经济学人102:随风而逝的破产银行 延迟的末日决战

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　　随风而逝的破产银行

　　Armageddon delayed

　　延迟的末日决战

　　Throwing sand into the gears of the financial doomsday machine

　　将沙子混入金融末日的齿轮之中

　　“WE WILL not kick you when you are down, at least not for a couple of days”: that is the gist³ of a putative⁴ deal struck by 18 global banks this week, which agreed not to pull abruptly⁵ out of contracts with each other if one of them hits the buffers⁶. As modest as that may sound, regulators see it as the foundation of a firewall to halt the spread of future financial crises.

　　“当你快挂了的时候我们是不会欺负你的，至少最近不会”：这是处理本周十八家罢工银行所奉行的要旨即双方默认不要唐突的撕毁合同当一方的脚已经踏入缓冲区时。监管者将其视为阻止即将入境金融风暴的防火墙之根基。

　　The agreement concerns derivatives⁷, contracts whose value “derives” from the performance of an underlying⁸ asset such as a share, currency or bond. Banks use them to hedge themselves or speculate, to the chagrin⁹ of regulators who dislike how hard they are to value and how easily they can entangle¹⁰ financial institutions in a web of interdependency.

　　这项协议主要把注意力放在金融衍生品以及那些那些价值取决于诸如股份、货币以及债券之类的指定资产之表现的合同上面。银行利用他们来对冲或者投机，而令监管机构懊恼的是银行不管多困难都会进行评估价值并且在相互依存的网络非常容易的就让金融机构陷入混乱。

　　破产银行.jpg

　　If a bank will benefit from invoking¹¹ its right to demand early settlement of such contracts when a counterparty runs into trouble, it tends to do so, naturally enough. Lehman Brothers discovered this in 2008; bankruptcy¹² lawyers are still untangling the mess. If everyone cuts and runs at once, however, the stricken party has to hand over cash when it can least afford it, deepening the crisis.

　　如果银行能在合同方陷入困境有权要求对方提前结款而有所收益的话问题就能迎刃而解，并且这似乎也并非难事。雷曼兄弟在2008年发现了此种方法；但破产律师们仍在为理清这混乱局面而作努力。其实如果每个人都能做到快刀斩乱麻即陷入困境的一方在还负担的起之时就付款结算，反而会带来更沉重的危机。

　　By contrast, a brief stay might give regulators time to right a listing bank, by forcing it to sell off still-healthy units, say. America and Europe have instituted such moratoriums¹³ since the crisis, but these do not apply to cross-border deals. Global rules which extend the principle to asset managers and others are in the pipeline¹⁴.

　　相比之下，一个简短的缓冲或许能够给监管者留出时间来通过强制他们（银行）卖出依旧完善的那部分挽救上市银行。自危机以来美国以及欧洲已经创立了延期偿付的方案，但这些并不适用于跨境交易。不过全球规则已经逐渐扩展到资产管理人以及其他人之中。

　　Banks hope their voluntary fix will assuage¹⁵ regulators’ concerns that many of them are still “too big to fail”. Officials are increasingly anxious to find a way to close ailing² financial firms without sparking a global panic. American regulators recently sent back for revision all 11 “living wills” they have received from banks, which explain how they might be wound down in a crisis. But at least one element of such a resolution is now clearer.

　　银行希望他们的自愿修复能够缓和监管者关于他们“百足之虫死而不僵”的担忧。官员们越来越焦虑希望能找到一种方法在不引起全球恐慌的情况下来关闭境况不佳的金融机构。美国监管机构最近重新修订了他们从银行收到的全部的十一个“生前遗嘱”，即用来解释他们将如何在危机中走向死亡。但是至少这个决议中有一个元素变得更加清晰了。

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