新的银行恐慌？（《纽约时报·早晨》中英对照）
The Morning
: A new bank panic?
《早晨》：新的银行恐慌？
March 13, 2023
By David Leonhartd
2023年3月13日
作者：戴维·莱昂哈特
Good morning. Is the U.S. at risk of another financial panic? We’ll learn more today.
早上好。美国是否有另一场金融恐慌的风险？今天我们将了解更多。
Silicon Valley Bank.
Jim Wilson /
The New York Times
硅谷银行。
吉姆·威尔逊 /《纽约时报》
Boom and bust, again
又是繁荣与萧条
Today is a day of uncertainty for the American economy. 今天是美国经济充满不确定性的一天。 Will more banks have to close, as Silicon Valley Bank did last week and Signature Bank did yesterday? How will financial markets react? What will the federal government do? And will the current turmoil prove to be fleeting — or turn into a true crisis? 是否会有更多的银行不得不像上周的硅谷银行（Silicon Valley Bank）和昨天的签名银行（Signature Bank）那样倒闭？金融市场将作何反应？联邦政府会怎么做？当前的动荡会被证明是短暂的，还是会变成一场真正的危机？ In today’s newsletter, I’ll walk through the basics of the potential financial panic sparked by the failure of SVB (as Silicon Valley Bank is known). 在今天的通讯中，我将梳理一下SVB（硅谷银行）破产引发的潜在金融恐慌的基本情况。
What happened?
发生了什么？
SVB, founded in California in 1983, became one of the country’s 20 largest banks mostly by lending money to start-ups. SVB was sometimes willing to back start-ups that more traditional banks were not — and some of those companies went on to great success. SVB于1983年在加州成立，主要通过向初创企业提供贷款，成为美国最大的20家银行之一。SVB有时愿意投资一些传统银行不愿投资的初创企业——其中一些公司后来取得了巨大成功。 SVB’s problems date to 2021, when many technology start-ups were flush with cash and deposited large amounts of it with the bank. SVB, in turn, tried to increase its profits by investing those deposits elsewhere. But as the Federal Reserve increased interest rates to fight inflation over the past two years, SVB’s investments began to lose value. SVB的问题可以追溯到2021年，当时许多科技初创企业现金充裕，并将大量现金存入了该银行。 反过来，SVB试图通过将这些存款投资于其他地方来增加利润。 但随着美联储（Federal Reserve）在过去两年提高利率以抗击通胀，SVB的投资开始贬值。 The bank’s clients became worried in recent days that it would no longer have enough money to repay its customers, and a classic bank run occurred. On Friday, federal regulators said they would take over SVB. 最近几天，该银行的客户开始担心它将不再有足够的资金偿还客户，于是发生了典型的银行挤兑。上周五，联邦监管机构表示，他们将接管SVB。 Bank runs are especially dangerous because they feed on themselves, sowing panic as people worry that their own deposits may be at risk. Even healthy banks can become endangered because they also do not keep enough cash on hand to repay all customers at once. If banks kept all their deposits locked up in a safe, they could not earn the money that allows them to pay interest. 银行挤兑尤其危险，因为它们会自我吞噬，在人们担心自己的存款可能面临风险之时播下恐慌的种子。即使是健康的银行也可能面临危险，因为它们手头也没有足够的现金能一次性偿还给所有客户。如果银行把所有的存款都锁在保险箱里，他们就赚不到钱来支付利息。
Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary.
Valerie Plesch for
The New York Times
珍妮特·耶伦，财政部长。
瓦莱丽·普莱什为《纽约时报》报道
Halting the crisis …
终止危机……
Federal regulators — at the Fed, Treasury Department and other agencies — tried to stem the worries last night by announcing that all customers of both SVB and Signature would have access to their money today. Before the announcement, it was unclear what would happen to deposits of greater than $250,000; a pre-existing guarantee from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation covers only deposits below that amount. 美联储、财政部和其他机构的联邦监管机构昨晚宣布，SVB和签名银行的所有客户今天都可以使用他们的资金，并试图消除这种担忧。 在此之前，尚不清楚超过25万美元的存款将会如何处置；联邦存款保险公司（Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation）预先提供的担保只覆盖低于这一数额的存款。 Some SVB clients had indicated that they would be unable to pay their employees if they lost their money, which could lead to spiraling economic problems. SVB的一些客户表示，如果他们没了钱，将无法支付员工的工资，这可能会导致螺旋式的经济问题。 Last night’s announcement has the benefit of reducing the likelihood of a panic today. It also prevents seemingly innocent victims — the workers and executives at companies that used SVB or Signature as their bank — from being hurt. Federal officials emphasized that they would not use taxpayer money to repay those companies. Ultimately, the money will instead come from a mix of the two banks’ assets and from a broader insurance program financed by other banks. 昨晚的声明有一个好处，那就是减少了今天出现恐慌的可能性。它还可以防止看似无辜的受害者——那些使用SVB或签名银行作为银行的公司的员工和高管——受到伤害。联邦官员强调，他们不会用纳税人的钱来偿还这些公司。最终，这笔资金将来自两家银行的资产组合，以及由其他银行提供资金的一个更广泛的保险计划。 But if the panic spreads, taxpayers would be on the hook, as happened during the financial crisis of 2007-9, because the insurance program would be too small to cover the losses. That risk highlights the fact that there are two different policy questions to keep in mind in coming days — one immediate and one longer term. 但如果恐慌蔓延，纳税人将陷入困境，就像2007年至2009年金融危机期间发生的那样，因为保险计划规模太小，无法弥补损失。这一风险凸显了一个事实，即在未来几天，有两个不同的政策问题需要牢记——一个是近期的，一个是长期的。 The immediate question is how to keep this situation from turning into a full-blown crisis. History suggests that an aggressive and generous government response, like the guaranteeing of all SVB deposits, probably has the best chance of success. The 2007-9 crisis never turned into a depression, partly because of the aggressiveness of the Fed and both the Bush and Obama administrations. 当前的问题是如何防止这种情况演变成全面危机。历史表明，积极而慷慨的政府应对措施，比如为SVB的所有存款提供担保，或许最有可能成功。2007- 09年的危机从未演变成萧条，部分原因在于美联储以及布什和奥巴马政府的积极行动。
… and avoiding the next one
……并避免下一场危机
The longer-term question is how to reduce the chance of future crises, and the historical lessons here are different. The U.S. has suffered so many financial panics over the past few decades, dating to the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, because the country tends to regulate its banks so lightly. 更长期的问题是如何降低未来发生危机的可能性，这方面的历史教训有所不同。美国在过去几十年经历了如此多的金融恐慌，可以追溯到上世纪80年代的储蓄和贷款危机，因为美国对银行的监管往往过于宽松。 In the case of SVB, regulators allowed it to make risky bets with its deposits (while the bank’s executives insisted that the bets weren’t risky). More generally, SVB and other banks are often not required to maintain enough of a financial cushion to withstand a crisis. Financial cushions — effectively, cash or other forms of insurance — tend to reduce banks’ profits, which is why bankers resist them. But without a healthy cushion, a bank can collapse during a crisis, and taxpayers must sometimes bail it out. When that happens, the bankers and their investors often emerged unscathed. 以SVB为例，监管机构允许它用存款进行高风险的押注（而该银行的高管坚称这些押注没有风险）。更普遍地说，瑞典国家银行和其他银行通常不需要维持足够的财务缓冲来抵御危机。金融缓冲——实际上是现金或其他形式的保险——往往会降低银行的利润，这就是银行家抵制它们的原因。但如果没有健康的缓冲，银行可能会在危机中倒闭，纳税人有时必须拯救它。当这种情况发生时，银行家及其投资者往往毫发无损。 Once SVB began to falter, financial industry executives and investors again began clamoring for government help. In the short term, the government may indeed need to step in to avoid a spreading crisis. But the less immediate questions may be uncomfortable for the bankers: How can the people who caused this crisis bear financial responsibility for it? And how can the U.S. economy end this cycle of booms that benefit banks and busts that hurt everyone else? SVB一开始步履蹒跚，金融业高管和投资者就又开始呼吁政府出手相助。从短期来看，政府可能确实需要介入，以避免危机蔓延。但一些不那么直接的问题可能会让银行家们感到不安：引发这场危机的人如何承担金融责任？美国经济如何才能结束这种让银行受益、让其他所有人受损的繁荣周期？ Noah Smith, an economist and Substack writer, offers this useful bit of history in his newsletter: 经济学家兼Substack作家诺亚·史密斯在他的时事通讯中提供了这段有用的历史: In 2008, the bankers who made the bad decisions that led to the financial crisis generally got to keep their (very lucrative) jobs after getting bailed out. And their banks continued to exist as well, and even got government to guarantee them some profits going forward. Even as normal people suffered mass unemployment and the loss of their careers and livelihoods, many of the people responsible for the disaster kept collecting million-dollar checks and being in respected positions of power, now with government guarantees. If that seemed unfair, it’s because it
was
unfair.
2008年，那些做出了导致金融危机的错误决定的银行家们在获得救助后，一般都保住了他们（非常赚钱的）工作。 他们的银行也继续存在，甚至得到了政府的保证，让他们继续盈利。 正当普通人遭受大规模失业、事业和生计的损失时，许多对这场灾难负有责任的人仍在领取数百万美元的支票，并身居要职，现在还有政府的担保。 如果这看起来不公平，那是因为它
本来
就不公平。
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.
谢谢你早上花时间看《纽约时报》。明天见。
Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Brent Lewis, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.
马修·卡伦、劳伦·哈德、劳伦·杰克逊、布伦特·刘易斯、克莱尔·摩西、伊恩·普拉萨德·菲尔布里克、汤姆·赖特-皮尔桑蒂和阿什利·吴为《早晨》杂志撰稿。您可以通过themorning@nytimes.com与团队联系。
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