要是你养的奶牛长得越来越大，产的奶却越来越少，通常你就得考虑一下它们的乳腺是不是出了问题。这就是我听说2013年美联储（Feb）为美国财政部提供的资金少于2012年时的第一反应。5年前，全球金融援助行动开始后，美联储一直是纳税人的资金来源，它持有的证券已经增加了约1.1万亿美元。

    这条有意思的消息来自美联储研究机构Stone McCarthy Research Associates。本月早些时候，这个机构告诉客户，2013年美联储为财政部提供了765亿美元资金，少于2012年的884亿美元。假设这个数字比较准确，5年来美联储向财政部（也就是说，向纳税人）提供的资金一共达到了3660亿美元。如果不是为了压低利率而大规模购买证券，这个数字可能只有1500亿美元左右。

    美联储为财政部提供这么多资金并不是为了当好人，而是因为美联储得按要求把几乎所有利润都交给财政部，后者相当理直气壮地把这笔资金作为自己的收入，就像对待人们缴纳的所得税一样。

    让我继续阐发这个比喻，2013年美联储提供给财政部的资金明显少于2012年是什么原因呢？美联储的“草料”一直都不太好吗？非也。

    实际情况是，2012年的援助行动让美联储获得了相当可观的一次性利润。

    首先，为了帮助贝尔斯登（Bear Stearns）和美国国际集团（AIG）的债权人，2008年联邦政府采取的措施之一是收购这些公司的证券。2012年，美联储将这些曾经“有毒”的证券转让后，获得了61亿美元利润。金融危机期间，美联储以低价买进了这些证券，等到它再次卖出这些证券时，市场正对收益如饥似渴。

    此外，美联储出售了所持证券中期限较短的一部分，目的是筹集资金用于长期证券投资。这种做法被称为扭曲操作，总计给它带来了133亿美元的利润。

    考虑到汇兑损失，2012年美联储的这些一次性收益达到了185亿美元。因此，2012年美联储的利润为901亿美元，而2013年的预计利润只有785亿美元。扣除2012年的一次性利润，并且基于Stone McCarthy Research Associates估算的2013年盈利数字，美联储的利润上升了10%左右。

    美联储在大约一年前公布了2012年的收益情况，因此我们可能很快就会得到2013年的官方盈利数据。

    同时，我怀疑美联储披露这些信息后，人们会像往常一样讨论持有3.8万亿美元证券给美联储带来的巨大风险。其中有大量长期证券。如果利率不断上升，这些长期证券的市场价值就会持续下降。

    批评人士会说，证券价值缩水有可能消耗掉美联储的资金。但你们知道吗？不会出现这种情况，原因是2011年美联储调整了会计方法。几乎没有人注意到这一点，我也是昨天才从Stone McCarthy Research Associates创始人雷•斯通那里听说了这件事。

    以我的理解，有了这条规则，美联储就无需按照市场价格下调自己打算持有的证券的价值。这样，美联储就可以稳坐钓鱼台，一边让这些证券生息，一边等着它们到期，在到期后按面额收回全部资金。一般的银行不能自行制定会计法则，但美国中央银行可以这样做。

    最后一点。今后某个时刻，短期利率将升至4%以上，我希望这种情况能很快出现。它会大幅削减美联储的利润，甚至造成亏损。无论怎样，美联储为财政部提供的资金将远低于此前的水平。可以断言的是，这笔资金变少后，政客们就会在对美联储加强监督方面施加政治压力。

    我不是美联储的拥趸。但如果美联储的资金断流1-2年，我们不应该太担心这个充当“奶牛”角色的机构，也不用马上就把它放到草场上。我们应该记住，等到财政部确实需要资金的时候，纳税人应该把美联储所持证券中最好的一部分撇出来。这一点无需多言。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie  

    When your cow gets bigger but produces less milk, it's usually time to worry that something has gone wrong with the beast. That's the first thing that came to my mind when I heard that the Federal Reserve, a cash cow for U.S. taxpayers ever since the worldwide financial bailout began five years ago, sent less money to the Treasury last year than it did in 2012. This despite the fact that the Fed had increased its securities holdings by about $1.1 trillion.

    I got this interesting news from a Fed watching firm, Stone McCarthy Research Associates, which told its clients earlier this month that it estimated that the Fed had sent $76.5 billion to the Treasury last year, down from $88.4 billion in 2012. Assuming Stone McCarthy's number is reasonably accurate, the Fed has sent the Treasury (and thus U.S. taxpayers) a total of $366 billion for the past five years, compared with the $150 billion or so it would have probably sent had it not made massive securities purchases in an attempt to force down interest rates.

    The Fed doesn't send all this money to the Treasury to be nice. It does this because it's required to turn over essentially all its profits to the Treasury, which counts them -- quite properly -- as revenue, the same way it counts your income tax payments.

    To continue milking my metaphor, what accounts for the Fed sending substantially less money to the Treasury last year than in 2012? Has the Fed been chowing down on inferior fodder? Nope.

    What happened is that in 2012, the Fed made some nifty one-time profits as a result of its bailout activities.

    First, it sold the once-toxic securities it acquired in 2008 from Bear Stearns and AIG (AIG) as part of the federal bailout of those firms' creditors. It made a $6.1 billion profit on these securities, which it bought at distressed prices during the financial meltdown and sold into a yield-hungry market.

    In addition, the Fed realized $13.3 billion of profits by selling shorter-term securities it held in its portfolio, in order to raise money to reinvest in longer-term securities, a move called Operation Twist.

    These one-time profits, offset by currency losses, totaled $18.5 billion in 2012. That's why the Fed earned $90.1 billion in 2012, but only an estimated $78.5 billion last year. Subtract the one-time profits from 2012 and plug in Stone McCarthy's estimate for 2013, and the Fed's profits were up about 10%.

    The Fed released its 2012 numbers just about a year ago, so we'll probably get its official 2013 numbers reasonably soon.

    I also suspect that the Fed's announcement will trigger the usual discussions about the huge risks the Fed is running by holding $3.8 trillion of securities, many of them long-term, whose market value will continue falling if -- make that when -- interest rates continue rising.

    Critics will say this value decline could well wipe out the Fed's capital. But guess what? That won't happen, thanks to a little-noticed accounting change the Fed adopted in 2011 and that Ray Stone told me about yesterday.

    The rule, as best I can explain it, allows the Fed to avoid having to mark down the value of securities that it intends to hold. That way, it can sit there, collect interest on the securities, wait for them to mature, and collect their full face value when that happens. Regular banks can't make up their own accounting rules, but our central bank can.

    And one final note. At some point, which I hope comes reasonably soon, short-term interest rates will rise above 4%, which will put a big damper on the Fed's profits, possibly even generating losses. In any event, it will send far less money to the Treasury than it's been sending. And you can bet that this decline will generate political pressure by politicians to increase oversight of the Fed.

    I'm no Fed fanboy. But if Fed remittances stop for a year or two, we shouldn't get too upset with old Bossy and try to put her out to pasture. We should remember that taxpayers got to skim the cream off the Fed's securities portfolio when the Treasury really needed the money. Nuff said.