金融世界第 17 讲: 最后贷款人

在上次节目中，我们介绍了各国中央银行或储备银行的职能。它的一个主要功能是：
lender of last resort - 最后贷款人。

最后贷款人这一职能意味着中央银行在其它商业银行遇到危机时要伸出救援之手。但是中央银行是否有能力成为各商业银行危难中坚强的后盾呢？澳洲广播电台金融节目主持人巴里克拉克对此谈了他的看法：

Support for the safety of the banking system via a lender of last resort mechanism became the most important function of central banks in the early twentieth century. However, the capacity of central banks to support commercial banks in trouble and to prevent a loss of confidence in all deposit taking institutions should not be overestimated. 通过最后贷款人机制来维护银行系统的安全已在二十世纪初成为中央银行最重要的功能。但是，不应该过高估计中央银行救援陷于困境的商业银行的能力以及防止人们丧失对所有受理存款机构的信心的能力。

为什么澳广金融节目主持人巴里克拉克说不能过高估计各国中央银行对陷于危难中的商业银行进行救援的能力呢？伦敦经济学院的查尔斯古德哈特教授对此作了进一步的解释。他在谈话中使用了这样一些词汇：

1 capital 资本
2 information gatherer 信息收集人
3 co-ordinator 协调人
4 corral 把...集合在一起
5 rescue 救援

古德哈特教授说：

Central banks have never actually had that much capital of their own, and they've never been able to finance any large scale rescue entirely on their own. Instead they act as information gatherers and co-ordinators of the banking system and they encourage and corral the banks as a group to provide support and assistance to the bank in difficulty. 中央银行自己实际上从来没有那么多的资金，也从来没有能力完全独立地资助任何大规模的救援行动。相反，它们是银行系统的信息收集者和协调人，鼓励并召集各个银行成为一个团体，为陷于困境的银行提供支持和援助。

And that has actually been the case more or less throughout ... and the Bank of England has acted as the co-ordinator and the central operator of a rescue system, rather than doing it all by itself. 实际上几乎一直都大致是这种情况。英格兰银行就一直扮演着一个救援体系中的协调和中央运作的角色，而不是单独靠自己进行救援。

More recently, the willingness of the banks to get together to bail out and support their colleagues has actually been diminishing with the more competitive system we now have. And effectively now the fund to bail out or to provide any large scale support system for the banks has to come from the taxpayer. 近来，各银行联合起来援助和支持同伴的愿望实际上已经降低，因为我们现在有了竞争更激烈的体制。事实上，现在为银行提供的救援或大规模支持系统所需的资金只能来自纳税人。

二十世纪三十年代的大萧条使各国中央银行承担起新的责任。澳广金融节目主持人巴里克拉克对此作了介绍：

The global depression of the 1930s and the demands for economic controls during the second world war thrust new responsibilities upon central banks. New economic ideas, principally those of the English economist John Maynard Keynes, legitimated a more interventionist set of government policies to direct the economy in pursuit of full employment and price stability. 巴里克拉克说，一九三十年代的大萧条以及第二次世界大战期间对经济进行控制的需要使中央银行背负上新的责任。新的经济观念，主要是英国经济学家凯恩斯的观点，使政府采行了一套更倾向于涉主义的政策来指导经济，以追求全面就业和价格稳定。

巴里克拉克的谈话中出现了这样一些英文词汇：

1 global depression 全球经济萧条
2 legitimate 使...合法化
3 interventionist 干涉主义者，干涉主义的
4 full employment 充分就业，全面就业
5 price stability 价格稳定

由于各国政府在二十世纪三十年代的大萧条之后采行新的对经济进行干预的政策，各国中央银行因此有了新的职责。墨尔本大学银行史学家大卫梅里特解释说：

The central bank was an institution that was already in existence, that now could act as agent for the government, combined with what we call fiscal policy, in bringing about full employment, price stability and so on. This became really their dominant or prime function from the end of the Second World War probably up until the 1970s. It's really the exercise of monetary policy which becomes the overriding objective. The older ones of lender of last resort, managing the note issue, being banker to government, really slide back into the background. 中央银行是一个已经存在的机构,现在它可以作为政府的代理，与我们所说的财政政策相配合，以实现全面就业和价格稳定等等。从第二次世界大战结束后可能一直到一九七十年代末期，这一直是中央银行最重要的职能。实际上执行货币政策已成为压倒一切的目标。原来的“最后贷款人”、管理货币发行和充当政府银行等功能已经退居其次。

在这里我们要补充的是，到了二十世纪八十年代中期，各国中央银行的角色再次发生了变化，压低通货膨胀率取代了全面就业，成为货币政策压倒一切的目标。