澳大利亚“水期货”揭秘

    不过《农业赌博：食物如何不再是食物》（ Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food）一书的作者弗莱德里克•考夫曼却从大宗商品交易和衍生品市场的历史的角度给鲁尼的话泼了一瓢冷水。他认为，水资源的金融衍生品和投机可能导致水价飙升，甚至使旱情进一步恶化，就像粮食和能源期货也曾导致社会动荡一样。考夫曼对Wired.com表示：“我们已经见证了金融衍生品对抵押证券产生的影响，我们不希望同样的事发生在水身上。”

    鲁尼认为，考夫曼提出的把水资源分配权交给政府的方法无法带来Waterfind为水资源市场所贡献的效率。

    熟悉美国水资源问题的美国保护基金会（Conservation Fund）的项目经理奥利•阿蒙森表示，美国的非政府机构已经在试图借助市场的力量来保护水资源。比如加利福尼亚州的律师汤姆•希克斯就希望让捐献用水权者获得类似于美国国内收入署赋予土地信托捐献者的税收优惠。这样就为用水权赋予了经济价值，同时也让投机者没有钻营的机会。

    阿蒙森认为，澳大利亚的期货市场可能不会蔓延至美国，其中一个原因是美国各地有关用水权的法律五花八门。但Waterfind公司却表示，它计划在2015年1月推出美国业务。

    就像考夫曼等人指出的那样，一旦妖怪跳出了瓶子，就没人能说得清市场到底会走向何方。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Frederick Kaufman, the author of Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food, says the history of commodity and derivatives markets throws some, ahem, cold water on this argument. He has warned that water derivatives and speculation could cause price spikes and even exacerbate droughts, just as grain and energy futures have wreaked social havoc in the past. “We saw what derivatives did for mortgage-backed securities. We don’t want them doing that for water,” Kaufman told Wired.com.

    Rooney says that Kaufman’s alternative—leaving it to government agencies to allocate water—would not yield the efficiencies he attributes to water markets.

    Ole Amundsen, a program manager for the Conservation Fund who is familiar with U.S. water issues, says non-governmental organizations are already trying to harness market forces for water conservation in the U.S. For example, he says, a California attorney named Tom Hicks is trying to gain similar tax benefits for donated water rights as those that the Internal Revenue Service applies to land-trust donations. This would give water rights a financial value without letting speculators run amok.

    Amundsen says the Australian futures market is unlikely to spread to the U.S., partly because of the diverse water-rights laws throughout the U.S. But Waterfind plans to launch U.S. operations in January 2015.

    As Kaufman and others have noted, once the genie is out of the (water) bottle, there is no telling where a market will go.