再见，蒂莫西•盖特纳

Farewell, Tim Geithner
再见，蒂莫西•盖特纳

Lessons learnt
经验教训

The outgoing treasury secretary sits down with The Economist one last time
即将离职的财政部长最后一次受访《经济学人》杂志

Jan 19th 2013 | WASHINGTON, DC |From the print edition
2013年1月19日 | 华盛顿 | 打印版

Almost free 快自由了。

IF THE Republicans do not raise the ceiling on America’s government debt, Barack Obama said on January 14th, the markets will go “haywire” and the country will plunge back into crisis. Tim Geithner, his treasury secretary, noted on the same day that this could happen in as little as a month from now.

1月14日，奥巴马总统表示，如果共和党不提高美国债务上限，那么美国市场将失控，整个国家将再次深陷危机。奥巴马政府的财政部长蒂莫西•盖特纳也在同日表示，这样的情况或许在最快不到一月之内就会发生。

But if all goes according to plan, Mr Geithner will not be around by then; he will have handed the reins to Jack Lew, currently the White House chief of staff. That could be a pity. Thousands of people have studied financial crises, but it would be hard to name anyone who has actually grappled with as many as Mr Geithner (see chart). While working in the 1990s for Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretaries, he dealt with currency and banking crises throughout the emerging world. When the global financial crisis erupted in 2007, he was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; this gave him a key role in the Fed’s response, including the bail-outs of Bear Stearns and AIG, an insurance company, and the decision to let Lehman Brothers fail. As Mr Obama’s treasury secretary, he designed and carried out the stress tests and capital injections that stabilised the banking system, as well as multiple mortgage schemes that ultimately did little to curb an avalanche of foreclosures.

但是按照原计划，现财政部长盖特纳在那时已经卸任，现任白宫幕僚长杰克•卢将接过财政部长一职。可惜的是，成千上万的人都在研究财经危机，但要是论真正与最多的危机直面搏击的话，除了盖特纳还真是寥寥无几了。在90年代，盖特纳服务于比尔•克林顿总统时期财长罗伯特•鲁宾和拉里•萨默斯时，他在这个新兴世界中处理过货币和银行危机。在2007年全球金融危机爆发的时候，他身为纽约联邦储蓄银行行长，这也就给了他在美联储的发言权，包括对贝尔斯登投资银行和保险公司美国国际集团提供紧急融资进行救助，并且做出让雷曼兄弟投行破产的决定。作为奥巴马总统的财政部长，他设计实施了压力测试，注资来稳定银行系统，同时，他的多种抵押贷款计划最终并没有过多的抑制取消抵押品赎回权的崩塌。

Mr Geithner’s life in the trenches has produced its own vocabulary. Serious decisions are “consequential”, good ideas are “cool”, better ideas are “compelling” and the best ideas are at “the optimal frontier”. During a crisis “plan beats no plan”, jury-rigged measures in the face of unavoidable disaster are “foam on the runway”, and bad outcomes are “dark”. Managing public perceptions is called “theatre”. “Fuck” also holds a prominent place in the Geithner lexicon, usually as an adjective, not a verb, as in “I have no fucking idea.”

盖特纳在财经前线作战的生活赋予了他专属的词汇。重要的决定用他的话就是“逻辑上必然而又重要的”；好的想法是“酷的”；更好的主意就是“迷人的”；而最好的想法是“最佳而具开拓性的”；在危机之中对于计划，“聊胜于无”；不可避免的灾难面前，临时的策略就是“飞机跑道上的泡沫——有助无害（1）”；不好的结果就是“黑暗的”；改变公众看法被称作“用一场好戏”；在盖特纳的词汇中“他妈的”也是个重要用词，常作为形容词而不是动词来使用，例如：“我他妈的不知道。”

More seriously, Mr Geithner has also developed rules of engagement for a crisis. The choices that face a policymaker are almost always bad. Don’t intervene, and you risk collapse; intervene, and you reward bad behaviour and outrage the public. “You are going to make mistakes, so you have to force yourself to decide which mistakes are easier to correct,” he told The Economist in a recent interview. “In a crisis, you get to a point where you have to decide that you’re going to risk doing too much, because it’s easier to clean that up.” Success also requires certain character traits: an ability to make decisions quickly in the fog of war without dwelling on what outsiders are going to say. Indeed, Mr Geithner is terrible at the “theatre” of being treasury secretary: he delivers speeches badly, hates lobbying, and has trouble behaving deferentially to Congress.

从更大的方面来说，盖特纳在面对危机时，自有一套套路准则。决策者面对的选择几乎永远都是不好的。不干涉带来的危机就是分崩离析，但是干涉，给决策者带来的就是不好的名声，甚至激怒民众。盖特纳在近期对话《经济学人》的一次采访中说到：“错误是肯定会犯的，所以你必须审时度势来看哪些错误是容易改正的。在一次危机当中，在某些时刻，你不得不决定在接下来去冒更大的风险，因为这样的摊子更容易收拾。“成功同样需要某些性格特质：不纠结在局外人将作出的评判，而能在战争的迷雾中很快的作出决定。事实上，盖特纳作为财政部长在改变公众舆论上并不擅长：他不是演讲的能手，他反感游说，面对国会，他始终不能表现的恭顺有礼。

That alone would make Mr Geithner a polarising figure. But liberal and conservative critics alike consider him excessively generous to big banks at the expense of the public. Evidence gathered by the crisis commission of Congress paints an unflattering picture of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s role before the crisis, when Mr Geithner was in charge, in overseeing banks, Citigroup in particular. Critics fault him for not imposing haircuts on AIG’s counterparties (mostly big banks) as part of the insurance company’s bail-out, and for not nationalising or breaking up big banks such as Citi. His actions and the subsequent financial-reform law, they say, enshrine the bad principle that some banks are “too big to fail”.

仅由这点就使得盖特纳成为一个极端化的形象。但是自由派和民主派的评论家都认为盖特纳对于大银行及其大方，尽管是以公众作为代价。危机面前，纽约联邦储蓄银行在盖特纳掌舵时期，国会危机调查委员会集聚的事实将其在银行监理反面描绘成一个耿直坦率的形象，尤其是花旗银行。评论家指责盖特纳没有对美国国际集团的业务对手（多为大银行）强加折扣作为对这个大的保险公司的援助，同时也指责他没有将花旗这样的大银行国有化或者是使其解体。盖特纳的做法和他接下来的财经改革法在评论者眼中，只能是使得某些银行“树大而不倒”这样不好的准则成为铭刻。

Mr Geithner says the banks supervised by the Fed withstood the crisis better than most institutions. The interventions have also been a pretty good deal for the public. The Fed and the Treasury have made a profit on the money committed to the big banks and AIG. Indeed, some AIG shareholders are suing the federal government over the bail-out’s onerous terms. Thanks to the stress tests and recapitalisation Mr Geithner forced on the banks in 2009, they are almost all back in private hands, well capitalised and lending again. The recovery remains sluggish, but compares well with those of other economies.

盖特纳表示，美联储监管下的银行比大多数机构能够更好的抵挡危机。干预行为也成为公众的一个很好的监控手段。美联储和财政部在投入到大型银行和美国国际集团的资金上也大有获利。事实上，一些美国国际集团的股东在因为救援案中的繁重条款起诉联邦政府。多亏了2009年盖特纳针对银行推出的压力测试和资本重整，这些银行都重返私营，更好的资本化并开始放贷。复苏仍旧迟缓，但是比较起其他经济产业的复苏来说已经很不错了。

Mr Geithner readily admits that his interventions have bred moral hazard, but says holding off for that reason worsens a crisis and requires even bigger interventions later. “You will end up having to socialise much more risk and [create] much more future moral hazard,” he says. “You have to design the crisis response to mitigate moral hazard to the extent you can, and then change the rules of the game going forward to undo some of the damage you’ve caused.” Hence the Dodd-Frank banking reforms. The law became maddeningly long and complex in its passage through Congress. But it retains the features Mr Geithner considers crucial. It creates a mechanism for seizing and winding down big failing firms while limiting the government’s discretion to keep them as going concerns. By reinforcing capital and liquidity buffers throughout the financial system, the law allows policymakers to be almost “indifferent about contagion caused by one institution”.

盖特纳无保留承认他的干预政策确实孕育了道德风险，但是如果说就因为这个原因而拖延不前，可能会危机加剧，到时候会需要更大的干预。他说：“这样你最后会面临更多的风险亟待解决，在未来也很可能会产生更大的道德风险。你必须去设计一些危机应对策略来最大程度减缓道德风险，然后改变一些规则，继续向前，去解决那些自己引起的问题。”因此，有了多德弗兰克银行业改革法案。法案在国会的进展令人恼火的长，又相当复杂。但是它还是保留了盖特纳认为极重要的特点。它创造了挽救那些走下坡路的公司同时限制政府审慎来让它们保持为运营企业的机制。通过加强资金和流动性，来再整个财经系统内进行缓冲，这项法案允许了决策者对“由一个机构引起的传染病熟视无睹”。

Dodd-Frank guarantees that Mr Geithner has left his mark on America’s financial system. America’s finances are another matter. The budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion in each year of his tenure. Given the slack that persists in the economy, temporary big deficits are not that troubling. Mr Geithner says it would take spending cuts and tax increases of only about 0.75% of GDP to stabilise the debt relative to GDP over the next decade.

多德弗兰克法案保证了盖特纳在美国财经系统的印记。美国的财经又是另一个问题。在他任期的每一年，财政预算赤字都超过1万亿美元。鉴于现今的经济疲软，当前的巨额赤字没有那么令人困扰了。盖特纳表明这仅需要占额GDP的0.75%支出削减和税收增长来稳定接下来十年内债务占GDP的比值。

Much more troubling is the lack of a plan to produce that path to stability. The reasons are many: it has not been a priority for Mr Obama, and negotiations with Republicans have foundered on the gaping difference in their respective visions. The result has been a series of deals hammered out at the last minute and, in the summer of 2011, a near-crisis as the government came within days of running out of cash before the debt ceiling was raised.

更扰人心的是缺少创造稳定的计划。原因有很多：这并不是奥巴马总统的优先任务，同共和党的和谈也因他们各自的意愿的大区别而以失败告终。结果就是一系列在最后时刻落锤定音的协议，和在2011年夏，在提高债务上限前政府的现金短缺而来临的准危机。

In 2011, Mr Geithner recalls, he “reminded people over and again, in the case of an existential Europe collapse or of a complete congressional impasse where they had forced us to default, we had no meaningful ability to protect the economy from the consequences. The way the US system is set up, Congress has all the firepower, the executive branch has almost no standing firepower.”

2011年，盖特纳回忆，他“一次又一次提醒人们，在现在的欧洲崩溃局面下或者是面临一次绝对的国会僵局并且他们让我们拖欠债务的情况下，我们没有任何有意义的能力来保护我们的经济不受这些结果的影响。这就是美国体制的结构方式，国会掌握全部火力，而行政机构几乎没有任何实质火力。”

This is not about to change. This year will be dominated by continuous warfare between Mr Obama and Congress. The outcome will depend less on the merits of competing proposals than on who has the advantage in public opinion. If things go wrong, the country could again need a crisis manager. But with luck, Mr Geithner’s skills will not be needed again.

这个局面不会改变。今年也将是奥巴马总统和国会纠纷不断的情形。胜负的结果更多的取决于谁在公众意见中占优，而不仅仅取决于竞争提案的优点。如果发展不顺利，那么这个国家会再次需要一位危机解决师，但是如果幸运的话，盖特纳的危机解决技能将不再被需要。

注释（1）：关于飞机跑道上的泡沫，与所说的泡沫跑道。

大家知道，飞机着陆时全靠起落架下面的橡胶轮子，在坚硬的水泥跑道上滑跑着陆。一旦飞机的起落架操纵失灵，飞机就只能“匍匐”着陆了。这样，由于机身与不光滑的水泥跑道之间摩擦力很大，会使飞机起火--翻斤头--最终机毁人亡。所以，当起落架发生故障时，飞机只能选择水面或平坦的田野着陆。为了避免意外的飞机失事，法国科学家试制成功一种非常安全可靠的泡沫飞机跑道，并在法国图卢兹市的一个机场上，成功地完成了一次泡沫飞机跑道的软着陆试验。这种泡沫跑道长1500米，宽10米，厚度只有几厘米。在飞机软着陆之前，一辆专门的汽车在10分钟内用一种能产生泡沫的水溶液在飞机即将着陆的水泥跑道上临时铺造一条泡沫跑道，从而使一架大型客机在不使用起落架的情况下安全着陆。这次利用泡沫进行飞机软着陆的试验证明，大型客机进行这种机动性着陆具有高度可靠性。

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