While some keep insisting that the government needs to step in, in a big way, to fix the financial crisis, Paul Kedrosky posits an interesting and worthwhile theory, as well:
lots of folks within the industry are scrambling to fix things every day, and if we just gave them a chance they might get stuff done. He's not saying this is definitely happening, but he uses the Y2K crisis as an analogy. Many people were totally freaked out about it, insisting that there was no possible way all the problems could get fixed in time. But they did. They did because a lot of people worked really hard to get things done and solve most of the problems. And he's wondering if the same sort of thing is happening today with the financial markets:
I hear too many naive projections, too many scenarios constructed via extrapolating early failures forward and assuming the same thing can happen in the same way, so systemic collapse is ahead. While that is possible, and this time is different (tm), it's at least worth wondering what if the Y2K lesson matters more than we might have thought. Government aside, independent and fiercely survival-minded actors are doing what they can throughout the economy and the financial system to mitigate the risks they face from the current depression. Credit default swaps are being netted and torn up; banks are trying to unwind swaps and other derivatives. Some financial institutions are accidentally healing, at least a little, under the flood of savings pouring into them from petrified and security-seeking citizens. There are myriad other examples, but the point is that the bell has been rung, people are acting, and communication networks are afire -- and history says these are circumstances in which people can, by protecting themselves, surprise us all with the outcome.
It's definitely a point worth thinking about. We've been told over and over again that only the government can help us out of this mess, but people seem to think that the rest of the financial world is sitting around picking their noses as the world collapses -- and there's little reason to believe that's actually true. In fact, if you listen to
this week's This American Life "Act 2" (starting about 45 minutes in) covers a couple of entrepreneurial guys who are doing their part: buying up "toxic" mortgages on their own and restructuring them -- and they're making decent money doing so. While even they're a bit skeptical about that on a larger scale, as Kedrosky noted, the same was true of the individuals working on solving the Y2K crisis as well.
译文:
为什么我们认为没有人在拯救金融危机？
尽管有人坚持认为政府需要大规模介入以拯救此次金融危机，Paul Kedrosky却提出了这样一个有趣且很有价值的理论：
行业内有许多人每天都在匆匆做事以使事情恢复原状。如果我们给他们这样的机会，他们也许已经把这件事情做成了。虽然他没有说我们一定可以渡过今天的危机，但他用“千年虫危机”对此作了一个类比。许多人曾经因“千年虫危机”而抓狂，并坚信没有任何办法可以使所有问题及时得到解决。但是他们却做到了。他们做到了，因为有许多人努力做事，并且解决了大部分的问题。Kedrosky想知道同样的事情是否会发生在今天的金融市场上。
我听到太多不成熟的预测。这些预测假定同样的事情会通过相同的方式发生，并把先前的失败向后外推，由此得到结论：系统性的崩溃就在不远处。这确实是有可能发生的，但是，如果“千年虫”危机给我么的教训比我们想象中更起作用的话，这一次的危机是否会有不同的结果。至少这一点值得我们思考。撇开政府不谈，一些具有独立意识和强烈生存意识的演员正在想尽一切办法通过经济和金融系统来降低当前萧条经济下他们所面临的风险。信用违约互换正在被收回和撕毁；银行正试图分拆互换和其他衍生品。令人意外的是，在一些不知所措的公民为寻求安全而将储蓄纷纷投入金融机构的大潮之下，一些金融机构至少在一定程度上正在逐步复原。还有许多其它例子，但重要的是，号角已经吹响，人们正在行动起来，通信网络也因此而开始繁忙——历史告诉我们，在一定情况下人们为了保护自己可以创造出让我们所有人惊奇的结果。
这确实是值得思考的一点。我们一再被告知只有政府才可以帮助我们摆脱这一团糟的状况。人们似乎认为，当世界正在陷入崩溃的时候金融世界里的其他人都在隔岸观火——我们似乎找不到原因来相信这是真的。事实上，如果你收听了
这周的美国生活“第二单元”的节目（大概从第四十五分钟开始），你就会知道一些企业界人士已经行动起来，正在做他们应该做的事：回购不良的抵押和并进行重组——通过这样做他们反倒赚了一些钱。尽管他们怀疑在更大的范围内，正如Kedrosky所注意到的，那些试图解决千年虫问题的人并没有因自己的努力工作而赚到钱，但他们自己却因为解决危机所作的一切而确实赚得了收入。