中国，你在看吗？

------ 中国应从美国金融危机中吸取的教训

作者： 罗杰 （ Roger Snyder ） 翻译： 罗玲

09/19/2008

这还是不久前，中国曾是个中央集权的经济。然而，过去三十年，中国已经大踏步地完成了其向世界和她的公民的经济开放。这种开放让数以亿计的人民摆脱了贫困，进入一个以消费 电视机，手机和汽车等商品而驱动的世界经济。她把识字率提高到了世界上最高水准的国家之一。人们的寿命也极大地增加。她在谷物，肉类和水产品等方面的农业发展非常稳定。这些对中国及其人民都是好事。它创造财富和提高本国公民的生活水平。

然而，当中国从半个世界之遥注视美国，看着我们的金融危机时，他们应该忧心这会如何影响他们。 因为他们最大的出口市场（美国）可能是进入了一个长期的经济衰退。我会建议中国你应该关注。

但是，我强烈敦促中国，应该长期关注的不是我们美国已经为自己制造的金融混乱，而是中国将来如何才能避免这种自己造成的混乱。

中国的金融市场已经开放了一段时间，随着自己的股票市场，建立金融债券和类似债务工具和巨大的主权财富基金到美国和欧洲投资外币资产（主要是美元和欧元）。其中有些投资已被证明是非常糟糕的投资。可以吸取什么教训呢？

第一个教训是千万不要仿效美国的榜样，放开这么多金融市场，不要让金融机构创造如此复杂的金融市场。否则其结果就是这个金融市场的发明人自己都搞不清楚是怎么回事了。虽然作为一个训练有素的美国经济学家，我理解企业和经济的所有不同社会指标，并相信自由市场 -- 我只在一定程度上相信自由市场。市场需要规范不仅保护的是消费者，还有市场的创造者。资本主义是好的。但没有规范的资本主义就是一个绝对的灾难 - 正如在过去的 2 年里美国已经显示给我们看的。

第二个教训 : 中国应该在其银行系统之上设置一层监管机构，以保护存款人免受银行领导人的不良决定带来的后果。一个人只能偷这么多钱。但是，如果他们作出错误的投资决定，他们可能会失去这一切 - 就像雷曼兄弟公司 - 它可以消失得很快，实际上变成稀薄的空气仿佛从未存在。

第三个教训：中国为公民和企业应该创立坚实的信贷决策模型，这样银行（及其规范机构）就可以有一个系统的办法，基于历史先例而作出贷款决定。美国在这方面有很好的模式。然而，美国的问题始于开始建立 “ 新的 ” 模式（次级抵押贷款），其中，对正在发放的贷款会否被偿还，对贷款收取多少利息，以及如何保证贷款并没有历史先例来衡量（这就是拖垮美国国际集团的原因）。从本质上讲，美国有过很好的模式，但因了我们的“贪婪”以及成桶成桶的倾倒进市场里的钱得有个去处，华尔街的 “ 专家 ” 就为这个 “ 放开 ” 的金融市场创立了“次级抵押贷款”。该市场目前是失败的，因为没有历史证明这些贷款将如何表现。这有点像一家人寿保险公司，而你没有数据显示某个人将活多久。所以，你对 30 岁的人收取的人寿保险价格与对 80 岁的人收取的价格相同。显而易见，你在 80 岁的人身上是肯定会赔钱的。所以，这基本上就是次级抵押贷款市场正在发生的情况。

第四个教训，中国应利用其大规模的外汇储备（美元，欧元和日元）投放在自己的基础设施上。你投资在自己身上永远不会出差错并且你也避免别人为你赔钱的机会 - 这就是投资在美国发生的结果。中国，其巨大的外币储蓄拥有一个很好的机会，就是利用其公民出色的情报成为创立替代能源技术的世界领袖。

虽然我是美利坚合众国一个自豪的公民，我的父亲在菲律宾与日本打了 4 年仗，为的是结束他们在这一地区（主要在中国）的压迫和侵略。我对我们的领导很失望。失望于我们的领导不力，以及我们对这些经济问题的操作不当给数以百万计的美国人和世界其他各地所造成的影响。

我要告诉中国，你有绝好的机会看到 “ 肆无忌惮的 ” 资本主义最糟糕透顶的时候。目睹美国正在经历的金融动荡。从中吸取教训吧！你不会感到后悔的。作为一个经济强国，你应该为你们的公民乃至全世界着想而不重复我们已经犯下的错误。

（译者注：作者为译者美国夫婿，译者忙碌中抽空翻译，可能有不足之处，敬请谅解，目的是与广大华裔同胞分享心得）

英语原文：

CHINA : ARE YOU WATCHING

Lessons China learn from the U.S. financial meltdown

Roger Snyder ( US)

09/19/2008

It hasn’t been that long ago that China was a controlled centralized economy. However, in the past thirty years China has made great strides in opening up its economy to the world and to its citizens as well. This opening up has brought hundreds of millions of its own people out of poverty and into a consumer driven world economy with televisions, cell phones and automobiles. It has increased its literacy rate to one of the highest in the world and seen the life span of its people increase enormously. Its agricultural development of grains, meats and aquatic products has been stellar. These are all good things for China and its people. It creates wealth as well as raises the standard of living of its citizens.

However, as China peers at the U.S. from half a world away and watches our financial meltdown they have to feel concerned about how it will affect them since their largest export market (the USA) may be entering a prolonged economic recession. I would advise China you should be concerned.

However, I would strongly urge China that the long term concern isn’t the financial mess we’ve made for ourselves but rather how China can avoid such messes of its own in the future.

China ’s financial markets have been opened for sometime with the advent of their own stock markets, the creation of financials like bonds and debt instruments and huge sovereign wealth funds to invest foreign currency holdings (mainly dollars and euro’s) in the USA and Europe. Some of those investments have turned out to be exceptionally poor investments. What lesson can be learned there?

The first lesson would be NOT to follow the U.S. example and deregulate the financial markets so much and not allow financial institutions to create such complex financial markets that in the end nobody, even the creators, knows exactly what is going on. While as a U.S. trained economist I understand business and all the different social metrics of an economy and believe in free markets – I only believe in free markets to a certain degree. The markets need regulating not only to protect consumers but also the creators of the market as well. Capitalism is good. Unregulated capitalism can be an absolute disaster – as the USA has been showing us for the past 2 years or so.

The second lesson for China would be to main a layer of agencies over its banking system to protect its depositors from bad decisions of the bank leaders. People can only steal so much money. However, if they’re making bad investment decisions they can lose it all – just like Lehman Brothers – and it can all be gone very quickly, literally into thin air as if it never existed.

The third lesson for China would be to create solid credit decision models for its citizens and businesses so that banks ( and the regulating agencies ) would have a systematic approach to making loan decisions that is based on historical precedence. The USA has great models on this. However, the USA problems started when we created “new” models ( SUBPRIME LOANS ) which had no historical precedent to gauge if the loans being made would be repaid, how much interest to charge for the loan, and how to insure the loan ( which is what brought AIG down ). Essentially, the USA had a great model, but our ‘GREED’ and the buckets of money being pored into the markets had to go somewhere so the Wall Street “experts” created SUBPRIME LOANS – because of the “deregulation” of the financial markets. The markets are now failing because there was no history on how those loans would perform. It’s a little like being a life insurance company but you have no data on how long someone will live. So, you charge the same price for life insurance to someone 80 years old as you would to someone 30 years old. The obvious is obvious. You’ll lose money on the 80 year old for sure. Well, basically this is what happened in the subprime market.

The fourth lesson for China would be to utilize their massive foreign currency holdings ( dollars, euro’s and yen ) in their own infrastructure. You never go wrong with an investment in yourself and you avoid the chance that someone else will lose money for you – as has happened with investments in the USA. China, with its massive foreign currency treasure has a great opportunity to utilize the wonderful intelligence of its citizenry to be the world leader in creating technologies for alternative energy sources.

While I am a proud citizen of these United States of America, and my father fought the Japanese for 4 years in the Philippines to end their oppression and aggression in the region (mainly in China) I am disappointed in our leadership and the affect that the poor leadership will have on millions and millions of Americans and others around the world with our mishandling of these economic issues.

I say to China, you have a wonderful chance to see “unbridled” capitalism at its worst by witnessing the financial upheavals the USA is experiencing. Learn from it. You won’t regret it. As an economic power yourself you owe it to your citizens, and indeed the world, to not repeat the mistakes we have made.