1、美联储的“扩张”英国金融时报 约翰奥瑟兹(John Authers) 2008-10-08At least one bank in the US is growing, and it is by leaps and bounds. It has added lots of clients in the last year, it has started offering interest on deposits, and yesterday, in a radical departure, it started offering short-term finance to companies
2、other than banks. The bank in question is the Federal Reserve. News that it will now launch its own special vehicle to buy commercial paper (very short-term bonds) directly from issuers means that it has in effect entered the business of lending to companies. It had already taken over the provision
3、of short-term finance to banks; banks are no longer willing to lend to each other but are still prepared to lend and borrow through the Fed.The commercial paper move was necessary, as many large companies rely on it to fund day-to-day needs, like payroll. A failure in this area was unconscionable. A
4、nd the constriction in commercial paper had become severe: the total volume on issue had fallen by 12 per cent, or about $200bn, in the past three weeks alone.But the Feds move merely underlined that vastly greater government involvement in the worlds banking systems was in many ways already a fact.
5、 The only question a critical one for investors in the institutions under pressure is in the detail of how governments intervene. Markets yesterday suggested they felt the sharp falls in materials and emerging market stocks over the past week had adequately discounted a global recession, at least fo
6、r now. But even if tension reduced, there was no joyous rebound. The drama in the stocks of banks at the centre of the rumours, with Royal Bank of Scotland the latest hapless victim, did not permit that. Stocks will find it hard to mark a definitive bottom and start to rise until they know many more
7、 details of how governments will insert themselves into the banking system.美国至少有一家银行在扩张，而且是突飞猛进。过去一年里，它增加了大量客户，现在已开始提供存款利息，而昨天，它进行了根本变更，开始向银行以外的企业提供短期融资。 上述银行就是美联储(Fed) 。它宣布，将自行创立特殊工具，直接从发行商手中买入商业票据（非常短期的债券），这意味着，美联储实际上已进入向企业提供贷款的业务领域。美联储此前已经接手向银行提供短期资金；银行不愿再互相借贷，但仍愿意通过美联储拆借。由于许多大型企业依赖商业票据来为薪水等日常开支提
8、供资金，此举很有必要。这一领域出现问题很不合理。而商业票据的收缩已很严峻：仅在过去 3 周，已发行票据总额已缩水 12%，即大约 2000 亿美元。不过，美联储的举措仅突显出，政府对全球银行体系更大规模的干预在许多方面已是既成事实。唯一的问题是政府干预方式的具体细节。对遭受压力的机构的投资者而言，这是个关键问题。市场昨日表现显示，过去一周大宗商品和新兴市场股票的大幅下跌，已充分纳入了一场全球衰退的可能性，至少现在如此。然而，即使紧张压力有所缓解，仍没有出现乐观的反弹。身处传言中心的银行股票的戏剧性表现就是个障碍苏格兰皇家银行(Royal Bank of Scotland)是最新的不幸受害者。在知晓政府将如何干预银行体系的更多细节以前，股票将很难找到谷底，并开始上涨。
