通达信60分钟macd选股:外汇储备救不了中国银行业

2011年 12月 13日 14:07 外汇储备救不了中国银行业
评论(25) CARL E. WALTER / FRASER J.T. HOWIE

人们越来越一致地认为，中国银行业已经陷入麻烦之中。由于过去几年在政府引导的信贷洪流中过度扩张，银行现在必须直面越来越严重的坏账问题──其中很多通过简单的数学计算即可得知。但关于北京可以怎样解决这个问题，却存在很多传言。其中最流行或许是政府始终可以动用三万亿美元的外汇储备，所以大家都不应该担心会发生金融危机。然而真相却大为不同。

储备金在救助银行的行动中发挥何种作用是现在的关键问题，因为如果外汇储备都不能拯救银行的话，可能什么都救不了它们了。20世纪90年代晚期，中国政府上次面临银行业危机的时候，不良贷款总额最终达到人民币4万亿元（按当前汇率计算合6,000亿美元）以上，超过整体经济规模的三分之一和国家财政支出的四倍。当时的问题对于政策制定者来说十分艰巨，但最终还是可控的。他们采取了一系列措施，包括引进外国战略投资者，向外部投资者出售部分股权融资，而最重要的是利用了国家的外汇储备。

但从那时候以来，中国经济规模已经达到原来的三倍，银行表内贷款也达到了经济规模的130%。随着不良贷款不可避免地增加，其规模将很快变得不可控制。在当前财政赤字达到约1,600亿美元的情况下，外汇储备再次成为唯一足以用于实施救援的资金池。

Bloomberg不出所料，有些人觉得这个看上去的强项十分让人放心。在这种观点看来，北京方面可以利用其外汇储备来克服以出口和投资带动的经济增长模式出现的任何问题。但这种看法对于外汇储备是什么，可以做什么，以及不可以做什么，存在着根本上的误解。

第一个问题在于，外汇储备真的是属于外国的。这些资金放在多个外国账户里。比如中国所持1.2万亿美元美国国债当中，至少多数都放在多家清算银行以中国人民银行和国家外汇管理局的名义在纽约联邦储备银行(Federal Reserve Bank of New York)所开的托管账户中。中国所持欧元债券和多种其他投资品也都采用这种模式。

政府可以把这些美国国债拿去给银行当资本。2003年重组中国银行、中国建设银行资本结构时就是这样做的。在国内人民银行的资产负债表上，这些债券直接从现金与证券账户转移到股权投资账户上就可以了，其他什么都不用动。

但中国银行业的业务绝大多数都是在国内人民币市场，对外币的使用相对较少。2010年年底，中国国际化程度最高的主要银行中国银行80%的资产和负债都是人民币。而在国际化程度最低的银行中国农业银行，这个比例达到95%。

这就意味着，在此类直接救助中，银行将获得他们不需要的资金（离岸资金），用来补上他们所没有的那块资金（不良贷款给银行国内资产负债表制造的窟窿）。尽管从帐面上看，这样做或许可以改善银行资产负债状况，但在银行迫切需要人民币资金用于国内之际，银行的一大块资金却以外汇的形式在海外冻结起来，这不会带来任何实际好处。

解决方法看似很简单：卖出美国国债，套现美元，然后用美元买人民币。2005年中国银行和建设银行就是这么做的。这两家银行都与其直接股东、国有独资公司中央汇金投资有限责任公司达成了协议，在一个限定的时间段内用美元买人民币。

由此也就引出了中国外汇储备的第二大问题。中国的经济是封闭经济，人民币不可兑换。这就意味着，每次央行从出口商手中买进美元，就会相应地投放人民币：在央行的资产负债表上，外汇储备这种资产对应着等值的人民币负债。如果中资银行（中资银行的大部分资产也属于央行，因为央行向汇金提供贷款来收购银行股权）想用美元买人民币，央行就将是在用新发行的人民币二次买进这些美元，形成人民币的二次投放。

无论这样一种交易是如何构建的（无论是作为一种直接贷款、期权或货币互换），在货币像人民币这样不可兑换的一个经济体，这都必然会造成通货膨胀。固然，至少有办法使外汇交易的时间拉得很长，而且可以尽量将通胀后果降到最小。如果这样，这种方法可能比简单地向银行注入人民币资金带来的通胀后果要小。但这不过是在努力控制通胀风险。而这种风险依然存在。

用外汇储备救助银行的另外一个难点在于国内外持有银行股权的小股东的命运。目前这些股东持有银行股权的约25%。任何注资行为，除非完全依靠债务，都会严重稀释这些股东的权益。这些银行上市才几年，2010年刚刚进行了一轮重大筹资活动，如果股东权益受损，将令北京感到尴尬。

所有这些徒劳的金融举措都是中国银行业和政治领导人所面临挑战的必然后果。中国创造的大部分财富都困在了错误的地方：海外。把这部分财富转移到国内只会制造严重的通胀压力，进而破坏国内创造的财富。

中国很有可能成功应付过去眼下的信贷潮，为此它有可能动用一系列工具，包括在监管方面做出巨大的让步（无限期地推迟银行不良贷款入帐的时间）。但仅此而已，任何解决方法都可能需要敷衍了事。外汇储备无法提供很多人为中国银行业问题所寻求的干净、明确的解决方法。

（编者按：本文作者CARL E. WALTER和FRASER J.T. HOWIE曾合写了《红色资本主义：中国奇特崛起之下的脆弱金融基础》(Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundations of China's Extraordinary Rise)，威立出版社(Wiley)2010年出版）。

2011年 12月 13日 14:07 Beijing Can't Use Its Reserves to Save the Banks CARL E. WALTER AND FRASER J.T. HOW
There's a growing consensus that China's banks are in trouble. Having overextended themselves over the past few years in a flood of government-directed credit, banks now must face rising problems with bad loans─a lot of this is basic math. But myths about how Beijing could solve the problem abound. Perhaps the most pervasive is that the government can always tap its $3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, and so no one should worry about a financial crisis. The truth is very different.

The role of reserves in any bank bailout is a central question now because if forex reserves can't save the banks, it's possible that nothing can. In the late 1990s, the last time Beijing faced a banking crisis, bad loans ultimately totaled more than four trillion yuan (more than $600 billion in today's exchange rate), more than one-third the size of the economy and four times national fiscal expenditures. That was tough but ultimately manageable for policy makers using a combination of foreign strategic investors, equity raising via partial share sell-offs to outside investors and, most importantly, the country's forex reserves.

But since then, the economy has tripled in size while on-balance-sheet bank lending has reached 130% the size of the economy. As nonperforming loans inevitably increase, the scale will quickly become unmanageable. In the face of ongoing national budget deficits of around $160 billion, the foreign-exchange reserves once again constitute the only pool of capital that would be sufficient for a bailout.

Sure enough, some see this perceived strength as a great comfort. In this view, Beijing could use its forex piggy bank to smooth over any problems in China's export- and investment-led growth model. But this fundamentally misunderstands what the foreign-exchange reserves are and what they can─and can't─be used for.

The first problem is that the foreign reserves are, indeed, foreign. They are held in various accounts in foreign countries. The bulk, if not all, of China's $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, for example, is held in New York City with the Federal Reserve Bank in the custody accounts of various clearing banks in the name of the People's Bank of China/State Administration for Foreign Exchange. The pattern repeats with euro-denominated bonds and various other investments.

The government can contribute these Treasury bonds to the banks as capital, as it did when it recapitalized Bank of China and China Construction Bank in 2003. Back in China on the balance sheet of the People's Bank, the bonds would simply move from its cash and securities account to an equity investment account; nothing else would change.

Chinese banks, however, operate overwhelmingly in the domestic yuan market and have relatively little use for foreign exchange. At the end of 2010, 80% of the assets and liabilities of the Bank of China, the most international of China's major banks, were yuan-denominated. For Agricultural Bank of China, the least international bank, the ratio was 95%.

This means that a direct bailout of this sort would give banks capital they don't need─held offshore─to replace capital the banks don't have─the holes in their domestic balance sheets resulting from bad loans. While on paper this might improve the appearance of a bank's balance sheet, it's little practical good to have the bulk of a bank's capital tied up in foreign currencies overseas when they desperately need yuan-denominated capital to use at home.

The solution seems simple: sell the U.S. bonds for dollars and then buy yuan. This is what Bank of China and China Construction Bank did in 2005. They each entered into agreements with their direct shareholder, Central SAFE Investments (now known as Huijin and 100% state-owned), to sell dollars for yuan over a defined period of time.

Therein lies the second major problem with the reserves. China's economy is closed and its currency is non-convertible. This means that each time the central bank buys dollars from exporters it creates yuan: China's forex reserves are assets on its balance sheet matched by local-currency liabilities. Now if China's banks, the bulk of whose capital is also a central-bank asset (since the central bank lends money to Huijin to buy bank shares), want to sell their dollars for yuan, the central bank will be buying those dollars a second time and with newly issued yuan.

No matter how such a transaction is structured─as a straight loan, as an option or as a currency swap─it is inherently inflationary in an economy with a non-convertible currency such as China's. To be fair, at least the currency trades can be planned over a prolonged period of time and sterilized to minimize the inflationary impact. That makes this potentially less inflationary than simply injecting local currency directly as bank capital. But this is a matter of trying to manage inflation risk. The risk is still there.

Another difficulty with a reserve-financed bailout would be the fate of foreign (and domestic) minority shareholders in the banks, who now hold roughly 25% of the banks' equity. Any recapitalization, barring full reliance on debt, would severely dilute their interests. Coming only a few years after the banks were first listed, and so soon after a round of major fundraising in 2010, this would be embarrassing for Beijing.

All this financial tail-chasing is the inevitable consequence of a challenge facing China's banking and political leaders. A huge part of the wealth that has been created by China is stuck in the wrong place: offshore. To bring that wealth onshore can only create significant inflationary pressure, which, in turn, destroys the very wealth that has been created at home.

China may well be able to muddle through its current credit binge and could use a range of tools including a significant capacity for regulatory forbearance (delaying indefinitely the moment when banks would have to acknowledge their bad loans). But that's just it─any solution may well require a heavy dose of muddling. Foreign exchange reserves do not offer the clean, decisive solution so many have sought for China's banking problems.

Messrs. Walter and Howie are coauthors of 'Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundations of China's Extraordinary Rise' (Wiley, 2010).