Emergent narrow banking|緊急狹義銀行業務We have talked a few times recently about, like, the theory of banking. That theory goes roughly like this. Banks fund themselves with deposits, which are basically short term and safe: If you have $100 in a bank account, you expect that it will always be worth $100, and you expect to be able to withdraw five $20 bills any time you want. Meanwhile banks invest their money in assets (loans, bonds) which are basically long term and risky: Banks make loans to risky businesses that don’t have to be repaid for years.
最近我們已經談過幾次銀行理論。該理論大致如下。銀行通過存款進行資金籌集,存款基本上是短期的和安全的:如果您在銀行賬戶中有100美元,您期望它的價值永遠是100美元,並且您期望隨時能夠提取5張20美元的鈔票。同時,銀行將其資金投資於基本上是長期和風險的資產(貸款、債券):銀行向風險企業發放貸款,這些貸款在數年內不必償還。
This business has well-known problems. The main problems are:
- The deposits are short-term but the assets are long-term: If all the depositors want their money back at once, it isn’t there, because it has been loaned out. This can lead to bank runs, panics, fire sales of assets, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.
- The deposits are safe but the assets are risky: If the bank makes bad loans and loses money, there won’t be enough money to pay back depositors, and bank deposits are meant to be money, so depositors really count on their bank deposits being safe.
這種生意模式存在著眾所周知的問題。主要問題如下:
- 存款是短期的,但資產是長期的:如果所有存款人同時要求取回他們的錢,因為錢已經被借貸出去了,所以沒有足夠的錢,這可能導致銀行擠兌、恐慌、資產抛售,就像《生活真美好》中的情節一樣。
- 存款是安全的,但資產是有風險的:如果銀行放出不良貸款並虧損,將沒有足夠的錢來償還存款人,而銀行存款本該是貨幣,所以存款人確實依賴他們的存款是安全的。
This business — “fractional reserve banking,” — is inherently risky and fragile. Everyone knows this, and there are standard methods to mitigate the risks. Banks have capital requirements (they are partly funded with equity, not deposits, so if the assets lose value the depositors still get their money back). They have liquidity requirements (some of their assets are short term and safe, so if depositors want money back there’s some money to give them). There is safety-and-soundness regulation and supervision (the government tries to prevent banks from making loans that will lose money). There is the lender of last resort (the central bank lends money to solvent banks that need cash, so if depositors want their money back the banks can get it). There is deposit insurance (the government promises that depositors will get their money back, making bank accounts safer and runs less likely). Still there is some unavoidable residue of fragility: The mismatch between the banks’ safe short term liabilities and their risky long term assets creates risk, and somebody — if not depositors then the government — has to bear that risk.
這種業務——「分散準備金銀行業務」——與生俱來的風險和脆弱性。每個人都知道這一點,並且有標準的方法來減輕風險。銀行有資本要求(它們部分由股本資金支持,而不是存款,因此如果資產貶值,存款人仍然可以拿回他們的錢)。他們有流動性要求(他們的一些資產是短期和安全的,所以如果存款人想要取回他們的錢,就有一些錢可以給他們)。有安全監管(政府試圖防止銀行貸款損失)。還有最後的貸款人(中央銀行向需要現金的償債能力良好的銀行借款,因此如果存款人想要取回他們的錢,銀行可以得到它)。有存款保險(政府承諾存款人會拿回他們的錢,使銀行賬戶更安全,擠兌不太可能)。儘管如此,仍然存在一些不可避免的脆弱性殘留:銀行的短期安全負債和長期風險資產之間的不匹配造成了風險,而某人——如果不是存款人,那麼就是政府——必須承擔這種風險。
You might draw one of two conclusions from this:
- Oh well! Banking is good; there is social value in this fragility; it allows society to pool its safe capital to be able to take on risks. “Banking is a way for people collectively to make long-term, risky bets without noticing them, a way to pool risks so that everyone is safer and better-off,” I wrote last month. “Financial systems help us overcome a collective action problem,” Steve Randy Waldman wrote in 2011: “In a world of investment projects whose costs and risks are perfectly transparent, most individuals would be frightened. … A banking system is a superposition of fraud and genius that interposes itself between investors and entrepreneurs” to encourage investment and make everyone better off.
- No, this is bad, it’s antiquated, we should fix it. Let’s get rid of fractional reserve banking and do something else.
你可能會從中得出以下兩個結論:
- 喔,好吧!銀行業是好的;這種脆弱性具有社會價值;它允許社會集中安全資本來承擔風險。我上個月寫道:“銀行業是人們集體進行長期、風險投注的一種方式,以一種不被注意到的方式存在,是一種將風險匯集起來,使每個人都更安全和更富有的方式。”“銀行系統幫助我們克服集體行動的問題。” Steve Randy Waldman在2011年寫道:“在一個成本和風險都是完全透明的投資世界裡,大多數個人都會感到害怕……銀行系統是一種欺詐和天才的疊加,它介入了投資者和企業家之間,鼓勵投資,使每個人都更富有。”
- 不,這是不好的,它已經過時了,我們應該進行修復。讓我們擺脫儲備金銀行業,并做些其他的事情。
Conceptually the main way to do that goes something like this:
- Banks should take short-term safe deposits and invest them in short-term safe assets.
- Long-term risky assets should be funded with long-term risky liabilities.
在概念上,達到這個目標的主要方法如下:
- 銀行應該接受短期安全存款,並將它們投資在短期安全資產上。
- 長期風險資產應該通過長期風險負債來獲得資金。
This is loosely speaking called the “Chicago plan,” or “narrow banking.” Banks would just hold cash for their depositors, so the cash would always be there and banks would not have any risk of runs or credit losses. In modern banking, the banks would not hold “cash” in the sense of $20 bills in a vault; rather, they’d take deposits and turn around and deposit the money as reserves at the Federal Reserve. The Fed pays interest on reserves, so the banks could earn enough money to pay for salaries and branches and still pay some interest to their customers. (Though it’s not clear why a narrow bank would need branches; it would be a lot cheaper to operate a narrow bank than a full bank, so presumably it would need less of an interest margin.)
這種思路大致可稱為“芝加哥計劃”或“狹義的銀行業務”。銀行只為其存款人持有現金,因此現金始終在那裡,銀行不會有任何擠兌或信貸損失的風險。在現代銀行業中,銀行不會像存放在保險箱里的20美元紙幣一樣持有“現金”;相反,他們會接受存款,然後將這些錢作為儲備存放在聯邦儲備銀行中。聯邦儲備銀行會支付儲備的利息,因此銀行可以賺取足夠的錢來支付工資和分支機構,並向客戶支付一些利息。(儘管還不清楚狹義銀行業是否需要分支機構,但運營狹義銀行業務的成本比全面銀行業務低得多,因此假定它需要較少的利息差距。)
Meanwhile, risky loans would come from people who intend to make risky loans: You could have, say, a loan fund that raises money from investors, locks up their money for 10 years, uses the money to make 10-year loans, and then pays back the investors whatever the fund gets back on the loans. 4 If the fund makes bad loans, the investors lose money; they bear the risk knowingly and directly, unlike bank depositors who sort of don’t know where their money is going.
同時,風險貸款來自那些打算進行風險貸款的人:比如,你可以有一個貸款基金,從投資者那裡籌集資金,將他們的資金鎖定10年,用這些資金進行10年期貸款,然後根據貸款所得向投資者支付回報。如果基金放出不良貸款,投資者將損失資金;他們明知地直接承擔風險,而不像銀行存款人那樣不知道他們的錢去了哪裡。
Perhaps this system would make borrowing more expensive, as the current system of “fraud and genius” disguises risks in the financial system and so makes it more willing to take risks cheaply. But perhaps it would be less fragile; it would cost society a little more most years but a lot less some years.
也許這種制度會讓借貸變得更加昂貴,因為“欺詐和天才”的現行制度掩蓋了金融系統中的風險,因此使它更願意以較低的成本承擔風險。但也許它會變得不那麼脆弱;它會在大多數年份花費社會一些錢,但在某些年份花費的錢會少很多。
People sometimes talk about imposing this sort of system by legislation or regulation; this had a wave of popularity after 2008, though that has waned in recent years. I have written before that the Fed seems to have no interest in narrow banking — it kind of hates it and has declined to approve a bank that tried to do exactly this model — and I don’t really expect fractional reserve banking to end anytime soon.
有時人們會談論通過立法或監管來實施這種制度;這在2008年之後曾經風靡一時,但最近幾年已經減弱了。我曾經寫過聯邦儲備銀行似乎對狹義銀行業沒有興趣——它有點討厭它,並拒絕批准一家嘗試使用這種模型的銀行——我不認為儲備金銀行業務很快就會結束。
But I do want to point out that there are indications that the markets are moving toward narrow banking all on their own. We talked last month about money market funds and the Fed’s reverse repo program. You can put your money in a money market fund that will just park it directly at the Fed, though when a money market fund parks cash at the Fed that is called “reverse repo” rather than “reserves.” A money market fund that just parks its money at the Fed has essentially no risk: All of its assets are short-term (they are parked overnight) and safe (its debtor is the Fed), so your money is safer there than it is at a bank. It has few expenses: It doesn’t need a branch network or a lot of lending officers to take in money online and park it at the Fed, so it can pass on most of the interest that the Fed pays it directly to its customers. And the Fed does pay it a lot of interest — reverse repos pay something like 4.8% — so it can end up paying depositors more interest for taking less risk than a bank can.
但我想指出的是,有跡象表明市場正在自行向狹義銀行業務發展。上個月我們談到了貨幣市場基金和美聯儲的逆回購計劃。您可以將資金放入一個貨幣市場基金,直接將其存放在美聯儲,儘管當貨幣市場基金將現金存放在美聯儲時,它被稱為「逆回購」而不是「準備金」。將資金直接存放在美聯儲的貨幣市場基金基本上沒有風險:所有資產都是短期的(它們在隔夜期間被存放),而且安全(其債務人是美聯儲),因此您的資金在那裡比在銀行裡更安全。它的開支很少:它不需要一個分支機構網絡或很多貸款主管在線上收取資金並將其存放在美聯儲,因此它可以將美聯儲直接支付給客戶的大部分利息傳遞下去。而美聯儲確實支付了它很多的利息——逆回購支付大約4.8%-因此它最終可以為承擔更少風險的存款人支付更多利息,而銀行則無法做到。
n 2021, when interest rates were zero-ish everywhere and when there hadn’t been a big bank failure in a while, nobody had all that much incentive to move their money from a bank account paying 0% interest to a money market fund paying barely more. But in 2023, when people were worried about their banks’ safety anyway, moving from a bank account paying 0% interest to a safer narrow money market fund paying 4.8% seems pretty attractive. And so people do. The Wall Street Journal reports:
在2021年,由於利率幾乎到了零,而且已經有一段時間沒有發生大規模的銀行倒閉,沒有太多的動力讓人們將錢從支付0%利率的銀行賬戶轉移到支付微不足道的貨幣市場基金中。但是在2023年,當人們已經擔心銀行的安全問題時,從支付0%利率的銀行賬戶轉移到更安全的狹義貨幣市場基金中,支付4.8%的利率似乎相當吸引人。因此,人們這麼做了。據《華爾街日報》報道:
Main Street banks such as Citizens Financial Group Inc. and First Horizon Corp. said in recent first-quarter earnings reports they are having a tougher time hanging onto customer money in a world where the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates. To keep those depositors around, some lenders are paying more on savings accounts and turning to products like certificates of deposit.
Though profits rose at many banks in the first quarter, the deposit declines signal a fundamental change in their business. Deposits were plentiful in the era of superlow rates because customers had little incentive to move their money elsewhere. Banks grew to rely on them as a cheap source of funding that they could use to make loans or buy bonds and other securities. …
In recent months, with the Fed continuing to raise rates, consumers and businesses at banks across the industry started moving their money from bank deposits to higher-yield offerings such as money-market funds and Treasurys. Customers who used to be satisfied keeping their money in accounts that paid no interest decided they no longer were.
The collapse last month of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank accelerated the shift at some firms. Both banks were felled by panicky customers pulling out their money after concerns started spreading about the banks’ health. Customers at those banks and some other smaller firms across the U.S. started moving their money to the largest banks, betting they were safer even in crisis. …
Even the biggest banks, which enjoyed a windfall of deposits from smaller-bank customers, had to pay more for deposits.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said last week it picked up about $50 billion in new deposits following March’s bank failures, but overall deposits were up only $37 billion from the end of 2022, indicating they would have dropped if not for the industry turmoil. JPMorgan executives cautioned that the new deposits might not stick.
像Citizens Financial Group 和 First Horizon Corp這樣的城鎮銀行在最近的第一季度財報中表示,在美聯儲積極上調利率的世界中,他們更難留住客戶的資金。為了留住這些存款人,一些貸款人正在為儲蓄賬戶支付更多的費用,並轉向像存單這樣的產品。
雖然許多銀行的利潤在第一季度上升,但存款下降表明瞭他們業務上的根本變化。在超低利率時代,存款豐富,因為客戶很少有動力將他們的資金轉移到其他地方。銀行們開始依賴它們作為一種廉價的資金來源,他們可以用來放貸或購買債券和其他證券…
最近幾個月,隨著美聯儲繼續加息,整個行業的消費者和企業開始將他們的資金從銀行存款轉移到高收益的投資,如貨幣市場基金和國債。過去滿足於將資金放在不支付利息的賬戶中的客戶決定不再滿足於此。
上個月硅谷銀行和Signature Bank的倒閉加速了一些公司的轉變。在擔心銀行健康狀況開始擴散後,兩家銀行都被驚慌失措的客戶抽出了他們的資金。這些銀行和美國其他一些較小的公司的客戶開始將他們的資金轉移到最大的銀行,打賭即使在危機中他們也是更安全的。
即使是最大的銀行也不得不為存款付出更多的代價,這些銀行從小銀行客戶那裡獲得了大量的存款。
摩根大通上周表示,在3月份的銀行倒閉後,他們獲得了約500億美元的新存款,但總存款僅比2022年底增加了370億美元,這表明如果沒有行業動蕩,存款將會下降。摩根大通的高管們警告說,新的存款可能不會留下來。
Then there is the other side of the Chicago plan: If banks don’t do lending, lending needs to come from funds whose investors lock up their money and consciously take on the risk of making loans. Those funds might have to charge more for loans than banks do, because their investors, unlike bank depositors, are knowingly locking up their money and taking risks and so want to be compensated.
然後還有芝加哥計劃的另一面:如果銀行不進行貸款,貸款就需要來自那些投資者鎖定資金並有意承擔放貸風險的基金。這些基金可能需要比銀行收取更高的貸款利率,因為與銀行存款人不同,這些投資者明知鎖定資金並承擔風險,因此希望得到補償。
And of course there is a lot of that in modern finance, loans that come from funds rather than from banks. Leveraged buyouts, for instance, used to be financed with a combination of junk bonds (bought by funds, insurers, etc.) and bank loans (bought by banks). In recent years, the “bank loans” have increasingly been owned by hedge funds, collateralized loan obligations, etc.; banks syndicate them but increasingly they end up on someone else’s balance sheet. And more recently a lot of leveraged buyouts have increasingly been financed by private credit, deals with loan funds (often sponsored by private equity firms) that cut out banks entirely.
當然,現代金融業中有很多這樣的情況,即來自基金而非銀行的貸款。比如,槓桿收購過去通常是由垃圾債券(由基金、保險公司等購買)和銀行貸款(由銀行購買)的組合進行融資。近年來,「銀行貸款」越來越多地被對衝基金、抵押貸款義務等擁有;銀行聯合它們,它們也越來越多地出現在其他人的資產負債表上。最近,很多槓桿收購越來越多地由私人信貸進行融資,即與貸款基金(通常由私募股權公司贊助)達成的交易,完全剔除了銀行。
It is not just leveraged buyouts, though. Apollo Global Management Inc. bought a lot of Credit Suisse Group AG’s structured finance and weird lending businesses, before Credit Suisse disappeared, forming a new lending business funded by investors and its insurance company. Last month it gave PacWest Bancorp a $1.4 billion lending facility, and I wrote: “It used to be that banks funded themselves with deposits and used the money to make loans to private equity firms. Now banks fund themselves with loans from private equity firms.”
不僅僅是槓桿收購。在Credit Suisse消失之前,Apollo Global Management Inc. 收購了Credit Suisse Group AG 的大量結構化融資和奇怪的貸款業務,組建了一個由投資者和保險公司資助的新貸款業務。上個月,它向PacWest Bancorp提供了14億美元的貸款便利,我寫道:「曾經,銀行用存款為自己融資,並用這些資金向私募股權公司發放貸款。現在,銀行通過從私募股權公司獲得貸款來為自己融資。」
Or here is a Bloomberg News story about Blackstone Inc.’s earnings:
[Blackstone President Jon] Gray said that the tumult following the collapse of three US regional lenders last month has created investment opportunities — even after Blackstone backed a firm’s losing bid for Silicon Valley Bank. Blackstone has been talking to small banks about stepping in to lend alongside them as more look to slim down their balance sheets
“Because of the focus on liquidity they may want to find partners,” Gray said.
這是彭博新聞報道的有關黑石集團(Blackstone Inc.)財報的信息:
[黑石集團總裁Jon] Gray 表示,上個月三家美國地區銀行破產後的動蕩局面為投資提供了機會(黑石支持的一家公司對倒閉的硅谷銀行進行出價未成功)。但是,黑石一直在與小銀行交流,希望與他們一起貸款,因為越來越多的銀行希望縮減其資產負債表。
「由於關注流動性,他們可能希望尋找合作夥伴,」Gray 說。
Small banks don’t want to make loans “because of the focus on liquidity”: Their deposits are more risky, so their banking needs to be narrower. So they turn to funds run by Blackstone, which raises long-term money from investors who want to take credit risk, to make their loans.
小型銀行不想放貸「因為關注流動性」:它們的存款更具風險,因此它們的銀行業務需要更狹義。因此,它們轉向由黑石運營的基金,該基金從想要承擔信貸風險的投資者那裡籌集長期資金來進行貸款。
Basically in 2023 the market has created a lot of money-market funds that look like the deposit-taking side of narrow banking, and a lot of credit funds that look like the lending side of narrow banking. I don’t want to overstate this, and there are still a lot of big universal banks that are attracting deposits and making lots of loans. But they have some competition from narrower banking.
基本上在2023年,市場創造了很多看起來像狹義銀行存款方面的貨幣市場基金,以及很多看起來像狹義銀行貸款方面的信貸基金。我不想過分強調這一點,仍然有很多吸引存款並進行大量貸款的大型全能銀行。但他們面臨來自更為狹義銀行的競爭。
One very speculative thing that I might say here is that the magic — the opacity, the “superposition of fraud and genius” — of traditional fractional reserve banking is maybe a bit harder to do in a world that pays attention to it. It is relatively easy to find a bank’s balance sheet online, and if one person reads that balance sheet and notices that the bank is insolvent, it is relatively easy for her to tweet that and have it go viral and cause a bank run. 5 “Game’s the same, just got more fierce,” the vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said last week, about bank runs in the age of social media. If banking relies on a certain opacity, modern communications technology and social media might just make that opacity harder to achieve. 6 If it’s too easy to see what the magician is doing, the magic doesn’t work anymore.
在這裡,我可以推斷,傳統的法定準備金銀行的「魔術」——不透明度、”欺詐和天才的超級疊加”——可能在廣受關注的世界中更難做到。現在很容易就能在網上找到一家銀行的資產負債表,如果有人閱讀了這份資產負債表併發現這家銀行已經資不抵債,那麼她很容易就可以發推特將其傳播開來,引起銀行擠兌。聯邦存款保險公司的副主席上周說過:「遊戲是一樣的,只是更加激烈了」,這是關於社交媒體時代的銀行擠兌。如果銀行依賴某種不透明度,現代通訊技術和社交媒體可能會使這種不透明度難以實現。如果太容易看到魔術師在幹什麼,那魔術就行不通了。