王关富商务英语阅读第二版参考译文chapter10

U10

The alchemists of finance

金融魔法点石成金

May 17th 2007

From The Economist print edition

（本文由ECO论坛dtchengxc翻译，原文版权归经济学人集团（The Economist Newspaper Limited）所有，译文版权归译者所有，未经授权，不得转载，谢谢合作！）

漫画作者玛丽亚?吉夫斯（Maria Jeeves）

Global investment banks are taking ever more risk, and are devising ever more sophisticated ways of spreading it, says Henry Tricks. Is that reassuring or worrying?

亨利?特里克斯(Henry Tricks)说：“全球的投资银行正承受着越来越大的风险，也在设计着越来越复杂的分散风险的方法。”这究竟是会让人放心还是让人担心？

AT LEAST since 1823, when Byron's Don Juan described “Jew Rothschild, and his fellow Christian Baring” as the “true Lords of Europe”, investment bankers have inspired awe, envy and, rightly or wrongly, a measure of disdain. Exactly 100 years ago the undisputed patriarch of the modern industry, J. Pierpont Morgan, stemmed the Panic of 1907, a financial crisis caused by unregulated trusts (the hedge funds of their day). Acting, in effect, as lender of last resort from his Wall Street office, he was briefly feted before Americans realised the danger of having such power vested in one man. Cartoonists then mercilessly mocked him. After his death in 1913 the Federal Reserve was set up.

不晚于1823年——那时拜伦（Byron）在《唐璜》（Don Juan）中将“犹太人罗思柴尔德（Rothschild）和他的同伙基督徒巴林（Baring）”称为“欧洲真正的主宰”，投资银行家们博得了敬畏、羡慕以及一定程度的蔑视——不管这正确与否。正好100年前这个现代产业无可争议的鼻祖J?皮尔庞特?摩根（J. Pierpont Morgan）制止了1907年的大恐慌（the Panic of 1907）——一场由非受监管信托（unregulated trusts）（当时的对冲基金（hedge funds））引起的金融危机。他在其华尔街的办公室中充当了实际上的最后贷款人的角色，受到了人们的追捧。其后不久，美国人意识到让一个人拥有如此的权力是多么的危险。当时的漫画家对他进行了无情的嘲弄。在他1913年死后，美联储（the Federal Reserve）就成立了。

The investment-banking industry was further constrained during the Depression of the 1930s, when Wall Street firms such as that founded by Morgan were split into commercial banks and securities houses. The latter—today's investment banks—underwrite stocks and bonds and advise companies on mergers and acquisitions, rather than collect deposits and make loans. In the 1980s and 1990s they developed a reputation for gluttonous excess. But a lot has changed since then.

在上个世纪30年代的大萧条（the Depression of the 1930s）期间投资银行业受到进一步的抑制，华尔街的许多公司（比方说摩根创立的公司）被拆分为商业银行和证券交易所。后者即今天的投资银行，它承销股票和债券，并就企业合并和收购事宜为公司提供咨询服务，而不经营存、贷款业务。在上个世纪80和90年代它们得到了过于贪婪的名声。但从那时以来情

况发生了很大的变化。

Intensely private partnerships have become publicly traded companies. Commercial banks such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have muscled back into investment banking. And European warhorses such as Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse have joined the race for global supremacy. The bets, and the profits, have got bigger, though investment banks are trying to keep quiet about that, for several reasons.

很大程度上私人合伙公司已经可以公开交易。诸如花旗集团(Citigroup) 、摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）这样的商业银行又挤回了投资银行业。欧洲老字号如：德意志银行（Deutsche Bank) 、瑞银集团(UBS)、瑞士信贷（Credit Suisse），也加入了争夺全球霸权的竞争。虽然投资银行基于几点理由试图对此保持沉默，赌注和收益却已越来越大。

First, they are under more scrutiny. Wall Street firms had their wings clipped by Eliot Spitzer, New York's former attorney-general, for plugging worthless shares during the dotcom era. Being publicly traded companies has tamed some egos, too. Star traders do not enjoy the same headroom on salaries (albeit very large salaries) as they did when they were partners in the business. At UBS, a Swiss bank which in 2000 moved into the American equity markets by merging with PaineWebber, a brokerage, “fiefs” are explicitly banned. Richard Fuld, boss of Lehman Brothers, a fast-growing W all Street firm, imposed a “one-firm culture” when it was spun off from American Express in 1994. Now, says Scott Freidheim, a top executive, Mr Fuld uses “culture” in speeches more often than any other word except “the”.

首先，它们受到了更多的审查。华尔街的公司被纽约州前总检察长艾略特?斯皮策（Eliot Spitzer）捆住了手脚，起因是这些公司在.com时代推广垃圾股票。成为可公开交易的公司也挫伤了些许自尊心。尽管交易明星们的薪水仍然很高，但薪水的上升空间与他们作为业务合伙人时相比逊色不少。瑞银集团(UBS)是一家瑞士银行，在2000年通过与经纪公司普惠（PaineWebber）合并而进入美国股票市场。在瑞银集团，“封地”是被明确禁止的。莱曼兄弟公司（Lehman Brothers）是华尔街一家快速成长的公司，当它在1994年从美国运通公司（American Express）分割出来时，其老板理查德?富尔德(Richard Fuld) 就强制推行“公司一体统筹的文化”。斯科特?弗赖德海姆（Scott Freidheim）是一个高层管理人员，他说现在富尔德先生在演讲中使用“文化”这个词的频率比除了“the”之外的所有单词都要高。

Meanwhile another group has overtaken the investment banks in the excess stakes: their money-spinning clients in the private-equity and hedge-fund industries. Already they throw the biggest parties, do the boldest deals and launch the most celebrated initial public offerings. The IPO of part of Blackstone, a private-equity group, might well raise more money than Goldman Sachs's did in 1999, when even the company's doormen and drivers became extremely rich.

同时，要说到过分，另一个群体已经超过了投资银行：它们在私募股权和对冲基金业赚大钱的客户。他们已经举行了最大规模的派对，进行了最大胆的交易，发起了最著名的首次公开招股（IPO，initial public offering）。黑石（Blackstone）是一家私募股权集团,其部分的首次公开招股所筹集的资金甚至超过高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）在1999年全年的业绩——那时即使是高盛公司的门卫和司机都赚得盆满钵满。

（图表说明：Rich list财富榜

Investment-banking revenue,by activity投资银行收入，按活动分类

2006,$bn 年度：2006年，单位：十亿美元

Advisory咨询业务Debt underwriting 债务承销业务Equity underwriting股票承销业务Goldman Sachs 高盛

Morgan Stanley摩根士丹利

JPMorgan摩根大通银行

Credit Suisse*瑞士信贷*

Citigroup 花旗集团

Merrill Lynch 美林

Deutsche Bank德意志银行

Lehman Brothers莱曼兄弟公司

Bank of America美国银行

*Annualised using 01-03 以2001-2003年的收入折算年度收入

Source: Dominion Bond Rating Service 资料来源：多美年债券评级服务公司）

Yet when investment bankers discuss the fabulous fortunes accruing to these firms' founders, they do so without envy. “Theirs is a truly pioneering role,” says Anshu Jain, head of global markets at Deutsche Bank, one of the world's top trading banks. “Pioneers in any industry get a disproportionate share of the spoils.”

但当投资银行家们谈到这些公司创始人所积累的巨大财富时，他们一点也不嫉妒。德意志银行（Deutsche Bank)是世界顶级的贸易银行之一，其全球市场业务总裁安苏?贾殷（Anshu Jain）说：“他们扮演的是一个真正的先驱者的角色，任何行业的先驱者都会得到一份不成比例的战利品。”

Even if they are no longer the pioneers, the investment banks have played a crucial part in bringing about the extraordinary changes seen in the financial markets, starting in the 1980s and accelerating dramatically in the past five years. Technology and innovation have brought unprecedented breadth, depth and richness to financial instruments. According to McKinsey, a consultancy, the stock of shares and public and private debt securities held in America grew from 2.4 times GDP in 1995 to 3.3 times in 2004. In Europe the increase was even more dramatic, albeit from a lower base. These figures do not include derivatives, notional amounts of which traded privately, or “over-the-counter” securities, which had soared to $370 trillion by last June, from $258 trillion less than two years earlier, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Given such torrid growth, the markets are becoming increasingly vital to global financial stability.

投资银行即使不再是先驱者，它们在给金融市场带来显著变化的过程中仍然扮演着至关重要的角色。这种变化始于上世纪80年代，在过去的5年里明显加速。技术和创新使得金融工具的广度、深度和多样性达到了前所未有的水平。根据麦肯锡（McKinsey）(一家咨询公司)的研究，美国人持有的股票和公私债券的存量在1995年是国内生产总值的2.4倍，而到了2004年则达到3.3倍。而在欧洲，尽管起点较低，但增长的速度更快。这些数字还不包括金融衍生品或是场外交易证券。金融衍生品的名义金额在私下交易。而根据国际结算银行（Bank for International Settlements，BIS）的报告，场外交易证券的交易金额从不到两年前的258万亿美元飙升到去年6月的370万亿美元。鉴于市场如此快速的发展，它们对全球金融稳定愈加重要。

There have been thrills and spills along the way. The stockmarket crash of 1987 and the seizing up of credit markets after Russia defaulted in 1998 both exposed huge flaws in the industry, forcing central banks to step in to prevent what they feared might be lasting damage to the real economy. Even so, regulators reckon that on balance the growth of markets has been a good thing, making the financial system safer than more traditional forms of bank lending. The trouble is that given the complexity of the new instruments and the range of clients and countries involved, they can never be absolutely sure that a monumental crisis is not brewing somewhere.

这一路上充满了紧张刺激。1987年的股市崩溃和1998年俄罗斯拒绝履行偿债义务后信贷市场的停摆都暴露了该行业的巨大缺陷。这促使中央银行进行干涉，以避免可能对实际经济造成的持久伤害。虽然如此，监管机构还是认为市场的成长使得金融系统比传统的银行贷款形式更加安全了，总的说来是一件好事。问题就在于：考虑到新工具的复杂性以及所涉及客户和国家的范围，监管者永远不可能绝对保证任何地方都没有酝酿中的巨大危机。

What worries both bankers and regulators is not so much the threat from hedge funds or private-equity groups but the implications for the financial system of a possible collapse of an investment bank (or large complex financial institution, as they clumsily call it). At a time when America's housing market has exposed the danger of overexcitement on Wall Street, it is worth exploring how these institutions are evolving, how they handle the risks attached to what they do, and how well those risks are spread around the financial system. That is what this survey sets out to do.

让银行家和监管者担心的还不仅仅是来自对冲基金或私募股权集团的威胁，还有带有投资银行（或者按照他们的笨拙叫法：大而复杂的金融机构）崩溃可能的金融系统的可能影响。每当美国的房地产市场暴露出华尔街过度兴奋的危险时，如下这些问题就是值得探究的：这些机构是如何发展的?它们如何处理自身行为所带的风险？能否很好的在金融系统中分散风险？这就是本期调查报告准备讨论的问题。

Risk-takers Anonymous

匿名赌徒

Investment banking is in a state of evolution rather than revolution. The essence of the business has always been taking calculated (and sometimes miscalculated) risks. But now traders place bets in more places, with more clients and using more complicated gambling devices than ever before. 投资银行业正处在稳步的发展之中，而不可能发生革命性的变化。一直以来，该行业的本质就是要冒可预料（有时不可预料）的风险。但现在交易者让赌注更加分散、客户更多、使用的赌博策略也比以往任何时候都要复杂。

Brokerage used to be described as a haulage business, lugging money, as a member of the Rothschild dynasty once put it, “from point A, where it is, to point B, where it is needed”. The idea of describing themselves as glorified delivery men may well still appeal to the cynics on the trading floor who work with shirtsleeves rolled up and hail each other loudly in Brooklyn or mock cockney accents. But any haulage firm would be flabbergasted by the trading profits and returns on equity seen in investment banking in recent years, especially among Wall Street's big “bulge-bracket” firms. Svilen Ivanov, head of capital markets at Boston Consulting Group, notes

that earnings from capital-market-related activities at the top ten global investment banks have risen by almost two-thirds in two years, from $55 billion in 2004 to $90 billion last year. That sort of profit increase is comparable with Apple's rewards for inventing the iPod, he points out. Yet in investment banking there is nothing nearly so tangible to which to ascribe the gains.

经纪业务过去通常被描述为一种搬运业务——就像罗思柴尔德王朝的一位成员曾经所说的那样，“把钱从它原来所在的A点搬到对它有需求的B点”。对于那些在交易所里工作、捋起衬衫袖子用布鲁克林口音或是模仿的伦敦口音相互大声喊叫的愤世嫉俗的交易员而言，把自己称为光荣的送货员的想法肯定还对他们颇具吸引力。但任何货运公司看到最近几年投资银行业尤其是“华尔街投资银行领导集团”里的大公司的营业利润和股票收益都会大吃一惊。波士顿咨询集团（Boston Consulting Group ）的资本市场总裁斯维伦?伊万诺夫（Svilen Ivanov）指出：全球十大投资银行与资本市场相关活动收入在两年内增长了将近2/3——从2004年的550亿美元增加到去年的900亿美元。他指出：这种利润增长可以与苹果公司发明iPod播放器所获得的赢利相媲美。然而在投资银行业，却不存在这般导致赢利的有形因素。

Bankers themselves are fuzzy about explaining their trading profits, bandying about phrases such as “deploying our intellectual capital”. But it is clear that three powerful forces are at work, all of them overlapping and mutually reinforcing, and all fundamental to the gushing liquidity the world is currently enjoying.

银行家们自己也搞不清如何解释他们的营业利润，老是重复着像“配置我们的智力资本”这样的话。但是，很明显，有三种强大的力量在起作用。它们相互重叠、相互加强，都对目前全世界享受的极大的流动性起到了基础性作用。

The first is the alchemist's trick of turning debt (mostly leaden) into derivatives (mostly liquid); the second is the emergence of a new class of leveraged client (hedge funds and private equity); and the third is seeking out new capital markets, and clients, around the world. Moreover, in all these pursuits the firms are now using not just their clients' money but, to differing degrees, their own too.

首先是把债务（通常缺乏流动性）转变为金融衍生品（通常是流动的），这有点像是点石成金的把戏；其次是杠杆式客户（对冲基金和私募股权）这一新类型的出现；第三就是在全世界搜寻新的资本市场和客户。而且，在所有这些追求的过程中，公司现在不仅使用客户的资金，而且在不同程度上也使用它们自己的资金。

Joseph Perella, an industry veteran who last year struck out independently with an advisory boutique, Perella Weinberg, observes that putting a firm's own capital into mergers, acquisitions and other transactions is one of the biggest changes in investment banking since the 1980s. “It's not just one firm sticking its neck out. It's across the board.”

约瑟夫?佩雷拉(Joseph Perella) 是一个业内老手，他在去年成立了佩雷拉—温伯格合伙公司(Perella Weinberg Partners)。这是一家从事咨询业务的小型投资银行，在这里他开始了独自创业的生涯。他注意到将公司自己的资金投入到合并、收购和其它交易当中是上世纪80年代以来投资银行业最大的变化之一。“不是只有一个公司在冒险。整个行业都在趟这趟浑水。”

But using the banks' own capital creates potential conflict. Not only do they risk putting their own interests before those of their clients; they are also increasingly exposing themselves to the

dangers of an abrupt turn in the credit cycle. They are arranging ever bigger debt issues for private-equity firms and hedge funds and so are encouraging a borrowing binge that could breed financial instability. For the time being all this is hugely profitable. But it is also making the banks far too complacent for their own good.

但使用银行自己的资金也导致了潜在的冲突。它们不仅要冒着将自身利益摆在客户利益之上的风险；而且它们也越来越易于受到信贷周期急转弯危险的影响。它们在为私募股权公司和对冲基金安排更大的债务发行额，这样也促进了可能造成金融不稳定的贷款狂热。眼下所有这些都非常赚钱。但这也使得银行对于自身的优点过于自满。

The driving force behind all this has been an unusually benign economic climate. The global economy is at its least volatile since the 1960s, real interest rates are low and companies are generating huge profits. What some call “the great moderation” has been a boon to financial markets around the world, particularly those trading in the multifarious debt instruments concocted in the laboratories of Wall Street and the City of London. The opening up of Asian economies has brought down the price of traded goods, helping to fight inflation. Meanwhile, high savings rates in that part of the world, combined with ageing populations in the West, have helped to push up demand for long-term investment instruments such as bonds.

难得的良好经济形势一直是这背后的驱动力量。全球经济处于上个世纪60年代以来最平稳的阶段，实际利率很低，公司创造了巨大的利润。一些人所称的“大稳健（the great moderation）”对于全世界的金融市场——尤其是那些经营在华尔街和伦敦金融城的实验室中设计出来的各种债务证券的金融市场——都是一个福音。亚洲经济的发展降低了贸易商品的价格，也有助于抑制通货膨胀。同时，亚洲地区的高储蓄率和西方老龄化的人口都推动了对债券这类长期投资工具需求的增加。

At the same time the search for yield, as investors seek to compensate for low returns in high-quality markets such as government bonds, has increased demand for instruments of greater complexity, such as credit-default swaps (CDSs), collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and other derivatives. That has pushed down implied volatilities to multi-year lows, arguably making the assets appear more reassuring than they actually are.

同时，在投资者寻求对政府公债这类高质量市场的低收益的补偿时，对收益的追求也增加了对更加复杂的金融工具（诸如信贷违约掉期（Credit Default Swap ，简称CDS）、债务抵押证券（Collateralized Debt Obligation，简称CDO）和其他金融衍生品）的需求。这也使内含的波动降到了多年来的低点，按理也会使资产看起来比实际情况更令人放心。

Regulation has helped, too. Under the Basel 2 banking accord, whose trickier provisions are due to come into force in the European Union next January and in America starting a year later, capital will be allocated according to the riskiness of assets. That has encouraged banks to make more use of credit derivatives to diversify their credit portfolios, and to sell more assets into the capital markets to be repackaged into debt securities.

监管也在起着促进作用。在新巴塞尔银行业协议(Basel 2 banking accord) 下——该协议更加复杂的条款定于明年一月开始在欧盟生效，而在美国协议生效的起始时间还要延后一年——资金的分配将与资产的风险挂钩。这促使银行更多的利用信贷衍生品（Credit Derivatives）来使信贷资产组合（Credit Portfolios）趋于多样化，也促使它们把更多的资产卖入资本市场以使这些资产重新包装成债务证券（Debt Security）。

All of which means that investment banks have generated many of their trading profits from derivative trades—with each other, with their banking clients or with hedge funds which increasingly use the instruments as speculative tools. The demand for loans to repackage into securities, such as CDOs, has helped fuel the generous credit conditions that have underpinned private equity's leveraged buy-out (LBO) boom as well.

所有这些都意味着投资银行的营业利润有许多来自衍生交易——银行相互之间、银行与客户之间、或是银行与越来越把金融工具当成投机手段的对冲基金之间。贷款以重新包装成像债务抵押证券（CDO）这样的有价证券的需求促进了便于融资的信贷环境的形成，这样的信贷环境也支撑了私募股权杠杆收购（leveraged buy-out ，简称LBO)的激增。

The wild east

疯狂的东方

To cap it all, over the past few years markets around the world have opened up in a way unmatched since before the first world war, and investment banks have seized the opportunity to expand internationally. Since the start of the 20th century, when America first emerged as an economic power, the world's financial-market activity had increasingly gravitated towards American share and bond markets. The introduction of the euro in 1999, and the rapid growth of economies in Europe and Asia, lured investment bankers in the other direction. The share of investment-banking fees earned from Europe was growing long before America's regulators woke up to the damage caused to American markets by aspects of the Sarbanes-Oxley act and other red tape. Last year, by some estimates, revenues from Europe and Asia overtook those from America for the first time (see chart 2).

最有趣的是，在过去的几年全世界的市场经历了自第一次世界大战之前以来无可匹敌的发展，投资银行抓住机遇在国际上进行扩张。20世纪初，美国开始作为经济强国兴起。自那时起，世界的金融市场活动越来越多的被吸引到美国股票和债券市场。1999年欧元的引进以及欧洲和亚洲经济的迅速发展吸引着其它方向的投资银行家。在美国的监管者意识到萨班斯—奥克斯利法案（Sarbanes-Oxley act）和其它官样文章的某些方面对美国市场造成危害的很久以前，投资银行业从欧洲挣得的酬金所占的份额就在不断增长。去年，根据一些估计，投资银行在欧洲和亚洲的收入首次超过其在美国的收入（参见图表2）。

（图表说明：A good spread 分布广泛

Revenues of investment banks by region投资银行收入按地区分类

Corporate finance & advisory 公司金融和咨询业务

Sales & trading销售和贸易

% of total investment-banking revenues 占投资银行总收入的百分比

The Americas美洲地区

Europe, Middle East & Africa欧洲、中东和非洲

Asia-Pacific亚太

Source: Boston Consulting Group 资料来源：波士顿咨询集团）

In the meantime London has become an impressive rival to New York as a global financial centre. Michael Klein, the boss of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup, describes Britain's capital as New York, Chicago, Houston and Washington, DC, rolled into one, because it trades all the assets of the first three and is regulated on the spot as well. Instead of Greenwich, Connecticut, it has Mayfair for hedge funds. London, moreover, is a hub for Europe, and stronger economies on the continent mean growing markets for capital; typically, such markets increase at double the rate of GDP when economies expand.

同时伦敦作为全球金融中心已经成为纽约的一个强大对手。花旗集团企业和投资银行总裁迈克尔?克莱恩（Michael Klein）把英国的首都描述成纽约、芝加哥、休斯顿和华盛顿（哥伦比亚特区）的统一体：因为它交易前三个城市的所有资产并且也在当地受到监管。它有为对冲基金服务的梅费尔（Mayfair）来替代康涅狄格州（Connecticut）格林威治（Greenwich）。而且，伦敦是欧洲的一个中心，欧洲大陆更强大的经济意味着不断壮大的资本市场；通常，这样的市场在经济扩张时以国内生产总值增长速度的两倍速增长。

London's position as a springboard for emerging markets vastly increases its allure. America and Europe between them may still account for almost four-fifths of all investment-banking revenues, but fees are growing fastest in the developing world. That reflects the might of companies such as Gazprom, Russia's energy behemoth, and the recently listed Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which Mr Klein admits are both vying with Citigroup in size. He notes that 140 of Citigroup's top 1,000 clients are from emerging markets, whereas 15 years ago the number was only 40. Russia and China are among the world's biggest IPO markets. And many developing countries are seeking to strengthen their domestic capital markets, which means that the biggest global investment banks—such as Citi—hope eventually to deploy enormous resources there: trading desks of perhaps 1,000 people, not 25.

伦敦作为新兴市场跳板的地位极大的提升了它的吸引力。美国和欧洲加起来仍差不多占投资银行总收入的4/5，但在发展中国家酬金的增速最快。这反映了像俄罗斯能源巨头俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司（Gazprom）和新近上市的中国工商银行（Industrial and Commercial Bank of China）这样的公司的力量。克莱恩先生承认这两个公司在规模上都与花旗集团有得一拼。他指出花旗集团前1000个客户有140个来自新兴市场，而在15年前只有区区40个。俄罗斯和中国都在世界最大的首次公开招股市场之列。许多发展中国家在试图加强它们国内的资本市场，这意味着像花旗这样全球最大的投资银行希望最终在那儿配置巨大的资源：交易部门的人数也许是1000，而不是25。

Given the markets' increasing complexity, how do investment banks manage the growing risks they face? There are lots of things they need to do, from finding enough brainboxes capable of handling the intricate assets being created to measuring the correlations between instruments that are supposed to spread risk but may do the opposite if liquidity dries up. It is mildly reassuring that hardly a week goes by without regulators in the world's main markets pressing the industry to improve its risk-management techniques—but rather worrying that the same regulators pay considerably less attention to where the risk may end up.

鉴于这些市场的复杂性不断增加，投资银行如何才能应付它们所面对的不断增加的风险？它们必须做许多事情，一件事就是要找到足够的处理创造出的复杂资产的智囊，还有一件就是要衡量用于分散风险但也许在流动性枯竭之后产生相反效果的金融工具之间的相互关系。稍微有点让人放心的是：没有哪个星期世界主要市场的监管者不敦促该行业改善风险管理技

术。但让人很担心的是：上述的这些监管者却不太关注风险会在哪里结束。

漫画作者玛丽亚?吉夫斯（Maria Jeeves）

Investment bankers themselves have a vested interest in not blowing up their firms. The biggest banks are thought to be investing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in technologies to measure risk and stress-test it. Comfortingly, regulators who scrutinise the banks' risk-weighted capital say it is stronger than ever. But capital is only one line of defence. The banks' ability to cope with liquidity crises and credit crunches is harder to gauge.

投资银行家们自己的既得利益不允许他们毁了自己的公司。人们认为最大的银行每年会在技术上投入几亿美元来测量风险并对其进行压力测试。令人鼓舞的是，对银行的风险加权资本进行审查的监管机构声称它比过去强大不少。但资本仅是一道防线。银行处理流动性危机和信用危机的能力更难以评估。

Financial markets send out mixed messages about the confidence of investors in the institutions themselves. The investment banks' share prices appear to reflect the belief that their equity will be safeguarded rather than that earnings will be stable. As David Viniar, chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, puts it, the firm, whose risk appetite is second to none, has increased revenues in 18 out of the past 21 years, but quarterly income has b een more volatile. “It's a growth business and it's not going to get more stable,” he says.

金融市场会发出关于市场内投资者信心的各种信息。投资银行的股价似乎反映了这样的信念：它们的股本会得到保护，但收入的稳定性无法得到保证。高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）对风险的偏好首屈一指。就像其首席财务官戴维?维尼亚(David Viniar)所说，公司过去21年里有18年收入增长，但季度收入一直更不稳定。他说：“这是一个发展特别快的行业，但它的稳定性不会增加。”

Taking risks and managing them is an investment bank's core business. Bankers believe risk-taking is how their industry supports entrepreneurs and hence economic growth. The trouble is that new risks are almost invariably explored before there is a good way to measure them.

承担风险并对其进行管理是投资银行的核心事务。银行家们相信承担风险是他们这个行业支持企业家、从而支持经济增长的方法。麻烦就在于：在找到测量新风险的好方法之前，人们几乎还要一直探究下去。

Ultimately, business and credit cycles tend to reveal which risks are excessive—and whatever junior traders may think, the business cycle is far from dead. Richard Portes, professor of economics at the London Business School, recalls first debating its possible demise back in 1969. Since then he has discovered a comment by Leon Fraser, an American banker, speaking after the great crash of 1929, which convinced him that boom-bust cycles in finance will always be with us. Mr Fraser's immortal words were: “Better to have loaned and lost than never to have loaned at all.”

最终，商业和信贷周期往往会揭示哪些风险是过度的——不管初级的商人们会怎么想，商业周期远没有消亡。伦敦商学院的经济学教授理查德?波特斯（Richard Portes）回忆了1969年首次争论商业周期消亡可能的情形。其后，他发现了美国银行家利昂?弗雷泽（Leon Fraser）

在1929年大崩溃后的一段评论。这段评论使他确信金融业的繁荣—萧条周期将会一直与我们如影随形。弗雷泽先生的不朽之语是：“总不能因为贷款可能收不回来就不做生意了吧！”