保尔森计划非全面解危方案

绝望时期需要孤注一掷的措施。但同样要记住，仓促决策有可能使一代人的金融系统受到影响。速度至关重要。但确保新体制的正确性同样重要。

这场危机无疑早已越过了这样一个阶段：政府听任私营部门自我拯救，仅需中央银行给予些许帮助。对美国来说，拯救贝尔斯登，就是这种选择消失殆尽的时刻。但过去两周半发生的一系列事件——对房利美(Fannie Mae)和房地美(Freddie Mac)的援救、雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的破产、美林(Merrill Lynch)的出售、对美国国际集团(AIG)的接管、市场逃向安全资产、摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)和高盛(Goldman Sachs)决定成为受监管的银行控股公司——使得一种全面解决方案成为必然选择。

美国公众期待政府采取行动。问题在于政府能否采取正确行动。要回答这个问题，我们必须就美国金融体系所面临的挑战以及判断如何迎接挑战的标准达成一致。

那么挑战是什么呢？雷厉风行的美国财政部长汉克•保尔森(Hank Paulson)在上周五宣布“问题资产纾困计划”时给出的答案是：“目前我们金融系统的根本弱点，是流动性不足的抵押贷款资产。随着住宅市场回调的继续，这些资产价值下跌。流动性不足的资产阻塞了对美国经济生死攸关的信贷流动。”这样看来，根本挑战被视作流动性不足，而非没有尝债能力。通过创建一个有毒资产市场，保尔森希望能终止价格下跌和破产的恶性循环。

我建议，我们应该从更宏观的层面观察这些事件。1980年，美国债务总额仅为国内生产总值(GDP)的163%，但2007年上升至346%。只有两个经济部门对债务水平如此大幅增加负有责任：家庭和金融部门。家庭债务与GDP之比从1981年的50%跃升至2000年的71%和2007年的100%；金融部门的债务率在1980年、2000年和2007年分别为21%、83%和 116%。金融部门的资产负债表和名义收益率都出现爆炸式增长。唉，可是举债是一把双刃剑啊。

由于2007年末美国对外净负债仅为GDP的17%，实际上，它所有的债务都是另一家国内实体的资产，净和为零。但是，当债务总额巨大而经济环境艰难时，许多实体破产的几率就很高。当人们担心出现大量的资不抵债时，贷款机构不再放贷，债务人停止消费。其结果可能是美国经济学家欧文•费雪(Irving Fisher)在1933年所描述的“债务通货紧缩”(debt deflation)，也就是上世纪90年代日本经历的情形。

考虑到杠杆水平最近的爆炸式增长，挑战可能不仅仅是有毒抵押贷款担保证券的错误定价。许多个人和机构的杠杆押注后来都出了纰漏。他们无力偿付债务。因此债权人采取了相应行动。

现在轮到政府评判干预的标准了。首先，它应该解决系统性威胁。其次，它应将对激励机制的损害降到最低。第三，纳税者承担的成本和风险应该最小。同样重要的是，它应该与社会公正的理念相一致。

此外，这些资产缺乏流动性完全是因为它们非常难以估值。即使努力避免，政府也有可能让国库中堆满大量价格过高的垃圾资产。同样遭人反对的——虽然更多是在设计层面而不是基本面方面——是财政部不受约束的权力。这样一家基金理应在独立监管之下由专业人士运作。最后，如果美国政府准备为不合格的投资者纾困，它必定也应该为贫穷而且常常消息不灵通的借款者提供更多援助。

但最重要的是，危机应对方案必须能够尽可能以目标明确的方式，补救金融系统日益迫近的资本流失问题。关于如何做到这一点，FT.com的经济学家论坛就此展开了精彩讨论。除了这些稿件——其中包括国际货币基金组织(IMF)总裁多米尼克•斯特劳斯-卡恩(Dominique Strauss-Kahn)日前发表的评论文章——我还要加上芝加哥大学商业研究生院(Chicago University's graduate school of business)路易吉•津加莱斯(Luigi Zingales)写的一篇文章*。

调整机构金融结构的最简单方式，是迫使它们增发股票和停止派息。如果这不奏效，还可以强制将债务转成股本。债转股的吸引力在于，它们会给债权人造成损失，这对于任何金融体系的长期稳健都是至关重要的。

这些计划的优势在于，它们不需要任何公共资金。而劣势在于，它们具有破坏性，非常不受欢迎：必须对银行机构进行估值，然后，资本不足的实体必须据此采取其中一种方式来改善其资本状况。

如果给金融部门造成如此痛苦的计划立即遭到拒绝（这似乎是有可能的），次佳的选择是，依据哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)的查尔斯•卡洛米里什(Charles Calomiris)提出的方法，由政府向资本流失的机构注入优先股。这还会是纾困行动，但此举能够约束受益者的行为，特别是在派息方面。与通过大量购买价格过高的不良证券，将利益投给不值得救助的机构相比，这种做法要好得多。

那么，我的结论是什么？是的，有毒证券市场也许存在干预空间。但要应对当前最深层次的挑战，这种方式成本既高，又没有实际效果。我们更需要的是一种清晰有效的方式，实现金融部门的去杠杆化和资本结构调整，理想的做法是不要动用纳税人的资金。如果要动用这些资金，在注资时也应该尽可能仔细设定目标并加以严密控制。正如保尔森所决定的那样，全方位的行动至关重要。但让美国从容不迫地采取正确的全方位行动吧。

*为什么保尔森错了(Why Paulson is wrong)，www.chicagogsb.edu/igm

WHY PAULSON'S PLAN WAS NOT A TRUE SOLUTION TO THE CRISIS

Desperate times call for desperate measures. But remember, no less, that decisions taken in haste may shape the financial system for a generation. Speed is essential. But it is no less essential to get any new regime right.

No doubt, the crisis has long passed the stage when governments could leave the private sector to save itself, with just a little help from central banks. For the US, the rescue of Bear Stearns was the moment when that option evaporated. But the events of the past two and a half weeks – the rescues of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the rescue of AIG, the flight to safety in the markets and the decisions by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to become regulated bank holding companies – have made a comprehensive solution inevitable.

The US public expects action. The question is whether it will get the right action. To answer it, we must agree on the challenge the US financial system faces and the criteria for judging how it should be met.

What then is the challenge? The answer given by Hank Paulson, the all-action US Treasury secretary, last Friday, in announcing his “troubled asset relief programme”, is that “the underlying weakness in our financial system today is the illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded. These illiquid assets are choking off the flow of credit that is so vitally important to our economy.” The core challenge, then, is viewed as illiquidity, not insolvency. By creating a market for the toxic assets, Mr Paulson hopes to halt the spiral of falling prices and bankruptcies.

I suggest we should take a broader view of events. The aggregate stock of US debt rose from a mere 163 per cent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 346 per cent in 2007. Just two sectors of the economy were responsible for this massive rise in leverage: households, whose indebtedness jumped from 50 per cent of GDP in 1980 to 71 per cent in 2000 and 100 per cent in 2007; and the financial sector, whose indebtedness jumped from just 21 per cent of GDP in 1980 to 83 per cent in 2000 and 116 per cent in 2007 (see charts). The balance sheets of the financial sector exploded, as did the sector's notional profitability. But leverage, alas, works both ways.

Since US net liabilities to the rest of the world were only 17 per cent of GDP at the end of 2007, virtually all of this debt is an asset of another domestic entity and would net out to zero. But when the gross debt stock is huge and economic conditions difficult, the chances that many entities are bankrupt is high. When people fear mass insolvency, lenders stop lending and the indebted stop spending. The result can be the “debt deflation”, described by the American economist, Irving Fisher, in 1933 and experienced by Japan in the 1990s.

Given the recent explosion in leverage, the challenge is unlikely to be one of mispricing of the toxic mortgage-backed securities alone. Many people and institutions made leveraged bets that have since gone sour. Their debt cannot be repaid. Creditors are responding accordingly.

Now turn to the criteria to be used in judging the intervention. First, it would deal with the systemic threat. Second, it would minimise damage to incentives. Third, it would come at minimum cost and risk to the taxpayer. Not least, it would be consistent with ideas of social justice.

Furthermore, these assets are illiquid precisely because they are so hard to value. The government risks finding its coffers stuffed with huge amounts of overpriced junk even if it tries not to do so. Also objectionable, though more in design than in the fundamentals, were the unchecked powers for the Treasury. Such a fund should be operated professionally, under independent oversight. Finally, if the US government is to bail out incompetent investors it should surely also provide more help to the poor and often ill-informed borrowers.

Yet, above all, a scheme for dealing with the crisis must be able to remedy the looming decapitalisation of the financial system in as targeted a manner as possible. A fascinating debate on how to do this is under way in the economists' forum on FT.com. To the contributions, including yesterday's Comment page article by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, I would add one by Luigi Zingales of Chicago University's graduate school of business.*

The simplest way to recapitalise institutions is by forcing them to raise equity and halt dividends. If that did not work, there could be forced conversions of debt into equity. The attraction of debt-equity swaps is that they would create losses for creditors, which are essential for the long-run health of any financial system.

The advantage of these schemes is that they would require not a penny of public money. Their drawback is that they would be disruptive and highly unpopular: banking institutions would have to be valued, whereupon undercapitalised entities would have to adopt one of the ways to improve their capital positions.

If, as seems plausible, a scheme that imposes such pain on the financial sector would be rejected out of hand, the next best alternative would be injection of preference shares by the government into decapitalised institutions, on the lines proposed by Charles Calomiris of Columbia University. This would be a bail-out, but one that constrained the behaviour of beneficiaries, not least on payment of dividends. That would make it far better than dropping benefits on the unworthy, via mass purchases of overpriced toxic paper.

What then do I conclude? Yes, there may well be a place for intervention in the market for toxic securities. But this is a costly and ineffective way of meeting today's deepest challenge. What is needed, still more, is a clear and effective way of deleveraging and recapitalising the financial sector, ideally without using taxpayer funds. If such funds are to be used, they must also be injected in as carefully targeted and controlled a way as possible. Comprehensive action is essential, as Mr Paulson has decided. But let the US take the time to make that comprehensive action right.

*Why Paulson is wrong, www.chicagogsb.edu/igm