这篇文章主要讨论了为什么金融市场永远无法完全安全。
文章指出，为了防止金融危机，政府和中央银行可能为下一次危机埋下了种子。
抵押品是金融市场中的关键要素，但错误地评估抵押品的安全性可能导致金融风险。
文章提到了瑞士国民银行向瑞士信贷提供大额贷款的例子，以及美联储与其他国家中央银行重新启动美元互换额度。这些都是为了应对金融危机而采取的措施，但有可能在长期内加剧金融风险。
在过去的金融危机中，对抵押品安全性的错误判断导致了金融市场的动荡。在2007-2009年的全球金融危机中，美国住房市场的安全性被过度信任，导致抵押品信贷的暴增。而在日本上世纪90年代初，土地价格*导致了长达十年以上的金融危机。
此外，金融危机还是推动抵押品运作方式创新的源泉。历史上，对金融市场的干预，如中央银行作为最后贷款人或美联储的互换额度，都是为了稳定金融市场。然而，这些措施可能在长期内改变对抵押品的认识，从而导致新的金融风险。
总之，这篇文章强调了金融市场永远无法完全安全的观点。抵押品在金融市场中的重要性和对其安全性的错误评估可能导致金融风险。虽然政府和中央银行采取措施应对金融危机，但这些措施可能在长期内加剧金融风险。In seeking to prevent a crisis, officials may have planted the seeds of the next one
Collateral is usually a boring affair. Valuing assets and extending credit against them is the preoccupation of the mortgage banker and the repo trader, who arranges trillions of dollars a day in repurchase agreements for very short-term government bonds. This activity is called financial plumbing for a reason: it is crucial but unsexy. And like ordinary plumbing, you hear about it only when something has gone wrong.
抵押品通常是一件无聊的事情。对资产进行估值并据此发放信贷是抵押贷款银行家和回购交易员的当务之急，他们每天安排数万亿美元的短期政府债券回购协议。这种活动被称为金融管道是有原因的：这很重要，但并不性感。就像普通的管道系统一样，只有当出了问题时，你才会听到它。
Now is one of those times. On March 16th the Swiss National Bank extended $54bn to Credit Suisse, backed by the bank’s collateral, in a move that turned out to be insufficient to save the 167-year-old institution. On March 19th America’s Federal Reserve announced it would reactivate daily dollar swap lines with Britain, Canada, the euro area, Japan and Switzerland. The central banks of these economies can now borrow dollars from the Fed at a fixed exchange rate for short periods, backed by their own currencies, and lend them on to local financial firms.
现在就是这样的时刻。3月16日，瑞士国家银行向瑞士信贷提供了540亿美元的贷款，由该银行的抵押品支持，但事实证明，此举不足以保存这家拥有167年历史的机构。3月19日，美联储宣布将重启与英国、加拿大、欧元区、日本和瑞士的每日美元互换额度。这些经济体的中央银行现在可以以固定汇率从美联储短期借入美元，并以本国货币为担保，然后将其借给当地金融公司。
In normal times assets that are exposed to little risk, and thought unlikely to swing much in value, underpin lots of market activity. Government bonds and property are typical examples of collateral. Commodities, corporate credit and stocks are riskier but also sometimes employed. Both sorts of collateral are at the root of many financial crises.
在正常时期，风险很小、价值不太可能大幅波动的资产支撑着大量的市场活动。政府债券和房地产是抵押品的典型例子。大宗商品、企业信贷和股票风险更高，但有时也会被利用。这两种抵押品是许多金融危机的根源。
The perception of safety is the reason why risks eventually emerge. The safer assets are thought to be, the more comfortable a lender is extending credit against them. Sometimes the assets are themselves safe, but the lending they enable (and the use of the money) is not.
对安全的认知是风险最终出现的原因。人们认为资产越安全，贷款人就越放心地向它们提供信贷。有时候，资产本身是安全的，但它们提供的贷款（以及资金的使用）却不是安全的。
This tension between safety and risk can prompt financial panics. At other times, the problem is simple misjudgment. The activities of Silicon Valley Bank (svb) were in essence a leveraged bet on assets its bankers believed to be solid: long-dated mortgage and Treasury bonds. The firm’s management believed it could safely borrow money—namely, that owed to depositors in the bank—against these reliable assets. The subsequent rapid drop in price of the assets was ultimately the cause of the bank’s downfall.
安全和风险之间的这种紧张关系可能引发金融恐慌。在其他时候，问题只是简单的判断失误。硅谷银行（Silicon Valley Bank，简称 SVB）的活动本质上是对银行家认为可靠的资产进行杠杆押注：长期抵押贷款和国债。该公司的管理层相信，它可以安全地借到钱，也就是说，欠银行储户的钱，以这些可靠的资产为抵押。随后资产价格的迅速下跌最终导致了银行的垮台。
During the global financial crisis of 2007-09, the belief in the unimpeachable safety of the American mortgage market led to an explosion in collateralized lending. The blow-up did not even require actual defaults in mortgage-backed securities. The mere shift in the probability of default raised the value of credit-default swaps, and the liabilities of firms that sold the products, which was sufficient to sink institutions that had sold enormous volumes of the swaps. In Japan in the early 1990s a collapse in land prices, the preferred collateral of domestic banks, led to a slow-burning series of financial crises that lasted for longer than a decade.
在2007-09年的全球金融危机期间，对美国抵押贷款市场无可指责的安全性的信念导致了抵押贷款的爆炸式增长。这场危机甚至不需要抵押贷款支持证券的实际违约。仅仅是违约概率的变化就提高了信用违约掉期的价值，以及出售这些产品的公司的负债，这足以让那些出售大量掉期的机构陷入困境。在日本，20世纪90年代初，国内银行首选的抵押品—土地价格*，导致了一系列持续了十多年的金融危机。
Crises do not only reveal where collateral has been wrongly judged to be safe. They are also the source of innovations that upend how collateral works. In response to the panic of 1866, caused by the collapse of Overend, Gurney & Company, a wholesale bank in London, Walter Bagehot, a former editor of this newspaper, popularised the idea of central banks operating as lenders of last resort to private financial institutions, against sound collateral. The daily swap lines recently reactivated by the Fed were introduced in the financial crisis and reopened in the early period of covid-19.
危机不仅揭示了哪些抵押品被错误地判断为安全。它们也是颠覆抵押品运作方式的创新之源。1866年，伦敦批发银行Overend，Gurney & Company*，引发了恐慌。为了应对这场恐慌，本报前编辑沃尔特·白芝浩（Walter Bagehot）普及了央行作为私人金融机构的最后贷款人的理念，并以可靠的抵押品为抵押。美联储最近重启的每日互换额度是在金融危机期间推出的，并在新冠肺炎疫情初期重新开放。
The Fed’s “Bank Term Funding Programme”, introduced after the collapse of svb, is the first innovation in collateral policy during the present financial wobble. The programme’s generosity is both new and shocking. A 30-year Treasury bond issued in 2016 is worth around a quarter less than its face value in the market today, but is valued at face value by the Fed if an institution pledges it as collateral. In the programme’s first week, banks borrowed nearly 153bn from the central bank’s ordinary discount window, at which banks can now borrow without the usual haircut on their collateral.
美联储的“银行定期融资计划”（Bank Term funding Programme）是在目前的金融动荡中，抵押品政策方面的首次创新。该项目的慷慨大方是前所未有的，也令人震惊。2016年发行的30年期美国国债的价值比目前市场上的面值低约四分之一，但如果一家机构将其作为抵押品进行质押，美联储将按面值进行估值。在该计划实施的第一周，银行借入了近120亿美元，并从央行的普通贴现窗口借入了创纪录的1530亿美元。银行现在可以通过普通贴现窗口借入资金，而无需对抵押品进行通常的减记。
The programme could change the understanding of collateral that has built up over the past 150 years. If investors expect the facility to become part of the regular panic-fighting toolkit, as swap lines have, then long-maturity bonds would enjoy a new and very valuable backstop. This would mean that financial institutions benefit when interest rates fall and their bonds rise in value; and when rates rise and the bonds slump in value, the Fed comes to the rescue. In an attempt to remove the risk of sudden collapses, and make the financial system safer, policymakers may in the long run have done just the opposite.
该计划可能会改变过去150年来形成的对抵押品的理解。如果投资者期望该机制成为常规抗恐慌工具的一部分，就像互换额度那样，那么长期债券将享有一个新的、非常有价值的后盾。这将意味着，当利率下降，其债券价值上升时，金融机构将受益;当利率上升，债券价值*时，美联储就会出手相救。为了消除突然崩溃的风险，并使金融体系更加安全，政策制定者在长期内可能会做相反的事情。
