雨天基金与英国银行业

银行居然也会缺钱？资本缺口是什么意思？英国银行业250亿英镑的资本短缺是怎样造成的？又有什么影响？FT社论作者Martin Sandbu用简介通俗的对话形式教授货币银行学入门，并给你讲一个并不复杂的道理：“出来混，迟早要还的”。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

restructuring [riː'strʌktʃərɪŋ] n.这里指的是资本重组，如通过债转股的形式将银行的债主转变为股东。

weighted ['weɪtɪd] adj.加权的

refrain [rɪ'freɪn] n./v.叠句，重复

eurozone periphery 欧元区边缘国家。德法荷等为核心国家，而南欧葡萄牙、希腊等国家即为边缘国家。

mischief ['mɪstʃɪf] n.恶作剧，损害

interest swap 利率互换

Threadneedle Street 伦敦的针线街，英格兰银行和波罗的海交易所所在地

gnome [nəʊm] n.侏儒，精灵。记得《哈利·波特》中的银行家是什么形象吗？

rustle up 凑集到，筹集到

A rainy-day fund for what went wrong (772 words)

By Martin Sandbu

‘UK banks have a collective capital shortfall of £25bn and must close it by the end of the year with new capital and restructuring, the UK’s new financial stability regulator announced.’

FT.com, March 27

Wait a minute – start from the beginning. What’s bank capital?

Banks need to keep a safety cushion of cash and assets in case their investments go sour. That’s how they make sure people leaving money in banks can get it back.

How much do they keep?

Ah – that’s a difficult question. The amount is “risk-weighted”. They require less capital for investments that are safe.

Like government bonds ...

Maybe not all of them ...

... and they need more capital if they invest in something that is more likely to go wrong.

Exactly.

So banks needing more capital sounds like bad news. Wasn’t getting the banks back into shape the reason for throwing so much money at them?

It’s becoming a bit of a refrain to say that things are worse than we thought. But that’s what the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee is saying. The banks have too little capital because they are still likely to lose money from decisions they made before the crisis.

I see. What kind of decisions are we talking about?

You could divide them into mistakes and mischief. The mistakes were the bad investments they made – the FPC mentions the eurozone periphery and UK commercial real estate. The mischief was stuff such as manipulating the Libor benchmark rate and selling payment protection insurance and interest swaps to people who didn’t need them.

Haven’t banks paid for this already?

They have. But now the regulators think it could get even worse. They reckon that between them banks may still face a cool £10bn in fines or compensation claims. That’s if there’s no other scandal waiting to come out of the woodwork, mind you.

That’s reassuring. How do we know that the BoE is right this time and that £10bn is the end of it?

We don’t.

Right. And the bad investments?

That’s not exactly news either. Here, too, the eagle-eyed experts in Threadneedle Street have decided that losses could be worse than the banks have estimated.

Wait ... than the banks have estimated? You mean we are taking the banks’ word for how much they stand to lose?

Surprised? It’s been part of international bank regulation, set in Basel, for years. You know how banks need to hold that “capital” stuff against the investments they make? Well, the big ones may often use their own models to estimate how risky their investments are and how much capital they actually need to hold.

Are you kidding me? These banks thought subprime mortgages were ultra-safe!

Don’t yell at me, go talk to the gnomes of Basel. But, to be fair, the regulators are on to this. The third reason banks have to rustle up more capital – apart from investment losses and additional punishment for their sins – is that their risk weights have been found to be too low.

They have been cheating.

Using what they called a “more prudent approach”, the regulators suggested that UK banks were not holding enough capital, given the riskiness of their portfolios.

And all of this adds up to them needing £25bn more?

Er, no, it adds up to £50bn. But the Bank of England thinks some of the shortfall is in banks that have capital to spare. So only £25bn of new equity is needed.

Let’s hope they’re right. What does this mean for me, though? Are the banks going to let me do my own risk-weighting so I can get a better mortgage deal?

Not quite. Anyway, who do you bank with?

There’s not much choice.

Too right. The government wants more competition, so they are letting new banks get away with less capital for each deal. The hope is to make it easy for new banks to attract customers. You should give it a try.

What if I want to stay with my own bank? It’s such a hassle to switch accounts.

The government promises to fix that too. Until it does, if you’re stuck with your bank things depend on how it goes about raising capital ratios. If it finds investors who want to buy new shares, great. If not, it must choose between limiting bonuses and dividends, or shrink its lending to meet the ratio.

We know what that means!

The regulators promise they will not let banks react to the rule by lending less ...

We’re in safe hands then.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1.What is true about "bank capital"?

A. It is provided by the government.

B. Banks need constant capital injection year by year.

C. The money deposited in a bank is its capital.

D. The more a bank invests in high-risk assets, the more capital it needs.

答案(1)

2.Why do British banks need more capital?

A. They made too much bad investments before the crisis.

B. They underestimated the risk of their investment.

C. Also, they need capital to pay fines for their wrongdoings.

D. All of above.

答案(2)

3.What might not be a choise for the banks?

A. Raise capital in the stock market.

B. Shrink their lending.

C. Limit bonuses for employees.

D. Pay less dividends to shareholders.

答案(3)

4.Who might be happy about the news(capital shortfall)?

A. Stockholders of the banks involved.

B. Depositors of the banks involved.

C. New banks and foreign banks.

D. British bank regulators and central bankers.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：D.The more a bank invests in high-risk assets, the more capital it needs.

解释：这正是本文的一个要点。 银行的资本是银行股东提供的“本钱”，如果银行业务不断扩张而自身利润不能支持的话， 才需要补充资本。储户的存款是银行的负债，资本加上负债，就是银行可以用来放贷和投资的资金。 如果银行投资的资产中，低风险的较多，则可以用较少的自有资本和较多的负债来投资。反之亦然。

(2) 答案：D.All of above.

解释：ABC都是正确答案。

(3) 答案：B.Shrink their lending.

解释：文章倒数第二句说，The regulators promise they will not let banks react to the rule by lending less ...

(4) 答案：C.New banks and foreign banks.

解释：央行的金融政策委员会认为英国的银行还面临着100亿英镑的赔偿或罚款——目前没有发现更多违法行为的情况下。 显然，银行的股民要面临股息减少和股价下跌了。而监管当局为了金融稳定和经济增长，一方面要敦促银行抓紧时间大举融资，另一方面要动用种种手段防止银行 紧缩放贷。储户会担心自己存款的安全，这时候新开的银行和外资银行肯定会高兴。