财经新闻:美联储应提高存款准备金率

The financial markets shook with fear last month when the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s meeting suggested that the US central bank might reconsider the costs of pumping nearly $1.7tn of excess reserves into the banking system. Of particular concern to members of the Federal Open Market Committee is the inflationary potential of these reserves if the banks turn them into loans and deposits.

上月，美联储(Fed)会议纪要表明，美联储可能重新考虑向银行业体系注入近1.7万亿美元超额准备金的成本，这导致金融市场出现恐慌。美国联邦公开市场委员会(FOMC)成员尤其关注的是，如果银行将这些准备金转化为贷款和存款，将有潜在通胀效应。

Before the financial crisis, banks held few reserves in excess of their requirements. This allowed the Fed to control closely the level of deposits that are extended when banks create loans. But today’s huge supply of excess reserves means financial institutions can create trillions of dollars of loans and deposits, which will be highly inflationary.

在爆发金融危机之前，银行持有很少的超额准备金，因此美联储可以严格控制银行放贷时动用的存款资金。但如今超额准备金的巨大供应意味着金融机构可以创造出数万亿美元的贷款和存款，这具有极高的通胀效应。

To eliminate these excess reserves, the Fed would have to sell more than half its nearly $3tn portfolio of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Given that the Fed has indicated that reversing its quantitative easing would be done only in a rapidly improving economic environment – which normally puts pressure on bond prices – further bond sales from the central bank could be destabilising to the financial markets.

要消除这些超额准备金，美联储将不得不出售其持有的近3万亿美元国债和抵押贷款支持证券(MBS)的一半以上。鉴于美联储已经表示，只有经济环境迅速改善（这通常会对债券价格造成压力）才会退出量化宽松，因此美联储进一步出售债券可能造成金融市场的动荡。

Fortunately, there is a solution to the Fed’s exit problem that does not involve selling securities. It employs one of the Fed’s oldest policy tools: raising reserve requirements.

幸运的是，有一种办法可以让美联储不用出售证券资产就可以解决退出问题。那就是运用美联储最古老的政策工具之一：提高存款准备金率。

All textbooks on money and banking highlight the three principal policy options open to central banks: discount lending, open market operations, and reserve requirements. Since the financial crisis broke, the Fed has vigorously used the first two. Massive discount lending to banks following the Lehman collapse prevented a devastating run on banks. Then huge open market purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities provided the financial system with much-needed liquidity. But the Fed has not altered reserve requirements in more than 20 years and has not raised any reserve ratio on any deposit in almost four decades.

所有货币银行学的教科书都强调央行有三大政策工具：再贴现率、公开市场操作和存款准备金率。自金融危机爆发以来，美联储积极使用前两种政策。美联储在雷曼(Lehman)破产后向银行提供了巨额的贴现贷款，从而让银行避免出现灾难性的挤兑。随后美联储在公开市场大举购买国债和抵押贷款支持证券，为金融体系提供了亟需的流动性。但美联储已有20多年没有调整存款准备金率，同时在近40年里没有提高任何存款的准备金率。

The decline in the use of reserve requirements is startling. Under pressure from the banks to keep costs down, required reserves at the Fed had withered to just $40bn before the financial crisis broke, equal to less than 0.5 per cent of the banks’ liabilities, far below the ceilings set by the Monetary Control Act of 1980. This legislation allowed the Fed to set a reserve ratio of up to 18 per cent on transactions balances and 9 per cent on time deposits. Additionally, the MCA allows the Fed to impose any reserve ratio it wishes on any liability of the banking industry for a period of up to one year.

美联储对存款准备金率的使用次数少得惊人。在金融危机爆发前，在降低成本的压力下，银行存放在美联储的存款准备金缩水至仅400亿美元，不到银行负债的0.5%，远低于《1980年货币控制法》(Monetary Control Act of 1980)规定的上限。该法案规定美联储可以对交易账户和定期存款账户分别制定最高18%和9%的准备金率。此外，该法案还允许美联储在最长一年的期限内，对银行业的任何类型债务任意制定准备金率。

The Fed’s Flow of Funds Account indicates that total deposits in financial institutions were $10.6tn at the end of 2012. This implies that a 15 per cent reserve requirement on deposits would absorb almost all the excess reserves now in the banks.

美联储编制的《资金流向报告》(Flow of Funds Account)表明，截至2012年年底，金融机构存款总额为10.6万亿美元。这意味着，15%的存款准备金率将吸收银行目前几乎所有的超额准备金。

To prevent banks from evading reserve requirements by issuing other, non-reserved liabilities, the MCA also gave the Fed powers to impose reserves on any non-deposit funding source.

为了防止银行发行其他未规定准备金率的债务来逃避准备金要求，《1980年货币控制法》还赋予美联储对任何非存款资金来源施加准备金要求的权力。

A reserve ratio as high as 15 per cent may appear to be extraordinarily burdensome to banks. But in 2008 Congress allowed the Fed to mitigate this cost by paying interest on reserves. As the Fed exits from quantitative easing, one feasible policy for the central bank to pursue is to set the interest rate on reserves at half the level of the Fed funds target.

对银行来说，高达15%的准备金率似乎会带来极大的成本。但在2008年，美国国会允许美联储向准备金支付利息来降低这种成本。当美联储退出量化宽松时，它可以选择的一个可行政策是，将准备金利率设为联邦基金目标利率的一半。

Data from the Fed show that most FOMC members expect the long-run Fed Funds target to be about 4 per cent, which would imply that the Fed would pay a 2 per cent rate on reserves under this policy. Given $1.7tn dollars of reserves, these payments would amount to a $34bn cost to the Fed, which is less than half the $77bn it earned in 2012. This means that after paying interest on bank reserves, Fed profits, which are remitted to the US Treasury, would still exceed profit levels that prevailed before the financial crisis.

美联储数据表明，大多数的FOMC委员预计联邦基金利率的长期目标在4%左右的水平，按照上述政策，这意味着美联储将支付2%的准备金利率。考虑到准备金有1.7万亿美元，因此美联储将支付340亿美元利息，这还不到其2012年770亿美元收入的一半。也就是说，美联储在向银行支付准备金利息后剩下的利润仍将超过金融危机前的一般水平。美联储的利润上缴至美国财政部。

Another attractive feature of higher reserve ratios is that they allow the government to modify, and in some cases eliminate, the liquidity and capital ratios dictated by new Basel III banking regulations. Reserves are deposits at the Fed that can be turned into currency on demand, and as such are the world’s most liquid asset. The higher reserve levels achieved by this policy will satisfy many of the liquidity requirements in the Basel agreement.

提高准备金率的另一个吸引之处在于，政府可以借之减轻（在某些情况下消除）新的《巴塞尔协议III》(Basel III)规定的流动性和资本比率的影响。准备金是存放于美联储的存款，可以随时转化为现金，因此也是全球流动性最高的资产。这项政策可以提高准备金水平，从而满足巴塞尔协议中的许多流动性要求。

The bottom line is that by increasing required reserves and bringing the Fed’s third policy tool out of hibernation, the US central bank’s exit strategy can be made far easier. And because these reserves satisfy many of the Basel III provisions, this policy can be a win-win for the Fed, the banking industry and the US economy.

最重要的是，通过提高准备金率和解冻第三套政策工具，美联储实施退出战略将会容易得多。由于这些准备金满足《巴塞尔协议III》的许多条款，这种政策不仅有利于美联储和银行业，而且还有利于美国经济。

Jeremy J. Siegel is the Russell E. Palmer professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

本文作者是宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院(Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania)Russell E. Palmer金融学教授