好英语网硅谷银行危机没想象的那么可怕
If there is one thing almost all observers of the economic scene have agreed about, it is that the issues facing the U.S. economy in 2023 are very different from those it faced in its last crisis, in 2008.
如果说有一件事是几乎所有经济观察人士都能认同的，那就是2023年美国经济面临的问题与2008年上一次经济危机中的问题截然不同。
Back then we were dealing with collapsing banks and plunging demand; these days banking has been a back-burner issue and the big problem has seemed to be inflation, driven by too much demand relative to the available supply.
彼时我们要面对的银行倒闭和需求暴跌的困境；而今银行业已是次要问题，最大的困境似乎成了因需求远大于现有供给而导致的通胀。
Oh, there were some echoes of past follies, because there always are. Hype springs eternal; the crypto cult shares some obvious features with the rise and fall of subprime mortgages, with people lured into complex financial arrangements they don’t understand. But nobody expected a repeat of those frightening weeks when the bottom seemed to be falling out of the world financial system.
对了，过往蠢行在今天仍有一些回响，因为这些永远不会消失。炒作之泉永不尽；加密崇拜和次级抵押贷款的兴衰有些明显的相似之处，人们被引诱陷入了他们并不理解的复杂财务安排之中。但谁都不觉得那段全球金融体系似乎就要彻底崩塌的恐怖时期将要重现。
Yet suddenly we seem to be replaying some of the same old scenes. Silicon Valley Bank wasn’t among the nation’s largest financial institutions, but then neither was Lehman Brothers in 2008. And nobody who paid attention in 2008 can help feeling the shivers while watching an old-fashioned bank run.
但突然之间，一些相同的画面似乎在重演。硅谷银行不是美国最大的金融机构，但2008年的雷曼兄弟也不是。面对一场经典的银行挤兑，但凡关注过2008年金融危机的人都会不寒而栗。
But S.V.B. isn’t Lehman, and 2023 isn’t 2008. We probably aren’t looking at a systemic financial crisis. And while the government has stepped in to stabilize the situation, taxpayers probably won’t be on the hook for large sums of money.
但硅谷银行不是雷曼兄弟，2023年也和2008年不同。系统性金融危机大概率不会发生。而在政府介入稳定局面之后，可能不需要搭上大笔纳税人的钱。
To make sense of what happened, you need to understand the reality of what S.V.B. was and what it did.
要弄清楚到底发生了什么，先得理解硅谷银行的性质及其业务运作。
Silicon Valley Bank portrayed itself as “the bank of the global innovation economy,” which might lead you to think that it was mostly investing in highly speculative technology projects. In fact, however, while it did provide financial services to start-ups, it didn’t lend them a lot of money, since they were often flush with venture capital cash. Instead, the cash flow went in the opposite direction, with tech businesses depositing large sums with S.V.B. — sometimes as a quid pro quo but largely, I suspect, because people in the tech world thought of S.V.B. as their kind of bank.
硅谷银行自称“为全球创新经济而生”，这可能让人误以为其主要投资领域在于具有高度投机性的科技项目。但实际上，它虽然向初创企业提供了金融服务，但并未提供大量借贷，因为这类企业手上往往有非常充裕的风险投资现金。这里的现金流是逆向的，科技企业将大量资金存入硅谷银行，有些是出于利益交换，但我怀疑很大一部分是因为科技界认为这是他们行业的银行。
The bank, in turn, parked much of that money in boring, extremely safe assets, mainly long-term bonds issued by the U.S. government and government-backed agencies. It made money, for a while, because in a low-interest-rate world long-term bonds normally pay higher interest rates than short-term assets, including bank deposits.
结果，该银行将大部分资金投资于平稳但非常安全的资产，主要是美国政府和政府支持机构发行的长期债券。这些投资一度看到了回报，因为在利率水平低的时候，长期债券的利率往往比包括银行存款在内的短期资产更高。
But S.V.B.’s strategy was subject to two huge risks.
但硅谷银行的策略会带来两大风险。
First, what would happen if and when short-term interest rates rose? (They couldn’t fall significantly, because they were already extremely low.) The spread on which S.V.B.’s profits depended would disappear — and if long-term interest rates rose as well, the market value of S.V.B.’s bonds, which paid lower interest than new bonds, would fall, creating large capital losses. And that, of course, is exactly what has happened as the Fed has raised rates to fight inflation.
首先，如果短期利率水平上升会怎样？（因为已经处于极低水平，所以没有大幅下跌的可能。）硅谷银行盈利所靠的利差就会消失。而如果长期利率水平也上升，硅谷银行所购债券（利率低于新发债券）的市场价值将会下跌，造成大量资本损失。而这正是美联储为对抗通胀而提高利率后发生的事情。
Second, while the value of bank deposits is federally insured, that insurance extends only up to $250,000. S.V.B., however, got its deposits mainly from business clients with multimillion-dollar accounts — at least one client (a crypto firm, of course) had $3.3 billion at S.V.B. Since S.V.B.’s clients were effectively uninsured, the bank was vulnerable to a bank run, in which everyone rushes to withdraw money while there’s still something left.
其次，虽然银行存款价值由联邦政府担保，但其上限只有25万美元。而硅谷银行的存款主要来自账上躺着数以百万计美元的商业客户，至少其中一位（当然是一家加密币公司）在该行存了33亿美元资金。由于硅谷银行客户实质上是未受保的，因而这家银行很容易受到挤兑的冲击，也就是趁着银行里还剩一点钱，所有人都争先恐后要取出来。
And the run came. Now what?
于是挤兑发生了。现在又该怎么办？
Even if the government had done nothing, the fall of S.V.B. probably wouldn’t have had huge economic repercussions. In 2008 there were fire sales of whole asset classes, especially mortgage-backed securities; since S.V.B.’s investments were so boring, similar fallout would be unlikely. The main damage would come from disruption of business as firms found themselves unable to get at their cash, which would be worse if S.V.B.’s fall led to runs on other medium-size banks.
即使政府坐视不管，硅谷银行的倒闭大概率不会对经济造成严重影响。2008年的情况是整个资产类别都在大甩卖，抵押支持证券尤甚；由于硅谷银行的投资太平稳，类似的后果不太可能发生。主要损失将来自企业无法提现而导致的业务中断，如果硅谷银行的破产导致其他中型银行挤兑，情况则会更糟。
That said, on precautionary grounds government officials felt — understandably — that they needed to find a way to guarantee all of S.V.B.’s deposits.
也就是说，出于预防目的，政府官员自然有理由认为得设法为硅谷银行的所有存款提供担保。
It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean bailing out stockholders: S.V.B. has been seized by the government, and its equity has been wiped out. It does mean saving some businesses from the consequences of their own foolishness in putting so much money in a single bank, which is infuriating — especially because so many tech types were vocal libertarians until they themselves needed a bailout.
值得注意的是，这并不意味着要为股东纾困；硅谷银行已被政府接管，股票化为乌有。一些将大笔资金存入同一家银行的企业确实躲过了一劫，不用为它们的蠢行付出代价，这是令人气愤的，尤其考虑到那么多科技人士平常言必称自己是自由意志主义者，到了他们自己需要纾困的时候就不一样了。
Indeed, probably none of this would have happened if S.V.B. and others in the industry hadn’t successfully lobbied the Trump administration and Congress for a relaxation of bank regulations, a move rightly condemned at the time by Lael Brainard, who has just become the Biden administration’s top economist.
当然，如果硅谷银行和其他业内机构未能成功游说特朗普政府和国会放松银行监管，这一切可能都不会发生。该举措当时遭到莱尔·布雷纳德义正严辞的谴责，而他刚刚成为了拜登政府的首席经济学家。
The good news is that taxpayers probably won’t be on the hook for much if any money. It’s not at all clear that S.V.B. was actually insolvent; what it couldn’t do was raise enough cash to deal with a sudden exodus of depositors. Once things have stabilized, its assets will probably be worth enough, or almost enough, to pay off depositors without an infusion of additional funds.
好消息是，这件事可能不需要付出太多纳税人的钱——甚至完全不需要。硅谷银行是否真的资不抵债还是个问题；它的问题是无法筹集足够的现金来应对突然出现的大量储户提款。一旦情况稳定，该银行的资产可能足够——或者说基本足够——偿付储户，无需注入额外资金。
And then we’ll be able to return to our regularly scheduled crisis programming.
届时我们就可以回到平日那些既定的危机戏码了。