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[2013.07.06] International finance: Money will find a way 资金会自寻出路
http://www.ecocn.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=193468&from^^uid=449928
(出处: ECO中文网)
The Eurobond’s 50th birthday has lessons for governments about how not to regulate finance
欧洲债券诞生五十周年之际就如何放松对金融的调控给ZF上了一课
Jul 6th 2013 |From the print edition
FIFTY years ago this week Autostrade, an Italian motorway operator, issued a $15m bond. The first Eurobond was less a piece of clever financial engineering than an elaborate tax dodge. The idea dreamed up by London bankers was to capture some of the dollars that were sloshing around Europe (hence the name Eurodollars) because of America’s Regulation Q, which limited the interest rates paid on deposit accounts. Autostrade was chosen as the first issuer because it had the right to pay interest (in the form of coupons) without deducting Italian tax. The bond was issued in Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to avoid British stamp duty. The coupons were payable in Luxembourg to avoid British income tax.
五十年前的这个星期，一家意大利高速公路运营商，Autostrade公司发行了1500万美元的债券。这是首个欧洲债券，伦敦银行家们设想通过债券这种方式来捕获大量因美国实行利率上限的Q规定而散落欧洲的美元（因而得名欧元）。首个欧洲债券不仅是一项高明的金融工程更是一个煞费苦心的逃税计划。Autostrade公司作为首个发行着是因其有权在不扣除意大利税的情况下以股息的形式付息。而在阿姆斯特丹史基浦机场发行债券是为了避开英国印花税，选择在卢森堡进行股息支付是为了避开英国所得税。
The new market’s growth was boosted when President John Kennedy imposed a tax to discourage Americans from investing in foreign securities. International companies that wanted to borrow in dollars turned instead to the Eurobond market. Investors, such as the archetypal Belgian dentist, were looking for a safe home for their capital and a shelter from Europe’s high taxes. Over the next four decades the market grew exponentially, hitting its first $1 billion year in 1966 and reaching a peak issue of $4.5 trillion in 2009.
在肯尼迪总统为了阻止美国人投资外国证券而征税之后，这一新市场开始快速成长。需要借入美元的国际公司开始求助于欧洲债券市场。而像典型的比利时牙医这样投资家们也正为资本寻找可以避开欧洲重税并且安全的庇护所。此后四十年间，欧洲债券市场成倍增长，1996首次年发行10亿美元并于2009达到顶点年发行4.5万亿美元。
With some encouragement from the Bank of England, London became the centre of this new market. The effect was to revive a financial centre that had been suffering from the country’s economic troubles and the decline of the British empire, with its associated sterling area. The Eurobond market created lucrative work for the City’s accountants, lawyers and merchant banks, and it attracted foreign banks to set up branches in London.
受到英格兰银行的一些鼓励，伦敦成为这一新兴市场的中心。此举意义在于振兴一直饱受国家经济问题和大英帝国以及英镑区衰落之苦的金融中心。欧洲债券市场为伦敦市里的会计人员，律师以及商业银行创造了赚钱的工作并吸引大量外资银行来伦敦设立分支机构。
This was the dingy, decaying city’s first step towards becoming the cosmopolitan capital of global finance that it is today. When exchange rates were allowed to float in the early 1970s London established itself as a currency-trading centre. More complex products like derivatives gravitated to it, too. Although Britain likes to lecture the world’s tax havens on their need for transparency and reform, its own financial sector owes its modern success to the country’s willingness to host an opaque, tax-evading capital market.
这是这所昔日肮脏，腐朽的城市走向今日全球金融的国际化大都市的第一步。在上个世纪70年代初期外汇汇率被允许浮动的时候，伦敦就把自己打造成为了外汇交易中心。更多复杂的衍生产品聚集在这里。尽管英国喜欢以需要透明和改革为由训斥世界其他避税国，但其财政部门把成功归功于国家意愿打造一个透明度低，逃税率高的资本市场。
Capital punishment
死刑
The Eurobond market was the first big modern international capital market; in time it was followed by large cross-border markets in currencies and equities. Governments in continental Europe have always treated these with suspicion. To them, markets are made up of speculators who like to interfere in the smooth running of economies; when a government’s policies are unconvincing, they drive currencies down and bond yields up. One reason why the European Union’s leaders were so keen on the creation of the single currency was their frustration with the devaluations that dogged the old Exchange Rate Mechanism.
欧洲债券市场是第一大现代国际资本市场，紧随其后的是大型跨境货币和股票市场。欧洲大陆的各国ZF总是以怀疑的眼光来看待这些市场。他们认为这些市场是由那些乐于干预经济平稳运行的投机者组成，当ZF政令不通时，这些投机者就伺机驱动货币市场利率下降债券收益率上升。欧盟各国领导对实行单一货币如此热衷的原因之一是对旧的汇率机制造成货币贬值的恐惧。
In recent years the wrath of European leaders has turned to the bond markets and the rise in the cost of government borrowing in some peripheral euro-zone countries. The politicians’ response has been to put in place or propose a raft of regulations and taxes, from restrictions on short-selling (betting on falling prices) and limits on bankers’ pay to taxes on financial transactions, in an attempt to curb the power of the dreaded markets.
近年来，欧洲领导人的愤怒开始转向债券市场和欧元区外围国家ZF借贷成本提高。政客的回应已经落实到位或提出一系列规程和税收措施。从限制卖空（看准价格会跌）和对银行家薪酬设限到征金融交易税，试图以此来控制可怕的市场。
Europe’s governments should, instead, heed the lesson of the Eurobond’s success: that elaborate rules will neither lower the borrowing costs of businesses nor persuade investors to forget their worries about the creditworthiness of governments, for money will always find a way round them. If trading becomes too expensive in Europe, volumes will shift elsewhere; and if regulations become too onerous the business will move to a more welcoming jurisdiction. Just as the American authorities handed a gift to London in the 1960s, the Europeans are now helping to ensure the eventual triumph of financial centres in Singapore and Hong Kong.
相反，欧洲ZF更应该注意欧洲证券成功的经验教训，ZF精心制定的规则既不会降低企业借贷的成本也不能劝导投资者忘掉对ZF信誉的担忧，因为资金会自寻出路。如果在欧洲交易成本太高的话，资金就会流向其他地方；如果监管过于苛刻的话，企业就会转移到环境相对宽松的地方。正如上个世纪60年代美国当局拱手递给伦敦一份“大礼”（ 利率上限的Q规定）助其成为世界金融中心一样，欧洲当局也正在为新加坡和香港的金融中心的最终胜利“贡献”力量。
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