美国总统候选人缘何青睐盲目信托

    即便政客严格遵照规则，但个别盲目信托的盲目性要更低一些。虽然参议院、众议院和执行机构的章程在根本上没有区别，但执行起来却有很大差异。到了各州，这种差异更大。罗姆尼的资金由一名波士顿律师管理，而如果他当选美国总统，为了遵守联邦法规，他必须重新办理一个更严格的盲目信托。

    不过，除了法律和政治上的麻烦，让大多数人对盲目信托望而却步的最大因素则是财务要求。盲目信托只对少数政客有用。而且，必须是那些财力非常雄厚的政客。

    华盛顿特区富理达律师事务所（Foley & Lardner）的克里塔•米歇尔曾是里克•桑托勒姆的竞选委员会委员，他说：“除非你在这类投资基金中投入了一笔巨款，需要进行持续性管理。否则，管理费可是不菲。”

    世达律所的格罗斯表示，通常，他会建议商界人士和其他富有的候选人考虑大众型投资，比如共同基金或指数基金等。奥巴马总统在经历过早期的争议之后，便采取了这种措施。2007年，时任参议员的奥巴马，因为其信托在捐助人的公司投资了数万美元而遭到指责。他的办公室称，这次投资是当时的顾问根据尚未敲定的盲目信托条款进行的，但此事仍登上了《纽约时报》（The New York Times）的头版。

    美国最有钱的政客们都避开了盲目信托。比如，2008年，希拉里参加总统竞选时，克林顿夫妇便把他们的信托全部变现，来避免出现利益冲突的指责。其他几位未设立盲目信托的富豪政客包括加州众议员达雷尔•伊萨、马萨诸塞州参议员约翰•克里和众议员少数党领袖南希•佩洛西，不过这三人的投资组合不够低调，不时就会有媒体跳出来对此指摘一番。

    格罗斯称，和拥有密切管理信托的候选人相比，进行大众投资的候选人“可以有同样的表现，甚至表现更好”。如今，有各种各样的指数基金可以提供更加激进、风险更高的投资选择。政客可以借此实现大幅度的投资增长，又无需担心盲目信托带来的烦恼（和巨额费用）。

    不过，盲目信托确实有它存在的价值。对于资产不便变现的竞选人来说，其他选择少之又少。卫理律所的沃克称：“对于所持有投资组合极其复杂的人来说，这可能是唯一的应对。”米特•罗姆尼的情况便是如此，他拥有很复杂的私募股权，还持有贝恩资本的股份，因此，他不可能把所有资金都用于购买美国长期国债，过早放弃投资所带来的税务影响就更不必说了。

    当然，这并不意味着只有成熟老练的投资者才可以设立盲目信托。任何人都可以选择这种投资方式。未来，盲目信托可能日益普遍。随着《证券法》（Stock Act）的通过，进一步加强了对财务披露的法律要求，并明确禁止内幕交易，而盲目信托不仅得到了伦理学家的认可，还具有保密性。因此，它未来可能会得到更多人的青睐。

    加州参议员芭芭拉•柏克瑟曾写过一本名为《盲目信托》（Blind Trust）的惊悚小说。写这本书的动机是因为一个不受她控制的信托进行了不良金融交易，致使她受到了不公正的指责。柏克瑟自己就设立了盲目信托，但同时也是负责管理盲目信托的参议院道德委员会的主席。对于这本书的寓意，罗姆尼和奥巴马肯定非常熟悉：对待盲目信托要小心谨慎。并非只有政客们自己能看清盲目信托的真实面目，群众同样心知肚明。

    翻译：刘进龙/汪皓

    Even when a politician follows the rules perfectly, some trusts are less blind than others. While the statutes are essentially the same for the Senate, the House and the Executive Branch, they're enforced differently. On the state level, there's even greater disparity. Romney's money is managed by a Boston attorney, and he would likely need to create a new, stricter blind trust in order to comply with federal regulations if elected.

    But besides the legal and political morass, perhaps the biggest deterrent is financial. Blind trusts are only really useful to a few politicians. And to be one of them, you must be really, really rich.

    "Unless you've got just a bajillion dollars in the kinds of investment funds that require constant management," says Cleta Mitchell of law firm Foley & Lardner in D.C., and former campaign council to Rick Santorum. "Then really the cost of managing that is a lot."

    Skadden Arps's Gross says that he typically advises businessmen and other wealthy candidates to consider plain vanilla investments like mutual funds or index funds. Notably, Obama went this route after his own early brushes with controversy. In 2007, the then-senator came under fire after his trust invested tens of thousands in donors' companies. His office said at the time that advisers had made the investments under the terms of a blind trust that had yet to be finalized, but the story still ran on the front page of The New York Times.

    Some of the country's wealthiest politicians have eschewed blind trusts altogether. Bill and Hillary Clinton liquidated theirs and left the holdings in cash to avoid perceptions of conflict of interest when Hilary ran for office in 2008. California Representative Darrell Issa, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are other examples of extremely well-endowed legislators without blind trusts, though none of the three have portfolios bland enough to avoid occasionally pointed question from the press.

    Candidates with vanilla holdings, says Gross, often "do just as well, and probably better," than those with closely managed trusts. Today's diversified index funds have more aggressive, riskier options, Gross says. That allows politicians to pursue serious investment growth without signing up for the hassle (and giant fees) that come with a blind trust.

    Blind trusts do serve a purpose, though. For some candidates with assets that can't be easily liquidated, there are few other options. "It may be the only response that someone who has extremely complicated holdings can take," Wiley Rein's Walker says. That might be true in Mitt Romney's case, where a complex bundle of private equity holdings and his stake in Bain Capital would make it extremely difficult for him to simply put everything in Treasury bonds -- to say nothing of the tax implications of prematurely bailing on his investments.

    That's not to say only a sophisticated investor can set up a blind trust. The option is open to anyone, and it's likely to become increasingly popular. With the passage of the Stock Act, which beefs up financial disclosure laws and explicitly bans insider trading, blind trusts may gain appeal for being both ethicist-approved and confidential.

    There's even a book about it: Blind Trust, a thriller written by California Senator Barbara Boxer, follows a protagonist unjustly blamed for untoward financial dealings in a trust she didn't control. Boxer, who has one of her own, is also the chair of the Senate ethics committee, which regulates them. The moral of the story is one both Romney and Obama are familiar with by now: Handle blind trusts with care. Not only can politicians often discern their contents, so can the public.