银行倒闭的解释（《纽约时报•早晨》中英对照）

The Morning

: The bank failures, explained

《早晨》：银行倒闭的解释

March 14, 2023

by German Lopez

2023年3月14日

作者：哲尔曼•洛佩斯

Good morning. Deregulation contributed to Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.

早上好。放松监管导致了硅谷银行的倒闭。

Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, Calif.

Jim Wilson /

The New York Times

加利福尼亚州圣克拉拉的硅谷银行。

吉姆·威尔逊 /《纽约时报》 Stopping the fallout

阻止余波

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and others — and the government’s rescue over the weekend — left many of us again rushing to understand the arcane details of the financial system. It can be maddeningly complex, so I want to use today’s newsletter to explain some of the basics. 硅谷银行（Silicon Valley Bank）等银行的倒闭——以及周末政府的纾困——让我们许多人再次急于了解金融体系的神秘细节。它可能非常复杂，所以我想用今天的时事通讯来解释一些基础知识。 First, the latest: Bank stocks plummeted yesterday, hitting midsize and smaller institutions in particular. Other financial markets gyrated as well, despite U.S. policymakers’ emergency help for customers of the closed banks. “It didn’t put calm back in the system,” said my colleague Maureen Farrell, who covers business. 首先是最新的消息：银行类股票昨日大幅下跌，尤其打击了中小型机构。 其他金融市场也出现了震荡，尽管美国政策制定者为关闭银行的客户提供了紧急援助。 我的同事、负责商业报道的莫林·法雷尔（Maureen Farrell）说：“这并没有让整个体系恢复平静。” Why does this matter to everyday Americans? After all, SVB is relatively small and most of us keep no money in it. 为什么这对每一个美国人都很重要？毕竟SVB相对较小，我们大多数人都没有把钱存在里面。 The short answer is the potential for wider fallout. When banks collapse, other people sometimes fear that their own banks and investments will follow. Even healthy banks don’t keep enough cash on hand to pay out all depositors, so if too many people panic at once and pull out their money — a classic bank run — it could lead to broader financial and economic calamity. And that is what the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve are trying to stop: a financial crisis largely prompted by plunging confidence. 简而言之，这件事可能会带来更广泛的影响。当银行倒闭时，其他人有时会担心他们自己的银行和投资也会随之倒闭。即使是健康的银行也没有足够的现金来支付所有的储户，所以如果太多人同时感到恐慌并提取他们的钱——典型的银行挤兑——这可能会导致更广泛的金融和经济灾难。而这正是拜登政府和美联储正在努力阻止的：一场主要由信心暴跌引发的金融危机。 The collapse

崩溃

How did we get to this point? To answer that, I need to dive into more detail about Silicon Valley Bank. 我们是怎么走到这一步的？要回答这个问题，需要深入了解硅谷银行的更多细节。 As its name suggests, the bank portrayed itself as focused on the leading edge of technology. And it served thousands of tech firms. Yet SVB invested their money in something much less exciting, as Paul Krugman wrote: U.S. bonds, effectively I.O.U.s from the federal government. 顾名思义，这家银行将自己描绘成专注于技术前沿的公司。 它服务了数千家科技企业。 然而SVB把他们的钱投资在一些不那么振奋人心的东西上，正如保罗·克鲁格曼（Paul Krugman）所写的：美国国债，实际上就是联邦政府的欠条。 Because the federal government has always paid its bills, U.S. bonds are widely considered the safest investment. SVB’s experience shows there are moments when even these safe investments may not pay off. The details get technical, but they’re worth unpacking to understand what went wrong. 由于联邦政府一直在偿还债务，美国国债被广泛认为是最安全的投资。SVB的经验表明，有时即使是这些安全的投资也可能得不到回报。细节变得很有技术含量，但为了了解问题出在哪里，有必要把它们拆开来分析。 Bonds are effectively money that the government borrows from buyers — the public — before paying them back later, with interest. Market conditions and the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, help determine that interest rate. 国债实际上是政府从买家（公众）那里借来的钱，然后再连同利息一起偿还。市场条件和美国的中央银行美联储有助于决定利率。 When SVB bought bonds, interest rates were very low. Since then, the Federal Reserve, which sets certain influential rates, increased those to combat rising prices. Now, new bonds can carry interest multiple times higher than those SVB bought. SVB购买债券时，利率非常低。自那以后，负责设定某些有影响力的国债利率的美联储（Federal Reserve）将利率提高，以遏制不断上涨的物价。现在，新债券的利息可能比SVB购买的债券高数倍。 Imagine, then, that you want to buy bonds today. You would want the newer bonds because they have a higher payout. So when SVB needed to sell bonds, to raise cash that it could use for its customers’ withdrawals, it could do so only for a discount, taking a loss. 想象一下，你今天想买债券。你当然会想要新债券，因为它们有更高的报酬。因此，当SVB需要出售债券来筹集现金以供其客户提款时，它只能以打折的方式出售，并承担损失。 The bank failed to follow basic financial advice: Diversify your portfolio. “It’s not fraud,” said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “But it’s an extremely risky, and obviously risky, strategy.” 这家银行没有遵循基本的理财建议：分散投资组合。“这不是欺诈，” 彼得森国际经济研究所（Peterson Institute for International Economics）的高级研究员约瑟夫·加格农（Joseph Gagnon）说，“但这是一种非常冒险的策略，显然是冒险的。” In the past few weeks, venture capitalists and other wealthy customers on social media and in private chats started discussing concerns that SVB could no longer pay its depositors. Some began to move their money out of the bank, and the situation spiraled quickly. “Once you start asking, ‘Are we having a bank run?, ’ it’s too late,” my colleague David Enrich, a business editor, said. 过去几周，风险投资家和其他富有的客户在社交媒体上和私下聊天中开始讨论SVB无法再支付储户的担忧。 一些人开始把他们的钱转出银行，情况迅速恶化。 “一旦你开始问：‘我们正在发生银行挤兑吗？’，就为时已晚了。” 我的同事戴维•里奇（David Enrich），一名商业编辑说道。 A regulatory failure

监管的失败

Financial regulations are supposed to stop these kinds of crises. But Silicon Valley Bank’s problems were not caught until it was too late — which many experts say was a result of insufficient oversight. 金融监管本应阻止这类危机。 但硅谷银行的问题直到为时已晚才被发现——许多专家表示，这是监管不足的结果。 Under pressure from banks in 2018, Congress passed bipartisan legislation that Donald Trump signed into law shielding smaller banks, like SVB, from more stringent rules. The banks argued that they were so small that they posed little risk to the broader financial system. 2018年，在银行的压力下，美国国会通过了两党立法，经唐纳德·特朗普签署成为法律，保护SVB等小银行免受更严格的规定。 这些银行辩称，它们规模很小，对更广泛的金融体系构成的风险很小。 SVB’s collapse and the aftermath suggest the banks’ claims were wrong: Even smaller bank failures can threaten the financial system as a whole, prompting some experts — but not all — to call for the federal government to get more involved. SVB的倒闭及其后果表明，这些银行的说法是错误的：即使规模较小的银行倒闭也可能威胁到整个金融系统，这促使一些专家（但不是全部）呼吁联邦政府更多地参与进来。 Controlled slowdown

控制下的减速

To readers of this newsletter, the Federal Reserve’s involvement in containing the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse may be puzzling. The Fed, after all, has been raising interest rates to slow the economy. An economic slowdown inherently involves businesses, including banks, failing. 对于本通讯的读者来说，美联储参与遏制硅谷银行倒闭的后果可能令人费解。 毕竟，美联储一直在提高利率以减缓经济增长速率。经济放缓必然会导致包括银行在内的企业倒闭。 The Fed’s concern is that the bank collapses could go too far and pose bigger systemic risks beyond SVB. Think of it this way: You can stop a runaway car by blowing out its tires, potentially causing a crash. But it would be better if the car stopped by simply braking. Officials are trying to get the economy to brake to a safer speed — one in which inflation isn’t so high. 美联储担心的是，银行倒闭可能会走得太远，造成比SVB更大的系统性风险。可以这样想：你可以通过爆胎来阻止一辆失控的汽车，这可能会导致撞车。但如果汽车只是刹车就能停下来，那就更好了。官员们正试图让经济减速到一个更安全的速度——一个通货膨胀不那么高的速度。 The economic slowdown that the Fed hopes for would still affect everyday Americans, in both lower prices and also potentially higher unemployment rates. But that outcome is better than an uncontrolled bank run that topples the financial system and takes the rest of the economy, and your 401(k), down with it. 美联储所希望的经济放缓仍然会影响到普通美国人，包括物价下跌和可能的失业率上升。但这样的结果总比不受控制的银行挤兑好，银行挤兑会推翻金融体系，殃及经济的其余部分，包括你40.1万的退休金计划。

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

— German

谢谢你早上花时间看《纽约时报》。明天见。

——哲尔曼

Matthew Cullen, Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, 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、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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