Into the land of the unknown
前途未卜

Global market turmoil continues after the rejection of the mortgage-rescue plan in America
美国救市计划遭拒后全球市场继续混乱
HOW many votes in Congress will the latest financial upheaval change? That is the calculus underway in Washington, DC, after the House of Representatives defeated the proposed $700 billion mortgage-rescue plan by 228 to 205 on Monday September 29th. Democrats backed it by 140 votes to 95, while Republicans opposed it by 133 to 65.

最近的金融巨变将改变多少国会的选票?这是继9月29日周一众议院以228票反对：205票支持挫败7000亿美元救市计划之后，华盛顿正在进行的计算。对此项救市计划，民主党140票支持：95票反对，而共和党则是133票反对：65票支持。

Bankers had been under no illusions that the tweaked Paulson plan would cure all the financial system’s ills. But most had seen it as a step in the right direction, and had expected it to pass. Its rejection sent stockmarkets into freefall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down by 7%, and suffered its biggest-ever points loss. Perhaps fittingly in an economy that is in danger of sliding into depression, the only stock among the 500 in the S&P index that finished higher was Campbell’s Soup. The S&P closed 29% below its peak. Reflecting fears that consumer demand will wilt, shares of Apple Computer, creator of the iPhone, fell by 18%. The rout continued in Asia and Europe on Tuesday morning.

银行家们对妥协后的鲍尔森的救市计划会治愈金融系统的疾患不抱幻想。但是他们中的大多数认为该救市计划是往正确的方向前进，并希望它能够得以通过。救市计划遭拒引起股市重挫。道琼斯工业平均指数下跌7%，创历史最大点数跌幅。或许，对一个有着滑向萧条之危险的经济体来说，标准普尔500指数股票里收盘唯一上涨的一只股票是美国汤品生产商金宝汤（Campbell’s Soup）就是再平常不过的事情了。标准普尔500指数比其历史峰值跌29%收盘。iPhone开发者苹果公司的股票下跌18%,反映出市场对消费者需求将会萎缩的恐慌。美国股市收盘后,亚洲股市还在下挫，欧洲股市的下挫则延续到周二早晨。

Worse, credit markets, already dysfunctional, were brought close to breaking point. Banks grew even less willing to lend to each other on Monday, and money-market funds fled anything with a whiff of risk. Some corporations are struggling to roll-over commercial paper, short-term debt issued to finance working capital, payroll payments and the like. In an effort to keep money markets from drying up, the Federal Reserve has doubled the size of a vital lending facility for banks, to $300 billion, and expanded agreements with other central banks that funnel dollars to lenders abroad.

更糟的是，已经运转不良的信贷市场濒临崩溃。周一，银行更为不愿互相拆借，一有风吹草动，货币基金就出逃任何投资项目。一些公司苦苦挣扎于结转商业票据，发行短期债券来筹措流动资金，支付工资和其他费用。在维持货币市场流动性的努力中，美联储把一项对银行的关键贷款供应规模翻番，达到3000亿美元，并且延伸了与其他央行关于它们为在海外经营的美国的银行注资的协议。

These unprecedented injections are aimed at easing concerns that weak participants in the interbank market will fail to honour their debts. But many banks are now assumed to be not only illiquid but insolvent. Last week Washington Mutual, a thrift saddled with rotten mortgages, became the largest-ever American lender to fail. And on Monday Citigroup agreed to buy most of the assets of Wachovia, an even bigger American bank, in a deal brokered by regulators. The pain has suddenly grown much more intense in Europe, too.

这些空前的注资举措目的在于缓解忧虑，这种忧虑是：孱弱的参与者在同业拆借市场上无能力偿还其所欠债务。但是现在许多银行被认为不仅仅是流动性差，而且是无偿付能力。上周，不堪承受大量不良抵押的一家储蓄银行–华盛顿互惠银行（Washington Mutual）破产，成为美国有史以来最大的倒闭银行。周一花旗集团同意购买大部分美联（Wachovia）资产，美联是一家比华盛顿互惠银行规模更大的银行，此项交易由监管方撮合。金融危机的痛楚在欧洲也急剧增强。

The no vote was a big blow to George Bush, Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman. They gave dire warnings of the consequences of an unchecked crisis, in hopes of persuading Congress to approve an unusually aggressive and early fiscal intervention. (It took many more years for a systemic response to widespread failures of American savings and loan banks in the 1980s). But because the intervention is relatively early, voters have yet to see much impact from the crisis on their lives. “On Monday morning…the sun came up and a lot of people went to work, and [they] couldn’t understand what this panic was in Washington,” Paul Kanjorski, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, told Mr Paulson last week. It was far easier for voters to relate to $700 billion of their taxes being spent on a mess in Wall Street.

对乔治•布什，财长汉克•保尔森，联储出席本•伯南克而言，否决票是一大打击。他们曾对不遏制危机的后果给出警告，寄希望于说服国会通过此项非比一般地积极地也是早期地财政干预。（上世纪80年代，对美国储蓄和贷款银行普遍破产的一个系统化处理耗费了许多年）。但是因为此次干预相对要早，选民们没有意识到这场危机对他们的生活的重大影响。宾夕法尼亚州民主党人保罗·坎乔斯基（Paul Kanjorski）上周对保尔森说道：”周一清晨“““太阳升起，人们赶去上班，他们无法理解华盛顿在恐慌什么。”对选民们来说，认同这7000亿美元–他们纳的税被浪费在华尔街的废物上倒是更为轻而易举的事情。

Party leaders largely agreed with the diagnosis, as did the presidential candidates of both parties. But polls showed that voters were split; constituent phone calls and e-mails ran heavily against the bill. Administration officials and party leaders are back at work trying to find a way to get at least 12 members to switch their vote; the betting both on Wall Street and in Washington, DC, is they will succeed. (Passage in the Senate is considered less problematic.) But it should not be taken for granted. Without amendments, anyone who changes his vote will face fierce criticism when he seeks re-election. Any amendments to appease Republicans could cost Democratic support, and vice-versa.

政党领袖们很大程度上同意对此次金融危机的诊断，连两党的总统候选人也赞同。但是民调显示了选民立场的分裂：反对救市方案的游说电话和邮件纷沓至来。执政官员和政党领袖重新回到此项工作上来，试图使至少12个反对成员改弦易辙；华盛顿和华尔街都预计他们能够办到。（在参议院通过问题不大）但这不应当被看作是他们就欣然接受。倘若对该方案未加修订，任何人改变自己原先立场都会在其再次面临选举时（寻求连任时）受到严苛的批评。另一方面，任何迎合共和党的修订都会损耗民主党的支持，反之亦然。

“You can’t let one day’s trading dictate public policymaking,” argues Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican and member of the Republican Study Committee, a block of conservative members who led opposition to the bill. “The market’s going to be a factor, but we’re looking at the larger picture.” Recalcitrant Republicans would rather see a programme to sell insurance to banks against mortgage defaults, rather than buying assets from them. The Treasury strongly opposes this approach. But there may be other grounds for compromise, such as relaxing mark-to-market accounting or extending the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s guarantee of a bank’s liabilities to more than just the first $100,000 of each customer’s deposits. Other proposals include giving banks more time to deduct mortgage-related operating losses from future taxable profits, letting companies repatriate foreign profits tax-free and improving the tax treatment of losses sustained by banks on their holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock.

“你不能让单日交易量来指示公共政策制定,” 科特•盖瑞特（Scott Garrett）主张，他是新泽西州共和党人，也是共和党研究委员会的成员，这个委员会由一批领导反对此项救市方案的保守人士组成。”市场将是一个主要问题，但是我们着眼于全局。”执拗的共和党人宁愿看到一个对银行出售保险以抵御抵押违约损失的计划，也不愿意从银行手里收购资产。财政部强烈反对这种方法。但是或许有其他妥协的余地，比如放松按市价调整的会计或者提高美国联邦存款保险公司对银行债务的担保，突破原先的每个客户存款担保10万美元的上限。其他建议包括给银行更长的时间从未来的应税收入中扣除目前抵押贷款业务的相关损失；让公司得以免税把在国外所得利润存回美国；并且改善在持有房地美和房利美的股票方面，银行所蒙受的损失的税收待遇。

For their part, more Democrats might back the proposal if the administration also agreed to more fiscal stimulus, in particular public-works spending, or taking any profits on the TARP to low-income housing. A deal may be possible, but time is short: legislators are itching to return to their districts to campaign, and investors’ appetite for risk is ebbing fast. The House is not expected to reconvene before Thursday, to accommodate the Jewish new year.

从民主党这边来看，如果执政当局还同意更多的财政刺激，特别是公共项目开销或是从问题资产救援计划（TARP）中提取任何利润给低收入住房的话，或许会有更多民主党成员支持这项救市提议。协议达成或许可能，但时间紧迫：立法者（议员们）急于返回其选区参加竞选，同时投资者的风险胃口迅速萎缩。周二之前众议院不可能重新召集议事，因为这期间包括了犹太新年日。（译者注：很多议员要赶回去过节）

The House vote also represented a stinging rejection of John McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr McCain suspended his campaign last week for two days, citing the financial crisis, and flew to Washington, DC, to help craft a solution to it. His main task was to persuade reluctant House Republicans to back their own president. In the event they voted against the deal made by their own leadership by two to one. The humiliation meted out to Mr McCain is intense.

众议院的选票也代表了一种对共和党候选人约翰•麦凯恩的无情拒绝。麦凯恩先生上周称是为金融危机而暂停了两天的竞选，并且亲自飞往华盛顿，来帮助达成一个针对救市计划的解决方案。他的主要任务是说服执拗的共和党人来支持他们共和党自己的总统。结果，他们以2比1投票反对他们自己的领导阶层制定的计划。麦凯恩先生蒙受的羞辱是相当强烈的。

Amid the efforts to put the deal back together, some small hope remains that not all is lost. What is unlikely to help is the atmosphere of bitterness and recrimination that is pervading Capitol Hill. With some justification, the Democrats are aggrieved to find that they supported Mr Bush’s bill while his own party did not. But the Republicans blame the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for making a stupidly partisan speech shortly before the vote in which she poured scorn on the Republicans she is trying to court. A lot of bridges will have to be built in a short span of time.

使这项救市方案达成还存一线希望。讥讽的氛围和遍布国会的互相指责是于是无补的。情有可原，民主党会愤愤不平，因为他们发现自己支持布什的救市方案而布什自己的共和党却反对。但是共和党人谴责众议院议长南希-佩罗西（她是民主党成员），指责她在投票前唐突地做了一个愚蠢的党派性讲话，在讲话中她讥讽她要试图拉拢的共和党人。短时间内，各方间必须建立大量沟通。