When Jack Lew, US Treasury secretary, participated in last week’s Group of 20 meetings, he issued a familiar plea: there needs to be more co-ordination over how countries impose financial market regulations and oversee the activities of banks.
美国财政部部长杰克•卢(Jack Lew)在出席上周举行的20国集团(G20)会议时，老调重弹地呼吁各国应在监管金融市场和银行活动方面加强合作。
He might as well have called on pigs to fly or bankers to become nuns. Since 2008 there have been numerous efforts to harmonise global financial rules. And in some respects progress has been made. Common capital standards have been agreed under the umbrella of Basel III. A global regulatory body, the Financial Stability Board, has been created.
他还不如呼吁猪上树或者让银行家做修女。自2008年以来，各国为协调全球金融法规而付出了巨大的努力。从某些方面来说确实取得了进展，比如在《巴塞尔协议III》(Basel III)框架下达成了共同的资本标准。同时全球监管机构——金融稳定理事会(Financial Stability Board)已经成立。
The unpalatable truth that no minister wants to acknowledge, however, is that almost every step towards co-ordination has been offset by a step away from it elsewhere. Just after Mr Lew’s appeal, for example, Deutsche Bank revealed that it would have to reduce its American assets by $100bn because US regulators are tightening capital rules for foreign banks. The UK has done something similar.
然而，所有部长都不愿承认的令人不快的真相是，合作方面的每一个进展几乎都会被其它方面的倒退所抵消。例如，就在卢发出呼吁之后，德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)披露称，该行不得不将其美国资产削减1000亿美元，因为美国监管机构收紧了外资银行的资本要求。英国也采取了类似的做法。
The US is also unilaterally introducing the Volcker rule, forcing banks to shed proprietary trading, while Europe is introducing rules for asset managers. Even the Basel III accord is implemented differently in different places.
美国还单方面出台了沃尔克规则(Volcker rule)，迫使银行剥离自营交易，同时欧洲正在出台针对资产管理公司的规则。甚至不同地区执行《巴塞尔协议III》的步调也不一致。
Is there a solution? One option might be for regulators and bankers to borrow ideas from international divorce or property disputes; or, as Annelise Riles, a Cornell law professor suggests in a paper presented last week in New York, from the arcane field of “Conflicts of Laws.”
有解决办法吗？一个选项或许是监管机构和银行向跨国离婚或财产纠纷案的处理借鉴一些思路；或者就如康奈尔大学(Cornell University)法学教授万安黎(Annelise Riles)上周在纽约发布的报告中所述，从神秘的“法律冲突”领域获得灵感。
Conflicts specialists determine which national law should apply when fights straddle borders. They do not rule on the contents of laws, or the merits of any case, but merely decide which legal regime to apply, based on technical factors such as the original intention behind national laws.
当出现跨国冲突时，由冲突专家决定应适用哪国法律。他们不会裁决法律内容，也不会涉及案件是非，而只是从各国法律初衷等技术因素出发，来判定应适用哪国法律制度。
Until now, nobody has ever asked these specialist lawyers to grapple with financial regulations; instead they usually just handle divorce or commercial deals. But Ms Riles thinks regulators should learn from some of their ideas. If the G20 were to adopt a “conflicts” mentality, it could drop the fantasy of co-ordination. Instead, it could accept the reality that different countries have different rules – and appoint technocratic, apolitical specialists to decide which laws apply if a conflict arises. “This provides a far more nuanced, sophisticated, and nevertheless manageable approach,” Ms Riles argues. And some regulators and lawyers agree.
迄今为止，没有人要求这些专业律师解决金融监管问题；相反他们通常只是处理离婚或商业协议。但万安黎认为监管机构应该借鉴他们的一些观点。如果G20采用一种“冲突”思维，就可能抛弃合作幻想。它可能会接受不同国家法律不同的现实，并任命从事技术工作的无党派专家来判定在冲突发生时应适用哪国法律。万安黎辩称：“这种方式更加微妙和复杂，但也更容易操作。”一些监管机构和律师对此表示同意。
At the Federal Reserve, for example, some lawyers talk privately of creating a “conflicts” database to enable regulators and bankers to track national variations in a transparent way. And some derivatives lawyers in London, such as Jeff Golden, have suggested creating an international court to handle contentious complex securities deals – in effect, an equivalent for the derivatives world of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
例如，在美联储(Fed)，一些律师私下谈论创建一个“冲突”数据库，以便让监管机构和银行家能够以一种透明的方式了解各国法律的不同之处。伦敦的杰夫•戈尔登(Jeff Golden)等衍生品律师提议创建一个国际法庭来处理存在争议的复杂的证券交易，实际上相当于衍生品领域的海牙国际刑事法庭。
In the near future, such radical ideas are unlikely to fly. National politicians would be loath to cede authority to a private law court on such a sensitive public policy matter as banking rules; and the risk of financial contagion makes governments unwilling to trust foreign regulatory authorities.
此类激进的想法不太可能很快付诸实施。在银行业监管这么敏感的公共政策事务方面，各国政客不会愿意将权力交给一家私人法庭；而金融危机蔓延的风险也让各国政府不愿信任外国监管机构。
And yet some regulators do now appear to be privately conceding Ms Riles’ point – namely that co-ordination is an unworkable fantasy – and quietly hunting for alternatives.
然而现在一些监管机构看来确实在私下里认同万安黎的观点（即合作是不切实际的幻想），并在悄悄地寻找替代办法。
Take the question of how to handle big bank failures. Five years ago, British and US regulators hoped to find a co-ordinated solution to this issue. But last year they tacitly recognised the inevitable – US and UK supervisors will never harmonise their approaches to shutting failed banks. Instead they agreed to respect each others’ rules, and came up with rough guidelines for deciding where each national regime applied. “This is about finding workable solutions,” says one former British regulator.
以如何解决处理大银行破产的问题为例。5年前，英国和美国的监管机构希望针对这个问题找到一个协商一致的解决办法。但去年它们默认这是不可能的——美国和英国监管机构在关闭破产银行的途径上根本不能达成一致。相反，它们同意尊重对方的法律，提出决定各国法律适用范围的大体原则。一位英国前监管人员表示：“这么做是想找到可行的解决方案。”
That is not nearly as good a solution as global harmonisation. But sometimes an imperfect answer is better than no answer at all. Or to put it another way, sooner or later, the G20 needs honestly to recognise that full co-ordination is a fantasy; and start talking about what other solutions could create a transparent and predictable financial world. And perhaps even talk to those divorce lawyers.
这几乎与全球协调一样，也不是一个好的解决方案。但有时，不太完美的方案好于没有方案。或者换言之，G20迟早需要诚实地承认，完全合作是个幻想；开始谈论其它解决方案可能会让金融世界变得透明而可预测。或许它们甚至会请教那些离婚律师。