Wall Street Voodoo
Old-fashioned voodoo economics — the belief in tax-cut magic — has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans.
Paul Krugman
But recent news reports suggest that many influential people, including Federal Reserve officials, bank regulators, and, possibly, members of the incoming Obama administration, have become devotees of a new kind of voodoo: the belief that by performing elaborate financial rituals we can keep dead banks walking.
To explain the issue, let me describe the position of a hypothetical bank that I’ll call Gothamgroup, or Gotham for short.
On paper, Gotham has $2 trillion in assets and $1.9 trillion in liabilities, so that it has a net worth of $100 billion. But a substantial fraction of its assets — say, $400 billion worth — are mortgage-backed securities and other toxic waste. If the bank tried to sell these assets, it would get no more than $200 billion.
So Gotham is a zombie bank: it’s still operating, but the reality is that it has already gone bust. Its stock isn’t totally worthless — it still has a market capitalization of $20 billion — but that value is entirely based on the hope that shareholders will be rescued by a government bailout.
Why would the government bail Gotham out? Because it plays a central role in the financial system. When Lehman was allowed to fail, financial markets froze, and for a few weeks the world economy teetered on the edge of collapse. Since we don’t want a repeat performance, Gotham has to be kept functioning. But how can that be done?
Well, the government could simply give Gotham a couple of hundred billion dollars, enough to make it solvent again. But this would, of course, be a huge gift to Gotham’s current shareholders — and it would also encourage excessive risk-taking in the future. Still, the possibility of such a gift is what’s now supporting Gotham’s stock price.
A better approach would be to do what the government did with zombie savings and loans at the end of the 1980s: it seized the defunct banks, cleaning out the shareholders. Then it transferred their bad assets to a special institution, the Resolution Trust Corporation; paid off enough of the banks’ debts to make them solvent; and sold the fixed-up banks to new owners.
The current buzz suggests, however, that policy makers aren’t willing to take either of these approaches. Instead, they’re reportedly gravitating toward a compromise approach: moving toxic waste from private banks’ balance sheets to a publicly owned “bad bank” or “aggregator bank” that would resemble the Resolution Trust Corporation, but without seizing the banks first.
Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, recently tried to describe how this would work: “The aggregator bank would buy the assets at fair value.” But what does “fair value” mean?
In my example, Gothamgroup is insolvent because the alleged $400 billion of toxic waste on its books is actually worth only $200 billion. The only way a government purchase of that toxic waste can make Gotham solvent again is if the government pays much more than private buyers are willing to offer.
Now, maybe private buyers aren’t willing to pay what toxic waste is really worth: “We don’t have really any rational pricing right now for some of these asset categories,” Ms. Bair says. But should the government be in the business of declaring that it knows better than the market what assets are worth? And is it really likely that paying “fair value,” whatever that means, would be enough to make Gotham solvent again?
What I suspect is that policy makers — possibly without realizing it — are gearing up to attempt a bait-and-switch: a policy that looks like the cleanup of the savings and loans, but in practice amounts to making huge gifts to bank shareholders at taxpayer expense, disguised as “fair value” purchases of toxic assets.
Why go through these contortions? The answer seems to be that Washington remains deathly afraid of the N-word — nationalization. The truth is that Gothamgroup and its sister institutions are already wards of the state, utterly dependent on taxpayer support; but nobody wants to recognize that fact and implement the obvious solution: an explicit, though temporary, government takeover. Hence the popularity of the new voodoo, which claims, as I said, that elaborate financial rituals can reanimate dead banks.
Unfortunately, the price of this retreat into superstition may be high. I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal — and that we’re about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.
克魯曼專欄》新巫毒經濟登場 小心 |
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| ‧克魯曼 2009/01/20 |
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| 【作者Paul Krugman是紐約時報專欄作家／夏嘉玲譯】
相信減稅有奇效的巫毒經濟學已褪流行，且被排除在文明論述之外。供給面學說的狂熱信徒只剩怪胎、假內行和共和黨人。
但近來新聞報導顯示許多動見觀瞻的人，包括聯邦準備理事會官員、金管官員，即將上任的歐巴馬政府官員可能也在內，已成為一種新巫毒的忠實信徒，相信舉行複雜的金融儀式，就能讓已經不行的行庫起死回生。
要解釋這碼事，我來說說一家虛構銀行的處境，我稱為「高譚集團」或簡稱高譚（按：Gotham是英格蘭傳說和童話中的愚人村） 。
帳面上，高譚有2兆美元資產和1.9兆美元負債，它的淨值是1000 億美元。但它的資產有很大部分，比如說房貸抵押債券和其他毒資產值4000億美元，假使這家銀行設法出售這些資產，可能賣不了2000 億美元。
所以高譚是家「僵屍銀行」，仍在營運，但實質上已破產。它的股票並非完全一文不值，它市值還有200億美元，但全然建立在政府會紓困解救其股東的希望上。
為何政府要對高譚紓困？因為它是金融體系的核心要角。各界任由雷曼公司倒閉後，金融市場凍結，有好幾星期全球經濟在崩垮邊緣搖搖欲墜。由於我們不希望舊事重演，因此高譚一定得繼續發揮作用。但怎樣才能讓它繼續發揮作用？
這個嘛，政府可以給高譚幾千億美元，就足以恢復其償付能力。但這當然是給高譚現在的股東送大禮，也等於鼓勵他們日後拚命不顧風險。即使如此，這分大禮的可能性讓高譚現在的股價獲得支撐。
比較好的方法是拿出政府在1980年代末期處理僵屍存款、貸款的方法：接管已無生意的銀行，解散股東。接下來政府把銀行壞帳轉移給特殊機構「資產清理信託公司」，政府清償足夠的銀行債務，讓銀行有償付能力，再把整頓過的銀行賣給新的所有人。
然而目前各方意見顯示，這兩種方式政策制定者都無意採用。據報導，他們傾向妥協，即把毒資產從民營行庫的資產負債表移到類似資產清理信託公司的公有「壞帳行庫」或「整合銀行」，但不先接管銀行。
美國聯邦存款保險公司董事長拜爾女士最近嘗試說明這種方法如何發揮功效：「整合銀行會以合理價格買下資產。」但何謂「合理價格」？
就我舉的例子，高譚集團沒有償付能力，因為其帳面上的4000億美元毒資產實際只值2000億美元。政府買下毒資產使高譚恢復償付能力的唯一途徑是支付比私人買家願意出的價高得多。
現在也許私人買家不願支付有毒資產的實際價值：拜爾女士說：「我們目前尚未就某些這類資產種類訂定合理價格。」但政府該聲稱比市場更清楚毒資產值多少錢嗎？還有，真的可能付「合理價格」（不管這是什麼意思）就足以讓高譚恢復償付能力嗎？
我懷疑可能政策制定者正準備試圖放長線釣大魚：政策看似清理了存款和貸款，但實際上無異犧牲納稅人而送給銀行股東大禮，還裝做以「合理價格」購買毒資產。
為什麼要如此拐彎抹角？答案似乎是華府仍對「國有化」這個字怕的要命。實情是，高譚集團和其同類機構已由國家監護，完全仰賴納稅人支撐，卻沒有人願意承認 這個事實並施行明顯的解決方案：儘管暫時卻是明確的政府接管。因此，如同我所說，大行其道的新巫毒宣稱複雜的金融儀式可讓死氣沉沉的銀行回春。
不幸的是，耽溺迷信的代價可能很高。希望我這想法是錯的，但我懷疑納稅人又被坑了一次，我們將多了一項無法奏效的金融援助計畫。 |
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