经济学人下载:房利美与房地美

Finance and economics
财经商业

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
房利美与房地美

Deconstruction delays
关闭计划或搁浅

A flawed reform of America's housing-finance market
存在缺陷的美国房屋金融市场改革

A RARE area of agreement about the financial crisis of 2008 is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were at the core of the meltdown and are in urgent need of reform.
关于2008年金融危机，几个少有的一致观点中就包括：房利美和房地美是这次灾难的主要原因，亟需整改。

On March 16th the leading Republican and Democratic members of thekey Senate Banking Committee belatedly released a plan,
在3月16日，参议院银行委员会中几位主要的共和党和民主党议员发布了一份迟来的计划，

for restructuring the two publicly traded mortgage giants.
内容是整改这两家公开交易的抵押贷款巨头。

The plan has received widespread attention in part because it appears to address the most evident problems of Fannie and Freddie,
这份计划受到广泛关注的原因部分在于它或将解决两房最为显著的问题，

and because it is deemed likely to be approved by Congress.
部分则是普遍认为这份计划会在国会通过。

Yet neither of these assumptions, on deeper examination, seems to be true.
然而仔细一想，这两个假设似乎都很难实现。

To satisfy those who want low-priced mortgages on terms that private markets would never endorse,
那些需要私有资本市场不会批准的低成本抵押贷款的民众应感到满足，

the plan makes explicit the government guarantee on debt which had been implicit for Fannie and Freddie.
因为这份计划明确表示政府将会对这些债务做出担保，而这曾是两房的潜在规则。

This would lower the interest rate on high-risk loans, while obscuring the cost of the subsidy.
这一规定将降低高风险贷款的利率，同时使补贴成本难以计算。

To placate those who worry that this in turn would leave the government stuck with mountains of dud loans,
那些担心政府会因此接受大量不良贷款的人也不必紧张，

a 10% capital cushion must be provided by investors to absorb initial losses.
因为计划规定投资者们需要提供10%的资本缓冲来承担首次损失。

A fee of 0.1% would be charged on all mortgage-backed bonds, with the proceeds going to three funds, two pre-existing, that will provide subsidies for housing.
所有抵押保证债券将会收取0.1%的费用，这笔收费将交由三家提供房屋补贴的基金，其中两家已经存在。

An as-yet undetermined insurance charge will be levied on top.
另外还要征收一项保险费，其数额尚未确定。

The result, said Mike Crapo, the ranking Republican senator on the committee, would be a strong step forward to fixing our flawed housing system.
委员会中的资深资深共和党参议员Mike Crapo认为，这个结果将是改善我们充满缺点的住房体系的重要进步。

If only, say critics, who include investors and both friends and foes of Fannie and Freddie.
批评者，包括投资者以及两房的敌友机构认为，哪怕计划得以通过，也会带来很多问题。

The first objection is that the law would create an unwieldy bureaucracy,
第一个障碍就是该法规将催生一个运作迟缓的官僚体系，

with a regulator atop other entities devoted to overseeing functions such assyndicating loans or bundling the loans of small banks.
用一个监管机构来监督实体机构行使某些职能，比如银团贷款和捆绑小型银行的贷款。

When the plan was announced, the price of shares in Fannie and Freddie, which account for about two-thirds of the mortgage market, did not budge at first.
当这个计划被宣布时，拥有抵押贷款市场三分之二份额的房利美和房地美的股价并没有立刻发生变化。

Then they tanked—presumably because investors reached page 387 of the 442-page text,
之后却狂跌不止，或许是因为投资者终于把442页的文本翻到了387页，

and found enshrined in legislation an earlier 2012 order by the Treasury that expropriated from private investors all profits made by Fannie and Freddie.
发现了法律中深藏的一项财政部于2012年下达的命令：没收私人投资者从两房获得的利润。

The move is unlikely to help attract the private money needed to supply the 10% in equity underpinning bonds issued under the new plan.
这个命令可不会帮助吸引私人资本为新计划将发行的用以支持股票的债券提供10%的资金。

Opponents of Fannie and Freddie contend that the two played a key role in the crisis,
两房的竞争对手们认为，这两家利用好听的经济适用房的授权，

by encouraging the issuance of loans with tiny downpayments through a benign-sounding affordable housing mandate.
鼓励发行首付极低的住房贷款，从而对金融危机负有很大责任。

Nothing much has changed. Under the new plan, downpayments of as little as 3.5% of the loan value would be permitted.
但在这方面却没有太大改变。新计划中，首付款可低至贷款的3.5%。

Strewn through the proposed law are words such as affordable, equal access and underserved communities,
该项被提议的法规中充斥着经济适用，同样途径和弱势群体这类词语，

which suggest that lending decisions will be based on political rather than credit criteria.
表明关于贷款的决定将取决于政治因素而不是信用标准。

The result, says Edward Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, will be risky lending for those least able to cope.
智囊团美国企业协会的Edward Pinto表示，贷款给无法偿还者非常危险。

The underlying problem with the new plan is that, like Fannie and Freddie before it, it tries to reconcile two conflicting goals:
新计划的潜在问题和这份计划之前两房的行为一样，想要同时完成两个相冲突的目标：

protecting the financial system and providing low-cost housing loans to favoured groups. A better approach would be to handle these goals separately and explicitly.
即保护金融体系，又想为特殊群体提供低花费的房屋贷款。将两个目前独立而明确地处理会是一个更好的方式。