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谁是这个世界上最大的利益勒索者，是西西里的黑手党还是中国人民解放军，甚至是克里姆林宫的盗贼统治阶层？如果是针对一家大公司，所有的这些都没有美国监管体系来得那么贪婪。其实这样的做手法很简单：找到一家大公司，也许有错也许没有错，威胁这家公司的管理者会进行商业性毁灭，而且最好还有犯罪指控，这样可以迫使对方使用本身的股东资本来支付巨额的罚款，以此来获得可以秘密的进行解决（这样就没有人可以知道其中的细节）这样的方式可以在另一家大公司进行重复使用。 罚金多得令人难以置信。今年到目前为止，美国的银行，摩根大通集团、花旗集团、高盛集团以及其它一些银行，据说是因为使投资者投资失败而被迫支付大约五百亿美金的罚金。 WHO runs the world’s most lucrative shakedown operation? The Sicilian mafia? The People’s Liberation Army in China? The kleptocracy in the Kremlin? If you are a big business, all these are less grasping than America’s regulatory system. The formula is simple: find a large company that may (or may not) have done something wrong; threaten its managers with commercial ruin, preferably with criminal charges; force them to use their shareholders’ money to pay an enormous fine to drop the charges in a secret settlement (so nobody can check the details). Then repeat with another large company. The amounts are mind-boggling. So far this year, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and other banks have coughed up close to $50 billion for supposedly misleading investors in mortgage-backed bonds. BNP Paribas is paying $9 billion over breaches of American sanctions against Sudan and Iran. Credit Suisse, UBS, Barclays and others have settled for billions more, over various accusations. And that is just the financial institutions. Add BP’s $13 billion settlement over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Toyota’s $1.2 billion settlement over alleged faults in some cars, and many more. In many cases, the companies deserved some form of punishment: BNP Paribas disgustingly abetted genocide, American banks fleeced customers with toxic investments and BP despoiled the Gulf of Mexico. But justice should not be based on extortion behind closed doors. The increasing criminalisation of corporate behaviour in America is bad for the rule of law and for capitalism (see article). 4 Until just over a century ago, the idea that a company could be a criminal was alien to American law. The prevailing assumption was, as Edward Thurlow, an 18th-century Lord Chancellor of England, had put it, that corporations had neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned, and thus were incapable of being “guilty”. But a case against a railway in 1909, for disobeying price controls, established the principle that companies were responsible for their employees’ actions, and America now has several hundred thousand rules that carry some form of criminal penalty. Meanwhile, ever since the 1960s, civil “class-action suits” have taught managers the wisdom of seeking rapid, discreet settlements to avoid long, expensive and embarrassing trials. 5 The drawbacks of America’s civil tort system are well known. What is new is the way that regulators and prosecutors are in effect conducting closed-door trials. For all the talk of public-spiritedness, the agencies that pocket the fines have become profit centres: Rhode Island’s bureaucrats have been on a spending spree courtesy of a $500m payout by Google, while New York’s governor and attorney-general have squabbled over a $613m settlement from JPMorgan. And their power far exceeds that of trial lawyers. Not only are regulators in effect judge and jury as well as plaintiff in the cases they bring; they can also use the threat of the criminal law. 6 Financial firms rarely survive being indicted on criminal charges. Few want to go the way of Drexel Burnham Lambert or E.F. Hutton. For their managers, the threat of personal criminal charges is career-ending ruin. Unsurprisingly, it is easier to empty their shareholders’ wallets. To anyone who asks, “Surely these big firms wouldn’t pay out if they knew they were innocent?”, the answer is: oddly enough, they might. Perhaps the most destructive part of it all is the secrecy and opacity. The public never finds out the full facts of the case, nor discovers which specific people—with souls and bodies—were to blame. Since the cases never go to court, precedent is not established, so it is unclear what exactly is illegal. That enables future shakedowns, but hurts the rule of law and imposes enormous costs. Nor is it clear how the regulatory booty is being carved up. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who is up for re-election, reportedly intervened to increase the state coffers’ share of BNP’s settlement by $1 billion, threatening to wield his powers to withdraw the French bank’s licence to operate on Wall Street. Why a state government should get any share at all of a French firm’s fine for defying the federal government’s foreign policy is not clear. 8 The best thing would be for at least some of these cases to go to proper trial: then a few of the facts would spill out. That is hardly in the interests of the regulators or their managerial prey, but shareholders at least should push for that. Two senators, Elizabeth Warren and Tom Coburn, have put forward a bill to make the terms of such settlements public, which would be a start. Prosecutors and regulators should also be required to publish the reasons why, given the gravity of their initial accusations, they did not take the matter all the way to court. 9 In the longer term, two changes are needed to the legal system. The first is a much clearer division between the civil and criminal law when it comes to companies. Most cases of corporate malfeasance are to do with money and belong in civil courts. If in the course of those cases it emerges that individual managers have broken the criminal law, they can be charged。 10 The second is a severe pruning of the legal system. When America was founded, there were only three specified federal crimes—treason, counterfeiting and piracy. Now there are too many to count. In the most recent estimate, in the early 1990s, a law professor reckoned there were perhaps 300,000 regulatory statutes carrying criminal penalties—a number that can only have grown since then. For financial firms especially, there are now so many laws, and they are so complex (witness the thousands of pages of new rules resulting from the Dodd-Frank reforms ), that enforcing them is becoming discretionary. 11 This undermines the predictability and clarity that serve as the foundations for the rule of law, and risks the prospect of a selective—and potentially corrupt—system of justice in which everybody is guilty of something and punishment is determined by political deals. America can hardly tut-tut at the way China’s justice system applies the law to companies in such an arbitrary manner when at times it seems almost as bad itself. Three problems are gross can use a simple example to illustrate.(1) poor management of a company, shares, down to the point of insolvency, how to do?Must think of some way to support.Is to come up with a way to make stock someone buy, from falling down.(2) who is going to buy?Who will support?By the subsidiary.Subsidiary of money come from?Borrow from the bank.What makes Banks lend money to subsidiary?By the parent company by assets as collateral.(3) the parent company guarantees made to the bank, the bank lend money to subsidiaries, affiliates take money to buy shares of the parent company, the parent company's share price was "temporary") cover.(4) the next, there are two possible: a. The parent company, while share price up secretly shipments, let the market many of unwitting retail goods, absorption to might;B. another possibility, it is still too late shipment, borrow money by a subsidiary of armor plate is unsustainable, breaking down, or, retail investors don't fall for it, not follow up.This leads to the final liquidation delisting. Now, as long as the ratio of the parent company of the United States, the ratio of stocks, bonds than for Banks, the Treasury, the fed than as subsidiary, outside of the United States government buyers including governments and corporate funds than for retail investors, is about the same. Poor management of the company in the United States, the deficit, not to issue bonds to borrow money to spend beyond, again afraid nobody buy bond issuance, so have to be printing money to buy the ministry of finance issued by the fed's Treasury.This is "quantitative easing" monetary policy.The purpose of quantitative easing monetary policy is in addition to print money to buy their own bonds ($), the more hope to "lure" other retail investors to follow, a total of haocha, support together. And all the three problems of gross has the answer: (1) who buy the bonds?The answer is many retail investors (especially governments);(2) who is buying?The answer is the us federal reserve, seventy percent of new debt is the federal reserve to buy, because retail investors are reluctant to follow up;(3) who will buy bonds in the future?Refers to the issue of new bonds again in the future who will buy?If you want to follow up the retail less and less, so only in order to improve the national debt interest to produce greater willingness to buy, which means a continuous expansion of Treasury bubble is close to the bursting point. Here, there is a problem is the key, the so-called "retail" (that is, in addition to other buyers outside of the us federal reserve) interest in Treasury bonds and support, in addition to see its fruits, also pay attention to the value of the dollar.If the dollar continues to depreciate, no amount of fruits can also be difficult to produce purchase intention. The house of representatives passed a recognised gold and silver COINS of Utah in the United States recently became legal tender of the bill.The bill approved residents can choose to use gold and silver COINS and dollars to pay taxes and to repay the debt.In addition to Utah, then there's the 12 states will consider a bill. Federal reserve chairman Ben bernanke for a claim of this return to the "gold standard", said "gold is not a panacea," and he said, the current of the world's gold reserves would not be enough to effectively support the monetary circulation in the United States. Ben bernanke, why not to constitutional issues related to monetary distribution rights belonging in response?In fact, Utah and other 13 states proposal seems absurd, but also highlights a deep crisis of confidence.America exhausted scheming, even at the use of military means to maintain the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency, but now because of the repeated failure of fiscal discipline and monetary discipline, even its own national confidence in the dollar began to shake, it was "within" trouble happened at home. With the development of the reform and opening up and the rapid development of economy in our country, our country government of fiscal deficits and great changes have taken place in way of make up.The relatively small size of the deficit before 1987, but its main way is to adopt the way of finance to the central bank overdrafts.Conform to the needs of economic development in 1987, the state council, has made the new regulation, finance can't to the provisions of the central bank overdraft.In order to carry out the policy and financial stability at the same time to reduce until canceled finance of the central bank's loan and overdraft, the government of the country's financial institutions issued 4 billion yuan of Treasury bonds, accounting for 30.14% of the total domestic debt income, thus causing the high-speed expansion of government borrowing for the first time.In 1994, the central government "budget law", defined the government shall not be overdraft or by borrowing from the bank to the bank to make up for the deficit, issuance of long-term and short-term debt become the only way to make up for the deficit.In 1995 the people's bank of China, to the government of the people's bank of China shall not be again to overdraw, not directly subscribe the regulation of government bonds, at the same time also emphasized that the people's bank of China may not provide loans for local governments at all levels, underwriting government bonds and other regulations.Thus, under the condition of no account of factors such as tax, the fiscal deficit offset only depend entirely on the issue of the national debt, this situation also led to the rapid growth of the government debt scale. For the introduction of hidden liabilities and contingent liabilities related literature, elaborated this paper no longer here.It is because of the two parts of the debt without more accurate estimate of the size and duration, and the composition of the various components of the debt is complex, if this part of the debt, in the case of external objective conditions change, the short time period into the reality of government debt, because of the government's fiscal position is unlikely to change in the short term, the government must be through the issuance of Treasury bonds to digest this part of the debt.Obviously, it will lead to the national debt scale expansion. The issue of Treasury bonds has its own unique characteristics, the main point is servicing the rigidity.Restore issue bonds in China in 1981, five years later China formally entered the payback period.After that, over the years the size of the bond issue, increasing national debt balance have a cumulative effect like snowball, shall be paid at the end of each year Treasury and regulatory flux increases year by year.For repayment of national debt and the interest is the basic way of fiscal surplus, raise taxes and raising new debt, but the reality is, in our country do not cover the fiscal revenue, year after year in the fiscal deficit, at the same time, as a result of the limitation of policy and the national debt project economic benefit is low, rely on tax increases and projects to achieve economic benefit of national debt to repay the debt does not apply to the present economic situation.The consequences of the national debt scale, therefore, the cumulative effect of government debt is further expanded. Fiscal policy is an important part of the influence factors of government debt.For example, if the government implements the active fiscal policy, is bound to expand the government's spending, which leads to the expansion of government bond issue.On the contrary, if the government to pursue a tight fiscal policy, then the deficit gap will be narrowed, government debt will decrease accordingly.Since 2007, for example, under the influence of the us subprime mortgage crisis, our country economy is in a low, insufficient domestic effective demand, the development of the government to stimulate the economy, promote economic growth, the government implemented expansionary fiscal policies, expanding the deficit, issuing bonds to increase government investment.Especially in 2009, along with the further government policy, China's national debt is issued the annual scale has reached a historic 1.6 trillion yuan. It is obvious that the size of the issuance of bonds should be compatible with the country's fiscal debt repayment ability, and this problem basically is to make debt issuance is consistent with the level of economic development.This means that a country's economic development situation determines the size of the can issue bonds.If the low level of economic development, GDP growth is slow, the fiscal income is not stable, so must not conducive to national debt moderate scale expansion.Instead, a national high-speed stable growth of GDP, fiscal revenue increased steadily, moderate debt would be bigger, the growth of the national debt can be stable and do not form the risk of debt, on the other hand, when a country's economic development level is very high, highly developed GDP, the government's fiscal income, government dependence on debt issuance also reduces, the initiative to reduce the national debt issue.At present our country's economic development is in the primary stage of socialism, economic development level of developed countries is relatively low, which fundamentally restricts the national debt scale expands in our country. From another perspective, the bond issuance will be restricted by social capital volume obviously, and the amount of social capital is just one aspect of the development of national economy.Should the debt money ability is an important factor of restricting the government debt, is to determine whether bonds issued smoothly, can release many important factors.As is known to all, the main body in bonds issued debt should be individuals and units, and the size of the how much savings and credit can be seen as a reflection of both capital ability.Plenty of savings, as well as large scale of credit indicates the overall amount of capital subscribed Treasury is enough, is conducive to the size of the national debt of moderate further expansion;On the other hand, will restrict bond moderate scale expansion.In addition, in 1992 the government's policy change, starting from this year to allow financial institutions, including all kinds of fund subscribe bonds, this makes the subscribe of debt subject to extension.Therefore, from the side, the financial institutions should state debt debt ability strong and the weak is also restricted the expansion of the national debt. |
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