的学生贷款。

　　It is a pioneering move: Britain is the first country to hawk⁶ income-contingent student loans to private investors⁷. 这是一次创新之举：英国成为第一个将按收入比例还款型的学生贷款兜售给私人投资者的国家。

　　The proposed sale has been a decade in the making. 这次兜售提议在过去十年间不断完善。

　　In 2008 the Labour government passed the Sale of Student Loans Act, which laid the legal groundwork. 在2008年，工党政府递交了学生贷款出手的法案，这奠定了合法的基础。

　　The deal’s complexity⁸ is the main reason for the delay. 这个提案的复杂程度是其被推迟的主要原因。

　　It would involve around ￡4bn ($5bn) of loans made to nearly half a million students, who began making repayments¹⁰ between 2002 and 2006. 因为这将会涉及近乎的40亿英镑（约50亿美元）贷款——由50名万学生产生并且在2002年到2006年之间就已经开始进行还贷工作。

　　There is little certainty about the repayment⁹ schedule: graduates pay money back only when they cross an earnings¹¹ threshold, currently ￡17,495. 有一点不确定的就是还款计划：大学毕业生只有当他们的收入超过17,495英镑的门槛时才需要还款。

　　They pay 9% of their earnings above the level; interest is the lower of inflation or the base rate plus one percentage point. 他们一般支付超过收入门槛以上的9%的额度，并且利率为通货膨胀率或基本利率的较低值再加上1%。

　　All this makes it hard to work out what the loans are worth. 这一切让人们很难算出这些贷款的价值。

　　The deal would involve slightly less than 10% of the student debt the government holds from before the tuition-fee system was changed in 2012. 这项提案将涉及稍低于10%在学费体系于2012年改革之前政府所持有的学生贷款。

　　If all goes well it is expected to sell further tranches of the debt. 如果一切顺利的话，预计会进一步处理这些贷款。

　　Selling it gradually is sensible, says Nicholas Barr of the London School of Economics, since nobody has much idea how it will work out. 伦敦政经学院的尼古拉斯-巴尔表示，一步步处理这些贷款是很明智的，因为没有人知道这一切会如何演变。

　　Opposition¹² to the sale has been building for some time. 反对出售学生贷款的呼声已经兴起了一段时间。

　　In 2014 the National Union of Students warned the government against flogging the debt to “some unscrupulous, bowler¹³ hatted, fat-cat profiteers.” 在2014年，全国学生联合会警告政府不要贩售这些学生贷款给那些不择手段、冠冕堂皇、一夜暴富、唯利是图的人。

　　More recently, critics have worried that graduates may lose out if the purchaser of the debt decided¹⁴ to tinker with the terms of their loans. 最近，批评家担心，如果学生贷款的卖家决定去利用贷款中的条款胡作为非，那么这些大学毕业生可能会赔个精光。

　　The government has promised that there will be no such changes. 政府已经做出承诺，人们所担心的变化不会发生。

　　That means graduates may in fact benefit from the sale. 这表示，实际上大学毕业生可能从交易中获益。

　　If the terms of the loans are fixed¹⁵, the government would no longer be able to fiddle¹⁶ with them, as George Osborne,  如果贷款中的条款定下，政府将不再能够恣意修改，

　　then chancellor¹⁷, did with a different generation of student loans in 2015. 因为原财政大臣乔治-奥斯本在2015年推行了新一代的学生贷款。

　　But, notes Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute, it would also be harder for a future government to relax the conditions, perhaps as part of a pre-election giveaway. 但是，高等教育政策研究所的尼克-希尔曼提到，未来政府也许会更难以缓解这种情况，这可能会成为预选提问过程中的一环。

　　A bigger worry is that the taxpayer¹⁸ will get a bad deal. 更令人担忧的是纳税人会得到不公平的待遇。

　　When a previous government sold a more straightforward¹⁹ form of student debt from the 1990s, the hope was that the buyer would be more tenacious²⁰ when chasing delinquent²¹ graduates. 前任政府从20世纪90年代开始以更直接的形式卖出学生债务的时候，期望的是买家在向欠债学生讨债时更坚决。

　　Since repayment is now deducted²² straight from pay-packets, there is no obvious way for investors to whip the regime into better shape. 因为现在还款直接从薪水账户扣除，投资者没有明确办法来完善此种体制。

　　And buyers are likely to be leery of income-contingent loans because of the difficulty in assessing their value and because they are an unfamiliar²³ form of debt, says Mr Barr. 另外，巴尔表示，买家可能对按收入比例回报的贷款心存疑虑，因为很难去评估其中的价值以及这些是不常见的贷款。

　　The government is simply swapping²⁴ a future flow of income for cash today, and will probably pay to do so. 府仅仅就是用未来收入流动来交换今天的现金，他们很可能为其买单。

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