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美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录--动荡年代:勇闯新世界-134:The Delphic Future-8

股票的市场价值以及非金融公司和政府的负债是投资的来源，因此是银行和其他金融机构创造负债的来源。 

这种金融中介过程是金融市场二十五年来充斥着压倒性流动性的主要原因。

如果利率开始上升，资产价格普遍下跌，“过剩”流动性将会枯竭，而且可能会很快枯竭。 

请记住，创收证券的市场价值是其预期的未来收入，加上折扣因子，该因子根据兴奋和恐惧以及对未来的更理性评估而变化。 

正是这些判断决定了股票和其他创收资产的价值。 

正是这些判断决定了一个社会拥有多少财富。 

大型制造工厂、办公楼甚至住宅的价值只有在市场参与者重视其未来用途的情况下才有价值。 如果世界在一小时内终结，所有财富的象征都将被视为一文不值。 

远非世界末日的事情——比如，我们未来的结果增加了更多的不确定性——市场参与者将降低他们的出价，并降低对实物资产的估值。 

任何事情都不能发生在我们的头脑之外。 

价值是人们所认为的。 

因此，流动性可能会随着新想法或恐惧的出现而出现或消失。 

金融市场的一个相关担忧是外国央行（主要是亚洲央行）持续大量增持美国国债。

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Spreads over U.S. treasuries of CCC-rated corporate bonds (socalled junk bonds) in mid-2007 were mind-bogglingly low. 

For example, this spread declined from 23 percentage points amid a plethora of junk bond defaults at the end of the recession in October 2002 to little more than 4 percentage points in June 2007, despite a large rise in issuance of CCC bonds. 

Spreads of emerging-market bond yields over those of U.S. treasuries have declined from 10 percentage points in 2002 to less than IVz percentage points in June 2007. 

This compression of risk premiums is global. 

I am uncertain whether in periods of euphoria people reach for an amount of risk that is at the outer limits of human tolerance, irrespective of the institutional environment in which they live. 

The prevailing financial infrastructure perhaps merely leverages this risk tolerance. 

For decades prior to the Civil War, banks had to hold capital well in excess of 40 percent to secure their notes and deposits. 

By 1900, national banks' capital cover was down to 20 percent of assets, to 12 percent by 1925, and below 10 percent in recent years. 

But owing to financial flexibility and far greater sources of liquidity,
the fundamental risk borne by the individual banks, and presumably investors generally, may not have changed much over that time period.

It may not matter. 

As I noted in my farewell remarks to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Jackson Hole Symposium in August 2005,
"History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums."

At a minimum, as riskless interest rates rise and risk premiums are purged of the unsustainable optimism they now embody, prices of income-earning assets will surely grow far more slowly than during the past six years. 

As a consequence of the decline in long-term nominal and real interest rates since 1981, asset prices worldwide have risen faster than nominal world GDP in every year, with the exceptions of 1987 and 2001-2 (the years of the dot-com bubble collapse). 

This surge in the value of stocks, real estate deeds, and other claims on income-earning assets—that is, direct and indirect claims on assets, whether physical or intellectual—is what I designate an increase in liquidity.

485


THE AGE OF TURBULENCE


These paper claims represent purchasing power that can quite readily be used to buy a car, say, or a company.

The market value of stock and the liabilities of nonfinancial corporations and governments is the source of investments and hence the creation of liabilities by banks and other financial institutions. 

This process of financial intermediation is a major cause of the overwhelming sense of liquidity that has suffused financial markets for a quarter century. 

If interest rates start to rise and asset prices broadly fall, "excess" liquidity will dry up, possibly fairly quickly. 

Remember, the market value of an income-earning security is its expected future income leavened by a discount factor that changes according to euphoria and fear as well as more rational assessments of the future. 

It is those judgments that determine the value of stock and other income-earning assets. 

It is those judgments that determine how much wealth a society has. 

Large manufacturing plants, office towers, even homes, have value only to the extent that market participants value their future use. 

If the world were to come to an end in an hour, all symbols of wealth would be judged worthless. 

Something far short of doomsday—say, a dollop more of uncertainty added to the mix of our future outcomes—and market participants will lower their bids and will value real assets less. 

Nothing has to be happening outside our heads. 

Value is what people perceive it to be.

Hence liquidity can come or go with the appearance of a new idea or fear.

A related concern in financial markets is the large and continuing accumulation of U.S. Treasury securities by foreign central banks, mainly in Asia.

Market participants fear an impact on dollar interest and exchange rates if and when those central banks stop purchasing U.S. securities or, worse, try to sell off large blocks of holdings. 

The accumulations are largely the result of endeavors mainly by China and Japan to suppress their exchange rates to foster exports and economic growth. 

Between the end of 2001 and March 2007, China and Japan combined accumulated $1.5 trillion of foreign exchange, of which four-fifths appears to be in dollar claims—that is,
holdings of U.S. Treasury and agency securities and other short-term claims,
including Eurodollars.*

*China has embarked on an announced program to diversify part of its huge foreign-exchange reserves (1.2 trillion in dollars and the dollar equivalent of nondollar assets).

486


THE DELPHIC FUTURE


Should the rate of accumulation slow or turn to liquidation, there will surely be some downward pressure on the U.S. dollar exchange rate and upward pressure on U.S. long-term interest rates. 

But the foreign-exchange markets for the major currencies have become so liquid that the currency transactions required to implement large international transfers of U.S. dollar deposits can be accomplished with only modest disturbance to markets. 

For interest rates, the extent of a rise is likely to be less than many analysts fear,
certainly less than a percentage point and conceivably much less. 

Liquidation of U.S. Treasury securities by central banks (or any other market participant) does not change the total amount outstanding of U.S. Treasury debt. 

Nor does the outstanding amount of securities or other assets that the central banks purchase with the proceeds of their sales. Such transactions are swaps,
which affect the spread between two securities but need not affect the overall
level of interest rates. 

It is similar to an exchange of currencies.*

The impact on interest rate spreads of a swap involving a large block of U.S. treasuries by a central bank (or anyone else) depends on the size of the portfolios of the world's other investors, and, importantly, the proportions of those investments that are close substitutes of treasuries with respect to maturity, the currency of denomination, liquidity, and credit risk. Holders of close substitutes such as AAA corporate bonds and mortgage-backed securities can be induced to swap for treasuries without undue disturbance to markets.

The international financial market has become so large and liquid* 

that sales of tens of billions of U.S. treasuries, perhaps hundreds of billions, can
be transacted without crisis-causing shocks to markets. 

We have had much evidence of the market's capability to absorb major transfers of U.S. treasuries in recent years. 

For example, Japanese monetary authorities, after having accumulated nearly $40 billion a month of foreign exchange, predominantly in U.S. treasuries, between the summer of 2003 and early 2004,
abruptly ended that practice in March 2004.

*Such swaps are quite different from the liquidation of equities whose values are falling because the discounted expectations of future earnings are falling. 

In that case, the overall value of equities declines. There is no offset. It is not a swap.
Aggregate holdings of foreign exchange by central banks and world private-sector portfolios of foreign cross-border liquid assets approached $50 trillion in early 2007, according to the BIS and IMF. 

Domestic nonfinancial corporate liabilities are also available as substitutes for U.S.
treasuries, probably at modest price concessions. Such liabilities net of foreign holdings of the United States and Japan alone amounted to $33 trillion at the end of 2006.

487

(未完待续, To be contd)
 

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