美联储主席珍妮特•耶伦：金融危机不是低利率惹的祸

    人们都说，失败无主。上次金融危机也是一样。

    上周三早间在参加国际货币基金（International Monetary Fund）会议发表演讲时，美联储主席珍妮特•耶伦宣称，美联储在本世纪最初几年一直维持低利率政策的行为并不是促成2008年金融危机的原因。

    “上一次危机本来可能通过2005年前后大幅度收紧货币政策而得到阻止或显著缓解，听到这么讲的情况并不少见，”耶伦表示。“但至少，这样的方式原本就不足以解决（美国当时面临的）全部弱点。”

    相反，耶伦认为，在危机发生前提高利率只会推高失业率，而不能解决金融系统面临的核心问题，其中包括使用外来的、人们知之甚少的衍生产品，以及系统重要性大型金融机构风险管理不善的问题。耶伦提到了实证研究的内容，高利率并不是抗击房地产泡沫的有效工具，除非利率高到导致不可接受的高失业率。

    相反，耶伦认为，美联储原本应该专注于使用限制短期融资和要求银行持有高水平资本等监管工具，以便抗击造成威胁的泡沫，同时确保银行系统足够健康，能够生存下来。

    市场参与者从中得到的收获很明确：这个演讲是对耶伦表示将长时间保持低利率承诺的双重确认。尽管詹姆斯•布拉德和查尔斯•普洛瑟等美联储官员一直公开提倡加息，很清楚的一点是，美联储这位主席不认为有任何理由加息，至少

    在明年年底前是这样。

    耶伦还明确表示，她认为，美联储应当大力监管金融系统。但耶伦并没有说，对于监管范围之外的金融风险（即被称为“影子”银行系统），美国央行具体应怎么做。当被问到，如果借助货币政策，美联储打算如何控制影子银行的风险，耶伦说：“它将是个巨大的挑战，我现在还没有找到好的答案。”（财富中文网）

    Failure, they say, is an orphan, and the financial crisis is no different.

    In a speech on Wednesday morning at an International Monetary Fund conference, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen argued that the low-interest-rate policy that the Fed maintained throughout the 2000s did not contribute to the financial crisis.

    “It is not uncommon to hear it suggested that the crisis could have been prevented or significantly mitigated by substantially tighter monetary policy in the mid-2000s,” Yellen said. “At the very least, however, such an approach would have been insufficient to address the full range of critical vulnerabilities” facing the country at the time.

    Yellen instead argued that raising rates during the run up to the crisis would have led to higher unemployment without getting to the core issues facing the financial system, which included the use of exotic and poorly understood derivatives and poor risk management on the part of large, systemically important financial institutions. Yellen also referred to a body of empirical studies that have shown that higher interest rates wouldn’t have been an effective tool at fighting the real estate bubble, unless they were raised to such a degree as to cause unacceptable levels of unemployment.

    Yellen argued that, instead, the central bank should have focused on using regulatory tools like limits on short-term funding and requirements for banks to hold higher levels of capital in order to fight dangerous bubbles and to make banks healthy enough to survive.

    The takeaway for market participants is clear: this speech is a doubling down on Yellen’s promise to keep interest rates low for a long time. Despite the fact that Fed officials like James Bullard and Charles Plosserhave been publicly arguing for higher interest rates, it’s clear that the Fed chair doesn’t see any reason to raise rates before the end of next year, at the earliest.

    Yellen also made clear that she believes that the Fed should engage in vigorous regulation of the financial system. But Yellen did not say what exactly should be done about financial risks that fall outside the purview of the central bank, what’s known as the “shadow” banking system. When asked how—if not through monetary policy—the Fed could contain risks in shadow banking, Yellen said, “That is going to be a huge challenge to which I don’t have a great answer.”