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The biggest US banks pose a potentially devastating threat to the economy and regulators should consider breaking them up, according to the new head of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.
明尼阿波利斯聯邦儲備銀行(Minneapolis Federal Reserve)新任主席尼爾慍什卡利(Neel Kashkari)表示，美國大銀行給美國經濟構成潛在的毀滅性威脅，監管機構應考慮拆分這些大銀行。
Neel Kashkari, one of the main architects of Wall Street’s 2008 bailout, said the largest lenders were “too big too fail”. In his first public comments since becoming the head of the Minneapolis Fed last month, he said efforts to regulate the big banks since the financial crisis had not gone far enough.
卡什卡利（見上圖）是2008年華爾街紓困行動的主設計師之一。他表示，大銀行“太大而不能倒”(too big to fail)。卡什卡利在上月就任明尼阿波利斯聯儲主席以來的首次公開演講中表示，自金融危機以來，旨在監管大銀行的努力做得還不夠到位。
A break-up should be on the table, alongside a plan to turn the largest into public utilities by “forcing them to hold so much capital that they virtually can’t fail”, he said.
他說，應該將拆分提上議程，并討論一項計劃，通過“迫使它們持有使它們幾乎不可能倒閉的足量資本金”，來把大銀行改造為公用事業企業。
Taxing leverage throughout the financial system to “reduce systemic risks wherever they lie”, should be considered as well.
另外還應考慮在整個金融體系對杠桿征稅，以“降低任何地方可能存在的系統性風險”。
Mr Kashkari said the largest financial institutions “continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy”. He unveiled a task force at the Minneapolis Fed designed to examine ways to make the financial system safer. “Now is the right time for Congress to consider going further than Dodd-Frank with bold, transformational solutions to solve this problem once and for all.”
卡什卡利表示，大型金融機構“繼續對我們的經濟構成重大、持續的風險”。他透露，明尼阿波利斯聯儲成立了一個特別工作組，研究提高金融體系安全性的方法。“美國國會是時候考慮實施比《多德-弗蘭克法案》(Dodd-Frank Act)更進一步的舉措、采用大膽的變革性方案、一勞永逸地解決這個問題了。”
Having started his career as an aerospace engineer, the former Goldman Sachs executive is best known for overseeing the $700bn troubled asset relief programme, which was designed to stabilise the financial system by hoovering up swaths of toxic assets from banks.
卡什卡利最早曾是一名航空航天工程師，在高盛(Goldman Sachs)擔任過高管，他最為人所知的是曾經負責過“問題資產救助計劃”(Tarp)。這項7000億美元的計劃旨在通過清除銀行的大量有毒資產來穩定金融體系。
Mr Kashkari’s remarks come as the debate over how to avoid a repeat of the Wall Street collapse becomes a main flashpoint in the race for the White House. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who is threatening to derail Hillary Clinton’s attempt to be the Democrats’ nominee, is calling for a break-up of the biggest institutions and has proposed a tax on financial transactions.
在卡什卡利發表上述言論之際，圍繞如何避免金融危機重演的辯論成為美國總統大選的一大熱點。佛蒙特州參議員伯尼儠德斯(Bernie Sanders)呼吁拆分大銀行，并提議對金融交易征稅。桑德斯有可能會讓希拉里克林頓(Hillary Clinton)獲得民主黨總統候選人提名的希望落空。
Banks must be allowed to make mistakes, “even very big mistakes”, Mr Kashkari said. But when they do, they should not require taxpayer bailouts or trigger “widespread economic damage”.
卡什卡利說，必須允許銀行犯錯，“甚至是非常大的錯誤”。但是銀行犯錯之后，不應要求納稅人為它們紓困，也不應造成“大面積的經濟破壞”。
“A very crude analogy is that of a nuclear reactor,” he said. “The cost to society of letting a reactor melt down is astronomical. Given that cost, governments will do whatever they can to stabilise the reactor before they lose control.”
他說：“一個非常粗糙的類比是核反應堆。讓反應堆熔毀會給社會帶來巨大成本。鑒于這種成本，各國政府會竭盡所能穩定反應堆，以防失去控制。”
The Minneapolis Fed will deliver a plan on how to end “too big to fail” by the end of the year. But on its own, the regional bank will not be able to implement its proposals.
明尼阿波利斯聯儲將在年底發布一份關于如何結束“太大而不能倒”現象的計劃。但它無力單獨實施這樣的計劃。
Mr Kashkari warned that if a bank ran into trouble at a time when the wider economy and financial system were healthy, policymakers should be able to avoid the failure cascading into crisis. But if one or more institutions struggled against a backdrop of weakness for the wider economy, regulators, “will be forced to bail out failing institutions” as they were during the financial crisis.
卡什卡利警告稱，如果一家銀行在宏觀經濟良好、金融體系健康之時陷入困境，政策制定者應該能夠避免這家銀行的倒閉蔓延成危機。但如果一家或多家銀行在宏觀經濟不景氣時陷入困境，監管機構“將被迫為瀕臨破產的機構紓困”，就像金融危機期間所做的那樣。
“We know markets make mistakes. That is unavoidable in an innovative economy. But these mistakes cannot be allowed to endanger the rest of the country,” he said.
他說：“我們知道市場會犯錯，這在一個創新的經濟中是不可避免的，但我們不能允許這些錯誤危及國家其他領域。”
