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Bank reform and Britain's economy
A ring-fence round the high-street banks
Jun 15th2011, 20:47 by J.O.
IN BRITISH politics, independent commissions are often adiversion that allows governments to be seen to be doing something about adifficult issue. Sometimes their findings are respectfully ignored. So it was amild surprise when on June 15th, three months before the Independent Commissionon Banks (ICB) is due to release its final report, George Osborne, thechancellor of the exchequer, told the City’s annual Mansion House dinner thathe would
endorse thecommission’s main findings.
The ICB’s most radical idea,
set out in itsinterim report in April, is to force British banks to ring-fencetheir retail-banking arms into separately capitalised subsidiaries, which canthen be salvaged if the rest of the bank goes bust. The banks’ trading andinvestment-banking divisions would, it is hoped, be allowed to live or diewithout any help from the government.
The commissioners are busily working outwhere to draw the line dividing retail banking from the riskier kind. Forinstance, retail banks often help small companies hedge their currencyexposures, a service also provided by their investment-banking arms. Thechanges would increase the borrowing costs of banks by ending cross-subsidiesbetween their different parts, but no one, including the commission, is quitesure by how much.
The ICB’s other headline proposal isthat large British banks would have to hold bigger buffers against losses thancurrently proposed under Basel 3, a new international agreement on minimumcapital requirements. Mr Osborne said the European Union should adopt these newBasel standards in full, a call echoed by Mervyn King, the Bank of England’sgovernor, who was
speaking at thesame event. But both speakers said theEU should allow countries to set higher capital standards if nationalcircumstances required them. Varying such rules is a key part of“macroprudential” regulation to be run by the Bank’s new financial-policycommittee, which has its inaugural meeting on June 16th.
Mr Osborne did his best to sound upbeatabout the economy: take out the shrinking financial sector and it had grown by4% since the recovery began, he said. But he acknowledged that a hard road hadbeen made harder by the rise in oil prices and the disruption caused by thetsunami in Japan. Mr King was blunter: the economy, he reckoned, had grown byonly around 1% in the past year. He also implied that interest rates could onlyrise in earnest once the banks were in better shape.
What prompted Mr Osborne to back thecommission so soon? Perhaps it was a concern that the ICB might yet come upwith something more radical, such as breaking up the banks altogether, if hedallied. The chancellor also announced that Northern Rock, a mortgage-lenderthat was nationalised in 2008. is to be sold by the government later this year.That suggests a different motive: a desire to end uncertainty and to draw aline under the banking crisis.
银行改革和英国经济
对繁华商业区银行的限制
在英国政体，独立委员会常常转移了人们目睹ZF就有关棘手的问题采取措施的注意力。有些时候他们的研究成果会被委婉的忽略。所以，6月15日距银行独立委员会公布其最终报告还有三个月的时候，财政大臣乔治•奥斯本在伦敦的年度首相官邸晚餐中表示他将支持该委员会的研究成果时，不免有些奇怪。
银行独立委员会在其四月份的临时报告中提出的最激进的观点是迫使银行将其零售银行业务分隔成独立融资的机构。如果银行的其他部门破产，这些机构可以独善其身。他们希望银行的贸易或投资部门可以不需要ZF的帮助而自生自灭。
委员们正忙于寻找将零售银行从风险更高的业务中分离出来的界限。。例如，零售银行经常帮助小型企业对冲他们的货币敞口，他们的投资银行部门也提供这样的服务。这种变化将通过停止通过不同部门的交叉补贴而增加银行的借贷成本，但是，包括该委员会在内没人确定成本会增加多少。
银行独立委员会还建议大的英国银行必须持有更高的应对损失的储备。这一储备应当高于现行的巴塞尔3协议要求的标准。奥斯本认为欧盟应当全盘采用新的巴塞尔3协议，英格兰银行行长金恩和奥斯本持相同的观点。但是，奥斯本和金恩都认为如果由于国内环境的压力欧盟应当允许其成员国设立更高的标准。对这些政策因国而异是即将在6月16日举行就职典礼的欧洲央行金融政策委员会实行宏观谨慎监管的重要组成部分。
奥斯本尽力将经济形势描绘的前景光明：除了萎缩的金融板块，自从复苏开始以来经济已经增长了4%，他说。但是，他承认油价上涨以及海啸给日本经济带来的波动让复苏之路变的更加艰难。金恩却更加直言不讳：他认为，在过去的一年中经济只增长了1%。他同样暗示只有银行业恢复以后利率才能实质提高。
是什么促使奥斯本转而支持银行独立委员会？或许是出于如果他草率对待，银行独立委员会或许会出台更加激进方案——例如全面的拆分银行——的担心。奥斯本同时宣布2008年国有化的贷款机构Northern Rock将会在年末被ZF出售。这表明了不同的动机：终结不确定性以及限制银行业危机的强烈愿望。
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