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| 个人信息 |
| 姓 名： |
林译员 [编号]:2397 |
性 别： |
女 |
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| 擅长专业： |
新闻传播学 |
出生年月： |
1986/4/1 |
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| 民 族： |
汉族 |
所在地区： |
广东 广州 |
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| 文化程度： |
本科 |
所学专业： |
新闻传播学 |
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| 毕业时间： |
40359 |
毕业学校： |
华南理工大学 |
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| 第一外语： |
英语 |
等级水平： |
CET6 |
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| 口译等级： |
中级 |
工作经历： |
1 年 |
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| 翻译库信息 |
| 可翻译语种： |
英语 |
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| 目前所在地： |
广东 广州 |
| 可提供服务类型： |
笔译、家教 |
| 每周可提供服务时间： |
周一至周日 |
| 证书信息 |
| 证书名称： |
大学英语六级证书 |
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| 获证时间： |
2008/6/1 |
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| 获得分数： |
499 |
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| 工作经历 |
| 工作时期： |
2009/7/1--2009/11/1 |
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| 公司名称： |
南方都市报 |
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| 公司性质： |
其它 |
| 所属行业： |
文学/传媒/影视 |
| 所在部门： |
经济部 |
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| 职位： |
新闻采编 |
| 自我评价： |
负责每周一《天天财富》中的《国际经济》版新闻的编译，发表的稿件共有15篇，平均字数2000左右；英文编译稿6篇，平均字数4000，增强了对经济现象的认识，提高了英语的编译能力 |
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| 笔译案例信息 |
| 案例标题： |
保尔森不问钱怎么花 2390亿美元救市款就这样演变成行贿资金 |
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| 原文： |
Just inside the entrance to the U.S. Treasury, on the other side of a forbidding array of guard stations and scanners that control access to the Greek Revival building, lies one of the most beautiful interior spaces in all of Washington.
In this room, starting in 1869 and for many decades thereafter, the U.S. government conducted many of its financial transactions. Bags of gold, silver, and paper currency arrived here by horse-drawn vans and were carted upstairs to the vaults. On the busy trading floor, Treasury clerks supplied commercial banks with coins and currency, exchanged old bills for new, cashed checks, and took in government receipts. In those days, anyone could observe all this activity firsthand—could actually witness the government and the nation’s bankers doing business. The public space where this occurred became known as the Cash Room.
Today the Cash Room is used for press conferences, ceremonial functions, and departmental parties. And that’s too bad. If Treasury still used the room as it once did, then perhaps we’d have more of a clue about what happened to the billions of dollars that flew out of Treasury to selected American banks in the waning days of the Bush administration.
Last October, Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.Over the next three months, Treasury poured nearly $239 billion into 296 of the nation’s 8,000 banks. The money went to big banks. It went to small banks. It went to banks that desperately wanted the money. It went to banks that didn’t want the money at all but had been ordered by Treasury to take it anyway. It went to banks that were quite happy to accept the windfall, and used the money simply to buy other banks. Some banks received as much as $45 billion, others as little as $1.5 million. Sixty-seven percent went to eight institutions; 33 percent went to the rest. And that was just the money that went to banks. Tens of billions more went to other companies, all before Barack Obama took office. It was the largest single financial intervention by Treasury into the banking system in U.S. history.
But once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it. The Treasury Department knew where it had sent the money, but nothing about what was done with it. Did the money aid the recovery? Was it spent for the purposes Congress intended? Did it save banks from collapse? Paulson’s Treasury Department had no idea, and didn’t seem to care. It never required the banks to explain what they did with this unprecedented infusion of capital.
A Reverse Holdup
The intention of Congress when it passed the bailout bill could not have been more clear. The purpose was to buy up defective mortgage-backed securities and other “toxic assets” through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP. But the bill was in fact broad enough to give the Treasury secretary the authority to do whatever he deemed necessary to deal with the financial crisis. If TARP had been a credit card, it would have been called Carte Blanche. That authority was all Paulson needed to switch gears, within a matter of days, and change the entire thrust of the program from buying bad assets to buying stock in banks.
Why did this happen? Ostensibly, Treasury concluded that the task of buying up toxic assets would take too long to help the financial system and unlock the credit markets. So, theoretically, something more immediate was needed—hence the plan to inject billions into banks, whether or not they wanted or needed the money. To be sure, Citigroup and Bank of America were in precarious condition. So was the insurance giant A.I.G., which had already received an infusion from the Federal Reserve and ultimately would receive more TARP money—$70 billion—than any single bank. Even at this early stage, it was hard to escape the feeling that the real strategy was less than scientific—amounting to a hope that if a massive pile of money was simply thrown at the economy, some of it would surely do something useful.
On Sunday, October 12, between 6:30 and 7 p.m., Paulson made a series of calls to the C.E.O.’s of the biggest banks—the so-called Big 9—and asked them to come to Treasury the next afternoon for a meeting on the financial crisis.
Paulson laid before them a one-page memo, “CEO Talking Points.” He wasn’t there to ask for their help, Paulson would say; he was there to tell them what he expected from them. To “arrest the stress in our financial system,” Treasury would unveil a $250 billion plan the next day to buy preferred stock in banks. Paulson’s memo told the bankers bluntly that “your nine firms will be the initial participants.” Paulson wasn’t calling for volunteers; he made it clear the banks had no choice but to allow Treasury to buy stock in their companies. It was basically a reverse holdup, with Paulson holding the gun and forcing the banks to take the money.
Some of the C.E.O.’s had misgivings, fearing that by accepting TARP money their banks would be perceived as shaky by investors and customers. Paulson explained that opting out wasn’t an option. “If a capital infusion is not appealing,” the memo continued, “you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance.” Paulson gave the bankers until 6:30 p.m. to clear everything with their boards and sign the papers.
Treasury had prepared a form with blank spaces for the name of the bank and the amount of TARP money requested. Each C.E.O. filled in the two blanks by hand—$10 billion, $15 billion, $25 billion, whatever—and then signed and dated the document. That was all it took.
“There Is No Problem Here”
But this was just the beginning. It’s one thing to call nine big banks into a room and give them what turned out to be a total of $125 billion. That required little more than a few hours. It’s quite a different matter to look out over the landscape of 8,000 other U.S. banks and decide which ones should get slices of the TARP pie. Moreover, the guiding principle was never clear. Was it to give money to essentially sound banks, so that they could help inject more money into the credit markets? Was it to pull troubled banks into the clear? Was it both—and more?
Regardless, the mechanism to disburse all this money even more widely was an entity called the Office of Financial Stability. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a functioning office yet—it was just a name written into a piece of legislation. To lead it, Paulson picked Neel Kashkari, a 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker who had followed Paulson to Treasury when he became secretary, in 2006. Kashkari had downplayed the gravity of the subprime-mortgage crisis only months before his appointment, reportedly sending the message to one gathering of bankers, “There is no problem here.”
There were no internal controls to gauge success or failure. The goal was simply to dispense as much money as possible, as fast as possible. When Treasury began giving billions to the banks, the department had no policies in place to ensure that the banks were using the money in ways that met the purposes of the program, however defined. One main purpose, as noted, was to free up credit, but there was no incentive to lend and nothing to stop a bank from simply sitting on the money, bolstering its balance sheet and investing in Treasury bills. Indeed, Treasury’s plan was expressly not to ask the banks what they did with the money. As the Government Accountability Office later learned, “the standard agreement between Treasury and the participating institutions does not require that these institutions track or report how they plan to use, or do use, their capital investments.” When the G.A.O. asked Treasury if it intended to ask all TARP recipients to provide such an accounting, Treasury said it did not—and would not. “There’s not a bank in this country that would lend money under [these] terms,” There wasn’t even anyone within the TARP office to keep track of the money as it was being disbursed. TARP gave that job—along with a $20 million fee—to a private contractor, Bank of New York Mellon, which also happened to be one of the Big 9. So here was a case of a beneficiary helping to oversee a process in which it was a direct participant.
When Henry Paulson unveiled the bank-rescue plan, he emphasized that it wasn’t a bailout. “This is an investment, not an expenditure, and there is no reason to expect this program will cost taxpayers anything,” he declared. For every $100 Treasury invested in the banks, he maintained, it would receive stock and warrants valued at $100. This claim proved optimistic. The Congressional Oversight Panel that later reviewed the 10 largest TARP transactions concluded that Treasury “paid substantially more for the assets it purchased under the TARP than their then-current market value.” For each $100 spent, Treasury received assets worth about $66.
Ask and You Shall Receive
In those first few weeks, money gushed out of Treasury and into the TARP pipeline at a torrential rate. After giving $125 billion to the big banks, Treasury moved on to the second round, wiring $33.6 billion to 21 other banks on November 14 in exchange for preferred stock. A week later it sent $2.9 billion to 23 more banks. As noted, by the time Barack Obama took office, the TARP tab totaled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. In its first six months, the new administration disbursed an additional $125 billion to banks, mortgage companies, A.I.G., and the big auto manufacturers.
To the public, the bailout looked like a gold rush by banks competing for TARP money. It was indeed partly that, but the reality is more complex. While some banks lobbied aggressively for TARP money, many others that had no interest in the money were pressured to take it. Treasury’s explanation is that regulators knew which banks were strongest and wanted to get more capital into their hands in order to free up credit. But it’s also true that spreading the money around to a large number of small and medium-size banks helped create the impression that the bailout wasn’t just for a few big boys on Wall Street.
It’s impossible to overstate how casual the process was, or how little Treasury asked of the banks it targeted. Like most bankers, Ray Davis, the C.E.O. of Umpqua Bank, a solid, respectable local bank in Portland, Oregon, followed with great interest all the news out of Washington last fall. But he didn’t see that TARP had much relevance to his own bank. Umpqua was well run. It wasn’t bogged down by a portfolio of bad loans. It had healthy reserves.
Then he got a call from a Treasury Department representative asking if Umpqua would like to participate in the Treasury program and suggesting it would be a good thing for Umpqua to do. Davis listened politely, but the fact was, he says, that Umpqua “didn’t need the funds. Our capital resources were very high.”
The next day, Davis was in his office when another call came through from the same Treasury representative. “Basically what he said was that the secretary of the Treasury would like to have your application on his desk by five o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” Davis recalls.
The “application” was the paperwork for a capital infusion, and Davis was told it would be faxed over right away. By now he was sold on participating. “Here was somebody from the secretary of the Treasury calling,” Davis says, “and complimenting us on the strength of our company and saying you need to do this, to help the government, to be a good American citizen—all that stuff—and I’m saying, ‘That’s good. You’ve got me. I’m in.’”
The most urgent task was to complete the application and get it back to Treasury the next day, and this had Davis in a sweat: “I pictured this 200-page fax that would take me three weeks of work crammed into one evening.” Imagine Davis’s surprise when a staff member walked in soon afterward with the official “Application for TARP Capital Purchase Program.” It consisted of two pages, most of it white space.
If TARP accomplishes nothing else, it has struck a mighty blow for simplicity in government. The application was only 24 lines long, and asked such tough questions as the name and address of the bank, the name of the primary contact, the amount of its common and preferred stock, and how much money the bank wanted. Anyone who has filled out the voluminous federal forms required in order to be eligible for a college loan would die for such an application. Davis recalls that, when the two faxed pages were brought to him, all he could say was “Really?” As soon as Umpqua’s application was approved, Treasury wired $214 million to Umpqua’s account.
What happened in Portland happened elsewhere across the country. no financial institution that asked for TARP money was turned away.
Small Bank, Sharp Teeth
With few restrictions or controls in place, bailout money found its way not only to banks that didn’t really need it but also to banks whose business practices left much to be desired. On November 21, $180 million in TARP money wound up in the affluent seaside community of Santa Barbara, California. This might appear to be just the kind of regional bank that Treasury had in mind as an ideal beneficiary of TARP. The bank has been a fixture in Santa Barbara for decades, serving small businesses as well as wealthy individuals. It sponsors Little League teams, funds scholarships to send local kids to college, and takes an active role in community groups. It plays up its “longstanding commitment to giving back to the communities we serve.”
How much TARP money made its way through S.B.B.&T. and into the local community is not known. But, as it happens, the bank also operates a little-known and controversial program far from the lush enclaves of Santa Barbara. Like an absentee landlord, the community bank with the “give back” philosophy in Santa Barbara turns out to be a big player in poor neighborhoods throughout the country. And not in a nice way. Outside Santa Barbara, S.B.B.&T. peddles what are known as refund-anticipation loans (RALs)—high-interest loans to the poor that are among the most predatory around.
A RAL is a short-term loan to taxpayers who have filed for a tax refund. Rather than waiting one or two weeks for their refund from the I.R.S., they take out a bank loan for an amount equal to their refund, minus interest, fees, and other charges. Banks operate in concert with tax preparers who complete the paperwork, and then the banks write the taxpayer a check. The loan is secured by the taxpayer’s expected refund. rals are theoretically available to everyone, but they are used overwhelmingly by the working poor. Ordinarily, the loans have a term of only a few weeks—the time it takes the I.R.S. to process the return and send out a check—but the interest charges and fees are so steep that borrowers can lose as much as 20 percent of the value of their tax refund. A recent study estimated that annual rates on some RALs run as high as 700 percent.
Santa Barbara is one of three banks that dominate this obscure corner of the banking market—the other two being J. P. Morgan Chase and HSBC. But unlike the two big banks, for which rals are but one facet of a broad-based business, Santa Barbara has come to rely heavily for its financial well-being on these high-interest loans to poor people. Interest earned from RALs accounted for 24 percent of the banking company’s interest earnings in 2008, second only to income generated by commercial-real-estate loans. Under pressure from consumer groups, some banks, including J. P. Morgan Chase, have lowered their RAL fees. Not Santa Barbara. Chi Chi Wu, of the National Consumer Law Center, in Boston, calls Santa Barbara Bank & Trust “a small bank with sharp teeth.”
The U.S. Department of Justice and state authorities in California, New Jersey, and New York have taken action against tax preparers with whom S.B.B.&T. works, charging them with deceptive advertising and with preparing fraudulent returns. Santa Barbara later took a $22 million hit on its books because of unpaid refund-anticipation loans.
The bank insists that its TARP money didn’t go to finance RAL. “The capital received by Santa Barbara Bank & Trust under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Capital Purchase Program was not intended nor is it being used to fund or provide liquidity for any Refund Anticipation Loans,” according to Deborah L. Whiteley, an executive vice president of Pacific Capital Bancorp, Santa Barbara’s parent company. Other banks that have received TARP money have made similar statements, contending that money received from Washington simply became part of their capital base and was not earmarked for any specific purpose. Indeed, the infusion from Treasury may well have been a lifeline for Santa Barbara. The Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina, which has been tracking S.B.B.&T.’s finances and its RAL program for years, concluded in 2008 that S.B.B.&T. would be losing money if it weren’t putting the squeeze on poor people around the country.
Gouging Needy Students
KeyBank of Cleveland is another institution that was given the nod by Treasury officials—and another bank whose lending practices prompt the question: What were they thinking?
Last fall KeyBank received $2.5 billion in TARP money. Its parent company is KeyCorp, a major bank With 989 full-service branches spread across 14 states, KeyCorp describes itself as “one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies,” with assets of $98 billion. It also ranks as the nation’s seventh-largest education lender.
Over the years, thousands of students have secured education loans from KeyBank to attend a broad range of career-training schoolsOne of the schools was Silver State Helicopters, which was based in Las Vegas and operated flight schools in a half-dozen states. people looking to change careers were encouraged to simultaneously sign up for flight school and complete a loan application that would be forwarded to KeyBank. Once approved, KeyBank, would give all the tuition money up front directly to Silver State. If a student dropped out, Silver State kept the tuition and the student remained on the hook for the full amount of the loan, at a hefty interest rate.
The same rule applied if Silver State shut itself down, which it did without warning on February 3, 2008. “Because the monthly operating expenses, even at the recently streamlined levels, continue to exceed cash flow,” an e-mail to employees explained, “the board has elected to suspend all operations effective at 5 p.m. today.” More than 750 employees in 18 states were out of work. More than 2,500 students had their training (for which they had paid as much as $70,000) cut short.
Silver State Helicopters was a flight school, but it might more accurately be thought of as a Ponzi scheme, according to critics. As long as there was a continual source of loan money, keeping the scheme afloat, all was well. KeyBank bundled the loans into securities, just as the subprime-mortgage marketers had done, and sold them on Wall Street. But when Wall Street failed to buy at an adequate interest rate, the money supply evaporated. As KeyBank dryly put it, “In 2007, Key was unable to securitize its student loan portfolio at cost-effective rates.” Without the loans—in other words, without the cooperation of Wall Street—the school had no income.
In February 2009, Fitch Ratings service, which rates the ability of debt issuers to meet their commitments, placed 16 classes of KeyCorp student-loan transactions totaling $1.75 billion on “Ratings Watch Negative,” signaling the possibility of a future downgrade in their creditworthiness.
After the Earthquake
because follow-up tracking by the government has been so minimal, it’s often impossible to determine if any bank or other financial institution used tarp money for any particular, discernible purpose. Only A.I.G., Bank of America, and Citigroup were subject to any reporting requirements at all, and the reporting has been spotty. But what is possible to say is that TARP allowed many recipients to spend money in ways they would have been unable to do otherwise. It’s also the case that recipients of TARP money continued to behave as if a financial earthquake hadn’t just shaken the world economy.
One of the most blatant examples was Citigroup’s plan to buy a $50 million private jet to fly executives around the country. A public outcry forced Citigroup to abandon that scheme, but the bank quietly went ahead with a $10 million renovation of its executive offices on Park Avenue, in New York. Given that Citigroup had already gone to the government three times for TARP assistance totaling $45 billion, and was not a paragon of public trust, retrofitting the windows with “Safety Shield 800” blastproof window film may have just been common sense.
The excesses weren’t confined to big-city banks. A subsidiary of North Carolina–based B.B.&T., after accepting $3.1 billion in TARP money, sent dozens of employees to a training session at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Sarasota, Florida. TCF Financial Corp., based in Wayzata, Minnesota, sent 40 “high-performing” managers, lenders, and other employees on a junket in February to Cancún, soon after receiving more than $360 million in TARP funds.
But let’s face it: episodes like these, infuriating as they may be, aren’t the real issue. The real issue is TARP itself, one of the most questionable ventures the U.S. government has ever pursued. Adopted as a plan to buy up toxic assets—one that was quickly deemed impractical even by those who first proposed it—it evolved into something more closely resembling an all-purpose slush fund flowing out to hundreds of institutions with their own interests and goals, and no incentive to deploy the money toward any clearly defined public purpose.
By and large, the cash that went to the Big 9 simply became part of their capital base, and most of the big banks declined to indicate where the money actually went. Because of the sheer size of these institutions, it’s simply impossible to trace. Bank of America no doubt used a portion of its $25 billion in TARP funds to help it absorb Merrill Lynch. Citigroup revealed in its first quarterly report after receiving $45 billion in TARP funds that it had used $36.5 billion to buy up mortgages and to make new loans, including home loans.
A.I.G., the largest single TARP beneficiary, wasn’t even a bank. The insurance company used its $70 billion in TARP funds to pay off a previous government infusion from the Federal Reserve. The original bailout money had flowed through A.I.G. to Wall Street firms and foreign banks that had incurred big losses on credit-default swaps and other exotic obligations. These were basically the casino-style wagers made by A.I.G. and the counterparties—wagers they lost. The government justified the help by saying it was necessary to prevent disruption to the economy that would be caused by a “disorderly wind-down” of A.I.G.
Some banks receiving TARP funds bristle at the notion that the taxpayer-funded program is a bailout. They say it is an investment in banks by the federal government, one that requires them to pay interest and ultimately pay back the money or face a financial penalty. In fact, many banks are making their scheduled payments to Treasury, and others have paid off billions of dollars in TARP funds (as well as interest). To TARP supporters, this is evidence of a sound investment. But at this stage it isn’t clear that every institution will be able to make the interest payments and buy back the government’s holdings. No one can predict how many banks will ultimately come up short. But in the meantime TARP has been a very good deal for banks, because it gave them, ccess to capital that would have cost them substantially more in the private market, while exacting nothing from the beneficiaries in the form of a quid pro quo.
Based on the reluctance of many banks to take the money in the first place, and the swiftness with which other banks have repaid TARP funds, the main conclusion to be drawn is that relatively few were actually endangered. Rather than targeting the weak for relief—or allowing them to fail, as the government allowed millions of ordinary Americans to fail—Paulson and Treasury pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system without prior design and without prospective accountability. What was this all about? A case of panic by Treasury and the Federal Reserve? A financial over-reaction of cosmic proportions? A smoke screen to take care of a small number of Wall Street institutions that received 100 cents on the dollar for some of the worst investments they ever made?
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| 译文： |
美国财政部斥资数千亿美元注入金融市场，之后几乎不闻不问，不设限制，不设问责汇报，甚至有违常识。钱从财政部流出去，政府就完全不知道它的走向了。它演变成更像有预谋的行贿资金，流向成千上万的机构，然后服务于他们的个体利益和目标，花在了与初衷相违之处。
财政部只知道往哪儿注资送钱，却全然不知送出去的钱是怎么使用的。这些钱真的去救市了吗？是按照国会批准时的初衷被使用的吗？这些钱真的挽救了银行吗？保尔森的财政部什么都不知道，而且好像也不关心这些。他从未要求银行汇报这一大笔注入资本的使用途径。
保尔森逼着银行从他那拿钱
去年10月，国会通过了《2008年经济稳定紧急法案》，接下来3个月的时间里，财政部向全国8000家银行中的296家倾注了2390亿美元的资金。这笔钱既流向了大银行，也流向了小银行；既流向了那些引项而待救市金的银行，也流向了那些根本不需要也不想接受这笔钱却被财政部强迫接受的银行。有些银行欢欢喜喜地接受了这笔飞来之财，并拿着它去收购其他银行。流向银行的救市金有的高达450亿美元，也有的只有150万美元。67%流向了8大机构。这还只是在算倾注到银行的钱，此外早在奥巴马政府上台以前，还有数百亿计的资金流向了公司企业。这是美国有史以来财政部对银行最大的一次干预。
国会通过这笔救市金的初衷再清楚不过：通过“不良资产救助计划”(简称tarp)收购有缺陷的抵押贷款证券和其他不良资产。但该计划太宏观，以至于使财政部有权去做任何部门认为有利于救市的事情。假设TA R P只是一张信用卡，那它就一定是全权委托卡(类似空白支票)。保尔森可在几天内就任意刷掉大把的钱，也将计划的本意从购买不良资产转而变成购买银行股票。
为什么会这样？表面上看，财政部声称购买不良资产对救市的作用太缓。急病还需猛药医，所以才有了向银行大笔注资的计划，而不管银行需要与否。当然，像花旗银行、美洲银行以及美国国际集团这样身处险境的机构，救市金无疑是雪中送炭。保险界巨头美国国际集团已从联邦储备收到不少钱，不过仍然会从TARP得到700亿美元的注资，这比任何一家银行得到的都多。即便在这救市计划的初始阶段，人们也很容易感到，计划太不科学了：只简简单单地把钱投到市场上，然后开始守株待兔般地期待总有一笔资金能发挥作用。
10月12日，周日早上6：30到7点间，保尔森开始给9大银行的CEO们打电话。请他们周一下午到财政部来开一个有关金融危机的会。
大家一头雾水地去了。保尔森已在每人面前放了一张一页纸的备忘录———“CEO的谈话点”。他不是请他们去帮忙的，只是叫他们过来，并告诉他们他想做什么。为了“给我们的金融系统减压，财政部明天会开始一个2500亿美元的救市计划去购买银行股权。”保尔森的备忘录上坦率地写道，“就先从你们9家银行开始吧。”保尔森不是在找志愿者加入他的计划，他明白地告诉这些CEO们，你们没有选择，这笔钱你们要也得要，不要也得要。这简直就是反打劫，保尔森握着手枪逼着银行从他那拿钱。
有些CEO心存顾虑，担心接受TA RP的钱会被投资人和客户解读为银行快不行了。不过保尔森讲得很清楚，没其他选项，他的备忘录里写着，“不论你们对注资感兴趣与否，你们要清楚你的监管机构随时可以要求你必须接受。”保尔森要求他们在下午6：30以前跟自己的董事会商量好，然后把协议签了。
财政部表格上留了两行空白，一行留给银行填写自己的名称，另一行是银行“申请”TARP的金额。每个CEO都亲笔填了两行，有的填100亿，有的150亿，有的250亿，然后署名签上时间。一切就这样搞定了。
财政部的原则就是不要去问这笔钱怎么花的
这还仅仅只是个开始，1250亿美元就这样在短短的数小时内分给了9大银行。全景来看全美国的8000家银行，究竟谁应该分一块TARP蛋糕，却从未有一个清晰的原则。到底钱应该给维持良好的银行，还是用来挽救那些摇摇欲坠的？还是不论谁都给？
负责具体支付救市金的部门叫“金融稳定办公室”，领头的是2006年跟着保尔森一起调到财政部的卡斯卡利。卡斯卡利曾认为次贷危机是小事一桩，在一次与银行家的会议上，他报告说“现在形势一片大好。”
关于钱的使用结果也没一个衡量标准。财政部目标就是尽可能快、尽可能多地把钱送出去。当财政部把数百亿计资金注入银行时，金融稳定办公室没有任何政策去规范和确保这些救市金的使用和计划的初衷一致。事实上，财政部的原则就是不要去问这笔钱是怎么花的。正如美国政府问责办公室后来观察到：财政部和参与TA RP计划的机构间的协议并不要求参与机构记录或汇报他们将如何使用或者是否使用这笔钱。当问责办公室问财政部当初是否要求所有参与机构提交相关汇报时，财政部的回答是，“没有，而且将来也不会有”。
当保尔森启动他的银行挽救计划时，他曾强调这不是救市，“这只是一种投资，不是开支，而且也不会浪费纳税人一分钱。”他说。因为财政部投资银行每100美元都会收到同等价值的股票和认股证。这听起来很好。可是国会监管委员会在审查了TA RP的10笔最大的交易后表示，“TARP以实际高于现市值的价格购买了那些资产”。每100美元，财政部大概只能回收价值66美元的资产。
血盆大口的小银行
于是大笔的钱以木马般的速度电汇至美国各地。有些银行努力游说以获得TA RP资金，而有些则是被强迫加入。财政部对此的解释是，监管机构了解哪些银行需要注入资金。不过把钱汇到这些中小型银行确实能制造一个印象，那就是，救市计划不光是为了华尔街的大佬们的。
申请TARP的表格非常简单，只有两页纸，而且大多地方都是空白。一共才24行字，要求填上一些“极难”的问题，诸如，银行名称、地址、联系人以及想申请多少钱等。如果你填过繁琐的助学贷款的表格再看到这份表格的时候，简直想自杀。而且，重要的是，没有一家申请机构被拒绝的。
在几乎没有限制和控制的情况下，这笔救市资金不仅是给那些确实不需要它的银行，而且也要给那些有很大业务空间的银行。TARP中的18亿资金会在11月21日发放给加州海边富裕的圣巴巴拉地区社区银行(S.B.B.&T)。这也许只是财政部心目中理想受益者的区域银行类型。该银行在圣巴巴拉已有好几十年历史，它为小业主和富裕的个人提供业务。它也赞助小联盟球队，成立了奖学金以助当地的学生上大学，它还在社区团体发挥着积极的作用。它大肆宣扬自己“回馈我们所服务的社会”。
我们不知道TARP通过S.B.B.&T把多少钱弄进了当地社区。只是银行却正在远离圣巴巴拉的地区从事一个鲜为人知而又充满争议的业务。有着“回馈”哲学的S.B.B.&T.竟然是各地贫困社区的大玩家。在圣巴巴拉外，S.B.B.&T.以冷酷的手段向穷人兜售高额利息的预期退税贷款。
预期退税贷款是给那些申请退税的纳税人的超短期贷款。国税局退税需等待一两个星期，于是银行先提供他们与其退税金额同等额度贷款。贷款由报税人预期退税担保。预期退税贷款理论上对每个人都是可行的，而且大多数穷人都等着退税款救急。等国税局退税手续走完并发出支票，银行贷款也就结束了，一般说来只持续几周时间。但利息和收费高昂却可能使贷款者损失退税款20%。而据最近的一项研究统计，如果按年息来算的话，有些贷款利息甚至高达700%。
圣巴巴拉是主宰这一市场灰色地带的三个银行之一，另两个是摩根大通和汇丰。但跟这两个大银行不同，预期退税贷款仅仅是它们无数业务中的一个，圣巴巴拉的发展却已经严重依赖借给穷人的高利息贷款业务。2008年，预期退税贷款收入占银行盈利的24%，仅次于商品房贷款收入。在消费组织的压力下，包括摩根大通在内的一些银行已经降低了他们的预期退税贷款收费。圣巴巴拉却不在此列。来自于波士顿的全国消费者法律中心委员吴齐奇称，圣巴巴拉信托银行为“血盆大口的小银行”。
在加州、新泽西以及纽约的司法部门已对在S.B.B.&T.里工作的税务编制人采取行动，指控他们使用欺骗性广告和编制虚假回报。后来，2200万的预期退税贷款没人偿还，这使得银行受到沉重的一击。
银行坚持没有将TARP用来做预期退税贷款业务。“我们无意将TA RP的钱用来资助预期退税贷款或是为之提供流动性资产。”太平洋投资银行公司(圣巴巴拉的母公司)的执行副总裁，怀特利如是说。其他收到TA RP资金的银行也做出了类似的声明，他们声称从政府拿到的钱只是作为基础资本的一部分，并没有用作任何其他特定用途。
事实上，财政部的“输液”很可能已经成为了圣巴巴拉的生命支柱。北卡州一直跟踪S.B.B.&T财务及其预期退税贷款计划的社区再投资协会在2008年的结论是，如果S.B.B.&T不是剥削压榨全国各地穷人的话，它一定会亏损。
穷学生也能刨出钱来
克里夫兰的KeyBank是获得财政部官员点头批准的另一个机构。也是一家外界对它的借贷行为提出质疑的银行：他们到底在想些什么？
去年秋天，KeyBank银行获得了来自于TARP的25亿美元。其母公司是大型银行KeyCorp。拥有高达980亿美元资产的KeyCorp自称为“美国最大的以银行为基础的金融服务公司之一”。它有989间提供全面服务的分行，遍布14个州。它也被列为全国第七大教育贷款。
多年来，成千上万的学生从KeyBank取得教育贷款，去参加各种职业培训学校。其中一间是银州飞行学校。它的总部设在拉斯维加斯，在半个美国都有它的飞行学校。他们鼓励来学飞行的人申请KeyBank的贷款。一旦获得批准，KeyBank将直接把这些学费给学校。如果学生中途辍学，学费就归学校所有，而学生仍然陷在高利率贷款的圈套里。
即使银州自行关闭的话，这一条例也适用。而它在2008年2月3日，在没有任何警示的情况下，真的这样做了。“按近来这么节约的水平，每月开支依然还是入不敷出。”他们给员工的邮件如此解释。“董事会已经投票决定从今天下午5时起暂停所有的业务。“18个州有超过750名员工失去工作。2500多名学生会被缩短训练(他们已付了7万美元学费)。”
有评论说，银州飞行学校很像一个庞氏计划。只要有一个稳定的贷款资金源让该计划维持下去，一切都会无恙。KeyBank像次贷市场做的那样，把贷款和证券捆绑在一起，并在华尔街出售。但是，当华尔街不能按照足够的利率购买时，资金流就断了。也就是说，如果没有贷款，没有华尔街的合作，学校就没有收入。
2009年2月，对债券发行人的偿还能力进行评估的惠誉国际评级服务，把总额达17.5亿美元的KeyCorp学生贷款评为“负面”。这意味着他们未来的信用度将会降低。
像这样的事例，也许令人愤怒，但这不是真正问题。真正问题是TA RP本身——— 美国政府有史以来最有问题的投资之一。这个买进不良资产计划，很快就注定是不切实际的，它演变成更像有预谋的行贿资金，流向成千上万的机构，然后服务于他们的个体利益和目标，没有任何机制来确保这些钱明确地流向公共用途。
总的来说，现金到了9大银行只是成为它们基础资本的一部分。大银行不愿说明这些钱究竟去了哪里。由于这些机构的庞大规模，我们根本无法追查。毫无疑问，美洲银行使用了250亿美元TARP中的一部分去收购美林。花旗集团在它的第一季度报告表中透露，接受TARP450亿美元后，花旗花了365亿收购抵押贷款，以提供包括住房贷款在内的新贷款。
鉴于大多数银行对参与TARP计划都极不情愿，我们应该可以总结，相对来说只有少数银行是真的处在危机中等待救市金的。不去针对挽救真正处在危机中的银行，或者干脆让他们破产，就像政府任由成千上万的美国人破产一样——— 保尔森和财政部不经初期规划及后期的监管就把数以千亿的美金注入金融市场。
这一切究竟是怎么回事？对金融风暴的过激反应？为华尔街大佬们释放的烟雾弹？国会监管委员会主席伊丽莎白·沃伦直白地提出了一个至今无人回答的问题：财政部的策略到底是什么？就目前伊丽莎白所能了解的，这个策略就是：把钱拿去，爱怎么花就怎么花吧。
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保尔森不问钱怎么花 2390亿美元救市款就这样演变成行贿资金 |
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Just inside the entrance to the U.S. Treasury, on the other side of a forbidding array of guard stations and scanners that control access to the Greek Revival building, lies one of the most beautiful interior spaces in all of Washington.
In this room, starting in 1869 and for many decades thereafter, the U.S. government conducted many of its financial transactions. Bags of gold, silver, and paper currency arrived here by horse-drawn vans and were carted upstairs to the vaults. On the busy trading floor, Treasury clerks supplied commercial banks with coins and currency, exchanged old bills for new, cashed checks, and took in government receipts. In those days, anyone could observe all this activity firsthand—could actually witness the government and the nation’s bankers doing business. The public space where this occurred became known as the Cash Room.
Today the Cash Room is used for press conferences, ceremonial functions, and departmental parties. And that’s too bad. If Treasury still used the room as it once did, then perhaps we’d have more of a clue about what happened to the billions of dollars that flew out of Treasury to selected American banks in the waning days of the Bush administration.
Last October, Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.Over the next three months, Treasury poured nearly $239 billion into 296 of the nation’s 8,000 banks. The money went to big banks. It went to small banks. It went to banks that desperately wanted the money. It went to banks that didn’t want the money at all but had been ordered by Treasury to take it anyway. It went to banks that were quite happy to accept the windfall, and used the money simply to buy other banks. Some banks received as much as $45 billion, others as little as $1.5 million. Sixty-seven percent went to eight institutions; 33 percent went to the rest. And that was just the money that went to banks. Tens of billions more went to other companies, all before Barack Obama took office. It was the largest single financial intervention by Treasury into the banking system in U.S. history.
But once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it. The Treasury Department knew where it had sent the money, but nothing about what was done with it. Did the money aid the recovery? Was it spent for the purposes Congress intended? Did it save banks from collapse? Paulson’s Treasury Department had no idea, and didn’t seem to care. It never required the banks to explain what they did with this unprecedented infusion of capital.
A Reverse Holdup
The intention of Congress when it passed the bailout bill could not have been more clear. The purpose was to buy up defective mortgage-backed securities and other “toxic assets” through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP. But the bill was in fact broad enough to give the Treasury secretary the authority to do whatever he deemed necessary to deal with the financial crisis. If TARP had been a credit card, it would have been called Carte Blanche. That authority was all Paulson needed to switch gears, within a matter of days, and change the entire thrust of the program from buying bad assets to buying stock in banks.
Why did this happen? Ostensibly, Treasury concluded that the task of buying up toxic assets would take too long to help the financial system and unlock the credit markets. So, theoretically, something more immediate was needed—hence the plan to inject billions into banks, whether or not they wanted or needed the money. To be sure, Citigroup and Bank of America were in precarious condition. So was the insurance giant A.I.G., which had already received an infusion from the Federal Reserve and ultimately would receive more TARP money—$70 billion—than any single bank. Even at this early stage, it was hard to escape the feeling that the real strategy was less than scientific—amounting to a hope that if a massive pile of money was simply thrown at the economy, some of it would surely do something useful.
On Sunday, October 12, between 6:30 and 7 p.m., Paulson made a series of calls to the C.E.O.’s of the biggest banks—the so-called Big 9—and asked them to come to Treasury the next afternoon for a meeting on the financial crisis.
Paulson laid before them a one-page memo, “CEO Talking Points.” He wasn’t there to ask for their help, Paulson would say; he was there to tell them what he expected from them. To “arrest the stress in our financial system,” Treasury would unveil a $250 billion plan the next day to buy preferred stock in banks. Paulson’s memo told the bankers bluntly that “your nine firms will be the initial participants.” Paulson wasn’t calling for volunteers; he made it clear the banks had no choice but to allow Treasury to buy stock in their companies. It was basically a reverse holdup, with Paulson holding the gun and forcing the banks to take the money.
Some of the C.E.O.’s had misgivings, fearing that by accepting TARP money their banks would be perceived as shaky by investors and customers. Paulson explained that opting out wasn’t an option. “If a capital infusion is not appealing,” the memo continued, “you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance.” Paulson gave the bankers until 6:30 p.m. to clear everything with their boards and sign the papers.
Treasury had prepared a form with blank spaces for the name of the bank and the amount of TARP money requested. Each C.E.O. filled in the two blanks by hand—$10 billion, $15 billion, $25 billion, whatever—and then signed and dated the document. That was all it took.
“There Is No Problem Here”
But this was just the beginning. It’s one thing to call nine big banks into a room and give them what turned out to be a total of $125 billion. That required little more than a few hours. It’s quite a different matter to look out over the landscape of 8,000 other U.S. banks and decide which ones should get slices of the TARP pie. Moreover, the guiding principle was never clear. Was it to give money to essentially sound banks, so that they could help inject more money into the credit markets? Was it to pull troubled banks into the clear? Was it both—and more?
Regardless, the mechanism to disburse all this money even more widely was an entity called the Office of Financial Stability. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a functioning office yet—it was just a name written into a piece of legislation. To lead it, Paulson picked Neel Kashkari, a 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker who had followed Paulson to Treasury when he became secretary, in 2006. Kashkari had downplayed the gravity of the subprime-mortgage crisis only months before his appointment, reportedly sending the message to one gathering of bankers, “There is no problem here.”
There were no internal controls to gauge success or failure. The goal was simply to dispense as much money as possible, as fast as possible. When Treasury began giving billions to the banks, the department had no policies in place to ensure that the banks were using the money in ways that met the purposes of the program, however defined. One main purpose, as noted, was to free up credit, but there was no incentive to lend and nothing to stop a bank from simply sitting on the money, bolstering its balance sheet and investing in Treasury bills. Indeed, Treasury’s plan was expressly not to ask the banks what they did with the money. As the Government Accountability Office later learned, “the standard agreement between Treasury and the participating institutions does not require that these institutions track or report how they plan to use, or do use, their capital investments.” When the G.A.O. asked Treasury if it intended to ask all TARP recipients to provide such an accounting, Treasury said it did not—and would not. “There’s not a bank in this country that would lend money under [these] terms,” There wasn’t even anyone within the TARP office to keep track of the money as it was being disbursed. TARP gave that job—along with a $20 million fee—to a private contractor, Bank of New York Mellon, which also happened to be one of the Big 9. So here was a case of a beneficiary helping to oversee a process in which it was a direct participant.
When Henry Paulson unveiled the bank-rescue plan, he emphasized that it wasn’t a bailout. “This is an investment, not an expenditure, and there is no reason to expect this program will cost taxpayers anything,” he declared. For every $100 Treasury invested in the banks, he maintained, it would receive stock and warrants valued at $100. This claim proved optimistic. The Congressional Oversight Panel that later reviewed the 10 largest TARP transactions concluded that Treasury “paid substantially more for the assets it purchased under the TARP than their then-current market value.” For each $100 spent, Treasury received assets worth about $66.
Ask and You Shall Receive
In those first few weeks, money gushed out of Treasury and into the TARP pipeline at a torrential rate. After giving $125 billion to the big banks, Treasury moved on to the second round, wiring $33.6 billion to 21 other banks on November 14 in exchange for preferred stock. A week later it sent $2.9 billion to 23 more banks. As noted, by the time Barack Obama took office, the TARP tab totaled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. In its first six months, the new administration disbursed an additional $125 billion to banks, mortgage companies, A.I.G., and the big auto manufacturers.
To the public, the bailout looked like a gold rush by banks competing for TARP money. It was indeed partly that, but the reality is more complex. While some banks lobbied aggressively for TARP money, many others that had no interest in the money were pressured to take it. Treasury’s explanation is that regulators knew which banks were strongest and wanted to get more capital into their hands in order to free up credit. But it’s also true that spreading the money around to a large number of small and medium-size banks helped create the impression that the bailout wasn’t just for a few big boys on Wall Street.
It’s impossible to overstate how casual the process was, or how little Treasury asked of the banks it targeted. Like most bankers, Ray Davis, the C.E.O. of Umpqua Bank, a solid, respectable local bank in Portland, Oregon, followed with great interest all the news out of Washington last fall. But he didn’t see that TARP had much relevance to his own bank. Umpqua was well run. It wasn’t bogged down by a portfolio of bad loans. It had healthy reserves.
Then he got a call from a Treasury Department representative asking if Umpqua would like to participate in the Treasury program and suggesting it would be a good thing for Umpqua to do. Davis listened politely, but the fact was, he says, that Umpqua “didn’t need the funds. Our capital resources were very high.”
The next day, Davis was in his office when another call came through from the same Treasury representative. “Basically what he said was that the secretary of the Treasury would like to have your application on his desk by five o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” Davis recalls.
The “application” was the paperwork for a capital infusion, and Davis was told it would be faxed over right away. By now he was sold on participating. “Here was somebody from the secretary of the Treasury calling,” Davis says, “and complimenting us on the strength of our company and saying you need to do this, to help the government, to be a good American citizen—all that stuff—and I’m saying, ‘That’s good. You’ve got me. I’m in.’”
The most urgent task was to complete the application and get it back to Treasury the next day, and this had Davis in a sweat: “I pictured this 200-page fax that would take me three weeks of work crammed into one evening.” Imagine Davis’s surprise when a staff member walked in soon afterward with the official “Application for TARP Capital Purchase Program.” It consisted of two pages, most of it white space.
If TARP accomplishes nothing else, it has struck a mighty blow for simplicity in government. The application was only 24 lines long, and asked such tough questions as the name and address of the bank, the name of the primary contact, the amount of its common and preferred stock, and how much money the bank wanted. Anyone who has filled out the voluminous federal forms required in order to be eligible for a college loan would die for such an application. Davis recalls that, when the two faxed pages were brought to him, all he could say was “Really?” As soon as Umpqua’s application was approved, Treasury wired $214 million to Umpqua’s account.
What happened in Portland happened elsewhere across the country. no financial institution that asked for TARP money was turned away.
Small Bank, Sharp Teeth
With few restrictions or controls in place, bailout money found its way not only to banks that didn’t really need it but also to banks whose business practices left much to be desired. On November 21, $180 million in TARP money wound up in the affluent seaside community of Santa Barbara, California. This might appear to be just the kind of regional bank that Treasury had in mind as an ideal beneficiary of TARP. The bank has been a fixture in Santa Barbara for decades, serving small businesses as well as wealthy individuals. It sponsors Little League teams, funds scholarships to send local kids to college, and takes an active role in community groups. It plays up its “longstanding commitment to giving back to the communities we serve.”
How much TARP money made its way through S.B.B.&T. and into the local community is not known. But, as it happens, the bank also operates a little-known and controversial program far from the lush enclaves of Santa Barbara. Like an absentee landlord, the community bank with the “give back” philosophy in Santa Barbara turns out to be a big player in poor neighborhoods throughout the country. And not in a nice way. Outside Santa Barbara, S.B.B.&T. peddles what are known as refund-anticipation loans (RALs)—high-interest loans to the poor that are among the most predatory around.
A RAL is a short-term loan to taxpayers who have filed for a tax refund. Rather than waiting one or two weeks for their refund from the I.R.S., they take out a bank loan for an amount equal to their refund, minus interest, fees, and other charges. Banks operate in concert with tax preparers who complete the paperwork, and then the banks write the taxpayer a check. The loan is secured by the taxpayer’s expected refund. rals are theoretically available to everyone, but they are used overwhelmingly by the working poor. Ordinarily, the loans have a term of only a few weeks—the time it takes the I.R.S. to process the return and send out a check—but the interest charges and fees are so steep that borrowers can lose as much as 20 percent of the value of their tax refund. A recent study estimated that annual rates on some RALs run as high as 700 percent.
Santa Barbara is one of three banks that dominate this obscure corner of the banking market—the other two being J. P. Morgan Chase and HSBC. But unlike the two big banks, for which rals are but one facet of a broad-based business, Santa Barbara has come to rely heavily for its financial well-being on these high-interest loans to poor people. Interest earned from RALs accounted for 24 percent of the banking company’s interest earnings in 2008, second only to income generated by commercial-real-estate loans. Under pressure from consumer groups, some banks, including J. P. Morgan Chase, have lowered their RAL fees. Not Santa Barbara. Chi Chi Wu, of the National Consumer Law Center, in Boston, calls Santa Barbara Bank & Trust “a small bank with sharp teeth.”
The U.S. Department of Justice and state authorities in California, New Jersey, and New York have taken action against tax preparers with whom S.B.B.&T. works, charging them with deceptive advertising and with preparing fraudulent returns. Santa Barbara later took a $22 million hit on its books because of unpaid refund-anticipation loans.
The bank insists that its TARP money didn’t go to finance RAL. “The capital received by Santa Barbara Bank & Trust under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Capital Purchase Program was not intended nor is it being used to fund or provide liquidity for any Refund Anticipation Loans,” according to Deborah L. Whiteley, an executive vice president of Pacific Capital Bancorp, Santa Barbara’s parent company. Other banks that have received TARP money have made similar statements, contending that money received from Washington simply became part of their capital base and was not earmarked for any specific purpose. Indeed, the infusion from Treasury may well have been a lifeline for Santa Barbara. The Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina, which has been tracking S.B.B.&T.’s finances and its RAL program for years, concluded in 2008 that S.B.B.&T. would be losing money if it weren’t putting the squeeze on poor people around the country.
Gouging Needy Students
KeyBank of Cleveland is another institution that was given the nod by Treasury officials—and another bank whose lending practices prompt the question: What were they thinking?
Last fall KeyBank received $2.5 billion in TARP money. Its parent company is KeyCorp, a major bank With 989 full-service branches spread across 14 states, KeyCorp describes itself as “one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies,” with assets of $98 billion. It also ranks as the nation’s seventh-largest education lender.
Over the years, thousands of students have secured education loans from KeyBank to attend a broad range of career-training schoolsOne of the schools was Silver State Helicopters, which was based in Las Vegas and operated flight schools in a half-dozen states. people looking to change careers were encouraged to simultaneously sign up for flight school and complete a loan application that would be forwarded to KeyBank. Once approved, KeyBank, would give all the tuition money up front directly to Silver State. If a student dropped out, Silver State kept the tuition and the student remained on the hook for the full amount of the loan, at a hefty interest rate.
The same rule applied if Silver State shut itself down, which it did without warning on February 3, 2008. “Because the monthly operating expenses, even at the recently streamlined levels, continue to exceed cash flow,” an e-mail to employees explained, “the board has elected to suspend all operations effective at 5 p.m. today.” More than 750 employees in 18 states were out of work. More than 2,500 students had their training (for which they had paid as much as $70,000) cut short.
Silver State Helicopters was a flight school, but it might more accurately be thought of as a Ponzi scheme, according to critics. As long as there was a continual source of loan money, keeping the scheme afloat, all was well. KeyBank bundled the loans into securities, just as the subprime-mortgage marketers had done, and sold them on Wall Street. But when Wall Street failed to buy at an adequate interest rate, the money supply evaporated. As KeyBank dryly put it, “In 2007, Key was unable to securitize its student loan portfolio at cost-effective rates.” Without the loans—in other words, without the cooperation of Wall Street—the school had no income.
In February 2009, Fitch Ratings service, which rates the ability of debt issuers to meet their commitments, placed 16 classes of KeyCorp student-loan transactions totaling $1.75 billion on “Ratings Watch Negative,” signaling the possibility of a future downgrade in their creditworthiness.
After the Earthquake
because follow-up tracking by the government has been so minimal, it’s often impossible to determine if any bank or other financial institution used tarp money for any particular, discernible purpose. Only A.I.G., Bank of America, and Citigroup were subject to any reporting requirements at all, and the reporting has been spotty. But what is possible to say is that TARP allowed many recipients to spend money in ways they would have been unable to do otherwise. It’s also the case that recipients of TARP money continued to behave as if a financial earthquake hadn’t just shaken the world economy.
One of the most blatant examples was Citigroup’s plan to buy a $50 million private jet to fly executives around the country. A public outcry forced Citigroup to abandon that scheme, but the bank quietly went ahead with a $10 million renovation of its executive offices on Park Avenue, in New York. Given that Citigroup had already gone to the government three times for TARP assistance totaling $45 billion, and was not a paragon of public trust, retrofitting the windows with “Safety Shield 800” blastproof window film may have just been common sense.
The excesses weren’t confined to big-city banks. A subsidiary of North Carolina–based B.B.&T., after accepting $3.1 billion in TARP money, sent dozens of employees to a training session at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Sarasota, Florida. TCF Financial Corp., based in Wayzata, Minnesota, sent 40 “high-performing” managers, lenders, and other employees on a junket in February to Cancún, soon after receiving more than $360 million in TARP funds.
But let’s face it: episodes like these, infuriating as they may be, aren’t the real issue. The real issue is TARP itself, one of the most questionable ventures the U.S. government has ever pursued. Adopted as a plan to buy up toxic assets—one that was quickly deemed impractical even by those who first proposed it—it evolved into something more closely resembling an all-purpose slush fund flowing out to hundreds of institutions with their own interests and goals, and no incentive to deploy the money toward any clearly defined public purpose.
By and large, the cash that went to the Big 9 simply became part of their capital base, and most of the big banks declined to indicate where the money actually went. Because of the sheer size of these institutions, it’s simply impossible to trace. Bank of America no doubt used a portion of its $25 billion in TARP funds to help it absorb Merrill Lynch. Citigroup revealed in its first quarterly report after receiving $45 billion in TARP funds that it had used $36.5 billion to buy up mortgages and to make new loans, including home loans.
A.I.G., the largest single TARP beneficiary, wasn’t even a bank. The insurance company used its $70 billion in TARP funds to pay off a previous government infusion from the Federal Reserve. The original bailout money had flowed through A.I.G. to Wall Street firms and foreign banks that had incurred big losses on credit-default swaps and other exotic obligations. These were basically the casino-style wagers made by A.I.G. and the counterparties—wagers they lost. The government justified the help by saying it was necessary to prevent disruption to the economy that would be caused by a “disorderly wind-down” of A.I.G.
Some banks receiving TARP funds bristle at the notion that the taxpayer-funded program is a bailout. They say it is an investment in banks by the federal government, one that requires them to pay interest and ultimately pay back the money or face a financial penalty. In fact, many banks are making their scheduled payments to Treasury, and others have paid off billions of dollars in TARP funds (as well as interest). To TARP supporters, this is evidence of a sound investment. But at this stage it isn’t clear that every institution will be able to make the interest payments and buy back the government’s holdings. No one can predict how many banks will ultimately come up short. But in the meantime TARP has been a very good deal for banks, because it gave them, ccess to capital that would have cost them substantially more in the private market, while exacting nothing from the beneficiaries in the form of a quid pro quo.
Based on the reluctance of many banks to take the money in the first place, and the swiftness with which other banks have repaid TARP funds, the main conclusion to be drawn is that relatively few were actually endangered. Rather than targeting the weak for relief—or allowing them to fail, as the government allowed millions of ordinary Americans to fail—Paulson and Treasury pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system without prior design and without prospective accountability. What was this all about? A case of panic by Treasury and the Federal Reserve? A financial over-reaction of cosmic proportions? A smoke screen to take care of a small number of Wall Street institutions that received 100 cents on the dollar for some of the worst investments they ever made?
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美国财政部斥资数千亿美元注入金融市场，之后几乎不闻不问，不设限制，不设问责汇报，甚至有违常识。钱从财政部流出去，政府就完全不知道它的走向了。它演变成更像有预谋的行贿资金，流向成千上万的机构，然后服务于他们的个体利益和目标，花在了与初衷相违之处。
财政部只知道往哪儿注资送钱，却全然不知送出去的钱是怎么使用的。这些钱真的去救市了吗？是按照国会批准时的初衷被使用的吗？这些钱真的挽救了银行吗？保尔森的财政部什么都不知道，而且好像也不关心这些。他从未要求银行汇报这一大笔注入资本的使用途径。
保尔森逼着银行从他那拿钱
去年10月，国会通过了《2008年经济稳定紧急法案》，接下来3个月的时间里，财政部向全国8000家银行中的296家倾注了2390亿美元的资金。这笔钱既流向了大银行，也流向了小银行；既流向了那些引项而待救市金的银行，也流向了那些根本不需要也不想接受这笔钱却被财政部强迫接受的银行。有些银行欢欢喜喜地接受了这笔飞来之财，并拿着它去收购其他银行。流向银行的救市金有的高达450亿美元，也有的只有150万美元。67%流向了8大机构。这还只是在算倾注到银行的钱，此外早在奥巴马政府上台以前，还有数百亿计的资金流向了公司企业。这是美国有史以来财政部对银行最大的一次干预。
国会通过这笔救市金的初衷再清楚不过：通过“不良资产救助计划”(简称tarp)收购有缺陷的抵押贷款证券和其他不良资产。但该计划太宏观，以至于使财政部有权去做任何部门认为有利于救市的事情。假设TA R P只是一张信用卡，那它就一定是全权委托卡(类似空白支票)。保尔森可在几天内就任意刷掉大把的钱，也将计划的本意从购买不良资产转而变成购买银行股票。
为什么会这样？表面上看，财政部声称购买不良资产对救市的作用太缓。急病还需猛药医，所以才有了向银行大笔注资的计划，而不管银行需要与否。当然，像花旗银行、美洲银行以及美国国际集团这样身处险境的机构，救市金无疑是雪中送炭。保险界巨头美国国际集团已从联邦储备收到不少钱，不过仍然会从TARP得到700亿美元的注资，这比任何一家银行得到的都多。即便在这救市计划的初始阶段，人们也很容易感到，计划太不科学了：只简简单单地把钱投到市场上，然后开始守株待兔般地期待总有一笔资金能发挥作用。
10月12日，周日早上6：30到7点间，保尔森开始给9大银行的CEO们打电话。请他们周一下午到财政部来开一个有关金融危机的会。
大家一头雾水地去了。保尔森已在每人面前放了一张一页纸的备忘录———“CEO的谈话点”。他不是请他们去帮忙的，只是叫他们过来，并告诉他们他想做什么。为了“给我们的金融系统减压，财政部明天会开始一个2500亿美元的救市计划去购买银行股权。”保尔森的备忘录上坦率地写道，“就先从你们9家银行开始吧。”保尔森不是在找志愿者加入他的计划，他明白地告诉这些CEO们，你们没有选择，这笔钱你们要也得要，不要也得要。这简直就是反打劫，保尔森握着手枪逼着银行从他那拿钱。
有些CEO心存顾虑，担心接受TA RP的钱会被投资人和客户解读为银行快不行了。不过保尔森讲得很清楚，没其他选项，他的备忘录里写着，“不论你们对注资感兴趣与否，你们要清楚你的监管机构随时可以要求你必须接受。”保尔森要求他们在下午6：30以前跟自己的董事会商量好，然后把协议签了。
财政部表格上留了两行空白，一行留给银行填写自己的名称，另一行是银行“申请”TARP的金额。每个CEO都亲笔填了两行，有的填100亿，有的150亿，有的250亿，然后署名签上时间。一切就这样搞定了。
财政部的原则就是不要去问这笔钱怎么花的
这还仅仅只是个开始，1250亿美元就这样在短短的数小时内分给了9大银行。全景来看全美国的8000家银行，究竟谁应该分一块TARP蛋糕，却从未有一个清晰的原则。到底钱应该给维持良好的银行，还是用来挽救那些摇摇欲坠的？还是不论谁都给？
负责具体支付救市金的部门叫“金融稳定办公室”，领头的是2006年跟着保尔森一起调到财政部的卡斯卡利。卡斯卡利曾认为次贷危机是小事一桩，在一次与银行家的会议上，他报告说“现在形势一片大好。”
关于钱的使用结果也没一个衡量标准。财政部目标就是尽可能快、尽可能多地把钱送出去。当财政部把数百亿计资金注入银行时，金融稳定办公室没有任何政策去规范和确保这些救市金的使用和计划的初衷一致。事实上，财政部的原则就是不要去问这笔钱是怎么花的。正如美国政府问责办公室后来观察到：财政部和参与TA RP计划的机构间的协议并不要求参与机构记录或汇报他们将如何使用或者是否使用这笔钱。当问责办公室问财政部当初是否要求所有参与机构提交相关汇报时，财政部的回答是，“没有，而且将来也不会有”。
当保尔森启动他的银行挽救计划时，他曾强调这不是救市，“这只是一种投资，不是开支，而且也不会浪费纳税人一分钱。”他说。因为财政部投资银行每100美元都会收到同等价值的股票和认股证。这听起来很好。可是国会监管委员会在审查了TA RP的10笔最大的交易后表示，“TARP以实际高于现市值的价格购买了那些资产”。每100美元，财政部大概只能回收价值66美元的资产。
血盆大口的小银行
于是大笔的钱以木马般的速度电汇至美国各地。有些银行努力游说以获得TA RP资金，而有些则是被强迫加入。财政部对此的解释是，监管机构了解哪些银行需要注入资金。不过把钱汇到这些中小型银行确实能制造一个印象，那就是，救市计划不光是为了华尔街的大佬们的。
申请TARP的表格非常简单，只有两页纸，而且大多地方都是空白。一共才24行字，要求填上一些“极难”的问题，诸如，银行名称、地址、联系人以及想申请多少钱等。如果你填过繁琐的助学贷款的表格再看到这份表格的时候，简直想自杀。而且，重要的是，没有一家申请机构被拒绝的。
在几乎没有限制和控制的情况下，这笔救市资金不仅是给那些确实不需要它的银行，而且也要给那些有很大业务空间的银行。TARP中的18亿资金会在11月21日发放给加州海边富裕的圣巴巴拉地区社区银行(S.B.B.&T)。这也许只是财政部心目中理想受益者的区域银行类型。该银行在圣巴巴拉已有好几十年历史，它为小业主和富裕的个人提供业务。它也赞助小联盟球队，成立了奖学金以助当地的学生上大学，它还在社区团体发挥着积极的作用。它大肆宣扬自己“回馈我们所服务的社会”。
我们不知道TARP通过S.B.B.&T把多少钱弄进了当地社区。只是银行却正在远离圣巴巴拉的地区从事一个鲜为人知而又充满争议的业务。有着“回馈”哲学的S.B.B.&T.竟然是各地贫困社区的大玩家。在圣巴巴拉外，S.B.B.&T.以冷酷的手段向穷人兜售高额利息的预期退税贷款。
预期退税贷款是给那些申请退税的纳税人的超短期贷款。国税局退税需等待一两个星期，于是银行先提供他们与其退税金额同等额度贷款。贷款由报税人预期退税担保。预期退税贷款理论上对每个人都是可行的，而且大多数穷人都等着退税款救急。等国税局退税手续走完并发出支票，银行贷款也就结束了，一般说来只持续几周时间。但利息和收费高昂却可能使贷款者损失退税款20%。而据最近的一项研究统计，如果按年息来算的话，有些贷款利息甚至高达700%。
圣巴巴拉是主宰这一市场灰色地带的三个银行之一，另两个是摩根大通和汇丰。但跟这两个大银行不同，预期退税贷款仅仅是它们无数业务中的一个，圣巴巴拉的发展却已经严重依赖借给穷人的高利息贷款业务。2008年，预期退税贷款收入占银行盈利的24%，仅次于商品房贷款收入。在消费组织的压力下，包括摩根大通在内的一些银行已经降低了他们的预期退税贷款收费。圣巴巴拉却不在此列。来自于波士顿的全国消费者法律中心委员吴齐奇称，圣巴巴拉信托银行为“血盆大口的小银行”。
在加州、新泽西以及纽约的司法部门已对在S.B.B.&T.里工作的税务编制人采取行动，指控他们使用欺骗性广告和编制虚假回报。后来，2200万的预期退税贷款没人偿还，这使得银行受到沉重的一击。
银行坚持没有将TARP用来做预期退税贷款业务。“我们无意将TA RP的钱用来资助预期退税贷款或是为之提供流动性资产。”太平洋投资银行公司(圣巴巴拉的母公司)的执行副总裁，怀特利如是说。其他收到TA RP资金的银行也做出了类似的声明，他们声称从政府拿到的钱只是作为基础资本的一部分，并没有用作任何其他特定用途。
事实上，财政部的“输液”很可能已经成为了圣巴巴拉的生命支柱。北卡州一直跟踪S.B.B.&T财务及其预期退税贷款计划的社区再投资协会在2008年的结论是，如果S.B.B.&T不是剥削压榨全国各地穷人的话，它一定会亏损。
穷学生也能刨出钱来
克里夫兰的KeyBank是获得财政部官员点头批准的另一个机构。也是一家外界对它的借贷行为提出质疑的银行：他们到底在想些什么？
去年秋天，KeyBank银行获得了来自于TARP的25亿美元。其母公司是大型银行KeyCorp。拥有高达980亿美元资产的KeyCorp自称为“美国最大的以银行为基础的金融服务公司之一”。它有989间提供全面服务的分行，遍布14个州。它也被列为全国第七大教育贷款。
多年来，成千上万的学生从KeyBank取得教育贷款，去参加各种职业培训学校。其中一间是银州飞行学校。它的总部设在拉斯维加斯，在半个美国都有它的飞行学校。他们鼓励来学飞行的人申请KeyBank的贷款。一旦获得批准，KeyBank将直接把这些学费给学校。如果学生中途辍学，学费就归学校所有，而学生仍然陷在高利率贷款的圈套里。
即使银州自行关闭的话，这一条例也适用。而它在2008年2月3日，在没有任何警示的情况下，真的这样做了。“按近来这么节约的水平，每月开支依然还是入不敷出。”他们给员工的邮件如此解释。“董事会已经投票决定从今天下午5时起暂停所有的业务。“18个州有超过750名员工失去工作。2500多名学生会被缩短训练(他们已付了7万美元学费)。”
有评论说，银州飞行学校很像一个庞氏计划。只要有一个稳定的贷款资金源让该计划维持下去，一切都会无恙。KeyBank像次贷市场做的那样，把贷款和证券捆绑在一起，并在华尔街出售。但是，当华尔街不能按照足够的利率购买时，资金流就断了。也就是说，如果没有贷款，没有华尔街的合作，学校就没有收入。
2009年2月，对债券发行人的偿还能力进行评估的惠誉国际评级服务，把总额达17.5亿美元的KeyCorp学生贷款评为“负面”。这意味着他们未来的信用度将会降低。
像这样的事例，也许令人愤怒，但这不是真正问题。真正问题是TA RP本身——— 美国政府有史以来最有问题的投资之一。这个买进不良资产计划，很快就注定是不切实际的，它演变成更像有预谋的行贿资金，流向成千上万的机构，然后服务于他们的个体利益和目标，没有任何机制来确保这些钱明确地流向公共用途。
总的来说，现金到了9大银行只是成为它们基础资本的一部分。大银行不愿说明这些钱究竟去了哪里。由于这些机构的庞大规模，我们根本无法追查。毫无疑问，美洲银行使用了250亿美元TARP中的一部分去收购美林。花旗集团在它的第一季度报告表中透露，接受TARP450亿美元后，花旗花了365亿收购抵押贷款，以提供包括住房贷款在内的新贷款。
鉴于大多数银行对参与TARP计划都极不情愿，我们应该可以总结，相对来说只有少数银行是真的处在危机中等待救市金的。不去针对挽救真正处在危机中的银行，或者干脆让他们破产，就像政府任由成千上万的美国人破产一样——— 保尔森和财政部不经初期规划及后期的监管就把数以千亿的美金注入金融市场。
这一切究竟是怎么回事？对金融风暴的过激反应？为华尔街大佬们释放的烟雾弹？国会监管委员会主席伊丽莎白·沃伦直白地提出了一个至今无人回答的问题：财政部的策略到底是什么？就目前伊丽莎白所能了解的，这个策略就是：把钱拿去，爱怎么花就怎么花吧。
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| 案例标题： |
The Dollar Dilemma |
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RENMINBI TO THE RESCUE?
With Zhou, the governor of China's central bank, aware of these realities, one wonders why he was promoting SDRs last spring. One explanation is that he was making a political point. He wanted to signal China's unhappiness with prevailing arrangements and remind other countries, on the eve the G-20 economic summit in London, that China expected to actively participate in discussions of international monetary reform and to advocate a rules-based multilateral system. He may also have been playing to his audience at home, seeking to deflect criticism that the Chinese authorities, by failing to actively seek out alternatives to the dollar, have not been careful stewards of the country's international reserves.
Or the tactic may have been a diversion, designed to distract attention from China's real objective, which is to make the renminbi itself a reserve currency. This would free China of the need to hold foreign currencies to smooth its balance of payments, and it would allow it to print more or less of its currency as needed, just as the United States does now. Wang Zhaoxing, vice-head of the Shanghai branch of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, suggested to reporters in May that the renminbi could become a major reserve currency by 2020.
But for now, the renminbi remains inconvertible. Foreigners can only use it to purchase goods from China or in cross-border trade with China's immediate neighbors and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao. Last spring, Brazil and China announced that they wished to explore ways to use their currencies in bilateral trade, but the statement was mainly a way to advertise the extent of their trade. What use would most Brazilian firms have for renminbi when these cannot be converted into reais? Similarly, the swap agreements that China has concluded over the last year with Argentina, Belarus, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea are of little practical importance; they are largely a way for Beijing to signal its desire to be an international player. The central banks of these countries cannot use renminbi to intervene in foreign exchange markets, import merchandise from third countries, or pay foreign banks and foreign bondholders. China would become a more consequential supplier of emergency credits if it made these available in dollars -- but that would undermine the use of swaps to enhance the renminbi's international role.
In time, China could strengthen the international role of the renminbi by developing liquid securities markets and liberalizing foreigners' access to them. In time, it could make its currency convertible for financial and trade transactions. The question is, in how much time? China has been feeling its way toward capital account convertibility, the ability to freely convert local financial assets into foreign ones and vice versa, for more than a decade, and it is still only partly there. As other Asian countries have learned, to their chagrin, maintaining financial stability while granting investors at home full freedom to trade foreign assets and investors abroad full freedom to trade domestic assets requires satisfying formidable preconditions. Markets must be transparent. Banks must be commercialized. Supervision and regulation must be strengthened. Monetary and fiscal policies must be sound and stable. The exchange rate must be flexible enough to accommodate larger flows of capital. In other words, China must move to full capital account convertibility; this is a prerequisite to the renminbi's coming of age internationally. But to do so, China would have to first abandon a growth model in which bank lending and a pegged currency have been two of the main instruments of development policy. This will not be easy. Witness how the Chinese authorities' first reactions to the economic crisis were to further rely on directed lending (in order to boost investment) and to reinforce the renminbi's peg to the dollar (in order to sustain exports).
All of this suggests that China's financial markets will continue to be opened up to foreign investors only gradually. Until now, renminbi-denominated bonds have been sold only in China and only by Chinese and multilateral banks, such as the Asian Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. The Chinese government has been reluctant to allow foreign corporations to issue bonds, since this would interfere with its ability to channel savings to Chinese industry. The situation is beginning to change, if slowly. In May, HSBC Holdings and the Bank of East Asia announced that they were the first foreign banks authorized to sell renminbi-denominated bonds in Hong Kong. But Hong Kong has open markets, and the China Development Bank and the Bank of China are already permitted to issue renminbi-denominated bonds to individuals there. It would be much more significant if such activities were allowed in Shanghai. Permitting the United States, for example, to issue renminbi-denominated bonds there on a small scale might help turn Shanghai into an international financial center. (Guo Shuqing, chair of the China Construction Bank, called for this during a visit to the United States in June.) Households would presumably regard these bonds, with their returns guaranteed in renminbi, as an attractive alternative to bank deposits, which are often funneled into industrial development. But if they did, China's entire development model would be put at risk.
To be sure, the Chinese government would like to see the United States offer an exchange-rate guarantee on its dollar-denominated securities. Guaranteeing new Chinese holdings against a depreciation of the dollar against the renminbi would be tantamount to issuing those bonds in renminbi. Governments have been known to take such steps. But the strategy is rightly seen as a sign of desperation. It can backfire if the foreign currency appreciates. And as the renminbi is expected to appreciate against the dollar, U.S. authorities are not likely to see this as an attractive option.
That said, China's efforts to internationalize the renminbi should not be underestimated. Chinese policymakers are serious about making Shanghai an international financial center by 2020. But meeting that objective will require building broader and more liquid financial markets in renminbi-denominated assets and liberalizing the access of foreign investors to those markets. And this, in turn, will entail a host of policy changes that would amount to abandoning China's tried and true growth model. Such changes cannot occur overnight, and perhaps not even before 2020.
Another reason that 2020 may be an overly ambitious target date by which to turn the renminbi into a reserve currency is that even if China's economy grows at seven percent annually for the next decade -- slower than in the past, given its less favorable demographics now, but still exceptionally fast by historical standards -- in 2020 its GDP will be only half the size of the United States' GDP at market exchange rates (market rates being what matter for international transactions). Even then, in other words, the renminbi will have a smaller platform than the dollar from which to launch its international career. Liquidity and transaction costs in renminbi markets will not be comparable to those in dollar markets, and holding reserves in renminbi will therefore continue to have limited appeal. The option will be attractive principally to countries that conduct most of their trade with China and do most of their international financial business in Shanghai. For reasons of proximity, if nothing else, these countries will be Asian first and foremost. The market for renminbi reserves will thus be disproportionately concentrated in Asia, at least initially, much as the market for euro reserves is now disproportionately concentrated in Europe.
This raises the question of whether Asia might one day wish to follow Europe in creating a single regional currency. Much ink has been spilled over the question, but it seems unlikely. China does not need to participate in a monetary union in order to achieve the economic and financial scale necessary for its currency to play a role internationally. It does not have to share monetary sovereignty with its neighbors in order for its currency to become a reserve unit. Rather than pushing ahead toward a regional monetary union, in the manner of Paris and Berlin, Beijing would almost certainly prefer to wait, for the longer it waits, the more the renminbi will matter within the region. There are plenty of reasons why a pan-Asian monetary union is unlikely -- ranging from the very different structures of the different economies in Asia to the limited appetite for political integration in the region. But the renminbi's own prospects as an international currency are an important one.
Can the renminbi serve as a regional reserve currency? Yes. As a subsidiary reserve currency? Yes. As a dominant reserve currency? For the foreseeable future, this is hard to imagine.
MEET THE NEW BOSS
By process of elimination, it is clear that the dollar will remain the principal form of international reserves well into the future. It will not be as dominant as in the past, for the same reasons that the United States will not be as dominant economically as it once was. In the short run, the euro will gain market share, especially in and around Europe. In the longer run, the renminbi's role will also grow, especially in Asia. But for as far as one can see clearly into the future, the dollar will remain first among equals.
This state of affairs -- with several national currencies sharing, albeit unequally, the status of reserve currency -- would not be unprecedented. A similar situation existed for several decades before World War I, when the pound sterling was the dominant reserve currency but the French franc and the German mark held significant market shares, especially in regions commercially and financially linked to France and Germany. Recent research has shown that the pound and the dollar supplied roughly equal shares of global foreign exchange reserves in the 1920s. The view that there is room for only one reserve currency at any point in time is belied by history. The dollar may have dominated to the exclusion of other reserve currencies after World War II, but this reflected exceptional circumstances, including the United States' exceptional dominance of global markets and the fact that only it had deep and open domestic financial markets. And these exceptional circumstances are now a thing of the past.
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人民币是救世主?
周小川当然意识到这些现实,人们不明白他为什么要在去年年初提议推行特别提款权。一种解释是,他在表达中国对现行安排的不满。并提醒其他国家,中国将积极参与国际货币改革的讨论,倡议多边制度。
或者这是声东击西的战术,而中国的真正目的是使人民币本身成为储备货币。这样做,可以使中国无须再依靠外币来理顺其收支,并能够自主地印钞票,就像美国现在一样。
不过,目前人民币仍然是不可兑换。外国人只能用它来购买中国商品,或在中国近邻,与中国有跨国贸易关系的地区,以及中国香港和澳门使用。去年春天,巴西和中国宣布,他们希望探索如何在双边贸易中使用本国货币。但这种说法主要是宣传其贸易范围。当人民币不能兑换成雷亚尔时,对大多数巴西公司来说,人民币还有什么用呢?同样,中国在去年与阿根廷、白俄罗斯、中国香港、印尼、马来西亚和韩国签署的互换协议,在很大程度上,它们是北京传达希望成为国际“玩家”这一信息的传声筒。这些国家的央行不能使用人民币干预外汇市场、从第 假以时日,通过发展流动性证券市场,并对外国人开放,中国能够巩固人民币的国际职能。假以时日,中国能够让人民币在金融和贸易交易中可兑换。问题是,这需要多久?中国一直在摸索着其资本账户可兑换性的方式,使地方金融资产和外币能够互相自由兑换。十几年过去了,仍没有完成。其他亚洲国家从中学到,要维持金融体系的稳定,并给予国内投资者充分自由购买外国资产,给予海外投资者充分自由购买国内资产,需要满足巨大的先决条件。市场必须是透明的,银行必须商业化,监督和管理必须得到加强,货币政策和财政政策必须健全和稳定,汇率必须灵活以适应更多的资本注入。换言之,中国必须走向全面的资本项目可兑换,这是人民币国际时代到来的前提条件。但要做到这一点,中国首先必须放弃一直以银行贷款和货币挂钩为主要发展政策的增长模式。这并不容易。
所有这一切表明,中国的金融市场将继续循序渐进开放给外国投资者。到现在为止,按人民币计价的债券只能由中国和多边银行,如亚洲开发银行和国际金融公司,在中国出售。中国政府一直不愿让外国企业发行债券,因为这会干扰其为中国工业融资的能力。这种情况正在开始改变,尽管进程缓慢。今年5月,汇丰控股和东亚银行宣布,他们是第一批获准在香港发债出售人民币债券的外资银行。然而,香港早已经开放市场,中国开发银行和中国银行已获准向香港当地居民发行人民币债券。如果这些举措在上海能被获准,才更有意义。例如,允许美国发行小规模的人民币计价债券可能有助于上海转变成国际金融中心。(中国建设银行董事长郭树清在6月访美期间曾这样呼吁。)
中国想在2020年确立上海为国际金融中心。要达到这个目标,就需要在人民币计价的资产上建立更广泛和更具流动性的金融市场,并且为外国投资者进入这些市场大开方便之门。而反过来,这将需要改变一揽子政策,这种变化不可能在一夜之间发生,甚至也许在2020年前都不会发生。
在2020年把人民币转变成储备货币这一目标或许野心过大了。原因是即使中国在未来10年的年经济增长率为7%,按照市场汇率,2020年中国G D P仍将只有美国的一半。(市场利率对国际交易有重要影响)。换言之,人民币开展其国际事业的平台要比美元小。人民币流动性和市场的交易成本也不能与美元市场相媲美。因此,人民币的储备作用将依然没有吸引力。不过这对于那些贸易关系以中国为主,并且大多数国际金融业务集中在上海的国家仍有吸引力,这些国家是以亚洲市场为第一位的。人民币储备的市场会因此而过多地集中在亚洲,至少在初期是这样。就像现在欧元储备市场比例失衡地集中在欧洲一样,。
这就引发了一个问题,将来亚洲会不会想跟随欧洲,建立单一地区货币。这个问题已经被讨论过很多次,但似乎不太可能。中国不需要参与货币联盟以实现人民币发挥国际职能所需的经济和财政规模。它不需要为了其货币成为储备联盟而与邻国分享货币主权。与巴黎和柏林不同,北京肯定更宁愿等待,而不是急着走向区域货币联盟。因为等待的时间越长,人民币在区域内就越重要。有很多原因注定泛亚洲货币联盟是不可能的,如亚洲差异性非常大的经济结构,区域内政治一体化的欲望有限等。人民币自己独自就有可能成为国际货币也是一个重要原因。
人民币可以作为区域储备货币?是的。作为一个附属储备货币?是的。但作为主要储备货币?在可预见的未来,这是难以想象的。
会见新老板
通过排除法,显然,美元仍将是未来国际储备的主要形式。它不会像过去一样占有绝对优势,同理,美国也不再像以前那样,在经济上占主导地位。从短期来看,欧元将获得更多的市场份额,尤其是在欧洲各地。从长远来看,人民币的作用也将逐渐加强,特别是在亚洲。但在可以预见的未来,美元将继续独占鳌头。
几个国家的货币共享储备货币地位的状况虽然不平等,但也不是前所未有的。第一次世界大战前,类似的情况存在了几十年。当时英镑是主要的储备货币,但法国法郎和德国马克持有较大的市场份额,特别是在与法国和德国有商业和金融来往的区域。最近研究表明,20世纪20年代,英镑和美元为全球外汇储备提供的股份大致相等。不管何时只能存在一个货币储备的观点与历史事实并不相符。二战后,美元可能主导了其他储备货币,但是这反映了特殊情况,包括美国占领全球市场的特殊优势以及它已深入开放国内金融市场的事实。而这些特殊情况,如今都已经成为历史了。 三国进口商品或支付外国银行和外国债券持有人。
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Copenhagen's Inconvenient Truth |
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Copenhagen's Inconvenient Truth
How to Salvage the Climate Conference
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65243/michael-levi/copenhagens-inconvenient-truth
by Michael Levi
This December, diplomats from nearly 200 countries will gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which for the first time bound wealthy countries to specific cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Most of those devoted to slashing the world's greenhouse gas emissions have placed enormous weight on the Copenhagen conference. Speaking earlier this year about the conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was emphatic: "We must harness the necessary political will to seal the deal on an ambitious new climate agreement in December here in Copenhagen. . . . If we get it wrong we face catastrophic damage to people, to the planet."
Hopes are higher than ever for a breakthrough climate deal. But it is not so simple. The odds of signing a comprehensive treaty in December are vanishingly small.
Many U.S. lawmakers want absolute near-term emissions caps from China and India, but those countries will not sign up for anything of the sort for at least another decade. And before they consider a deal of any kind, Chinese and Indian negotiators are demanding that developed countries commit to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by over 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, but none of the world's wealthiest countries will even come close to meeting this goal. Meanwhile, China, together with other developing countries, is also asking the wealthy nations to commit as much as one percent of their collective GDP -- more than $300 billion annually -- to a fund that would help the rest of the world reduce its emissions and adapt to climate change. But Western politicians will not be willing to send anything near this amount of money to their economic competitors in order to secure a deal.
There is little sign that anyone is ready to make big compromises. And the high demands of any comprehensive global agreement are only half the problem. Even a blockbuster deal in which every country signed up to binding emissions caps would come nowhere close to guaranteeing success, since the world has few useful options for enforcing commitments to slash emissions short of punitive trade sanctions or similarly unpalatable penalties. The core of the global effort to cut emissions will not come from a single global treaty; it will have to be built from the bottom up -- through ambitious national policies and creative international cooperation focused on specific opportunities to cut emissions.
The aim of a deal at Copenhagen should be to reinforce developed countries' emissions cuts and link developing countries' actions on climate change to objectives in other areas -- such as economic growth, security, and air quality -- that leaders of those countries already care about. If, instead, negotiators focus on fighting against various governments' most entrenched positions, they may leave the world with nothing at all.
MOVING TARGETS
The goal of climate diplomacy should be a safe planet rather than a treaty for its own sake. There is an emerging consensus among negotiators that the world's governments should aim to cut emissions in half, ideally from 1990 levels, by 2050.
This target needs to be divvied up fairly between wealthy and developing nations. Even if rich countries managed to reduce their emissions to zero and all other nations held theirs steady, the world would still miss its 2050 target.
Most of the buildings, power plants, and industrial facilities built in the next decade will probably still be around several decades hence. Cutting emissions in 2050 thus requires changing global infrastructure investments today. Moreover, most innovation in energy technology will not happen in an inventor's garage. Most of the necessary innovation and cost cutting will come only as engineers and firms deploy clean-energy systems on a large scale and learn real-world lessons about which technologies and business models work. It will not be possible to make cheap emissions cuts in 2050 unless the world makes large-scale changes in investment patterns now. These decisions have clear near-term economic, and hence political, implications.
The European Union, Japan, and the United States have each proposed cutting their emissions by about 15 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, although some are weaker than they should be, they provide a realistic starting point for action. Yet similar goals for the world's other big emitters -- Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Russia -- would be unreasonable. China, India, and Indonesia have per capita GDPs that are less than a tenth that of the United States; Brazil and Russia are richer but still lag far behind the United States. As these countries develop and bring people out of poverty, their emissions will naturally rise -- and they should not be penalized for economic growth. Insufficient action in China, India, and Russia would also make it impossible to sustain domestic political support for U.S. efforts.
The goal for these three countries should be to deliver cuts in emissions intensity -- emissions per unit of GDP -- roughly equivalent to those the United States and Europe hope to achieve, aided where appropriate by Western financial and technological help. Under such a plan, emissions growth in China, India, and Russia would slow sharply. And if their economies develop along the lines that many project, their emissions would actually start to drop around 2025 -- a staggering turnaround that would help put the world on a safer environmental path.
OUT WITH THE OLD
Americans accustomed to thinking about climate diplomacy within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol may assume that the obvious next step is to translate reduction goals into emissions caps, put them in a treaty, and establish a system for global carbon trading. But this would be problematic for three reasons.
First, negotiators from developing countries would insist on much less stringent caps than whatever they thought they could meet. Higher caps would give them a cushion by maximizing the odds of their remaining in compliance even if their domestic policies for cutting emissions failed. Likewise, these loose caps would protect them if their economies shifted in unexpected ways that increased their emissions, as happened in China in the early part of this decade and could happen in India in the future. Inflated targets could also let developing countries collect large sums of money in exchange for little effort, if they were allowed to sell surplus emissions permits in a global cap-and-trade system. But potentially enormous financial flows from wealthy countries to poorer ones would make the system politically toxic in the West.
Second, even if a developing country met its agreed emissions cap, other nations would, in the near term, have little way of verifying this, since most developing countries, including China and India, lack the capacity to robustly monitor their entire economies' emissions.
And finally, even the second problem could be solved, simple caps would have little value on their own. Canada is a case in point. Ottawa will soon exceed its Kyoto limit by about 30 percent, yet it will face no penalty for doing so because the Kyoto parties never agreed on any meaningful punishments. The United States and others have essentially no way to hold countries such as China and India to emissions caps short of using punitive trade sanctions or other blunt instruments that would make a mess of broader U.S. foreign policy. Obsessing narrowly in Copenhagen over legally binding near-term caps for developing countries is therefore a waste of time.
The solution to all three problems is to focus on specific policies and measures that would control emissions in the biggest developing countries and on providing assistance and incentives to increase the odds that those efforts will succeed. Such bottom-up initiatives could include, among other things, requiring efficient technology in heavy industry, subsidizing renewable energy, investing in clean-coal technology, improving the monitoring and enforcement of building codes, and implementing economic development plans that provide alternatives to deforestation.
Actual emissions cuts happen because of policies, not promises, and the simple fact that governments could directly control these policies would increase the likelihood of success. Monitoring compliance would also be easier, since policies, unlike emissions targets, must be codified in law and reflected in specific changes on the ground. Developing countries could focus much of their near-term efforts on specific measures that dovetail with other objectives -- such as reducing oil imports or cutting air pollution -- making them more attractive and hence more likely to be implemented. Moreover, they could be linked to incentives from the outside, such as subsidized sales of efficient U.S. technology, which could be more effective and politically palatable than the simple but blunt financial incentives of a global cap-and-trade system.
GREEN CHINA, GREENER BRAZIL
China, the world's largest emitter, is already taking significant steps to cut emissions -- much more than most Americans appreciate. It has ambitious fuel-economy standards for its cars and trucks, fairly advanced codes for energy efficiency in its buildings, significant investments by its power companies in ultra-efficient conventional coal power and in wind power generation, and economic incentives for investments in renewable energy and for cutting industrial emissions.
China's dependence on cheap coal and oil may make the goal of rapid economic growth clash with that of controlling emissions, but it is not always a zero-sum game. For example, more efficient power plants, cars, and industrial facilities can help boost economic growth by saving money on resource costs over time.
The potential economic payoff may also come in the form of new technology that can be marketed to the world.
Shifting China onto a cleaner path will require Beijing to identify specific ways in which it can make deep emissions-intensity cuts. That could include better enforcement of building codes, mandating the use of efficient technology in factories, new subsidies for renewable energy, or a provisional commitment to use carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology on new coal plants by 2020. The United States and other wealthy countries should then offer to help China in whatever ways they usefully can. When it comes to building codes, Washington could help develop Beijing's monitoring and enforcement capacity; to aid heavy industry, international development banks could help provide loan financing for overhauls when Chinese capital markets do not; carbon-trading systems tailored to specific sectors could help Chinese firms sell carbon credits to wealthier countries if they exceed aggressive targets for cutting emissions intensity; wind power could be expanded by encouraging China to improve its protection of intellectual property, which would attract investment from international firms; and to help slash emissions from coal, the U.S. and Chinese governments could fund private demonstrations of CCS technology and share the resulting intellectual property so that Chinese firms could ultimately compete with those in the rest of the world.
Brazil presents a different sort of challenge altogether. Its energy system is one of the cleanest in the world, primarily because of its heavy reliance on hydroelectric power and biomass energy, but its emissions from deforestation vault it above India in the world's emissions rankings. Simply demanding that Brazil massively curb deforestation, even in exchange for money, will not solve the problem. The details will matter enormously.
There is too great an economic incentive for people to continue clearing forests and for the government to continue allowing it.
The solution will require the Brazilian government -- with the help of financial assistance from wealthier countries -- to pay ranchers, loggers, and others to stop cutting down trees. That might mean, for example, helping ranchers use land more efficiently, so that they could expand their incomes without encroaching on the forests. for example, if a broader scheme helps increase beef production on unforested lands, no new incentives for deforestation will be created. This is not a particularly elegant solution to global warming, but it is the sort of policy that might actually work.
An approach to dealing with climate change based on hundreds, if not thousands, of individual policies and measures may be messy, but the complexity of the problem requires it. Many who pine for a simpler solution are either ignoring the real challenges of international action or romanticizing the multilateral regimes that have dealt with other problems on this scale. But the genesis of other major international regimes, such as those dealing with nuclear weapons and global trade, illustrate that large global problems rarely have simple solutions.
REGIME CHANGE
Signed by its first participants in 1968, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) appears to be a model of simplicity: states with nuclear weapons agreed to eventually disarm, those without nuclear weapons pledged not to acquire them, and all states maintained a right to pursue civilian nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But the actual nuclear nonproliferation regime is far more complex. Countless bilateral and regional relationships, each of which requires careful management, are used to shape states' security decisions. The Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose multilateral cartel, tries to control sales of nuclear technology. The core institution of the regime, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which inspects civilian nuclear programs, actually predates the NPT. And as proliferation has transformed from a problem that governments could directly control into one involving private and nonstate actors, the regime has had to add various new appendages, such as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and the informal Proliferation Security Initiative.
Likewise, global trade agreements have been built piece by piece. The first round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in 1947, involved only 22 countries; the global regime has since grown gradually, alongside a range of bilateral and regional trade accords. These trade agreements have often been secured through broader deals that extend beyond economic issues and have sometimes been supported by "aid for trade" arrangements that build countries' basic capacities so that they can export goods. Moreover, trade agreements are far from simple. The agreements that created the World Trade Organization in 1995 total 550 pages, and the documents outlining each member state's commitments extend many pages beyond that. (China's accession protocol, for example, runs to 103 pages -- not including the extensive schedules detailing tariff and quota obligations on everything from hams to styrofoam.)
As with the regimes for nonproliferation and trade, an effective climate regime will require attention to technical detail and depend on contributions from a host of bilateral relationships and multilateral institutions. The United States will need to make protecting the climate an integral part of its bilateral dealings, particularly with the world's biggest emitters. And since progress will require including climate concerns alongside those regarding economic development and energy security, the issue will necessarily become an increasingly important part of the work that institutions such as the World Bank and the International Energy Agency do. That does not mean Washington should put climate change above all else -- indeed, the priorities of promoting national security and economic growth will often supersede the issue of climate change, just as nuclear nonproliferation and trade have sometimes been overshadowed by other objectives.
CONFIDENCE BUILDING
The negotiations leading up to Copenhagen have proceeded along five tracks: mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, and creating a vision for long-term cooperative action. Mitigation focuses on near-term commitments to cutting emissions; adaptation, on efforts to deal with unavoidable climate change; finance, on schemes to pay for emissions cuts; technology, on frameworks for advancing and distributing low-carbon technology; and creating a long-term vision（The world must cut its overall emission in half by 2050）, on developing a simple framework that ties all this together.
Perhaps the biggest prize that might realistically be won in Copenhagen (or soon after) is an agreement on measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV). These may seem like technicalities, but they are actually central to the success of any climate-change measures. One of the greatest barriers to unilateral emissions cuts, particularly in the United States, is the suspicion that other countries are not going to do their part. But if a country, such as India, does take steps to deeply reduce its emissions, whether through a UN deal or on its own, having both a process and an institution responsible for verifying those cuts will be essential. Such verification will help make it more politically feasible to undertake similar emissions-cutting actions elsewhere, including in the United States.
A solid MRV scheme would also help link the actions of developing countries to support from wealthier nations. Any assistance from rich countries for emissions-cutting activities in countries such as India will need to be contingent on the actual implementation of these projects. Conversely, the implementation of those emissions cuts will depend on recipients' confidence that the support promised to them will actually be delivered. By providing transparency for both sides, an MRV scheme would appeal to both developing countries in need of assistance and the wealthier nations supplying it.
THE COHA ROUND
An ambitious and legally binding deal on the other fronts -- mitigation, finance, and technology -- would be invaluable because it would increase confidence on all sides, which would, in turn, encourage further emissions-reduction efforts. But such a deal will be much harder to achieve and may be too far a reach right now. Negotiators should instead keep their expectations in check, aim for political agreement at Copenhagen on the form that a legal treaty on these fronts would ultimately take, and launch negotiations to fill in the difficult details later. If the major governments do eventually reach a comprehensive legal agreement, it may not happen for several years. This delay should not stop the Copenhagen delegates from striking intermediate deals and implementing their own national policies to put the world on the path to a safer climate.
When it comes to mitigation, the United States should put forward provisional 2020 and 2030 targets for its own emissions cuts as a concrete offer in these discussions. (The 2030 targets it is currently contemplating are aggressive and could blunt criticism that its 2020 targets are too weak.) Washington should also be clear that it will not sign a deal codifying any targets until it receives sufficient commitments to major emissions-cutting initiatives, such as schemes for avoiding deforestation or boosting low-carbon energy, from the biggest developing countries. Anything significantly more from the United States or less from Brazil, China, and India will make ratification in the U.S. Senate impossible.
Gaining concessions from developing countries' governments and support from European allies will require Washington to make credible financial offers as well. Such financial support will likely need to rise over time to more than $10 billion each year -- a large number, but only about three percent of what Washington spends on imported oil. The United States should push the biggest and wealthiest developing-country emitters to agree that they will need to take significant actions on their own before they can expect financial help from Washington. This sort of "matching" approach, which makes clear that everyone is investing effort, is the only one that has a chance of being accepted politically in the United States.
Furthermore, the U.S. government should argue that the Clean Development Mechanism -- a program established under the Kyoto Protocol that currently funds voluntary emissions-cutting projects through carbon trading -- must be streamlined, focused on the least developed countries, and expanded to include deforestation. Washington should also make sure that other financial support for emissions cuts, even if channeled bilaterally or through institutions such as the World Bank, has the same legitimacy in the eyes of world governments as money delivered through carbon trading or UN funds -- something that China, India, and others have resisted.
When it comes to technology, the United States is likely to invest far more in research, development, and demonstration projects than most other countries. But several developing countries will press for a deal in which rich countries share intellectual property related to clean technologies. This matters most for Brazil, China, and India, for whom the chance to become clean-technology leaders is a critical incentive for action. An agreement on intellectual property is more likely to be reached outside the UN negotiations than within them because of the idiosyncrasies involved in dealing with each country. The United States should assure poorer countries that intellectual-property rights will not drive up the cost of disseminating technology to the point where it is prohibitive. It should also offer to share a substantial part of whatever intellectual property its public investments in technology create in exchange for an agreement that other intellectual property will be protected.
The best Copenhagen can do on mitigation, finance, and technology is to establish a longer-term bargaining process in which the goal is getting the major developing countries to agree to specific emissions-cutting measures and getting wealthy countries to agree to provide assistance to poorer ones while also cutting their own emissions. This "Copenhagen Round" would be much more like an extended trade negotiation than like a typical environmental-treaty process. It may take many years before this results in a meaningful, legally binding agreement -- and even that outcome is far from assured.
Indeed, many forget that the last climate deal took over eight years to finish. The world agreed on a lengthy legal text in Kyoto in 1997, but the content was still sketchy; it was not until 2001 that the final details were hammered out in Marrakech, and it took a series of side deals to bring the treaty into force in 2005. Serious pre-Copenhagen negotiations are less than a year old, and ambitions are much higher this time around. Eight years is too long to wait for action -- but a bit of patience would be wise.
This makes it even more important for the United States to ensure that deals on adaptation, a long-term vision, and verification are not held hostage to what may be a very long stalemate. Washington should aim to have a deal on those fronts outlined in principle at Copenhagen and ironed out over the next year, even as work continues on the other parts of the agenda. Most important, the United States should make sure that aggressive bottom-up efforts to actually start cutting emissions, such as a U.S. cap-and-trade system and a sophisticated Brazilian effort to curb deforestation, do not wait for agreement on a comprehensive global deal. That is where the real action is, and there is no time to waste.
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今年12月，来自200多个国家的外交家们将齐聚哥本哈根探讨一个能够接替1997年京都议定书的新方案，这也将是首次将发达国家与具体减少温室气体排放绑定在一起。
许多对全球气候变暖问题关注的人士都对哥本哈根会议寄以厚望。联合国秘书长潘基文较早前曾强调：“我们必须利用政治力在今年12月的哥本哈根会议上达成一项新的气候问题方案，如若不然，我们的人民和地球将面临灾难性的打击。”
尽管各界对新方案的期待如此高涨，但想在今年12月就达成一项广泛的方案的可能性微乎极微。
不少美国政客希望中国和印度能在近期对气体排污实施最高限额制度，而这在至少大约10年内都是不可能的。中印两国也在期待发达国家到2020年能将自己的温室气体排放量比照1990年减少40%。可没有哪个发达国家哪怕能接近这个目标。同时，中国还与其他发展中国家一道，要求发达国家拿出自己GDP的1%, 也即每年3千亿美元，以资助其他国家减少温室气体排放，应对气候变化。拿出这么大笔的钱去资助自己的经济竞争对手，发达国家当然也很难照办。
没有任何迹象显示双方会作出大的妥协让步。而即使各国真能同意设定一个排放限额，很可能也只是空谈，因为没有任何机制或惩罚措施能强制各国去实施这一限额标准。全球减排的核心并不在于一份国际条约。全球减排必须自下而上的逐步建立——从各国国家政策及当具体减排机会出现时国际间有创意的合作开始。
哥本哈根的目标应该设定为加强发达国家的减排政策，同时将气候变化问题与发展中国家的其他问题——如经济发展、国家安全及空气质量——这些各国业已关注的问题联系起来。如果各国仍只是就各自立场争论不休，会议很可能将是一事无成。
转移目标
气候外交的目的应是为着一个更安全的地球，而不是为了条约而定条约。目前各国似乎已存在的共识是：到2050年，全世界应减排至1990年代的一半。这个任务应该在发达国家和发展中国家之间公平的分配。哪怕发达国家将自己的排放量减至零，没有其他国家的参与，2050目标也一样不可能实现。
在接下来的十年里新建的建筑物，发电厂和工业设备都将持续存在好几十年。这意味着要想达成2050目标，需要现在就对投资结构作出基础性的改革。另外，大多数能源领域的科技创新都不是来自小车间，而是来自于大企业的工程师们在大规模采用清洁能源技术的实战经验中摸索出的切实有效的技术。所以要想达成2050目标，就除非世界大规模改变现有的投资格局，这对现今的经济和政治都会带来明显的影响。
欧盟，日本及美国已经提案将率先达到2020年温室气体排放量比2005年降低15％的目标。虽然力度不大，但至少也迈出了一步。但这一目标对世界上其他的温室气体排放大国——巴西、中国、印度、印尼和俄罗斯来说，则几无可能。中、印及印尼的人均GDP还不足美国的1/10，巴西和俄罗斯稍富些，也远远落后美国。这些国家在努力发展的同时，排放量自然也会升高，她们不应该为发展经济而受到惩罚。针对她们的目标，应该放在排放强度上——，在发达国家资金和技术的援助下，使其单位GDP二氧化碳排放量达到一个满意的程度。这样的话，中印俄三国的排放量增速将会急速下降，如果三国的经济发展与减排相协调发展的话，到2025年，三国的排放量也将开始下降。这才是真正的挽救环境之道。
自下而上的行动将更为有效
因为京都议定书的思维定势，美国人倾向于认为下一步应是以国际条约的形式制定排放限额，以及国际排污交易。但这有三个问题。
首先，发展中国家会要求较宽松的限额。较高限额会让她们施政时有更多的回旋空间。如果国际排污交易成为现实的话，较高限额还可以使得发展中国家多拿钱少办事。
其次，即便某个国家真的达到了限额，其他国家也没有能力去核实，因为大多数发展中国家，包括中国和印度，都缺乏监管国家整体排放的能力。
最后，即便第二个问题解决了，限额制度也没什么用，渥太华很快将超过京都议定书限额的30%，但是却没有任何惩罚措施来制止它。京都议定书各方从未就任何惩罚措施达成协议。欲借哥本哈根会议给发展中国家设定限额，只是在浪费时间。
解决上述三个问题的关键在于，发展中国家出台具体政策和方法，以及发达国家提供援助以增加实施政策方法的动力，如，提供更高效节能的重工业科技，补助可再生能源和清洁煤技术, 对建筑规范提高监控和执行力度，减少森林砍伐的经济发展计划等。这就是一种自下而上的思路，要知道减排成功的关键在于政策，而不是曾诺。而且政策也比排放量更易于被外界监管。
绿色中国 绿色巴西
中国是世界上最大的排放国,快速增长经济的目标似乎与控制排放的目标相冲突,但这并不总是一场零和游戏。例如,长期来看，更有效率的电厂,汽车、工业设备将有助于节省经济增长的资源成本。此外新新技术还可以在国际市场上销售。
想让中国变得更清洁环保，需要北京拿出细节的措施来减少排放强度，这包括更严格的贯彻建筑标准，强制工厂使用更高效的技术、对可再生能源进行新的补贴,或者暂时承诺到2020年在新的燃煤电厂使用碳采集和存储技术(CCS)。而美国与其他发达国家则应尽可能的为之提供相关帮助。
巴西的问题不同，因为严重依赖于水电和生物质能源，巴西的能源系统是世界上最清洁的。但其排放量却超过印度，主要是因为大面积的毁林。简单的要求巴西限制砍伐,并不能解决问题。解决问题的关键同样在于具体的细节政策。
有太大的经济动因驱使人们继续砍伐森林。发达国家应从财政上援助农场主和伐木工停止砍伐。如,帮助牧场更高效利用土地,以便扩大收入。举个例子,如果出台政策鼓励在非林地增产牛肉，那么砍伐森林的经济驱因就会相应减少。这也许听起来荒唐，但它确是那种能带来实效的政策。
气候变化问题的复杂性使得其处理方案要由成百上千个的细节政策和措施来构建。许多人向往简单的解决方案只是忽略了国际行动的难度，并对多边国际机制心存浪漫的幻想。但是其他处理重大国际问题——如核问题和全球贸易——的国际机制的产生历史,却说明了大范围的国际问题很少有简单的解决方案。
转变体制
1986年签署的核不扩散条约（NPT）似乎很简单：拥有核武器的国家同意解除核武，没有核武器的承诺不寻求拥有它，但所有国家都保留追求用于和平目的的民用核能的权力。但实际的核不扩散制度要比这复杂得多。人们用无数的双边和区域关系来制定国家安全决策，这里面的每个关系都需要谨慎处理。松散的同业联盟——核供应集团，力图控制核技术的销售。事实上，负责审查民用核计划的国际原子能机构（该制度的核心机构），等于提前就把不扩散核武器条约实施了。由于扩散已经从一个政府可以直接控制的问题，转变成一个涉及非政府的角色。该制度还不得不添加各种新的附属条件，如纳恩-卢格降低威胁合作计划和非正式的防扩散安全倡议等。
同理，全球贸易协议也是一步步地建立起来的。1947年， 22个国家签署了第一轮关税贸易总协定。此后，该机构逐渐扩大，新增许多双边和区域贸易协定。这些贸易协定往往是以更广泛的，超越经济层面的交易为担保，并时有“贸易援助”协定的支持。“贸易援助”协定是用于建设国家的基本生产能力，使他们得以出口产品。此外，贸易协定远非如此简单。该协定于1995年设立世界贸易组织，文件就达550页。概述每一个会员国承诺的有关文件还要更多。（例如，中国入世协议达103页-这还不包括大量关税细节的时间安排和大大小小事物的配额义务等。）
因此，要建立有效的气候制度需要注意技术细节，并依赖许多双边关系和多边机构的帮助。美国将需要使气候保护成为其双边合作的一个组成部分，特别是与全球最大的排放国家。此外，由于取得进步不仅需要对气候关注，同时，也需要经济发展和能源安全。这个问题必然将成为世界银行和国际能源机构工作日益重要一部分。这并不意味着美国应该把气候变化问题放在高于一切的位置。确实，优先促进国家安全和经济增长往往会在轻重缓急上取代气候变化问题。正如有时其他目标也使核不扩散及世界贸易问题黯然失色一样。
建立互信
通向哥本哈根的谈判按照“减缓，适应，资金，技术，长期合作愿景”这五步不断前行。减缓，侧重于近期减排的承诺；适应，是指解决不可避免的气候变化的努力；资金，是指支付减排的计划；技术，是指技术开发与转让的框架；而建立一个长远的目标（2050年，全球必须将总排放量减少到一半），是指制定一个简单的框架，把所有这一切都捆绑在一起。
也许在哥本哈根（或许不久之后）的是达成一项关于衡量，报告和核查（MRV）的协议。这些看似是技术性，但它们实际上是所有气候变化措施获取成功的关键。怀疑其他国家不会尽自己的本分是单方面削减排放量的其中一个障碍。因此，检查的程序，以及负责核查削减结果的机构将是至关重要的。这种核查制度将使减排行动具有更强的政治可行性。
完整的MRV计划也将有助于使发展中国家的行动得到发达国家的支持。发达国家的一些减排援助活动在像印度这样的国家将需要视这些项目的实际执行而定。相反，这些减排的实施也将取决于受援国的信心，相信发达国家对他们所承诺的支持会真正落实。给双方都提供透明度的MRV计划将吸引需要援助的发展中国家和提供援助的富裕国家共同参与。
哥本哈根峰会
在其他方面（减缓，资金和技术）的法律协议也十分重要。因为它会增加各方面对减排的信心，但现在还难以企及。然而，谈判者们应力求在哥本哈根达成政治协议，表示将朝着一个最终的法律条约努力，然后开展谈判，处理棘手的细节问题。主要国家最终是否真的能达成一项全面的法律协议？这在几年内不会发生。不过这种滞后不会阻碍哥本哈根的会议代表们达成中段目标，执行本国的全球气候政策。
华府很清楚，在接到其他足够多的关于减排计划的承诺之前，它不会签署任何有明文规定目标的协议。这些计划包括最大发展中国家避免砍伐森林，促进低碳能源的发展。任何美国做得较多，或者巴西、中国、印度做得较少的事情，美国参议院都不可能批准。
获得发展中国家政府的让步和欧洲盟友的支持后，美国将被要求提供可靠的财务资助。随着时间推移，这样的财政支持很可能会需要增加到每年100亿美元，这虽是“天文数字”，但也只是美国花在进口石油上的1/3。美国应该推动最大的和最富有的发展中国家排放国，使他们同意自己先采取重大行动，然后才期望得到美国的经济援助。这是唯一有可能被美国接受的方式。
在技术方面，美国在研究、开发和示范项目上的投资，遥遥领先。但一些发展中国家迫切希望能达成一项共享清洁技术知识产权的协议。这对巴西，中国和印度来说至关重要。对他们来说，有机会成为清洁技术领跑者是他们采取行动的关键诱因。这个关于知识产权的协议更有可能在联合国以外达成，因为联合国牵涉面太广。美国应该向贫穷国家保证，知识产权不会把传播技术的成本推到使他们望而却步的地步。
在减缓，资金和技术方面，哥本哈根最可能的是建立一个长期的博弈过程，以争取主要的发展中国家同意具体化其减排措施；争取富裕国家同意给贫困者提供援助，同时也减少自己的排放量。这种“哥本哈根圆桌会议”更像广泛的贸易谈判，而不是典型的环保条约谈判进程。可能需要很多年的时间，才会出现在有意义的，具有法律约束力的协议。
事实上，许多人忘记了此前的气候协议经过了长达八年多的时间才达成。1997年，全球在京都商议了一个漫长的法律文本，但其内容依然粗略，直到2001年，才在Marrakech才敲定最终的细节。在2005年，这个协议还采取了一系列的附属协议以使得其条约生效。哥本哈根先期谈判至今还不到1年，但今次它的野心却要大得多。再一个8年或许是太长了——但多一点耐心将是明智的。
美国需确保关于适应、长远愿景以及核查等方面的协议不陷于长久的僵局中，这一点至关重要。华府应致力于将上述目标列为哥本哈根原则，并在来年开始着手处理。最为重要的是，那些自下而上的努力不须等一个全球协定后才开始，如美国排污限额和排污交易系统，和巴西成熟的制止砍伐森林的办法等。真正行动起来吧，一切已经如箭在弦了。
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