西班牙应当让小银行倒闭

    整合不是救治西班牙银行沉疴的万灵丹。上周西班牙宣布新一宗银行整合，对于恢复投资者对该国风雨飘摇的银行业的信心，作用甚微。在形势变得不可收拾之前，西班牙政府和欧洲央行（European Central Bank）最终需要联手私营投资者为西班牙银行注资并增强其实力。

    从2008年金融危机开始，围绕西班牙一些负债累累的小银行Caja（类似美国的储蓄和贷款银行）的担忧与日俱增。与上世纪80年代美国的储蓄和贷款银行类似，Caja助涨了过去十年西班牙商业和住宅房地产的繁荣，信贷紧缩的启动令这一繁荣戛然而止。

    当时执政的左翼政府认为，避免大批银行倒闭的最好办法是把所有Caja整合起来，希望它们凭借更大的资产负债表能更好地抵御这场金融危机。当时认为，合并产生的协同效应可用于弥补那些不良的房地产贷款造成的损失。从此次金融危机之始，西班牙银行领域就一直在推进整合。本周宣布的是涉及Ibercaja、Liberbank和Caja3的三方合并，由此Caja数量从45家减至10家。

    但此类合并没有让事情朝好的反向发展，反而使状况变得更糟。去年7月合并成立的、拥有7家Caja的银行联合体Bankia本月公布了巨额亏损，不得不进行部分国有化。分析师们原本估计，这家西班牙银行合并政策的典型代表将需要30-100亿欧元的救助资金。

    这些资金还远远不够。上周五，Bankia宣布，公司实际上需要190亿欧元，几乎是西班牙银行现有救助资金额的5倍。马德里希望欧洲央行能伸出援手，向这家银行注入新的资本金以避免其倒闭。

    欧洲央行是否真的会帮西班牙政府堵住Bankia资产负债表上的这个大窟窿，报道众说纷纭。这种不确定性将西班牙政府的借贷成本推高到了加入欧元区以来的最高值6.6%，接近迫使希腊、葡萄牙和爱尔兰向欧洲央行和国际货币基金组织（IMF）求助时的7%。这种不确定性也压低了欧元兑美元汇率，冲击全球股市，因为人们担心这可能成为欧元分崩离析的导火索。

    西班牙需要在银行危机失控前改变方向。银行合并不能奏效的原因是，Caja的房地产贷款损失远远超过任何合并协同效应。鉴于不良贷款与一国失业率之间的强关联，毫不奇怪西班牙拥有欧盟最高的失业率，已升至令人麻木的24%，年轻人失业率更是高达50%左右，两者目前都无改善迹象。

    Consolidation is no panacea for Spain's banking woes. The announcement this week of yet another banking merger in Spain has done little to restore investor confidence in the country's shattered banking sector. The Spanish government and the European Central Bank will ultimately need to work in conjunction with private investors to recapitalize and strengthen the nation's banks before the situation turns critical.

    Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, there has been increasing worry over Spain's debt-ridden "cajas," which are small banks, similar to savings and loans. Like S&L's did in the 1980s in the U.S., the Spanish cajas helped fueled a commercial and residential real-estate boom in Spain in the last decade, which came to a screeching halt with the start of the credit crunch.

    The ruling left-wing government at the time thought the best way to avoid lots of bank failures was to smash all the cajas together in the hopes that they could better weather the crisis with a bigger balance sheet. It was believed that merger synergies could then be used to cover any losses resulting from the sour property loans. There has since been considerable consolidation in the sector since the crisis began. The announcement this week of a three-way merger involving Ibercaja, Liberbank and Caja3 reduces the number of cajas to 10 from 45.

    But instead of making things better, the mergers have made things worse. Bankia, an agglomeration of seven cajas, which came together just last July, reported massive losses this month and had to be partially nationalized. Analysts estimated that the poster child for Spain's merger policy would need to be bailed out for 3 to 10 billion euros.

    They were way off. Bankia announced last Friday that it actually needed 19 billion euros, which is nearly five times the amount of money available in Spain's bank bailout fund. Now Madrid is hoping that the European Central Bank will come to their rescue and inject fresh capital into the bank to prevent it from failing.

    There have been conflicting reports as to whether or not the ECB will indeed help Spain's government plug the hole in Bankia's balance sheet. This uncertainty sent Spanish government borrowing costs to a euro-era high of 6.6%, which was near the 7% level that forced Greece, Portugal and Ireland to request massive government bailouts from the ECB and IMF. This weighed heavy on the euro's value versus the U.S. dollar and drove equity markets down across the globe on the fear that this could be the flashpoint that could set off the collapse of the troubled common currency.

    Spain needs to change tack before its banking crisis spins out of control. The bank mergers didn't work because the losses the cajas were registering from their property loans far outstripped any merger synergy. That shouldn't be too surprising given the strong correlation that exists between non-performing loans and a country's unemployment rate. Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the EU at a mind-numbing 24% with a youth unemployment rate that is around 50%, both of which show no signs of abating.