主题：【文摘】美国思想阵营的分野的一个金融窥探 -- jugojl6

在Bloomberg看到这个，很有意思。

可以得到几个初步观点：

1 TARP基本没用——“没用”指在最浅显最起码所需要的金融系统恢复上“没用”。金融系统仍然是瘫痪的，市场利息和目标利息之间鸿沟巨大，只不过在08年10月份这个鸿沟横亘在 银行间利率和美国短期国债反映的目标利率之间，现在则横亘在商业银行间利率和银行向外操作实际经济业务时的利率之间。

2 形势很严峻，O8马很着急。

3 美国的既得利益阶层的雇佣文人（如加里·贝克尔）和中国的宪章派、崇洋派、买办文人一样，继续一条路走到黑。必将遭到美国普通人民的唾弃。

美国有可能再次爆发30年代中期的社会运动。

Banks’ ‘Catatonic Fear’ Means Consumers Don’t Get TARP Relief

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By James Sterngold

Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- As the new owner of $172.5 billion of preferred shares and warrants in 208 U.S. financial institutions, the Treasury Department hasn’t succeeded in thawing frozen credit markets, leaving taxpayers propping up an industry that won’t lend to them.

While inter-bank lending rates have fallen since Congress approved the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program on Oct. 3, most bank lending to consumers remains tight and interest rates high. The average credit-card rate was 14.33 percent on Dec. 16, according to IndexCreditCards.com in Cleveland, almost unchanged from 14.41 percent in October 2007.

That’s prompted criticism from Alan S. Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University in New Jersey and a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, who says the government should take a more active role as a stakeholder in the nation’s banks.

“With the banks in a state of catatonic fear now, they’re just sitting on the capital,” Blinder said in an interview. “I don’t fault the banks one bit, since this shows Wall Street they’re safer, but then this doesn’t get you much improvement. If you’re taking money from the public purse, we should get something in return, and we’re really not.”

Jeffrey Garten, a professor of international trade and finance at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, and a Commerce Department undersecretary during the Clinton administration, says banks should be forced to increase their lending or risk having taxpayer money taken away.

“The government isn’t acting aggressively enough to demand a quid pro quo,” Garten said. “The public good is the key to the private good in this case. It’s not the other way around.”

$8.5 Trillion

Although the government has committed more than $8.5 trillion to energizing the economy, and the Fed cut a key lending rate almost to zero, banks haven’t made it easier to borrow. The Fed said consumer credit fell by $6.4 billion in August, the largest drop in 65 years, and then by $3.5 billion in October, the first time since 1992 that there were two months of declines in a year.

In its most recent quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey in October, the Fed reported that about 85 percent of U.S. banks said they had tightened standards on commercial and industrial loans to companies with more than $50 million in annual sales, up from 60 percent in July. Ninety-five percent said they increased the cost of those loans. About 70 percent said they made it more difficult to obtain prime mortgages, and almost 65 percent said they did the same for consumer loans.

Mortgage Rates

While mortgage rates have declined, they haven’t fallen as fast as bank borrowing rates, meaning financial institutions are demanding more profit for every dollar they lend. Average rates on 30-year residential mortgages fell to 5.14 percent last month, according to data compiled by McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac. That’s down from 6.67 percent in June 2007, before the worst turmoil in the housing market. At the same time, the spread of mortgage rates over the 10-year Treasury bond yield rose to 2.958 percentage points from 1.567.

The spread of rates on so-called jumbo mortgages, those of more than $729,750, is close to a record at 1.6 percentage points above the rate for smaller mortgages that conform to terms of ones Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will purchase, according to financial data firm BanxQuote in White Plains, New York. A year ago the difference was 0.23 percentage points.

High interest rates have angered consumers. The Fed has offered relief in the form of rule changes that allow banks to raise rates only on new credit cards and future purchases, not on existing balances. Banks will also have to give cardholders 45 days notice of changes in terms, up from 15 days. Those changes aren’t scheduled to take effect until July 2010.

‘We Own Them’

“We own them now, and we should use that to make sure they stop ripping us off,” said Gail Hillebrand, head of the financial-services campaign at Consumers Union, an advocacy group based in Yonkers, New York. “We shouldn’t allow banks to use the money to support things that hurt consumers and taxpayers. What we’re looking for is responsible behavior, not social benefits.”

Bank profits or returns on the government investments are secondary concerns, Hillebrand said.

That view is opposed by free-market advocates such as Gary Becker, a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago and a Nobel Prize winner, who says the primary aim of the government bailout should be a hasty withdrawal from investments that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

“If you believe in a private-enterprise system, you use competition to control the banks, not a stakeholding,” Becker said. “It would be a grave mistake to use these private institutions for social goals.”

Paulson Changes Course

Diane Casey-Landry, chief operating officer of the American Bankers Association, a trade group in Washington, said that bank profitability had to come ahead of any demand to ease lending.

“Taxpayers should get a return on their investment,” Casey-Landry said. “We have to go back to a time when we realize not everyone is entitled to get a loan. What is going to get us out of this recession is sound lending to people who are going to pay it back, not throwing money at people who can’t.”

When Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in October authorizing TARP, the funds were supposed to be used to acquire troubled mortgage-related assets from banks in order to ease credit.

“The underlying weakness in our financial system today is the illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Sept. 19. “These illiquid assets are choking off the flow of credit that is so vitally important to our economy. When the financial system works as it should, money and capital flow to and from households and businesses to pay for home loans, school loans and investments that create jobs.”

TARP Allocations

Two weeks after the legislation was passed, Paulson changed course and said it was more important to recapitalize the banks, allowing them to determine how best to deploy their capital.

Since then, Treasury has allocated $250 billion to buy non- voting preferred shares of banks paying a 5 percent annual dividend, as well as warrants convertible into equity. The investments range from $25 billion each in JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. in San Francisco to $1.6 million in Westminster, California-based Saigon National Bank.

In addition, $40 billion has gone to New York-based American International Group Inc.; another $20 billion to Citigroup in New York, along with a $5 billion guarantee against possible losses; $20 billion to purchase consumer and small-business loans; and $13.4 billion to Detroit-based automakers General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

‘No New Lending’

Last week the government announced that $5 billion of TARP funds would be used to purchase preferred shares and warrants in GMAC LLC, the automaker’s financing arm, with Treasury separately lending another $1 billion to GM to support GMAC’s transition into a bank holding company.

With the exception of GMAC, which immediately began offering loans to GM customers with lower credit scores in order to halt the decline in auto sales, most financial institutions that received TARP funds have been reluctant to lend.

“Right now there is no new lending, and without new lending it’s going to be difficult for the economy to recover,” Roger Altman, founder and chief executive officer of boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc. and an assistant Treasury secretary in the Carter administration, said in a Dec. 29 interview with Bloomberg TV.

Stifling Innovation

A report released Dec. 2 by the Government Accountability Office in Washington questioned whether Treasury is policing the cascade of federal money closely enough.

“Although Treasury has said that it expects the institutions to increase the flow of credit,” the report said the department “has not yet determined whether it will impose reporting requirements on the participating financial institutions.”

David John, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a public policy and research group in Washington, said it was inappropriate for the government to demand policy changes from the banks and that doing so would be counterproductive because it would stifle innovation. Instead, he said banks should use the capital to recover stability and then be forced to return the taxpayer funds.

“Bureaucrats take no risks, they have no ideas,” John said. “If this recoups a profit for the taxpayer, great, but a slight loss would be acceptable. I don’t see it as a long-term value to be an activist shareholder.”

‘No Road Map’

There are no partisan lines separating those who favor a passive investment strategy and those who want the government to play a more active role.

“I do not see the Treasury or the Fed as active investors in the banks, and it would be a mistake if they were,” said Martin N. Baily, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration and now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “The goal is to stabilize the financial sector and to be mindful of the costs to taxpayers. Perhaps there will be positive returns on these investments, but not necessarily.”

Bruce Josten, executive vice president for governmental affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business group, said taxpayers had a right to expect a loosening of credit by the banks, though the government “shouldn’t micromanage them.”

“I don’t think there’s one good answer here,” Josten said. “There’s no paint-by-the-numbers road map. It’s all improvised.”

For Garten, the unprecedented nature and scale of the problems means that policy makers and taxpayers will have to get used to a new way of thinking as long as the crisis lasts.

“There’s a philosophical conflict in the American mind because we’re just not used to this level of intervention,” Garten said. “That hang-up is not compatible with the depth of this crisis.”

To contact the reporter on this story: James Sterngold in Los Angeles at [email protected]

当初俺的判断是，财政部应该完全忽略银行的资产负债表和所有的烂帐，资金注入，以帐号分列的办法，搞“政治贷款”。风险由联邦政府担保，利率收入可以让银行落袋。这样就缓解实体经济的资金链断裂问题。

有一个学者 迈克尔·郝德逊 被邀请去吉隆坡会面。

"Michael Hudson"

peshinesmith

Sat Jan 3, 2009 4:48 pm (PST)

Dear ……

I've been invited to go next month to Kuala Lampur to meet with Muhammed

Mahathir and discuss monetary reform. Michel Chossudovsky of Canada is the

organizer, and among other attendees will be Ellen Brown. His website just

published the following article by her own Web of Debt website.

My question to you is:

What's the best way to go beyond the fractional reserve theory to

explain how today's monetary system works -- and what Malaysia can best do

to navigate in today's world?

Michael

市场基本面还在往下走，在这种情况下还是国有的银行好使，私有的银行人家不放贷你没办法它。

PS：刚看了美国的经济数据，满头雾水，不知道美联储要搞出个怎么样的结果。

前面六七年美国房地产、金融创新等刺激的过度消费需求拉动的美国经济必须进行相当的收缩，这个收缩过程基本是不可避免的，即使美国金融系统现在十分有效。在这个过程中，有能力负担借贷资金的往往不需要、也没有动力从金融系统获取资金；急需从金融系统获取资金的往往没有能力持续偿还资金。因此，“财政部应该完全忽略银行的资产负债表和所有的烂帐，资金注入，以帐号分列的办法，搞“政治贷款””的后果基本是一堆坏账。

可以说，美国经济必须完成收缩过程才能谈及其他。当然，金融系统失效必然加剧美国经济的收缩程度。

金融帝国——美国金融霸权的来源和基础

作　　者： 迈克尔·赫德森

出 版 社： 中央编译出版社

出版时间： 2008-8-1

定 价： 48元

不会也成了堰塞湖吧？

把啥航母，潜艇，飞机啥的，卖掉点，足够了

国防预算估计难动，要动得狠，奥黑的命都不一定保得住。

Liberalism要求的是经济上的有序（代表人物Keynes,政策为政府增加干预与开支）同个人生活的自由(性解放/女权)。68年（顶点是世界各地的红卫兵/文革）以后Liberalism逐渐被抛弃。80年里根上台以后Conservatism大行其道，Conservatism要求的是经济上的自由（代表人物Friedman/Hayek,政策为政府减小干预与开支），同个人生活的有序（顶点是克林顿"moral value"的失败让布什胜过了戈尔）。

在这次危机之后，Friedman被抛弃，Keynes重新崛起，新诞生的可能是Neo-Liberalism--经济同个人生活同样的有序。这一点可以从奥巴马同传统Liberalism的细微差别看出来。至于美国经济的前景，可能要从更长的时间轴上才能得出结论。

• 就连Liberal也已经沉沦好多年了

他的父亲在30年代的工人运动中好像是领袖吧。所以到50年代麦卡锡主义猖獗的时候很惨，家里天天进FBI检查。后来去大银行做较高级的职位，大概类似于今天的风控监督部门。

出身西部，所以带有比较强烈的中西部民风。美国有几个异端的经济学系在西部（堪萨斯城大学、犹他大学、加州还是加州州立的某所分校），东部似乎只有2所（New School和 麻州大学）。其他地方是正统经济学一统天下。

30年代后崛起的严格叫New （Deal）Liberalism.

Liberalism的源地英国，就是要求经济放任的。只不过到了美国的30年代以后发生了变化。New Deal Liberalism 或 New Liberalism被简称为Liberalism，成为美国左派。

美国左派的诉求有深刻的历史背景，也作出了巨大的贡献（美国在5-8年内经济翻盘，社会巨变（文化上巨变还没有开始），功不可没）。

而Neo-Liberalism是全世界最臭名昭著的新自由主义，也就是美国政治的Conservatism拥抱的那一套。所以兄弟用词有误。

而原来英国上的经济上的自由主义，改称Liberatarianism，为 放任自由主义，或自由至上主义。

结果留下Liberalism这个词，与New或Neo-结合，其含义天差地别，几乎完全对立。

不过刚才查了一下google, 才发现Liberalism就有十几种，Conservatism也有十几种。现在也不敢随便用这两个词了，怎么用都可能错了。

不用Liberalism/Conservatism来表达，就是：经济/生活上1933-1980是一个周期，1980-2008是一个周期。现在奥巴马的上台将要把美国带入另一个周期，可能这个周期同1933-1980也不一样。