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Why Dodd-Frank Is Already Failing 为何Dodd-Frank法案已经失败？ 作者：Paul G. Mahoney @2015-9-17

译者：尼克基得慢（@尼克基得慢）

校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy） 二校：龙泉（@L_Stellar）

来源：Library of Law and Liberty， http://www.libertylawsite.org/2015/09/17/why-dodd-frank-is-already-failing/ Five years after its enactment, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 remains controversial. Critics argue that the statute imposes disproportionately large compliance costs on small community banks, institutionalizes “too big to fail,” and drives up the cost of banking services to consumers. Comparing Dodd-Frank to past securities reforms, particularly those of the New Deal, shows that these three problems are related and are nearly inevitable features of post-crisis legislation.

自2010年执行起，五年了，《多德-弗兰克法案》仍饱受争议。批评者认为该法规对小型社区银行强加了不成比例的巨大合规成本， 将“大而不倒”制度化，同时抬高消费者享用银行服务的成本。将多德-弗兰克法案与过去的证券业改革——尤其是罗斯福新政中那些——相比较会发现，这三个问题是相互关联的，并且是后危机立法几乎不可避免的特征。

Every major financial reform in U.S. history was enacted in the aftermath of a substantial decline in equity prices. Each, in other words, was crafted during a time of public anger that politicians hoped to deflect from themselves to Wall Street. The congressional authors always compose a narrative of the stock market crash that blames unscrupulous financial intermediaries or public companies and insufficient regulation of the markets.

美国历史上每一次重大金融改革都是在股票价格大幅下跌后制定的。换句话说，每一次改革都是在群情激愤时精心制定，政治家们希望借此将公众愤怒的对象从自己转移到华尔街。国会的立法者总会借市场崩盘创造出一套说辞——指责金融中介机构、上市公司不道德的钻空行为和以往监管的不足。

Just as inevitably, proponents studiously avoid any suggestion that their own prior regulatory innovations had unintended consequences that contributed to the crash. Meanwhile, firms in the regulated industry concentrate on determining who the winners and losers may be under a new regulatory regime, so they can make sure they end up on the winning side.

必然地，支持法案的政客们刻意避免任何这样的看法：正是他们自己早先实施的监管革新，无意中促成了那次崩盘。同时，受监管的公司集中精力分辨出新监管体系下的赢家输家，以确保自己最终处在赢面。

This routine ensures that the primary losers from financial reform are investors and small, regulated firms. Costly new rules simultaneously serve the ends of Congress and the major financial institutions. They allow Congress to argue that it filled the regulatory gaps that it claims caused the crisis. Large firms can spread the new costs over a large number of transactions, giving them a structural advantage over their smaller and previously nimbler competitors . All firms will seek to pass on to their customers as many of the regulatory costs as possible.

这一惯常路数使得金融改革的主要输家必然是投资者和监管范围内的小型企业。成本高昂的新规定服务于国会和大金融机构的目标，这些规定让国会有资格宣称自己填补了其所宣称的那些监管空白。大公司则可以通过大量交易摊薄新增的成本，相比那些更小、曾经更灵活的竞争对手，这给了他们结构性优势。所有的公司都会尽可能的把监管成本转移给消费者。

All of this would be unfortunate but bearable if the new regulations generated benefits in excess of their costs. But that is unlikely with post-crisis legislation. The objective is to show the public that Congress is doing something and time is short. Congress knows relatively little about the details of market practices and so relies on the financial industry for information.

如果新规产生的收益大过成本，所有这些都还可忍受，尽管不算幸运。但是这对于后危机立法是不太可能的。立法的目的是为了向公众显示，国会有所作为而且行动迅速。他们对于市场行为的细节知之甚少，因此不得不依赖金融业者来获取信息。

The largest firms have skilled lobbyists and contacts with legislative staff. They argue, often successfully, that their ways of doing business are “best practices” and their competitors’ practices are shoddy or unfair. The process almost guarantees that the legislation will harm competition and therefore investors. Historically, that is precisely the pattern we observe, as demonstrated in my book Wasting a Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails .

那些行业巨头都有熟练的游说人员，与立法者有着广泛联系。他们通常会成功地辩解，他们做生意的方式是“最佳实践”，而竞争者的做法是卑劣的、不公平的。这样的立法过程几乎确保了法律最后会有害于竞争，并进一步伤害投资者利益。从历史上来看，这正是我们观察到的模式，正如我在《白白浪费了一次危机：为何证券监管总是失败》一书中所展示的。

The New Deal securities reforms, often seen as the classic example of good regu lation, provide a cautionary tale. President Franklin Roosevelt and his administration argued that the 1920s were a time of widespread fraud and manipulation in the stock market, but there is scant factual basis for the claim.

罗斯福新政中的证券业改革常被视为良好管制的经典案例，其实是一则警示寓言。富兰克林·罗斯福总统和他的行政团队声称，1920年代的股市中充满了欺骗和操纵，但是这样的观点缺乏有力的事实依据。

As my book demonstrates, the best-documented cases of “fraud” were no such thing; the evidence proves mostly that Congress did not understand how securities markets operate. By going back and analyzing market reactions to earnings announcements, I also show that the markets did not view the disclosures they received as a result of mandates from the Securities and Exchange Commission as more informative than the stock exchange-mandated disclosures of the pre-SEC era.

正如我书中所说，记录最为详尽的“骗局”案例都是空穴来风；有关证据只是证明了国会并不了解证券市场如何运行。通过追溯和分析市场对盈利报告的反应，我还揭示了，市场不觉得，在SEC规制下，企业的信息披露比前SEC时代更有价值。

The 1920s were, on the other hand, a time of sharply increasing competition and innovation in the investment business. As a growing middle class looked for ways to invest its savings, a large industry of brokers, investment bankers, and investment managers developed to meet the demand. New entrants modernized the sales process, taking advantage of the rising number of households with telephones and radio sets. Like many creative new companies, they took business away from their more established competitors.

另一方面，1920年代是一个投资业务竞争和创新飞速发展的时期。由于成长中的中产阶级为其储蓄寻求投资的途径，一个由经纪人、理财顾问、投资银行家构成的大产业就发展起来满足这种需求。新入行者充分利用配有电话和老式收音机的家庭的不断增长，将销售过程现代化。正如许多有创新力的新公司那样，他们从老牌的竞争者手中抢过了生意。

The New Deal reforms put the brakes on this innovation and competition. At the urging of the old-line investment banks, the securities laws defined the new sales practices as misleading and forced the industry to return to the traditional syndicated method of public offerings at which the established investment banks excelled. The securities laws comprehensively regulated brokers, stock exchanges, and listed companies, subjecting small, regional businesses to costs they could not bear.

罗斯福新政改革遏止了这种创新和竞争。在传统投资银行的强烈要求下，证券法将新的销售模式认定为骗局，并强迫整个行业重返传统财团公开募股的方法，这正是老牌投资银行所擅长的。证券法全面管制经纪人、证券交易所和上市公司，使地方小型交易商背负它们不可能承受的成本。

The results were dramatic:

结果是触目惊心的： Industry concentration increased promptly and measurably. By my estimate, the New Deal securities laws increased the aggregate market share of the top five investment banks by 12 percent; 行业集中度快速、可见地提高。据我估计，罗斯福新政的证券法使得投资银行前五名市场占有率共提升12%。 Smaller securities dealers based outside New York City began to exit the business despite having survived the worst phase of the Great Depression; 在纽约市以外的小型券商开始退出市场，尽管他们熬过了大萧条时最糟糕的时期。 Regional stock exchanges began a terminal decline. Of the 41 exchanges in existence when the Securities Exchange Act went into effect in 1935, only 20 survived until 1938, despite the fact that many of them had survived the financial panic of 1907 and the recession of 1920-21; 地区性证券交易所走上穷途末路。在1935年，《证券交易法》开始实施时还存在41家证券交易所，到了1938年则只有20家交易所还存在，尽管这些交易所中大多数都成功走过了1907年的金融恐慌和1920～1921年的经济衰退。 Regulators helped enforce anticompetitive practices such as fixed brokerage commissions that increased investors’ costs. 监管者推动了从业者的反竞争措施，比如执行增加投资者花费的固定佣金制。 Dodd-Frank, for its part, has a broader focus than the New Deal securities laws. It changes the regulatory framework for the entire financial system, including commercial banks, investment banks, investment managers, and insurance companies.

在这方面，多德-弗兰克法案的关注面要比罗斯福新政的证券法更宽广。它改变了整个金融系统的监管框架，包括商业银行、投资银行、投资经理人和保险公司。

Its counterproductive effects are therefore potentially even more far-reaching and costly to consumers. At the most basic level, it gives the federal banking regulators the authority to identify “systemically important” financial institutions. These are pre-cleared for a bailout during the next financial crisis. In return, they become in effect wards of the state, with regulators having broad discretion to oversee their business practices.

因此对消费者来说，它适得其反的影响有可能更加深远且代价巨大。从最基础的来说，它赋予了联邦银行监管人员鉴别何为系统重要性金融机构的权力。下一次金融危机要实行救援计划时，它们就会被预先判定无辜。作为交换，国家成了它们事实上的监护人，监管者对其商业行为有着广泛的自由裁量权。

Dodd-Frank also requires major changes to the over-the-counter derivatives market. Lawmakers argued that “opaque” and “risky” derivatives contributed substantially to the financial crisis. This is true only in the sense that anything that reduces the transaction costs of borrowing leads to more borrowing.

多德-弗兰克法案还要求场外衍生品市场做出重大改变。立法者认为“晦涩的”和“高风险的”衍生品实质上促进了金融危机。这种观点仅在如下意义上是正确的：任何降低借款交易费用的事情都会导致更多借贷行为。

The financial crisis was fundamentally a problem of financial institutions taking highly leveraged positions in mortgage-related assets. Derivatives are only one of many vehicles by which they did so. Leverage is the problem, not the specific contracts by which it is achieved.

这次金融危机从根本上说是金融机构用抵押资产贷款维持高杠杆化经营的问题。金融衍生品只是这些企业实现高杠杆化的众多工具之一。衍生品并不是金融危机背后的问题，高杠杆化才是。

Congress therefore devised a solution to a non-problem by requiring that many over-the-counter derivatives be centrally cleared, meaning there must be an institution (typically owned by other financial institutions) that guarantees each party’s performance to the other. These central clearinghouses are eligible for “systemically important” status and will be in line for bailouts during the next financial crisis as well.

国会因此给一个不存在的问题设计了解决办法，要求场外金融衍生品集中清算，这意味必须要有一个机构（通常由其他金融机构拥有）来保证各方对彼此履约。这些（场内）中央清算所有资格具备“系统重要性”，而且也将在下次金融危机时纳入救援计划。

There are plausible arguments that the 2007-2008 financial crisis was exacerbated by the unintended consequences of governmental policies, including interest-rate decisions by the Federal Reserve, housing policies administered by banking regulators, politically-driven risk weights within the risk-based system of capital requirements, and the tendency to bail out large institutions in financial distress.

有人不无理由的说，2007-2008年金融危机被政府政策的非意图后果加剧了，包括美联储的利率决议，银行监管部门的住房贷款政策，风险相关的资本要求中受政治影响扭曲的风险权重，还有在危机时救助大机构的倾向。

Dodd-Frank increases the likelihood that regulators’ missteps will be a significant contributor to the next financial crisis. But because governmental actors strongly resist admitting mistakes, it, too, will be blamed on “reckless” bankers, clearinghouses, insurance companies, or other financial intermediaries.

多德-弗兰克法案增加了因监管者过失导致下一次金融危机的可能性。但是因为政府机构总是死不认错，下次 危机也会被归咎于“不计后果的”银行家、清算所、保险公司、或者其他金融中介机构 。

And then the cycle will start again, with more regulations that will cause more unintended consequences for which Wall Street will be blamed.

然后这个循环又会开始，更多规定导致更多非意图后果。为此华尔街还会被指责。

Paul G. Mahoney is dean of the University of Virginia School of Law.

弗吉尼亚大学法学院院长 Paul G.Mahoney

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