[2011.08.13] 终身裁判

引用 join_soon 2011-8-15 09:44

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Credit-rating agencies
信用评级机构

Judges with tenure

终身裁判【法官】

Making financial markets less reliant on ratings will not be straightforward
降低金融机构对评级的依赖？没那么容易【降低金融机构对评级的依赖不是件容易事】

Aug 13th 2011 | NEW YORK | from the print edition

WARREN BUFFETT did not mince his words after Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt.Treasuries deserved a “quadruple-A” rating, he harrumphed. The world’s best-known investor may be short some of the ratings agencies’ opinions, but he is long their equity. With a 12.5% stake (as of March 31st), his holding company is one of the largest shareholders in Moody’s, S&P’s main rival.

针对标普调低了美国长期债权等级一事，沃伦巴菲特并不讳言他的异议，他认为美国的债权甚至可以达到“AAAA”的级别。这位世界最知名的投资人可能看不上标普的一些观点【某些评级机构的的某些观点】，但要注意，他已是标普的老对手了【他可是他们的老东家了】。巴菲特的控股公司持有标普主要竞争对手穆迪 12.5% 的股份（3 月 31 日前统计数据），是穆迪最大的股东。

Mr Buffett understands that, for all the politicians’ pledges to clip ratings firms’ wings, the trio that dominates the industry—the smaller Fitch is the third—will continue to wield huge influence. And where there’s power, there’s money. Moody’s enjoys operating margins of 35-40%. Activist investors are pushing for a break-up of S&P’s parent, McGraw-Hill, to free its more promising divisions, including ratings, from the more sluggish publishing units.

巴菲特显然知道，虽然所有政客都决心剪除评级机构的羽翼，但是当前的评级三巨头（排名第三的是规模较小的惠誉）仍将保持着巨大的影响力，而权利在哪里，金钱就将涌向哪里，穆迪的营业毛利就达到了35-40%。激进的投资者正催促标普母公司麦格希进行拆分，把包括评级在内更有前景的部门从增长缓慢的出版部门独立出来。

The opprobrium heaped on ratings firms is only partly deserved. They acquitted themselves poorly in the run-up to Enron’s collapse in 2001. Their number-crunching reached a nadir in the more recent mortgage debacle, which was exacerbated by their willingness to award AAA ratings to thousands of structured-mortgage time-bombs.

评级机构承担的恶名一部分属于自作自受，另一部分确却是无辜受累。2001 年安永破产，在整个事件的发展过程中，评级机构难辞其咎。在距今更近的按揭危机事件中，评级机构更是名声扫地，由于它们向众多堪称定时炸弹的结构化按揭产品授予 AAA 评级，导致了事态的恶化。

On the debt of countries, however,their record is considerably better. In a study last year, the International Monetary Fund concluded that ratings were a reasonably good indicator of sovereign-default risk. All countries that have defaulted since the mid-1970shad their grade cut to junk by ratings agencies at least a year beforehand. In the current European crisis, ratings firms had begun to downgrade peripheral euro-zone countries years before bond markets woke up to default risk.

然而评级机构在国家债务方面的一贯表现明显要好得多。去年国际货币基金组织执行的一项研究表明，评级是衡量主权违约风险的较好指标。自 20 世纪 70 年代以来，所有违约国家至少在违约之前的一年，信用评级就被评级机构调到了垃圾的级别。如今的欧洲危机中，评级公司更是在债券市场意识到违约风险之前years ，就开始降低欧元区外围国家的信用评级。

Still, there are awkward questions to answer. Some wonder how S&P can rank America below France, which is knee-deep in the euro-debacle. In recent years it has tended to downgrade sovereigns ahead of its rivals, leaving some wondering if its criteria are too harsh (see chart). It has, to be fair, strived to explain which factors affect its decisions. It has been less good at clarifying their relative weight. The big ratings firms provide “an ingredients list with no recipe,” says GlennReynolds of CreditSights, a research company. Indeed, markets were taken by surprise when, three days after the American downgrade, S&P said that some state and local governments might be able to keep their top-notch ratings if they could, for instance, show how they would cope with reduced federal benefits.

然而人们仍有些不太客气的问题要问。有些人诧异，标普怎么会把美国的等级定得比深陷欧元崩溃危机的法国还低。近年来，标普倾向于先于竞争对手降低主权国家信用评级，让人们不禁怀疑它的标准是否太严格（见图）。平心而论，标普确实在尽量试图解释影响其决策的要素，但是却没有说清楚这些要素的相对权重。研究公司 CreditSights 的 Glenn Reynolds 评论说该评级机构巨头提供了张“没有配方的配料表”【给了配料单，但是没有给菜谱】。而标普调低美国信用评级三天后，又声明说可能会保留某些州和地方政府的顶级评级，只要它们证明能够应对联邦福利减少等问题即可。此举令市场大为惊讶。

The power that the big three wield over debt markets stems from their designation (along with seven much smaller outfits) as “nationally recognised” ratings firms. This confers quasi-regulatory status on them and ensures their judgments are hard-wired into rules governing banks, insurers and funds. Ratings are, for instance, used in evaluating capital standards and in central banks’ collateral-eligibility rules. Rescue proposals in Europe have turned on how ratings agencies define a sovereign default.

追根溯源，三巨头能对债券市场施加如此的影响力，是因为它们及另外七家规模更小的机构是“国家认可”的评级机构。如此一来，它们就拥有了半官方监管机构的身份，并能把它们的判断渗透到监管银行、保险商和基金的规则中。例如，评估资产标准时要用到评级，中央银行有关抵押资格的规则也要使用评级，欧洲救援提案的主要考量依据就是评级机构将会如何定义主权违约风险。

Ratings are also embedded in private contracts: witness the ruinous amounts of extra collateral demanded by AIG’s derivatives counterparties after it was downgraded. Some two-thirds of American pension funds with investment charters limit themselves to buying bonds rated by the industry’s triopoly.

在私有合同中也时时出现评级的身影：想想 AIG 降级后，其衍生产品购买方提出了多么巨额的额外担保要求吧。美国约有三分之二的养老基金都在投资章程中规定，只能购买经过评级三巨头评分的债券。

The increase in references to ratings in regulations over time, combined with limited competition, has created “a more or less ‘guaranteed market’ with few incentives to compete on the basis of rating quality,” the IMF notes. Worse, it creates so-called cliff effects: a rush to the exits when assets are downgraded (or likely to be),especially to below investment grade.

长期以来，评级越来越经常成为监管活动的参考，再加上竞争有限，便形成了一个“近乎‘铁饭碗’的市场，没有人有动力在评级质量方面一较高下”，IMF 评论说。更糟糕的是，评级还导致了所谓的悬崖效应：即资产降级（或可能降级）时，尤其是降到投资级别以下时，人人都会争先恐后地离场。

The obvious answers are to sever the link to regulation and to increase competition. The Financial Stability Board, which co-ordinates the G20’s financial policies, has asked standard-setters and regulators to find ways of yanking ratings out of rules on bank capital, fund holdings, margin agreements and so on. America’s Dodd-Frankact requires their removal, or replacement by “appropriate” alternatives,within two years. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed numerous changes to this end, covering securities registration, money-market funds and capital standards for brokers. Reliance on external ratings has been reduced in Japan and Argentina, too.

很明显，解决之道就是割断监管与评级的联系，并加强竞争。金融稳定委员会在 20 国集团的金融政策中发挥着协调作用，它已要求标准制定者和监管者想办法从银行资产、基金持有、保证金贷款协议等事项的监管规则中剔除评级因素。美国的 Dodd-Frank 法案要求在两年内删除或以其他“合适”参数替代评级。证券交易委员会 (SEC) 已为此目标提出了多项修改方案，涉及方面包括证券注册、货币市场基金及券商资产标准等。日本和阿根廷也降低了对外部评级的依赖。

On rating watch negative 评级进入负面观察名单

Counter-intuitively, some industry leaders back these moves. Deven Sharma, S&P’s boss, argues that the firm’s analysis would still find takers without a regulatory stamp of approval. It might also become easier to defend the industry’s much-pilloried line against those who bring liability lawsuits: that ratings are mere opinions, protected by free-speech laws.

令人匪夷所思的是，有些评级业的公司高管也支持这些举措。标普的老板 Deven Sharma 称就算没有监管机构的批准，仍然会有买家购买公司的分析。以上举措推行后，评级业在遭受责任诉讼时，也可以更理直气壮地说“评级仅仅是种见解，受到自由言论法的保护”，过去人们对这种说法一直颇为嘲讽。

Unfortunately, finding alternatives to ratings is proving difficult. Some suggest using credit-default-swap prices,but these too can exacerbate market swings. Others propose a minimum volume of past debt issuance, but this discriminates against smaller entities. Regulators remain open to suggestions for how to assess risk in bank-capital rules without ratings.

然而要找到评级的替代品并非易事。有人建议使用信用违约掉期价格，但是这种做法也会加剧市场的动荡。还有人建议对以往债券发行量规定最低限额，但是该做法对较小型的实体不利。监管者仍在征集建议，找出如何在银行资产规则中使用评级以外的方法评估风险。

Even in the absence of a panacea to replace ratings, officials could do worse than to scrap the “nationally recognised” imprimatur, throwing the game open to any firm that meets basic standards. Encouragingly, new competitors are entering the arena, including Kroll, a corporate-investigation firm, and Bloomberg, a financial-information firm. (The Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, is among the outfits that produce sovereign ratings.) Ratings agencies based in emerging markets can expect their clout to grow, too (though few pulses quickened when China’s Dagong Global cut America to five notches below AAA on August 2nd.)

即使现在没有替代评级的万全之策，撕毁“国家认可”特令，让任何达到基本标准的公司参与到竞争中来也是官方最好的选择。可喜的是，新竞争者已陆续开始进入竞技场，其中有公司调查机构 Kroll，也有金融信息公司 Bloomberg。（经济学人的姊妹公司经济学人信息部也是开展主权评级的机构之一。）位于新兴市场的评级机构也有望扩张自己的影响力（虽然中国大公国际在 8 月 2 日将美国的评级调到比 AAA 低五个等级时，并没有人多么在意）。

The danger is that many institutional investors will be reluctant to do their own credit analysis and will continue to rely on the big three even if ratings are pulled from the rules. That would be an easy option, but ultimately a masochistic one. For the biggest beneficiaries of ratings have not been long-term bond investors but the Wall Street firms that used the system to foist misrated debt on them.

危险在于，即使规则中已经消除了评级因素，许多机构投资者可能并不情愿自己开展信用分析，而是将继续依靠三巨头的工作。这样选择看起来理所当然，其实却是受虐狂才会做的选择。因为评级的最大受益人并非长期债券投资者，而是利用这套系统将错误评级的债务转嫁到投资人身上的华尔街公司们。

from the print edition | Finance and Economics

引用 yujialu 2011-8-15 19:18

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谢谢join_soon 前辈点评。点出来好多硬伤，是在是惭愧啊
1.Judges with tenure 这个我在翻译的时候也犹豫了一下，不知道该用“裁判”还是“法官”，后来觉得法官是判人有没有罪的，用在这里是不是不太好，所以就用了裁判。但是刚才我又查了下，好像没有很多“终身裁判”这样的说法，而“终身法官”这种说法就很常见，而且用在这里也表示评级机构地位比较超然比较高，不知道这是不是您觉得应该用“终身法官”的原因？
2.
The world’s best-known investor may be short some of the ratings agencies’ opinions, but he is long their equity. 这一句什么也不说了，看的时候没有注意“rating agencies”这个复数形式，导致整个句子理解不通，现在明白了。
3. an ingredients list with no recipe 这句也是没有表达清楚，改过的版本很容易懂

谢谢啦

引用 moonfrost 2011-8-15 21:27

谢谢楼主。不才我看不懂 “Quick on the draw＂的那张图，能请帮忙解释一下吗？谢谢。

引用 yujialu 2011-8-16 19:11

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我的理解是这样的。以第一行发达国家为例：
总共有66起发达国家信用评级被降低的事件，其中大概75%，也就是大概50起是标普最早开始行动，接下来另外两家才下调评级；然后另有三五次是穆迪最早开始下调评级，十几次是fitch最早行动的

下一行同理。

引用 moonfrost 2011-8-17 00:32

谢谢楼主。让我好好想一想。

引用 shiningkyle 2011-8-17 10:16

有个小错误：第三段的Enron是“安然”公司~安永是Ernst & Young。

引用 yujialu 2011-8-17 21:54

回复 shiningkyle 的帖子

火速改正之，多谢

引用 rank 2011-8-18 14:42

这个文章比较拗口，能通篇译下来已经很不错了。

引用 子丑寅卯 2011-8-18 15:34

第二段： Moody’s enjoys operating margins of 35-40%.
穆迪的营运利润率达到了35-40%。

营运利润率的翻译来自http://www2.goldmansachs.com/chi ... lish-chinese/o.html

若是说毛利的话，应该是具体数值，而不是百分比。

有些抠字眼了，希望楼主莫介意哈！

引用 Crate 2011-8-19 07:38

这么长，翻译得挺清晰的，看得懂，学习了。楼主辛苦啦

引用 incense 2011-8-25 13:49

楼主翻译的很好啊，读起来很通顺~
挑个小错顺便求教：
Rescue proposals in Europe have turned on how ratings agencies define a sovereign default.
欧洲救援提案的主要考量依据就是评级机构将会如何定义主权违约。
请问turn on这里怎么理解才好呢？谢谢啦~

引用 yujialu 2011-9-5 17:11

回复 incense 的帖子

牛津高阶里面说：
turn on sth
have sth as its main topic 以某事物为主要议题: The discussion turned on the need for better public health care. 讨论的主要议题是必须改善大众保健服务.
所以我感觉这里就是说评级机构对主权违约的定义在救援提案里占了很大的分量，译得时候稍微转译了一下，不知道体现出了这个意思没

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