距离华尔街陷入混乱已经过去一年多了。值得注意的是，美国政府几乎没有采取任何措施来防止华尔街再次陷入混乱。
事实上，闭上眼睛，我们仿佛又回到了2007年的狂乱之中。银行家们依然在下着疯狂的赌注，依然在设计新型衍生产品，依然在堆积债务。承蒙美联储(Fed)恩典，大型银行获取资金的成本几乎和2007年一样低廉，因此银行利润上升，发放的奖金与经济鼎盛时期同样慷慨。
有动力做出风险更高的押注
唯一的区别是，如今华尔街的几大银行知道自己“规模过大不能倒闭”，如果遇到麻烦会得到纳税人的纾困——这意味着他们完全有动力做出风险更高的押注。当然，与此同时美国纳税人亏了1200亿美元，还有数百万人失去了房子、工作和储蓄。
如果参众两院里负责制定新监管体制的各委员会即将严惩华尔街，如果奥巴马(Obama)政府在督促他们这么做，一切还情有可原。但压根没这么回事儿。
上周，参议院银行委员会主席克里斯•多德(Chris Dodd)宣布，他不会在11月寻求连任，表明他是即将卸任、无心作为的官员，银行让他做任何事都会照办。美国银行家协会(American Bankers Association)首席执行官爱德华•英林(Edward Yingling)表示，多德的决定“提高了制定监管改革法案的可能性”，因为这“将他从本来会让他更难以妥协的政治动态中解放了出来”。翻译一下就是：多德领导的委员会将经过讨论和修正的法案提交给参议院辩论表决——民主党若不这么做会非常窘迫——但这项法案会非常无力，因为选民无法再因为多德对华尔街软弱而惩罚他。
确保华尔街未来能够得到纾困
众议院已经成型的法案也不怎么鼓舞人心。所谓《华尔街改革与消费者保护法案》(Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act)，实际上确保了华尔街未来能够得到纾困。该法案授权各联邦储备银行在下一次华尔街垮台时，提供高达4万亿美元的紧急资金。这比去年美联储向金融市场注入资金的两倍还要多。该法案还给予政府在银行业危机中为金融公司的债务提供担保的权力——对债券持有者来说，这是完美的保险政策。当然，法案规定，只有当“所有资金和利息被偿还的可能性至少为99%时”，美联储和财政部才有权使用这笔资金，但有关爆发在即的经济灾难的预测能够轻易变通，特别是在涉及到为华尔街纾困时。
如果这还不够，众议院法案创造的监管漏洞之大，足以让银行家们开着捷豹跑车穿过。以衍生品为例。去年，正当纳税人向华尔街砸钱时，国会领袖承诺，将规定衍生品交易只能在公开交易所进行，以便披露衍生品价格并制定保证金要求，提高交易商偿付押注的可能性。但众议院法案豁免了600万亿美元未结清衍生品交易中的近半数。
该法案还允许——值得注意的是，不是要求——监管机构“禁止任何基于激励的薪酬安排”。这使得丰厚的奖金变成行业惯例，除非监管者有理由禁止发放奖金。而正如我们去年所目睹的那样，银行监管机构往往不愿破坏现状。众议院法案甚至没有试着解决评级机构与华尔街之间的利益冲突，正是这种利益冲突导致前者对后者背负的风险视而不见。
应该赞许的是，众议院法案提出成立“消费者金融保护局”(Consumer Financial Protection Agency)，来保护债务人抵御掠夺性放贷行为。银行监管机构有权力为消费者提供保护，但没有做到，因此通过成立新机构强化这种权力有一定意义。但参议院的共和党人坚决反对，而多德乐于妥协的新意愿很可能会让它胎死参议院。
破产法不允许房产业主宣布破产
真正值得注意的是国会和奥巴马政府都没有兴趣做的事情。大批美国人因为银行收回抵押房产而失去了自己的居所，或正面临这种危险。然而，美国破产法不允许房产业主宣布破产，然后对其抵押贷款进行重组。如果法律允许这么做，房产业主在与银行谈判时就能拥有更大的讨价还价能力。但不管是国会还是奥巴马政府，都没有推进破产法的改革。华尔街反对这种改革，而且本来就在限制个人破产范围方面扮演了关键角色。
对于曾经存在于商业银行业务和投资银行业务之间的那堵墙，立法者们也没有表现出任何修复的热情。在1929年大萧条(Great Crash)之后通过的《格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法》(Glass-Steagall Act)对两种业务进行了区分，因为很显然商业储蓄必须得到政府担保，并远离投行业务的“赌博室”。但华尔街迫使国会在1999年拆掉了那堵墙，使得花旗集团(Citigroup)这样的金融超市能够利用其储蓄进行各种各样的赌注。连奥巴马的顾问、前美联储主席保罗•沃克尔(Paul Volcker)都主张两种业务应该被再次分开。
也没有任何人认真讨论一下如何利用反垄断法来拆散最大的几家银行——反垄断法是针对一切“规模过大不能倒闭”的资本主义实体的传统药方。如今五大华尔街银行统治着美国的金融界。如果一百年前分拆石油和铁路巨头、以及后来分拆美国电话电报公司(AT&T)这样的庞然大物符合公共利益，那么将花旗集团、美国银行(Bank of America)、摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)、高盛(Goldman Sachs)和摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)构成的这团大得几乎没边的乱局打散也不是没有道理。还没有人拿得出一个明确的理由，说明为什么大型银行对美国经济很重要。无论是逻辑还是经验都表明：事实恰恰相反。
去年的狠话去了哪里？
去年早些时候国会和白宫的那些狠话都跑到哪里去了？为什么金融改革的议程规模如此之小，开展得如此之晚？
部分答案在于，美国公众转移了注意力。美国政坛上的一条重要原则是，如果政治家等的时间够久，公众的注意力就会转移。鉴于金融危机似乎已经结束，公众目前更关心的是就业。12月份又有8.5万个职位流失。自从2007年12月经济开始步入衰退以来，总失业人数已超过700万。目前六个美国人中，就有一个失业或没有充分就业。
然而，总统和国会如果有意，他们本可以帮助美国人理解大范围失业与华尔街不负责任、致使美国陷入“大衰退”之间的关系。他们可以推行严厉的金融改革，作为实现长期就业持续增长的一条对策。
诚然，金融规章不会成为精辟有力的汽车保险杆标语。没有多少美国人知道华尔街居民整天都在干些什么。知道或关心债务抵押证券(CDO)或信用违约互换的人就更少了。如果说美国人关注过哪项公共政策的详情，那就是医疗改革议案。但这就带出一个问题：为何金融改革没有在总统和民主党领导人的议程上占据更靠前的位置？
华尔街的政治能量
一个更重要的缘由恐怕是华尔街具有左右美国政治过程的力量。华尔街是金钱汇聚之地，而有钱就能在电视上大做竞选广告。华尔街的公司和高管一向对两党都很慷慨，并且是民主党最大赞助者之一。从2008年11月到2009年11月期间，华尔街累计捐给国会议员4200万美元，大部分是捐给参众两院的银行业委员会和两院领导人。在2009年前3个季度，该行业共花费3.44亿美元用于游说——华尔街由此成为华盛顿的一大势力。
金钱的作用巨大。清谈则很廉价。奥巴马近期指摘高级银行家是“肥猫”。而银行家们则坚称，他们感到震惊——为他们雇用的说客坚决反对金融改革而感到震惊。银行家们甚至宣称，他们的意图与他们的说客的行为存在“脱节”。当然，这都是镜头前的做秀。
然而，华尔街与“主街”之间的鸿沟越来越大：前者得到大笔援助，后者领取失业救济；前者获取巨额利润并分发丰厚奖金，后者失业没工资可领；前者信心满满，后者深陷焦虑，忿忿不平；前者住进更奢华的宅邸，后者供不起房——这种局面是危险的。去年夏天，当获得纳税人资金援助的美国国际集团(AIG)向高管们分发高额奖金时，美国人怒气冲天。如果华尔街不久后拿出数十亿美元作为奖金，美国人不会高兴。愤怒的民粹主义正潜伏在美国两党政治的表层之下。听听沙拉•佩林(Sarah Palin)或与她相当的人物在美国电台和电视谈话类节目上的言论，就能感受到这一点。从长远来看，在改造华尔街一事上，政治层面与经济层面一样关系重大。
本文作者是美国前劳工部长、加州大学(University of California)伯克利分校公共政策教授，其最新著作名为《超级资本主义》(Supercapitalism)
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001030841
It has been more than a year since all hell broke loose on Wall Street and, remarkably, almost nothing has been done to prevent all hell from breaking loose again.
In fact, close your eyes and you could be back in the wilds of 2007. Bankers are still making wild bets, still devising new derivatives, still piling on debt. The big banks have access to money almost as cheaply as in 2007, courtesy of the Fed, so bank profits are up and bonuses as generous as at the height of the boom.
The only difference is that now the Street's biggest banks know they are “too big to fail” and will be bailed out by taxpayers if they get into trouble – which means they have every incentive to make even riskier bets. And, of course, American taxpayers are out some $120bn, while millions have lost their homes, jobs and savings.
All could be forgiven if the House and Senate committees with responsibility for coming up with new regulations were about to come down hard on the Street and if the Obama administration were pushing them to. But nothing of the sort is happening.
Last week, Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, announced he would not seek re-election next November, recasting himself as a lame duck who will do whatever the banks want. Mr Dodd's decision “makes it more likely that regulatory reform will be enacted”, says Edward Yingling, chief executive of the American Bankers Association, because it “frees him from political dynamics that would have made it more difficult for him to compromise”. Translated: Dodd's committee will report out a bill – Democrats would be embarrassed not to – but it will be weak because voters can no longer penalise Mr Dodd for rolling over for the Street.
The bill that has already emerged from the House is hardly encouraging. Dubbed the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act”, it effectively guarantees future Wall Street bail-outs. The bill authorises Fed banks to provide up to $4,000bn in emergency funding the next time the Street crashes. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into financial markets last year. The bill also enables the government, in a banking crisis, to back financial firms' debts – a wonderful insurance policy if you are a bondholder. To be sure, the bill authorises the Fed and Treasury to spend these funds only when “there is at least a 99 per cent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back,” but predictions about pending economic disasters can be conveniently flexible, especially when it comes to bailing out the Street.
If this were not enough, the House bill creates regulatory loopholes big enough for bankers to drive their Jaguars through. Consider derivatives. Last year, as taxpayers threw money at the Street, congressional leaders promised to put derivative trading on public exchanges. The prices of derivatives could be disclosed and margin requirements imposed, making it more likely that traders would make good on their bets. Yet the House bill exempts nearly half the $600,000bnof outstanding derivatives trades.
The bill also allows – but, notably, does not require – regulators to “prohibit any incentive-based payment arrangement”. This makes fat bonuses the norm unless a regulator has reason to prevent them. And as we witnessed last year, bank regulators tend not to disturb the status quo. The House bill does not even make an attempt to unravel the conflict of interest that led credit ratings agencies to turn a blind eye to the risks the Street was taking on.
To its credit, the House bill does create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect borrowers from predatory lending. Banking regulators have authority to protect consumers but failed to do so, so consolidating these powers in a new agency makes some sense. But Senate Republicans are dead-set against it, and Mr Dodd's new willingness to compromise may well doom it in that chamber.
What is truly remarkable is what Congress and the administration have shown no interest in doing. Large numbers of Americans have lost their homes to bank foreclosures or are in danger of doing so. Yet American bankruptcy law does not allow homeowners to declare bankruptcy and have their mortgages reorganised. If it did, homeowners would have more bargaining power to renegotiate with banks. But neither Congress nor the administration has pushed to change the bankruptcy laws. Wall Street opposes such change and was instrumental in narrowing the scope of personal bankruptcy in the first place.
Nor have lawmakers shown any enthusiasm for resurrecting the wall that used to exist between commercial and investment banking. The Glass-Steagall Act, passed in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, separated the two after it became obvious that commercial deposits needed to be insured by government and kept distinct from the betting parlour of investment banking. But Wall Street forced Congress to take down the wall in 1999, enabling financial supermarkets such as Citigroup to use its deposits to make all sorts of bets. Even Obama adviser and former Fed chief Paul Volcker has argued that the two functions should be separated again.
Nor is anyone talking seriously about using antitrust laws to break up the biggest banks – the traditional tonic for any capitalist entity that is “too big to fail”. Five giant Wall Street banks now dominate US finance. If it was in the public's interest to break up giant oil companies and railroads a century ago, and the mammoth telephone company AT&T, it is not unreasonable to break up the almost infinitely extensive tangles of Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. No one has offered a clear reason why giant banks are important to the US economy. Logic and experience suggests the reverse.
What happened to all the tough talk from Congress and the White House early last year? Why is the financial reform agenda so small, and so late?
Part of the answer is that the American public has moved on. A major tenet of US politics is that if politicians wait long enough, public attention wanders. With the financial crisis appearing to be over, the public is more concerned about jobs. Another 85,000 jobs were lost in December, bringing total losses since the recession began in December 2007 to over 7m. One out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed.
Yet if the president and Congress wanted to, they could help Americans understand the link between widespread job losses and the irresponsibility on Wall Street that plunged America into the Great Recession. They could make tough financial reform part of the answer to sustain-able jobs growth over the long term.
True, financial regulation does not make a powerful bumper sticker. Few Americans know what the denizens of Wall Street do all day. Even fewer know or care about collateralised debt obligations or credit default swaps. To the extent Americans have been paying attention to the details of any public policy, it has been the healthcare reform bill. But that only begs the question of why financial reform has not been higher on the agenda of the president and Democratic leaders.
A larger explanation, I am afraid, is the grip Wall Street has over the American political process. The Street is where the money is and money buys campaign commercials on television. Wall Street firms and executives have been uniquely generous to both parties, emerging as one of the largest benefactors of the Democrats. Between November 2008 and November 2009, Wall Street doled out $42m to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders. In the first three quarters of 2009, the industry spent $344m on lobbying – making the Street one of the major powerhouses in the nation's capital.
Money is powerful. Talk is cheap. Mr Obama recently called the top bankers “fat cats”, and the bankers insisted they were shocked – shocked! – to learn how intransigent their lobbyists had been in opposing financial reform. The bankers even claimed a “disconnect” between their intentions and their lobbyists' actions. This was all for the cameras, of course.
But the widening gulf between Wall Street and Main Street – a big bail-out for the former, unemployment checks for the latter; high profits and giant bonuses for the former, job and wage losses for the latter; buoyant expectations of the former, deep anxiety and cynicism by the latter; ever fancier estates for denizens of the former; mortgage foreclosures for the rest – is dangerous. Americans went ballistic early last summer when AIG executives got big bonuses after taxpayers had bailed them out. They will not be happy when Wall Street hands out billions in bonuses very soon. Angry populism lurks just beneath the surface of two-party politics in America. Just listen to Sarah Palin or her counterparts on American talk radio and yell television. Over the long term, the political stakes in reforming Wall Street are as high as the economic.
The author, a former US labour secretary, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is Supercapitalism
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