Only ten days ago you might have thought that the banks had been fixed after the nightmare of the financial crisis in 2007-09. Now it is clear that they still have the power to cause a heart-stopping scare. A ferocious run at Silicon Valley Bank on March 9th saw $42bn in deposits flee in a day. svb was just one of three American lenders to collapse in the space of a week. Regulators worked frantically over the weekend to devise a rescue. Even so, customers are asking once again if their money is safe.

就在十天前，你可能还以为银行在经历了2007-09年金融危机的噩梦后已经得到了修复。现在很明显，银行仍然有能力引发惊心动魄的恐慌。3月9日，硅谷银行发生了一场惨烈的挤兑，一天之内就有420亿美元的存款流失。一周内倒闭了三家美国银行，硅谷银行只是其中之一。整个周末，监管机构都在拼命地设计救助方案。即便如此，消费者再次质疑存款的安全性。

Investors have taken fright. Fully $229bn has been wiped off the market value of America’s banks so far this month, a fall of 17%. Treasury yields have tumbled and markets now reckon the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates in the summer. Share prices of banks in Europe and Japan have plunged, too. Credit Suisse, which faces other woes, saw its stock fall by 24% on March 15th and on March 16th it sought liquidity support from the Swiss central bank. Fourteen years since the financial crisis, questions are once again swirling about how fragile banks are, and whether regulators have been caught out.

投资者陷入恐慌。本月到目前为止，美国银行的市值已经蒸发了2290亿美元，损失了17%。国债券收益率下滑，现在市场预测美联储将在夏天开始降息。欧洲和日本的银行股价也出现暴跌。瑞士信贷集团面临其他困境，3月15日股票下跌24%，3月16日向瑞士央行寻求流动性援助。上次金融危机已经过去14年，人们再次质疑银行有多脆弱，监管机构是否存在纰漏。

The high-speed collapse of svb has cast light on an underappreciated risk within the system. When interest rates were low and asset prices high the Californian bank loaded up on long-term bonds. Then the Fed raised rates at its sharpest pace in four decades, bond prices plunged and the bank was left with huge losses. America’s capital rules do not require most banks to account for the falling price of bonds they plan to hold until they mature. Only very large banks must mark to market all of their bonds that are available to trade. But, as svb discovered, if a bank wobbles and must sell bonds, unrecognised losses become real.

硅谷银行的快速倒闭暴露出系统内一个被低估的风险。当利率走低，资产价格走高时，这家加州银行大量持有长期债券。后来美联储以四十年来最快的速度加息，引起债券价格暴跌，银行巨额亏损。美国的资本规则不要求大多数银行对持有至到期债券的价格下跌负责，只有特大型银行才必须对所有可供交易的债券实行按市值计价。但正如硅谷银行看到的，如果银行出现动荡，必须出售债券，那么未实现损失就会成为已实现损失。

Across America’s banking system, these unrecognised losses are vast: $620bn at the end of 2022, equivalent to about a third of the combined capital cushions of America’s banks. Fortunately, other banks are much further away from the brink than svb was. But rising interest rates have left the system vulnerable.

在美国的整个银行系统中，未实现损失很庞大：2022年底高达6200亿美元，相当于美国银行资本缓冲总额的三分之一。幸亏其他银行远未达到硅谷银行那样倒闭的地步，但利率持续走高使银行系统变得脆弱。

The financial crisis of 2007-09 was the result of reckless lending and a housing bust. Post-crisis regulations therefore sought to limit credit risk and ensure that banks hold assets that will reliably have buyers. They encouraged banks to buy government bonds: nobody, after all, is more creditworthy than Uncle Sam and nothing is easier to sell in a crisis than Treasuries.

2007-09年的金融危机是鲁莽放贷和房地产泡沫破裂造成的。所以危机后的监管试图限制信贷风险，确保银行持有的资产卖得出去。他们鼓励银行购买政府债券：毕竟没有人比山姆大叔更有信誉，危机中没有什么比国债更容易出售。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Many years of low inflation and interest rates meant that few considered how the banks would suffer if the world changed and longer-term bonds fell in value. This vulnerability only worsened during the pandemic, as deposits flooded into banks and the Fed’s stimulus pumped cash into the system. Many banks used the deposits to buy long-term bonds and government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities.

多年的低通胀和低利率意味着，很少有人考虑如果世界发生变化，长期债券贬值，银行会遭受怎样的损失。新冠疫情使这种脆弱性恶化，存款大量涌入银行，美联储的刺激措施向银行系统注入了大量现金。许多银行使用存款购买长期债券，以及政府担保的住房抵押贷款支持证券。

You might think that unrealised losses don’t matter. One problem is that the bank has bought the bond with someone else’s money, usually a deposit. Holding a bond to maturity requires matching it with deposits and as rates rise, competition for deposits increases. At the largest banks, like JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America, customers are sticky so rising rates tend to boost their earnings, thanks to floating-rate loans. By contrast, the roughly 4,700 small and mid-sized banks with total assets of $10.5trn have to pay depositors more to stop them taking out their money. That squeezes their margins—which helps explain why some banks’ stock prices have plunged.

你可能认为未实现损失不要紧。问题是银行使用别人的钱（通常是存款）购买债券。持有债券至到期需要与存款挂钩，随着利率上升，银行对存款的竞争会加剧。在摩根大通或美国银行等最大的银行，客户具有粘性，所以利率上升往往会提高他们的收入，这要归功于浮动利率贷款。相比之下，总资产达10.5万亿美元的大约4700家中小银行只有向储户支付更多的利息，才能阻止他们取出资金。这挤压了中小银行的利润——有助于解释为什么某些银行的股价暴跌。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The other problem affects banks of all sizes. In a crisis once-loyal depositors could flee, forcing the bank to cover deposit outflows by selling assets. If so, the bank’s losses would crystallise. Its capital cushion might look comforting today, but most of its stuffing would suddenly become an accounting fiction.

另一个问题影响到各种规模的银行。曾经忠诚的储户在危机中可能会逃离，迫使银行通过出售资产来弥补存款外流。这样一来，银行的损失就会成为现实。银行的资本缓冲在今天看来可能令人欣慰，但大部分资金可能突然变成假账。

That alarming prospect explains why the Fed acted so dramatically last weekend. Since March 12th it has stood ready to make loans secured against banks’ bonds. Whereas it used to impose a haircut on the value of the collateral, it will now offer loans up to the bonds’ face value. With some long-term bonds, this can be more than 50% above market value. Given such largesse, it is all but impossible for the unrealised losses on a bank’s bonds to cause a collapse. And that means that the bank’s depositors have no reason to start a run.

这一令人担忧的前景解释了美联储为什么在上周末采取大力举措。自3月12日以来，美联储准备以银行债券作担保发放贷款。美联储过去扣减抵押品的价值，但现在要发放高达债券面值的贷款，某些长期债券可能比市值高出50%以上。考虑到美联储的慷慨解囊，银行债券的未实现损失几乎不可能导致银行倒闭，也意味着银行储户没有理由进行挤兑。

The Fed is right to lend against good collateral to stop runs. But such easy terms carry a cost. By creating the expectation that the Fed will assume interest-rate risks in a crisis, they encourage banks to behave recklessly. The emergency programme is supposed to last only for a year but, even after it has expired, banks competing for deposits will search for high returns by taking excessive risks. Some depositors, knowing that the Fed has stepped in once, will not have much reason to discriminate between good risks and bad.

美联储以优质抵押物为担保发放贷款，以阻止银行挤兑的做法是正确的。但这样的优待办法是有代价的，由于产生了美联储会在危机中承担利率风险的预期，这会怂恿银行鲁莽行事。这项应急计划应该只持续一年，但即使该计划到期后，竞争存款的银行仍将通过过度冒险来寻求高回报。某些储户知道美联储干预过一次，他们就没什么理由去区分小风险和大风险。

Regulators must therefore use the year ahead to make the system safer. One step is to remove many of the odd exemptions that apply to mid-sized banks, some of which were the result of post-crisis rules being rolled back amid much lobbying in 2018 and 2019. The rescue of depositors in svb demonstrates that policymakers think such banks pose systemic risks. If so, they should face the same accounting and liquidity rules as the megabanks—as they do in Europe—and be required to submit to the Fed plans for their orderly resolution if they fail. In effect, this would force them to increase their safety buffers.

因此，监管机构必须在未来一年里让银行系统更加安全。一项举措是取消适用于中型银行的许多奇怪的豁免条款，部分条款是在2018年和2019年的大量游说期间，危机后规则被取消的结果。对硅谷银行储户的救助表明，决策者认为这种银行会构成系统性风险。如果这样的话，它们应该面临与大型银行相同的会计与流动性规则——正如它们在欧洲所面临的——并要求它们向美联储提交计划，阐述在倒闭时采取什么有序的解决方案。

Buffering, please wait

缓冲，且慢
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Regulators everywhere must also build a regime that recognises the risks from rising interest rates. A bank with unrealised losses will be at greater risk of failure during a crisis than one without such losses. Yet this disparity is not reflected in capital requirements. One idea is to stress-test what might happen to a bank’s safety cushion were its bond portfolios marked to market, and if rates rose further. Policymakers could then consider whether on this measure the system has enough capital.

各地的监管机构还必须建立一种制度，认识到利率上升带来的风险。在危机中，有未实现损失的银行比没有此类损失的银行面临更大的倒闭风险，但这种差异并没有反映在资本要求上。一种办法是压力测试，如果银行的债券投资组合实行按市值计价，并且利率继续上升，银行的安全缓冲会怎么样，决策者以这种标准衡量银行系统是否拥有足够的资本。

Bankers will hate the idea of yet more capital buffers and rulemaking. But the gains from safety are vast. Depositors and taxpayers from Silicon Valley to Switzerland are facing a mighty scare. They should not have to live with the fear and fragility they thought had been consigned to history years ago.

银行家们厌恶增加资本缓冲和规则的想法，但安全带来的好处是巨大的。无论硅谷还是瑞士，储户和纳税人都在面临巨大的恐慌。他们不应该生活在恐慌和脆弱中，他们原本以为这种恐慌和脆弱早在几年前就已成为历史。