巴克莱丑闻凸显沃克尔法则必要性

    巴克莱（Barclays）被控操纵伦敦银行同业拆借利率（Libor），最后达成4.50亿美元和解并披露了大量电子邮件，但在这些邮件中找不到任何信贷员或商业银行家要求抬高利率的内容。为什么没有这样的邮件？巴克莱可是全球最大的银行之一。而Libor众所周知是从企业授信额度到汽车贷款的数万亿美元贷款的基准利率。那么，既然巴克莱有庞大的放贷规模，还能操纵Libor，为什么没有发现信贷员写邮件来要求抬高利率，增加季度贷款利润？

    事实上，这些邮件来自交易员，而且通常都是要求负责提交巴克莱贷款利率的银行官员压低（而不是抬高）Libor，以帮助该行或个别交易员的头寸获利。很多时候，提交利率者都照办了。有些银行看上去还有协调利率提交和交易业务的安排。据称，部分银行干脆就把利率提交部门安排在了交易部门的旁边，希望藉此增加银行利润。但是，好像没有什么协调银行贷款利率和实际贷款业务的安排。而且他们对于压低Libor将损及贷款利润似乎也不怎么担心。

    摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）伦敦鲸丑闻败露后暴露出来的一点是，该行的交易业务，也就是杰米•戴蒙所称的“对冲”，已经变得有多大多重要。摩根大通将大约1/3的存款（约3.5亿美元）都进行了投资，而不是放贷。正如路透社（Reuters）的菲利克斯•赛蒙和其他人所指，该行将这么多的资源用于交易（而非放贷），这是真正问题所在，绝非一家资本金充足的大银行搞砸了一笔交易这么简单。

    Libor丑闻看来也一样。真正的问题或者说让监管机构长期担忧的并非利率操纵，而是大银行有多少业务是交易驱动，而非借贷驱动。显然，巴克莱和其他银行当时认为，通过操纵利率，他们可以在交易业务中赚更多的钱，弥补借贷业务的损失。正如佛洛依德•诺瑞斯周末在《纽约时报》（NY Times）上的文章中所写的：“有意思的是，即便是在金融危机之前，这类操纵也不是总是朝着抬高利率（常理看来，贷出方总是利率越高越好）一个方向。巴克莱的交易部门炮制报告，有时根据交易头寸要求降低利率，即便这样可能会减少该行获得的利息收入。”

    所有这些看来都进一步证明了一点，那就是，为什么我们需要严厉的《沃克尔法则》（Volcker rule），以便将借贷业务与交易业务分离。它不光是为了防止这些大银行遭受巨额交易损失。我们需要《沃克尔法则》的原因是在经济增长乏力之时，我们需要银行家专注于借贷业务。Libor丑闻再次表明借贷业务在当代国际金融界只是个配角。这才是真正的问题所在。

    译者：早稻米

    Here's one thing you won't find among the trove of e-mails released as part of Barclays' $450 million settlement for its part in the scheme to fix Libor: Loan officers or commercial bankers asking for higher rates. The question is why not. Barclays is one of the biggest banks in the world. And Libor, as the world now knows, is the basis for trillions of dollars in loans including everything from corporate lines of credit to auto loans. So if Barclays is a huge lender, and the Libor fix was on, why wasn't there any e-mails from loan officers asking the bank to jack up the rates in order to boost lending profits in the quarter?

    Instead, the e-mails are from traders. And often they are asking for the bank officials responsible for reporting Barclays' lending rates to the London group that set official Libor to push the rate down, not up, in order to benefit the bank's, or an individual trader's, positions. And in many instances the submitters complied. At some banks there appeared to be a concerted effort to coordinate their rate reporting and their trading operations. Allegedly, some banks sat their Libor traders right next to the submitters in order to boost profits. Yet, there appears to be very little effort to coordinate bank lending rates with actual lending. And very little concern for how pushing the rate lower would hurt lending profits.

    One of the revelations after the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) London Whale blow-up was just how big and important trading activities, which Jamie Dimon calls hedging, had become at the bank. Roughly, one-third of all the money JPMorgan has taken in from depositors, or around $350 billion, is invested, rather than lent out. The fact that the bank diverted so much of its resources to trading, and away from lending, Reuters' Felix Salmon and others pointed out, was the real problem for the economy, and not the fact that a large well-capitalized bank had messed up a trade.

    The same appears to be true for the Libor scandal. The real story, and the long-term concern for regulators, is not that lending rates were fixed, but how much of the business of big banks these days is driven by trading, not lending. Clearly, Barclays and other banks believed they could make more money on their trading desk manipulating the rate, then they would lose in their lending operations. As Floyd Norris wrote in the NY Times over the weekend, "It is interesting to note that even before the financial crisis, the manipulation was not, as one might expect from a lender, always in the direction of higher rates. The trading department at Barclays was rigging the report, and sometimes its trading positions called for lower rates, even though that might reduce the interest income received by the bank."

    All this appears to be more evidence for why we need a strong Volcker rule that separates lending from trading. It's not just to insure against large trading losses at the big banks. The reason we need the Volcker rule is that at time when the economy is struggling to grow what we really need is bankers who are focused on lending. The Libor scandal shows once again that lending is a sideshow in the world of modern global finance. And that's the real problem.