中国的银行应该减肥，瘦身，
2013-10-16 17:00阅读：
张化桥在路透社撰文：坏银行，坏主意,
简介如下：
谁也没有先见之明。不过，现在回头看，13年前中国弄出的四大资产管理公司是个巨大的错误。
当年，银行虽然坏帐很严重，但是公众对银行的信心从来没有动摇，而且银行的流动性也很正常。1999－2001年贷款增速开始下降，信贷资金开始转不动，那本来是好事，它会迫使银行提高贷款标准，改善资金的使用效率。但是四大资产管理公司的出现以及后来大量的注资破坏了本来应该出现的改革。
这13年来的信贷失控，和高通胀都源于那次的强力注资。现在，中国的银行又有了很多坏帐。千万不要再搞'剥离'。中国的银行资本金太多（不是太少），放款能力太强，应该瘦身。应该停止配售新股，停止优先股，和可转债。应该大大提高派息，甚至实行大额的特殊派息。
Bad banks, bad idea,
By Joe Zhang,
At the end of the 1990s,
China’s banks faced a rising
tide of bad debts, and
Beijing came to the rescue.
Financial insiders still see
that move as necessary, wise
and courageous. On the contrary,
bailing out the banks was
a bad idea. It would be
a mistake to repeat the
trick.
Then, as now, China’s
lenders had lent too much.
Between 1984 and 1997, their
loans grew 24 percent per
annum. It couldn’t continue
forever. In 1998, as
non-performing loans started to
increase, the growth rate fell
to 15 percent, and then 8
percent and 6 percent in
the next two years. By
that point, bad loans in
the banking system were close
to 30 percent of total
lending.
If Beijing had done nothing,
this credit slowdown could have
forced a loan contraction, or
even a recession. That would
have been a blessing in
disguise: it would have ushered
in much-needed improvement in
the quality of credit
allocation.
Sadly, the necessary adjustment never
happened. China’s authorities instead
set up four asset management
companies - Cinda, Orient,
Huarong and Great Wall -
to take over the “toxic”
loans, and between 1999 and
2005, they took out around
2 trillion yuan (roughly $300
billion at today’s exchange
rate) of bad assets. They
did this at 100 cents on
the dollar, without forcing the
banks to take a haircut.
This had two side-effects. First,
it gave everyone false hope
that the banks had suddenly
become solid and that there
would be future bailouts if
the bad debts ever piled
up again. Second, it left
the banks with masses of
liquidity. The resulting equity
injection was equivalent to 20
percent of their loan balance.
The banks had received massive
inflationary power with a few
strokes of the pen.
Print away the pain
What came next was inflation,
and more lending. The government
was already running a deficit
in 1999-2000 equivalent to 15
percent to 19 percent of
its budget. So to fund
the bailout, the Ministry of
Finance let the monetary
printing press do the work.
Rates were aggressively cut
too.
That drove annual loan growth as
high as 21 percent in the
following three years. The
resulting spending and investing
generated huge sales taxes and
dividends for the Ministry of
Finance, which then helped
recapitalise the banks again in
subsequent years.
Banks are now hooked on rapid
loan growth. Even when the
central bank forced them to
keep 20 percent of their
deposits in reserve, it was
not enough to neutralise the
power of the additional
“high-powered” money in the
banks. Subsequent IPOs and
fund-raisings have given them
even more firepower, keeping
average loan growth since 2000
up to a 16.6 percent
annual rate.
But sensible lending opportunities have
not grown, and cannot possibly
grow, that fast. That means
that bankers have competed to
find new customers and lowered
their credit standards, both
knowingly and unknowingly. That
is a surefire recipe for
a crisis.
Repeat and repent
Were the AMCs really necessary?
It’s unlikely. There are two
misconceptions. First of all,
depositors were never at risk.
There was absolutely no erosion
of public confidence in the
banks in the 1990s, despite
the government’s public admission
that all the banks were
technically bankrupt. Some financial
institutions went bust, but no
individual depositor lost money.
Second, banks never faced a
capital crisis. In order to
accommodate the double-digit loan
growth of the past three
decades, lenders certainly needed
more capital. But it would
have been better for the
economy if much of that
lending had never happened.
Besides, borrowers wouldn’t all
have failed to repay at
once, so credit growth would
have slowed, not collapsed
entirely.
Today, the world is worried
about China’s bad debts again.
There are loud calls for
another round of recapitalisation.
But that would be a grave
mistake.
Instead, the best thing for
China’s financial system would
be to downsize the banks
via special dividend payouts,
and allow their lending capacity
to gradually decline. That
should force discipline into
their lending processes, and
reduce the risks of badly
allocated credit.
Some pessimists estimate that China’s
bad debts are more than
10 percent of the total,
enough to wipe out the
sector’s capital. But as long
as depositors’ confidence in the
banks remains high, and loans
don’t all fail to pay
back at once, that needn’t
matter very much. Bailing out
the banks at a stroke
will only leave them emboldened
to make the same mistakes
again.
Joe Zhang, the author of “Inside
China’s Shadow Banking: The Next
Subprime crisis?”, is a
corporate adviser in Hong Kong.
