精读|翻译|词组Finance and economics | Buttonwood财经｜梧桐树专栏
英文部分选自经济学人20230812期财经板块
Finance and economics | Buttonwood财经｜梧桐树
In defence of credit-rating agencies
为信用评级机构正名
The much-maligned institutions have performed well of late
饱受诟病的信用评级机构近来表现不俗Fifteen years ago, in August 2008, the world’s credit-rating agencies were in the midst of the worst period in their history. The global financial crisis was about to reach its zenith. It was already clear that the allegiances of rating agencies—beholden to both investors in and issuers of debt—had been stretched beyond a healthy limit. The survival of their business model looked uncertain. 十五年前的2008年8月，可谓是全球信用评级机构历史上的至暗时刻。彼时，全球金融危机顶峰将至，评级机构一边需要忠于投资者，另一边还需要忠于债券发行人，在两端拉扯中弊病频现，几乎要超越极限，似乎很难再靠这种商业模式生存下去。 In a turn-up for the books, rating agencies have more than survived. Borrowers’ demands to have their homework marked have surged. During the market boom of 2021, Moody’s Investors Service, one of the “big three” agencies, made almost $4bn in revenues, compared with $1.8bn at its peak in 2007. The “issuer pays” business model, in which borrowers are on the hook for having their own bonds rated, creating a conflict of interest for the agencies, has limped on, too, despite endless demands for change. Yet even though they have gone largely unreformed, rating agencies have been on a good run in recent years. 出人意料的是，评级机构不仅大难不死，而且风生水起。发行人需要第三方出具评级意见以作背书，而且这类需求增长很快。2021年市场火热，评级“三巨头”之一的穆迪投资者服务公司（Moody’s Investors Service）营收接近40亿美元，大大超过2007年峰值18亿美元。目前评级业务仍然采用“发行人付费”的商业模式，发行人负责聘请评级机构为其发行的债券评级，导致评级机构面临利益冲突。纵使有无数声音呼吁变革，该模式仍然“苟延残喘”至今。近年来，评级机构鲜有进行大刀阔斧的变革，却也经营得风生水起。 注释：a turn-up for the book(s), an unexpected and surprising event 意想不到的事，突发事件 Ironically, rating agencies often spring into the limelight when they are least important. That is what happened on August 1st when Fitch, another of the big three, reduced the American government’s rating from aaa to aa+. After all, agencies do not offer superior expertise when it comes to the analysis of rich countries’ fiscal health. The economic data that they observe is widely watched by everyone else. In 2015 American money-market funds were liberated from having to use credit ratings as their only metric for deciding whether to invest in securities. Funds can now determine, for instance, that a security represents a “minimal credit risk”. This means that downgrades to the ratings of Treasuries matter even less than before. 讽刺的是，评级机构总会在评级结果根本无关痛痒之际猛然闯进公众视线。比如在今年8月1日，“三巨头”之一惠誉国际（Fitch）就将美国政府的信用评级从“AAA”下调至“AA+”。说到底，在分析富裕国家财政状况方面，评级机构并没有什么傲人的专业水准，它们作出的评级也是基于向全社会公开的经济数据。美国货币市场基金（American money-market funds）从2015年起就不再需要把信用评级结果作为投资证券资产的唯一衡量标准，可以自行判断证券是否“信用风险极低”。这就意味着此次美国国债的评级下调甚至比之前还要无足轻重。 注释：2011年8月5日，美国奥巴马政府与共和党人在最后一刻就债务上限达成协议后两天，国际评级机构标准普尔下调了美国的主权信用评级，从“AAA”降至“AA+”。那是美国第一次被降评级。标普500指数当天暴跌6%，美国股市直到两个月后才得以恢复。 Companies that provide ratings nevertheless hold two important roles. First, they aggregate, sort and publish information about borrowers, which investors can analyse and use to compare them. Second, they act as a certification stamp on assets. Bank regulators use credit ratings to determine the capital requirements for lenders; funds use them to decide what they should and should not hold. 不过，信用评级机构仍在市场中扮演着两个重要角色：一方面搜集、整理并发布有关发行人的信息，供投资者分析与比较；另一方面为金融资产提供认证，银行监管机构据此确定贷款机构的资本要求，基金据此决定该或不该持有哪些资产。 Rating agencies have a difficult job: not attracting negative attention is about as good an outcome as they can reasonably expect. During the deep financial distress early in the covid-19 pandemic, they quietly managed just that, as the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a panel of researchers from academia, banking and business, concluded when later assessing their performance. In 2020, 198 companies rated by s&p Global Ratings defaulted, the most since the global financial crisis. Whereas 11 investment-grade firms failed to repay their debts in 2009, all of the defaults in the first year of the pandemic happened among companies already labelled as riskier speculative grades. 评级机构的工作并不轻松：不引起负面关注几乎已是能够期待的最好结果。在新冠疫情爆发初期，这些机构就在金融困境中成功做到了这点，资本市场监管委员会（由学术界、银行业和企业界的研究人员组成）经过评估也对评级机构的表现给予肯定。2020年，共198家由标准普尔（s&p Global Ratings）评级的公司违约，这一数量创全球金融危机以来之最。这事儿得这么看，2009年的时候，11家被评为投资级的公司出现债务违约；而在疫情第一年也就是2020年违约的所有这些公司，都是原先就已被评级为风险较高的投机级公司。 注释：Investment-grade：投资级。“三巨头”的信用评级可分为两大类，即投资级和投机级（non-investment/speculative grade）。投资级相对较高，分为AAA、AA、A和BBB；投机级相对较低，分为BB、B、CCC、CC、C和SD/D级。如果被评为投资级的发行人违约，意味着在违约暴雷之前信用评级机构存在失职，没有及时监测到风险，也没有及时调降信用评级做出反应。 The firms did take flak during the demise of Silicon Valley Bank (svb) in March. Both Moody’s and s&p had given svb investment-grade ratings. But the bank’s collapse, which was facilitated by social media, instant messaging and digital-finance apps, was unusually rapid. And the ratings that were awarded to the bank—of a3 and bbb respectively—were far from the highest notches available. Indeed, a downgrade warning from Moody’s the week before svb’s collapse was one of the triggers that revealed the parlous state of the bank’s funding. Rating agencies can be criticised for having been asleep at the wheel, or for prompting the crisis, but hardly both. 今年 3 月硅谷银行（SVB）倒闭事件波及了评级机构，因为穆迪和标普都曾将硅谷银行评为投资级。也应看到，这次倒闭事件在社交媒体、即时通讯和数字金融应用程序的推波助澜下，发生的速度是非常之快的。该银行“生前”从两家评级机构处获得的评级分别为A3和 BBB，距离最高评级相差甚远。事实上，在硅谷银行倒闭前一周，穆迪曾发出降级警告，这也是导致该行的资金困境暴露于公众眼前的导火索之一。人们可以批评评级机构玩忽职守，也可以说它们引发危机，但不能里里外外都给骂一遍。 Research also demonstrates a continued role for agencies in rating emerging-market government debt. One paper by the Bank for International Settlements, a club of central banks, shows that rating changes still have a big impact on credit-default-swap markets in the emerging world, suggesting that investors retain respect for agencies’ judgments. Another, published by the World Bank, calculates that the effect of credit ratings may even have risen since the global financial crisis. A one-notch improvement in a developing economy’s credit rating in comparison with similar countries raised capital inflows by around 0.6% of gdp in 2009-17, about a third more than in the preceding decade. 研究还表明，评级机构在新兴市场政府债务评级中持续发挥积极作用。由各国央行组成的国际清算银行（Bank for International Settlements）发表的一篇论文表明，评级变化仍对新兴世界的信用违约互换市场有重大影响，表明投资者仍然尊重评级机构的判断。世界银行发布的一份报告计算出，自全球金融危机以来，信用评级的影响力甚至可能有所上升。2009至2017年，在可比国家之间，发展中国家的信用评级平均每提高一个等级，就有约相当于GDP 0.6%的资金流入，这一增量比此前十年高出约三分之一。 Rating agencies are a lightening rod for criticism. Firms that attempt to be the arbiters of risk are bound to get stuff wrong—or worse, play a causal role—during unexpected blow-ups. Even though problems exposed during the financial crisis remain unfixed, rating agencies are still crucial to the working of capital markets. Recently, they have even been doing a pretty good job. 评级机构确实容易成为众矢之的。它们想要做风险的评判者，不仅很难保证不出错，甚至有可能陷入风暴的因果。尽管金融危机期间暴露出的问题仍未解决，但评级机构对于资本市场的运作仍然不可或缺。近来，它们的表现甚至相当有水准。 翻译组：Zy，没啥新鲜的，想做一个好译员Alfredo，清纯男高体验卡仅剩几个月到期Trista，女，暴富不是梦想，是未来的现实 校对组：Cecilia，2023生活得贵妇一点Constance，痛终有时，爱必将至风筝，热爱生活，热爱翻译，热爱搞钱，热爱猫咪
