常春藤名校生宁愿教书不进华尔街

We are witnessing the decline and fall of investment banking as we have known it for the past 40 years.

现在，投资银行业正在经历衰退和没落，难复过去40年间的辉煌。

The evidence is everywhere. The increasing regulations on Wall Street — as required by the Dodd-Frank law and still being written by the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and others agencies in the US and Europe — will require the remaining companies to increase their capital, curb their risk-taking and reduce their principal investing.

投资银行业陷入困境的证据无处不在。多德弗兰克法案的制定将使华尔街面临更为严厉的监管，美联储，美国证券与交易委员会，美国商品期货交易委员会以及其他美国和欧洲金融监管结构也正在酝酿更为严厉的监管方案，这些措施将使得苟延生存的投资公司不得不增加投资资本，遏制投资风险并减少其主要投资。

Aside from the fact that investing principal and proprietary risk-taking per se had nothing to do with the financial crisis — and that the ability of Goldman Sachs Group to make a huge proprietary bet against the mortgage market probably helped save the firm — these new rules will curb Wall Street's revenue and profitability at a time when the business itself is suffering a severe slowdown. (What sunk Wall Street in 2008 was the seemingly more conventional business of the manufacture, packaging and sale of increasingly risky mortgage-backed and other debt securities.)

抛开投资本金和风险本身与金融危机并无关系这一事实，也不讨论高盛押宝抵押贷款市场崩溃（这一行为使公司逃过一劫）——这些新的监管措施将限制华尔街的收益和获利能力，在商业环境本已如此萧条的背景下，这无疑是雪上加霜。（制造，包装，销售风险日益上升的住房抵押贷款产品以及其他债务证券产品的传统业务，是华尔街在2008年遭受重创的原因。）

Not being able to make those big proprietary bets when you see them developing — in effect, the closing of the casino that Wall Street has become over the past few decades — will severely limit bankers' money-making opportunities. It will also protect the rest of us when those big bets go wrong or are perceived to be too risky. (For every Goldman Sachs acting brilliantly, there is an MF Global Holdings acting foolishly).

即便发现投资机会，投行也不能激进下注——过去几十年间造就的华尔街赌场，如今一朝关闭——这一事实会大大减少银行家的获利机会。同时，这些限制错误投资或风险过大投资的监管措施，其实也是对我们大多数人的保护。（高盛每走一步好棋，全球曼氏金融就会走一步臭棋。）

There is little debate anymore that Wall Street had become highly dependent on its trading operations. Something like 90 percent of Bear Stearns's profits in the years leading up to its March 2008 demise came from its trading and debt-origination activities. At Goldman Sachs in 2010, its traditional investment-banking operations generated only $1.3 billion of $12.9 billion in pretax earnings, about 10 percent.

毫无疑问，华尔街已经高度依赖交易操作。贝尔斯通2008年3月破产的时候，公司90%的收入来源于交易和贷款融资。高盛2010年税前盈利129亿美元，其中传统投行业务盈利13亿美元，仅占总收入10%。

The slowdown in business, combined with the looming trading curbs, has resulted in job losses across Wall Street. Morgan Stanley recently announced it was firing 1,600 employees. Goldman Sachs has done its usual turn of eliminating the bottom 10 percent of its workforce and a group of its long-serving partners. Bank of America announced that about 30,000 employees would be chopped by the end of 2012, although a number of the firm’s investment bankers lost their jobs in the past month.

业务放缓，加之隐现的交易限制措施，华尔街上刮起了裁员风暴。摩根士丹利最近宣布裁员1600人。高盛业已完成基层裁员10%，并与一些长期服务的合作伙伴解除了关系。美国银行宣布将在2012年底前裁员3万人，而一些该公司的投资银行家已经在上个月失去了工作。