Investment Bank:Glory and Failure
投资银行的盛衰
Investment banking describes the activities of a firm conducted when serving as an intermediary between an issuer of securities and the investing public. Most of these activities are related to what is called “underwriting” whereby an investment bank commits to buy the new issue shares of a company for resale to the investing public. The majority of investment banks also maintain brokerage and trading operations for institutional and retail clients. As an investment bank, a company can use one of several agreements when assisting a company going through the process of issuing shares to the public. Investment banks will usually undertake one of the following arrangements when assisting a company in the issuance of shares: firm commitment, best efforts, or all or none. Not all of these methods guarantee that the initial public offering of stock will be successful.
投资银行业务描述的是一家公司作为证券发行者和投资大众的中间人进行服务活动。这些活动大多数与承销有关，由此投资银行许诺购买一家公司的新股票并转售给投资大众。大多数投资银行也会为一些机构和散户投资者做经纪和委托买卖业务。作为一家投资银行公司，它可以使用多种发行协议之一来帮助公司向大众发行股票。它通常会进行以下协议中的一种：包销，代销或整批委托。但并非所有这些方式都可以保证首次公开发行能够成功。
Aside from signaling the end of an era for Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, American financial crisis definitively drew a line at the end of another historical era: the Age of Glass-Steagall.
除了象征雷曼兄弟公司和美林证券时代的结束，美国的金融危机毫无疑问同时终结了另一个时代：格拉斯一斯蒂格尔。
Crudely speaking, in the 1920s commercial banks (the types that took deposits, made construction loans, etc.) plunged into the bull market, making margin loans, underwriting new issues and investment pools, and trading stocks. When the bubble popped in 1929，exposure to Wall Street helped drag down the commercial banks. In the absence of deposit insurance, the results were devastating. Wall Street’s failure helped destroy Main Street.
总的来说，在1920年商业银行（含存款，发放建设贷款等类型）进人牛市，进行发放保证金贷款，承保新发行业务和聚集投资，买卖股票一系列的活动。当经济泡沬在1929年破裂，与华尔街有业务的相关商业银行被拖累。在没有存款保险制度的情况下，结果是灾难性的。华尔街的失败同时摧垮了中央街。

The Glass-Steagall Act is the Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking. It was functionally repealed in 1998, when Travelers (the parent company of Salomon Smith Barney) acquired Citicorp. And it was officially repealed in 1999. But recent events on Wall Street-the failure or sale of three of the five largest independent investment banks-have effectively turned back the clock to the 1920s, when investment banks and commercial banks cohabited under the same corpcrrate umbrella.
格拉斯一斯蒂格尔法是大萧条时期法律，它规定分离商业和投资银行业务。该法案在1998年，旅行者公司（该公司的母公司为所罗门美邦）收购花旗集团的时候实质上被废除。并于1999年正式废除。但是最近发生的事件——华尔街的的五个最大的独立投资银行中三个的失败或出售，似乎已将历史的车轮辗转回20世纪20年代，那时投资银行和商业银行同居在同一企业的保护伞下。
Generally, the investment banks weren’t subject to regulation by the Federal Reserve and didn't have to adhere to stodgy capital requirements. In 2000, the investment banking firm JPMorgan bought commercial bank Chase. Commercial banks like Bank of America and Wachovia have tried to build up their own investment-banking operations, but they haven’t had much success in eating into the core franchises of the five big independent investment banks: Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Steams.
一般来说，投资银行不受美国联邦储备的管制，并且不受单一的资本要求的约束。2000年，投资银行JP摩根买入商业银行大通。商业银行如美国银行和Wachovia试图建立自己的投资银行业务，但他们还没有成功地吃进五大独立投资银行（美林，高盛，摩根士丹利，雷曼兄弟和贝尔斯登）的核心特许经营业务。
Up until the summer of 2007，the debt-powered independent broker-dealers who minted money with stock brokering, proprietary trading, and advising on mergers and acquisitions looked set to leave boring commercial banks in their dust. But 2008 has been another story. In March, a faltering Bear Steams was swallowed by JPMorgan Chase. Lehman has gone bankrupt. Now the investment bank with the largest brokerage force, Merrill Lynch, is being bought by Bank of America,
直到2007年夏季，债务积压的独立股票经纪人，他们曾经通过股票经纪，自营交易，并对合并和收购提供咨询意见来吸金，似乎将抛弃枯燥的商业银行业务。但2008年又是一番境况。3月份，步履蹒跚的贝尔斯登被摩根大通所吞没。雷曼兄弟巳经破产。现在，投资银行与券商的最大力量，美林，正在被美国银行收购。