空色一体
千江有水千江月，万里无云万里天。
西蒙·约翰逊：自大与权威
发自华盛顿特区——
最近耳边充斥的都是各大欧美央行主管们对自身在2008~2010年危机中所作所为的评价：“咱们干得不错。”在他们眼里，正是一系列维护金融 系统的政府行为协助稳定了整个局势。而美联储的资产收购行为既然已经获得了盈利（并随后上缴了美国国库），那有什么可指责的呢？
但用这种思维来界定这一事务其实是有问题的：往轻了说，是被一时的错觉遮了耳目；往重了说，这将催生出一种傲慢自大的偏见，最终腐蚀中央银行得以构建其权威的基石——公信力。
事实上，那场危机的真正成本根本无法用任何中央银行的账面盈亏来衡量——也无法用美国财政部问题资产救助计划（TroubledAssetReliefProgram）的一系列行动是赚是亏来进行评估。
如果要说真正的成本，那就是仅美国就失去了800万份工作，就业率也从最高峰下跌了6%——这也是与1945年后历次衰退最大的不同之处——如今距离危机爆发已经过去31个月了，失业率依然徘徊在低于最高峰5%的水平上。
另一项成本则是私人部门手中不断增加的联邦政府净债务额——该指标是计算政府债务的最准确手段。对比美国国会预算办公室在危机前（2008年1月）和危机后发布的中期预测，这一债务的增加额相当于GDP的40%，足以令人震惊不已了。
事实上，导致美国如今的财政危机（以及可能进一步伤害许多民众的政府支出削减）的原因其实很简单：各大银行的危机使美国民众付出了巨大的代价， 并在全球范围内造成了巨大的负面影响。美国和其他一些国家所出现的大部分公共债务并非源自于无节制的财政刺激政策，而是来自于本次衰退所引发的税收锐减 （加上布什政府为最富有的那批人减税，经费不足的老年医疗保健药物财政补贴，还有靠借债维持的阿富汗和伊拉克战争都严重削弱了美国的远期财政前景）。
最后一项成本则是数百万无家可归者和被扰乱的生活，有些影响甚至将持续一辈子。
但问题不在于美联储或是其他中央银行是否应当设法阻止本国银行系统的崩溃。如果想了解银行危机的恶劣影响，最佳的范例莫过于1930年代（也是 伯南克担任美联储主席之前的研究领域）。如果在任何特定时期只有两个选择：要么政府出手，要么坐视其崩溃，那么前者将是必然的选择。
但在更广泛的意义上，正如亚特兰大联邦储备银行主席丹尼斯·洛克哈特（DennisLockhart）上星期在该机构组织的一个公共论坛上所指 出的那样，我们不应试图运行一个构建在“私人得益公众受损”原则之上的银行系统，更何况这些损失大多由一些效率极低的行为方式所造成，而且毫无公平可言。
相反私人得到的好处则可以通过管理人员津贴的数额来直接计算得出。从2000年到2008年，全美前14家金融机构的管理者总共获得了大约26亿美元的现金津贴（包括工资，分红和股票出售在内）。
到如今，前五位收入最高的人合共收取了近20亿美元，而他们恰巧也是构建了整个高风险资产架构并险些将金融系统推入深渊的始作俑者：山迪·维尔 （建立了花旗集团，该集团在他离职不久后就爆发了危机）、汉克·保尔森（大规模扩展了高盛集团业务并说服国会允许投资银行采取更高投资杠杆，然后又摇身一 变到美国财政部赴任去协助拯救这些银行）、安杰罗·莫兹洛（创立美国国家金融服务公司Countrywidefinancialcorp.，是滥发抵押贷 款的主要推手），迪克·福德和杰米·卡尼（分别是雷曼兄弟和贝尔斯登的送葬者）。
相比之下公众的损失则极为巨大：如果仅仅用联邦政府的债务增长来评估的话，大概60亿美元。但那些银行大佬们却依然坚持自己应当被允许运营更高杠杆的全球业务，并基于企业股票回报率来向他们支付报酬——无论出现任何风险。
为此有一批全球最顶尖的独立金融研究者也正以长远而严谨的眼光观察这类事务，而我们近几年的研究显示情况比想象中更糟（详见斯坦福大学商学院教 授安娜特·阿德玛蒂AnatAdmati的网页）。在他们看来，大银行应具备更多的准备金——大概应占其资本总额的30%。但银行家们则强烈反对这一建议 （因为这很可能减少他们的收入），而中央银行管理者们也持有类似的立场（他们都被银行家的抗议所说服了）。
如能有一个由远离政界的专业人士来运作的独立中央银行，那是有许多好处的。但当掌管这些金融机构的人都坚持自己在危机中做得很好，宣称所有问题都会解决，放任那些引发危机的金融巨鳄们逍遥法外，那么他们的公信力也将不可避免地受到损害。
这一切都应当令中央银行管理者们感到忧心，因为公信力就是他们的一切。毕竟美国宪法并不保证美联储的独立。国会创造了美联储，也可以解散它。通过忽视高杠杆大银行所可能造成的危害，一场“坏事变好事”的危机神话带来的，仅仅是中央银行身上的不断累积政治压力而已。
Around $2 billion was received by the five best-paid individuals, who were also central to creating the highly risky asset structures that brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss.
By Simon Johnson
WASHINGTON, DC – It is increasingly common to hear prominent American and European central bankers proclaim, with respect to the crisis of 2008-2010, the following verdict: “We did well.” Their view is that the various government actions to support the financial system helped to stabilize the situation. Indeed, what could be wrong when the United States Federal Reserve’s asset purchases may have actually made money (which is then turned over to the US Treasury)?
But to frame the issue in this way is, at best, to engage in delusion. At worst, however, it creates an image of arrogance that can only undermine the credibility on which central banks’ authority rests.
The real cost of the crisis is not measured by the profit and loss statement of any central bank – or by whether or not the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), run by the Treasury Department, made or lost money on its various activities.
The cost is eight million jobs in the US alone, with employment falling 6% from its peak and – in a major departure from other post-1945 recessions – remaining 5% below that peak today, 31 months after the crisis broke in earnest.
The cost is also the increase in net federal government debt held by the private sector – the most accurate measure of true government indebtedness. Comparing the US Congressional Budget Office’s medium-term forecasts before (in January 2008) and after the crisis, this debt increase is a staggering 40% of GDP.
Indeed, the reason there is a perceived fiscal crisis in the US today – along with spending cuts that will further hurt many people – is simple: the banks blew themselves up at great cost to the American people, with major negative global implications. Most of the public-debt increase in the US and elsewhere is not due to any kind of discretionary fiscal stimulus; it’s all about the loss of tax revenue that comes with a deep recession. (And the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest, unfunded Medicare prescription benefit, and debt-financed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have severely weakened the long-term fiscal outlook.)
Finally, the cost of the crisis is millions of homes lost and lives damaged, some permanently.
The issue is not whether the Fed, or any central bank, should seek to prevent the collapse of its country’s banking system. To see the severe effects of a banking crisis, look no further than the 1930’s, a period that Ben Bernanke studied in detail before he became Fed chair. If the choice at any particular moment is to provide support or let the system collapse, you should choose support.
But, more broadly, as Dennis Lockhart, President of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, said last week at a public conference organized by his institution, we should not seek to operate a system based on the principle of “private gains and public losses.” And these losses are massively skewed in ways that are grossly inefficient, in addition to being completely unfair.
The private gains can be measured most directly in the form of executive compensation. From 2000 to 2008, the people running the top 14 US financial institutions received cash compensation (salary, bonus, and the value of stock sold) of around $2.6 billion.
Of this amount, around $2 billion was received by the five best-paid individuals, who were also central to creating the highly risky asset structures that brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss: Sandy Weil (built Citigroup, which blew up shortly after he left); Hank Paulson (greatly expanded Goldman Sachs, lobbied for allowing more leverage in investment banks, then moved to the US Treasury and helped save them); Angelo Mozilo (built Countrywide, a central player in irresponsible mortgage lending); Dick Fuld (ran Lehman Brothers into the ground); and Jimmy Cayne (ran Bear Stearns into the ground).
The public losses are massive in comparison: roughly $6 trillion, if we limit ourselves just to the increase in federal government debt. And leading bank executives still insist that they should be allowed to run highly leveraged global businesses, in which they are paid based on their return on equity – unadjusted for any risk.
The world’s top independent financial minds have looked long and hard at these arrangements, and, given what we have learned in recent years, have found them worse than wanting (see the Web page of Anat Admati at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for the details). In their view, the big banks should be funded much more with equity – perhaps as much as 30% of their capitalization. But bankers strongly reject this approach (because it would likely lower their pay), as do central bankers (because they are too much persuaded by the protestation of bankers).
There are many advantages to having an independent central bank run by professionals who can keep their distance from politicians. But when the people at the apex of these institutions insist that the crisis response went well, and that everything will be fine, even as the financial behemoths that caused the crisis lumber forward, their credibility inevitably suffers.
That should worry central bankers, because their credibility is pretty much all they have. The US Constitution, after all, does not guarantee the Fed’s independence. Congress created the Fed, which means that Congress can un-create it. By assuming away the damage that highly leveraged megabanks can do, the myth of a “good crisis” merely makes political pressure on central banks all the more likely.
Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a leading economics blog, http://BaselineScenario.com, a professor at MIT Sloan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-author, with James Kwak, of 13 Bankers.
