Can bank regulators and central banks prevent future liquidity crises?
银行监管者和中央银行能否防止未来的流动性危机？
POLICYMAKERS and academics are still grappling with the causes and
consequences of the credit crunch. One broad area of agreement is that ample
“liquidity” encouraged the lax lending that led to bad mortgage debts, and
a sudden dearth of it helped to precipitate the crisis. But what is
liquidity, why does it suddenly evaporate and what can central banks and
regulators do to ensure that its ebb and flow does not destabilise
economies? This and much else is the subject of a special issue of the Bank
of France's Financial Stability Review.*
政策制定者和学者们还在设法对付信贷危机的源头和后果。目前一个广泛的共识是，太
多的“流动性”造成贷款泛滥，贷款泛滥导致恶劣的楼宇抵押债务，并且，流动性的突
然短缺促使危机的突然加剧。那么“流动性”是什么？为什么它会突然消失？央行和银
行管理者怎么样才能保证它的消长不致于造成经济不稳定呢？这个以及其他很多问题都
是法国银行《财经稳定文摘》一个特辑的主题。
The essence of liquidity is the ability to raise ready money to meet
pressing spending needs. A firm is liquid if it has enough cash to pay its
suppliers and employees and finance its investment. This funding liquidity
is linked to a second facet, market liquidity—the ease with which assets
can be sold without losing their value. If financial markets were complete
and perfectly liquid, firms and households could always raise cash by
pledging their future earnings in return. Both funding and market liquidity
rely on a big enough pool of monetary liquidity to draw upon. This is a
third aspect of liquidity: the amount of central-bank money flowing around
the economy.
流动性的本质是一种能提供足够的金钱来应对支出性压力的能力。如果一个公司有足够
的现金去支付它的供应商和雇员，并且为投资注资，那么这个公司是流动性的。这种资
金流动性与第二个层面的市场流动性是结合在一起的-----有了它资产可以不被贬值的售
出。如果金融市场流动性充分而完美，那么公司和家庭可以持续不断的以它们未来的收
入作担保来筹集现金。资金和市场的流动性都依赖于有一个足够大流动性的货币储备能
提取。这是第三个层次的流动性：央行可以在整个经济实体中流动的货币的数量。
Commercial banks play a vital role in providing liquidity. They furnish
ready cash to households and firms in exchange for pledges of future income,
such as mortgages and loans. Banks make their profits from bearing liquidity
risk (holding on to long-term pledges that cannot easily be sold), as well
as from credit risk (the danger that such promises may not be kept). The two
sources of risk are linked, since the greater the uncertainty about the
creditworthiness of borrowers, the harder it is to sell on their loans to a
third party. Banks can minimise their credit risk by vetting borrowers
carefully. It is trickier to limit liquidity risk, which depends on the
willingness of others to trade in markets.
商业银行在提供流动性上扮演这十分重要的角色。它们以家庭和公司未来的收入为担保
来为它们提供现金，例如按揭和贷款。银行通过承担流动性的风险（需长期持有不容易
卖出的抵押品）以及信用危机（还款承诺可能无法实现的危险）来获得利润。这两种来
源的风险是相互关联的，因为借贷者的信用不稳定性越大，就越难让第三方接受他们的
贷款。银行可以通过核查借贷者的状况来让信用风险最小化。限制流动性的风险可能就
更需要技巧，因为这种风险取决于其他人有多意愿在市场上进行交易。
Banks are not the only source of liquidity of course. Large firms can raise
funds by selling bonds or shares directly to savers in the capital markets.
Banks themselves have sold on bundles of their loans as securities. For a
while, indeed, the securitisation boom made the old textbook role of banks
seem somewhat redundant. But one of the lessons of the credit crunch is that
banks are still important underwriters of liquidity when markets dry up.
When investors began to turn their nose up at securities linked to souring
subprime mortgages and other risky loans, banks ended up financing them.
银行并不是流动性的唯一来源。大的企业可以通过直接出售债券和股票给资本市场的出
资者来融资。银行自己也把它们大量贷款以证券的形式让其具有价值。的确，在一段时
间，证券化的热潮让银行在教科书中的原始作用变得多余。但是信用危机的一个教训就
是，在市场干涸的时候，银行仍然是流动性的重要承销者。当投资者开始把注意力转移
到与不合格的次级按揭以及其他的风险贷款挂钩的证券上时，银行便不再为投资者提供
资金。
That has been one of the main causes of the convulsions in interbank lending
markets, a usually humdrum corner of the financial system which once again
is showing signs of strain. In normal times, banks share their cash reserves
with each other through short-term loans at interest rates that should
closely track the policy rates set by central banks. Since the crisis broke,
interbank lending rates have sometimes been unusually high compared with
policy rates. Again this week they were signalling that banks may be
hoarding liquidity—either because they are worried about their rivals'
exposure to dodgy loans, or because they do not want to be caught out in the
scramble for cash.
那就是银行同业拆放市场出现混乱的重要原因之一，银行同业拆放基本是在处在金融体
系中平静一角的，现在金融体系也一再发出紧缩信号。一般情况下，银行间彼此会通过
短期贷款来平衡准备金的储备，而它们之间短期贷款的利率是紧跟央行的基准利率的。
自从危机爆发以来，银行同业拆放利率有时候不同寻常的比基准利率高出很多。这个星
期，他们再次传达出讯号，银行可能在临时限制流动性----可能是因为它们可能担心同
业竞争者牵涉进入危险贷款，或者不想被发现他们正在争夺现金。
Throughout the crisis central banks have sought to iron out these kinks. At
first they offered emergency lending facilities, but banks were reluctant to
tap them, because of the stigma attached. To counter the strains in money
markets, central banks in America and Britain decided to ease the terms of
their lending to all commercial banks. Interbank borrowing costs eased over
the new year after the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve
injected $660 billion between them into money markets. If interbank spreads
continue to widen, the ECB, the Fed and other central banks may have to
intervene once again.
在这次危机的整个过程中，央行曾寻求消除这些缺陷。起初，它们曾经提供紧急借贷措
施，但是银行并不愿意去选择它们，因为它们觉得这是耻辱。为了对抗货币市场的紧
缺，美国和英国的央行都决定放宽条件向所有商业银行借款。银行同业借钱的成本开
支，在新年之后欧洲央行和美联储向货币市场注资6千6百亿之后，开始缓解。如果银行
同业拆放利率差继续拉大，欧洲央行和美联储可能会再次干预。
Prevention or cure? 预防还是根治？
Given these recurrent tensions in the market, how might future liquidity
shocks be prevented or, at least, coped with? The proposals in the Bank of
France's symposium have two broad thrusts. The first says that central banks
should get their hands dirtier during liquidity crises. Andrew Crockett, a
former head of the Bank for International Settlements, thinks central banks
should broaden the range of collateral they accept when they supply cash to
commercial banks. This would make it easier to soothe funding pressures in
money markets. It would also improve market liquidity for assets eligible as
security for central-bank money, to the benefit of overall financial
stability.
由于市场再度出现紧张状况，应该如何避免，或者至少是应该如何应对未来流动性带来
的冲击呢？法国银行研讨会提出的方案中有两大核心。第一点说，央行应该更深的插手
干预流动性危机。西雅图国际银行的前任领导Andrew Crockett认为，央行在给商业银行
提供现金的时候，应该扩大他们可以接受的担保的范围。这样可以更容易的缓解货币市
场的资金压力。这也可以为以央行货币担保的合格资产加强市场流动性，以此来稳定金
融全局。
The second, more orthodox, proposal is for tougher regulation of banks'
liquidity. Holding low-yielding liquid assets is costly for commercial
banks. They are reluctant to forgo profitable lending just to protect
themselves against the remote chances of a liquidity shock—especially when,
in a crisis, the central bank is likely to step in with extra cash. For
these reasons banks should be encouraged to consider more seriously the
liquidity of their loans as well as their default risk.
第二点，更加传统，这份方案提出对银行流动性采取更严格的规管。对于商业银行来
说，持有回报率低的流动性资产成本非常大。它们并不太愿意仅仅为了保护他们自己免
受可能极小的流动性危机，而放弃有利可图的贷款，特别是在危机中，央行可能出手注
入更多资金。因为这些原因，因此它鼓励银行应该更慎重的考虑它们的贷款的流动性，
以及违约风险。
There is something complementary about these two proposals. The bigger the
role that central banks have in offering liquidity support, the less
commercial banks need to worry about their liquidity risk—which is why
tougher regulation of liquidity is required. The worry is that an overly
liberal collateral regime could displace private markets and their
discipline; the ECB, for instance, which accepts a broad range of
collateral, is believed to have taken some undesirable securities that could
not easily be funded elsewhere. The offer of liquidity insurance may
influence the price of the affected private-sector assets; it would also
discourage private rescuers from holding liquidity by making fire-sales less
likely. Why, finally, should the state offer broad liquidity insurance:
isn't that what commercial banks are for?
对于这两个安放有一些需要补充。央行提供对流动性支持的作用越大，商业银行就越少
需要担心它们的流动性风险-----这就是为什么需要对流动性的规管应该更严格。但是让
人担忧的是，整个自由化的担保体系会替代私有市场和它们的原则；例如，接受更广泛
担保的欧洲央行，相信也接受了不少不受欢迎也不易从他处获得注资的证券。为流动性
提供安全保障，可能会影响到那些受到影响的私有资产的价格；它也通过降低贱卖资产
的可能性来阻止私有救市者限制流动性。最后，那为什么国家要提供更广泛的流动性保
障呢：难道这不正是商业银行该做的吗？ |
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