Before his conviction on Monday, Tom Hayes, a 35-year-old former UBS and Citigroup derivatives trader, argued he had merely been taking part in a widespread practice of manipulating the Libor benchmark of interest rates. Sentencing him to 14 years’ imprisonment, Mr Justice Cooke saw things differently. “The fact that others were doing the same as you is no excuse,” he said.

在周一被定罪之前，35岁的前瑞银(UBS)和花旗集团(Citigroup)衍生品交易员汤姆眠耶斯(Tom Hayes)辩称，他只是参与了操纵伦敦银行间同业拆借利率(Libor)的普遍行为。然而，库克法官(Justice Cooke)不这么看，他在判海耶斯14年徒刑的时候说：“其他人与你做同样的事不是借口。”

The past five years have seen the exposure of a litany of financial wrongdoing yet a dearth of criminal prosecutions, generating uproar that has now been heard. Hayes’s conviction shows that prosecutors and judges are serious about punishing financial crime — and, they imagine, thereby preventing it.

过去五年里，我们看到金融领域的不良行为被连篇累牍地曝光，却很少看到刑事起诉。这种状况催生了现在已经被有关方面听到的公愤。海耶斯被定罪表明，检察官和法官对于惩罚金融犯罪是认真的。而且，按照他们的想象，此举会阻止金融犯罪。

But their new zeal might not matter much. Everyone might be doing it, but not everyone can be prosecuted or jailed. Even if another dozen traders are sentenced, most of the people who manipulated Libor will go free.

然而，他们这种新的热情可能不会有太大实效。也许大家都在这么做，却不是每个人都会被提起公诉或锒铛入狱。就算再判十几名交易员入狱，多数操纵Libor的人还是会逍遥法外。

Traders will process news of Hayes’s sentence through the lens of economics more than ethics. Yes, 14 years is a long time, but the probability of prosecution is low — arguably even lower than before, with so many resources dedicated to investigating past wrongdoing. You are less likely to be caught speeding after you see a car pulled over by a police officer than you were before.

对于海耶斯被判刑的新闻，交易员们将会透过经济（而不是道德）的棱镜来观察。没错，14年刑期是很重，但是被起诉的概率很低——甚至可以说现在比过去还要低，因为如此多的资源被用于调查过去的不当行为。在你看到一名警官示意一辆汽车靠边停车之后，你被抓住超速的几率低于看到这一幕之前。

And the evidence wielded by prosecutors provides a road map of what not to do. Hayes left a trail of electronic evidence. Lesson: do not ask a bank, in writing, to skew Libor “too low for the next few days” and then promise to “return the favour as when you need it”. You do not have to recognise the illegality of such requests to know that they might one day prove embarrassing.

而且检方所用的证据为交易员们提供了反面教材。海耶斯曾留下大量电子证据的痕迹。这其中的教训是：不要以书面方式要求一家银行“在今后几天内压低”Libor，然后承诺“在你需要时还这个人情”。你不需要认识到这种要求的非法性，也会知道它们可能会在某一天令人尴尬。

Hayes co-operated with the government. Another lesson: keep your mouth shut. Hayes spoke to prosecutors on the record for 82 hours over several months. This may not have been wise. We have yet to learn the fate of other traders who allegedly manipulated Libor and refused to talk, but it is a fair bet they will one day congratulate themselves on their silence.

海耶斯曾与政府合作。这就带来了另一个教训：沉默是金。在几个月期间，海耶斯在有正式记录的情况下与检察官交谈，总共长达82小时。这么做或许不明智。我们还不知道其他涉嫌操纵Libor但拒绝开口的交易员的命运，但是一个合理的猜测是，他们某一天会庆幸自己保持了沉默。

A conviction that leans so heavily on the defendant’s missteps is unlikely to be much of a deterrent. And the most important lesson from Hayes’s conviction is this: “Everyone’s doing it” is not merely an excuse, but also a temptation.

如此严重依靠被告失误的定罪，不太可能有很大威慑力。而海耶斯被定罪的最重要教训是：“每个人都在这么做”不仅是一种借口，还是一种诱惑。

Manipulating Libor was not a criminal scheme of Hayes’s own conception. According to regulators, bankers at UBS were already submitting requests to move the bank’s Libor submissions up or down when he joined in 2006. Hayes told a close friend he found the practices unsettling, but felt he was not in a position to question what they were doing.

在海耶斯自己的理念中，操纵Libor并不是一种犯罪计划。根据监管机构的说法，海耶斯2006年加入瑞银时，该行的银行家已经在请求上调或下压该行提交的Libor。海耶斯曾向一位密友表示，他觉得这种做法令人不安，但觉得自己不宜质疑他们的操作。

“I thought it was weird,” he said, “but that’s how they did it.”

他说：“我觉得这很奇怪，不过这就是他们的操作方式。”

Prosecution is a good way of deterring people from doing things that they understand to be crimes. But financial fraud is not like murder or bribery or even drug dealing. The transactions are complicated and can appear morally ambiguous. Bankers generally exploit information advantages and dodge regulations, and the lines between legitimate and criminal can be blurry.

要吓阻人们不去做他们知道是犯罪的事，公诉是一种很好的威慑方法。然而金融欺诈不像谋杀、行贿、甚至贩毒。相关交易是复杂的，道德上可能显得模棱两可。银行家们普遍利用信息优势并规避监管，合法行为与犯罪行为之间的界线可能是模糊的。

At various stages, both Hayes and his employers seemed to see what he was doing as perfectly legal, even if morally wrong. Hayes did not hide his views about Libor, and he apparently even changed his Facebook status to show which way he wanted the benchmark to move. The year before he left UBS, the bank paid him nearly $2m; his boss cited his “strong connections with Libor setters in London. This information is invaluable for the derivatives books.” Hayes later left for Citigroup, which offered to more than double his pay and permitted him to risk up to $3m for every basis point that Libor moved.

在各个阶段，不论海耶斯还是他的雇主，似乎都认为他的所作所为是完全合法的，即便在道德上是错的。海耶斯并未隐瞒他对Libor的观点，他显然甚至会更改他的Facebook状态，说明他希望这一基准利率向哪个方向移动。就在他离开瑞银前一年，该行向他支付了近200万美元，他的老板提到他“与伦敦的Libor设定者建立了密切联系。对于衍生品业务来说，这类信息是无价的”。后来海耶斯去花旗集团任职，该行向他提供了逾双倍的薪水，并允许他为Libor变动的每一个基点押上最高300万美元。

No matter how many others were doing it, Hayes could have said no to the lucrative yet unethical behaviour of which he has been convicted. That would have carried costs and required courage. We hope that everyone — from our children to derivatives traders — will stand up to wrongdoing. Unfortunately, many traders who learn about Hayes’s conviction are more likely to go along with it.

不论有多少其他人在这么做，海耶斯本可以向这类有利可图但不道德的行为说不——他最终因为这种行为被判了刑。这样的行为将带来代价，还需要勇气。我们希望每个人（从我们的子女到衍生品交易员）都会与不当行为作斗争。不幸的是，对许多得知海耶斯被判刑的交易员来说，他们更有可能继续从事不当行为。