我的译文和英文原文
纽约时报 09-04-2008）： 在过去的七年里，中国的主要银行一直在美国购买房利美（Fannie Mae）和房地美（Freddie Mac）所发出的大约1万亿美元价值的国债和抵押贷款支持的债卷。
这些投资的价值从美元转换成人民币已大幅下降。放到聚光灯下看，中国央行的资本基础很小。该银行的资本只有32亿美元，尽管国际货币基金组织（IMF）曾私下提出警告，但央行的资本金额在上述的收购美国债卷狂潮期间没有增长。
现在，中国中央银行需要注入资本。中央银行当然可以印更多的钞票，但这会起通货膨胀。央行已与财政部接洽，就集资的几种方式进行讨论----三位参与讨论的知情人士说。但他们坚持不愿透露姓名，因为这在中国是很微妙的。
中央银行的困境将有若干反射效应，其一，它不太可能允许人民币对美元的汇率继续升值，中央银行业的专家说。但这可能会加剧与美国贸易的紧张局势。布什政府和许多民主党人在国会已要求人民币升值，以减少中国的出口竞争力，和缩减美国的贸易赤字。
中央银行一向是支持人民币走强的主要倡导者。但央行现在发现自己越来越依赖财政部，而财政部则倾向于反对人民币走强。因为人民币的价值走低，使中国的出口货物获得了相对于其他国家的优势。
这两个官僚机构一向是不协调的对手。接受财政部注资，将有可能损及中央银行的独立性，前国际货币基金组织中国财务司司长
Eswar S. Prasad说：“中央银行很不原意这样做，因为它会使他们更受制于财政部。”
Prasad 先生补充说，他代表IMF走访中国时，曾多次对央行持有的巨额美国债券提出警示，强调因为不管人民币走强或美元利率攀升，都有损这些投资的价值。当利率上升，债券价格下跌。
中国央行官方拒作评论，而财政部官员也未出面回应。号称为各国央行的央行，根据基于瑞士Basel的国际结算银行（Bank of International Settlements）的资料，迄2002年底，虽然各国央行的资本相对于它们的外汇储备都偏低，但却很少有国家低于中国的央行。
有鉴于海外债券的表现乏善可陈，中国政府有可能将部分外汇储备转至全球股市。央行去年冬天开始购买乐适度的海外股票，但如同其他国家央行——其外汇储备中几乎还是债券占极大多数。
然而，财政部也在推动海外的股票市场投资。去年，由财政部完全控制，央行负责资金二百亿美元的中国投资公司注册。该公司最为公开化的宣传动议，是去年5月以30亿美元对美国黑石集团的投资。目前，这笔投资已经缩水超过 43％ 的帐面价值。
经济学家们认同，央行自身出现困境会对经济构成威胁。中国政府有充裕的资金和财政预算盈余。最有可能的是，财政部简单的将其它政府机关的债券转移给中央银行，以增加其资本。但是，即使在一个国家极力阻止批评其经济政策，隐约的不满还是出现在中国的对外投资方面。
好了，下面是更多的英文原文，有兴趣的朋友自己读原文吧！
英文原文 Main Bank of China Is in Need of Capital
Published: September 4, 2008
HONG KONG — China’s central bank is in a bind.
It has been on a buying binge in the United States over the last seven years, snapping up roughly $1 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Those investments have been declining sharply in value when converted from dollars into the strong yuan, casting a spotlight on the central bank’s tiny capital base. The bank’s capital, just $3.2 billion, has not grown during the buying spree, despite private warnings from the International Monetary Fund.
Now the central bank needs an infusion of capital. Central banks can, of course, print more money, but that would stoke inflation. Instead, the People’s Bank of China has begun discussions with the finance ministry on ways to shore up its capital, said three people familiar with the discussions who insisted on anonymity because the subject is delicate in China.
The central bank’s predicament has several repercussions. For one, it makes it less likely that China will allow the yuan to continue rising against the dollar, say central banking experts. This could heighten trade tensions with the United States. The Bush administration and many Democrats in Congress have sought a stronger yuan to reduce the competitiveness of Chinese exports and trim the American trade deficit.
The central bank has been the main advocate within China for a stronger yuan. But it now finds itself increasingly beholden to the finance ministry, which has tended to oppose a stronger yuan. As the yuan slips in value, China’s exports gain an edge over the goods of other countries.
The two bureaucracies have been ferocious rivals. Accepting an injection of capital from the finance ministry could reduce the independence of the central bank, said Eswar S. Prasad, the former division chief for China at the International Monetary Fund.
“Central banks hate doing that because it puts them more under the thumb of the finance ministry,” he said.
Mr. Prasad said that during his trips to Beijing on behalf of the I.M.F., he had repeatedly cautioned China over the enormous scale of its holdings of American bonds, emphasizing that it left China vulnerable to losses from either a strengthening of the yuan or from a rise in American interest rates. When interest rates rise, the prices of bonds fall.
Officials at the central bank declined to comment, while finance ministry officials did not respond to calls or questions via fax seeking comment. Data in a study by the Bank of International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland, sometimes called the central bank for central banks, shows that many central banks had small capital bases relative to foreign reserves at the end of 2002, though few were as low as the People’s Bank of China.
Given the poor performance of foreign bonds, the Chinese government could decide to shift some of its foreign exchange reserves into global stock markets.
The central bank started making modest purchases of foreign stocks last winter, but has kept almost all of its reserves in bonds, like other central banks.
The finance ministry, however, has pushed for investments in overseas stocks. Last year, it wrested control of the $200 billion China Investment Corporation, which had been bankrolled by the central bank. That corporation’s most publicized move, a $3 billion investment in the Blackstone Group in May of last year, has lost more than 43 percent of its value.
The central bank’s difficulties do not, by themselves, pose a threat to the economy, economists agree. The government has ample resources and is running a budget surplus. Most likely, the finance ministry would simply transfer bonds of other Chinese government agencies to the bank to increase its capital. But even in a country that strongly discourages criticism of its economic policies, hints of dissatisfaction are appearing over China’s foreign investments.
For instance, a Chinese blogger complained last month, “It is as if China has made a gift to the United States Navy of 200 brand new aircraft carriers.”
Bankers estimate that $1 trillion of China’s total foreign exchange reserves of $1.8 trillion are in American securities. With aircraft carriers costing up to $5 billion apiece, $1 trillion would, in theory, buy 200 of them.
By buying United States bonds, the Chinese government has been investing a large chunk of the country’s savings in assets earning just 3 percent annually in dollars. And those low returns turn into real declines of about 10 percent a year after factoring in inflation and the yuan’s appreciation against the dollar.
The yuan has risen 21 percent against the dollar since China stopped pegging its currency to the dollar in July 2005.
The actual declines in value of the central bank’s various investments are a carefully guarded state secret.
Still China finds itself hemmed in. If it were to curtail its purchases of dollar-denominated securities drastically, the dollar would likely fall and American interest rates could soar.
China spent more than one-eighth of its entire economic output last year on foreign bonds, and then picked up the pace during the first half of this year. Chinese officials have suggested in recent comments that they are increasingly interested in stopping the yuan’s rise, and thus are willing to continue buying foreign securities to support the dollar. In fact, the yuan weakened slightly against the dollar last month after 26 consecutive months of gains.
Along with Treasuries, China has invested heavily in mortgage-backed bonds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the struggling mortgage finance giants that are sponsored by the United States government. Standard & Poor’s estimates China’s holdings at $340 billion.
Some bond traders suspect that the central bank has scaled back its purchases of these securities, as have China’s commercial banks. But the central bank trades this debt through many third parties in many countries, making its activity opaque to outside analysts.
The central bank has gone to great lengths to maintain its foreign purchases. The money to buy foreign bonds has come from the reserves required that commercial banks must deposit with the central bank. In effect, China’s commercial banks have been lending the central bank more than $1 trillion at an interest rate of less than 2 percent.
To keep the banks strong when they were getting such little interest on their reserves, the central bank has kept deposit rates low. The gap between what banks are paying on deposits and the rates they are charging ordinary customers to borrow is several percentage points. This amounts to a transfer of wealth from ordinary Chinese savers to the central bank and on to Americans who are selling their debt to the Chinese.
The central bank is now under considerable pressure to reduce the commercial banks’ reserve requirements to encourage growth as the Chinese economy shows signs of slowing.
Victor Shih, a specialist in Chinese central banking at Northwestern University, said that when he visited the People’s Bank of China for a series of meetings this summer, he was surprised by how many officials resented the institution’s losses.
He said the officials blamed the United States and believed the controversial assertions set forth in the book “Currency War,” a Chinese best seller published a year ago. The book suggests that the United States deliberately lured China into buying its securities knowing that they would later plunge in value.
“A lot of policy makers in China, at least midlevel policy makers, believe this,” Mr. Shih said.
[此贴子已经被作者于2008-9-7 2:41:13编辑过]
winston1986 金钱 +50 奖励 2008-9-7 3:17:30
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