能追不尽景，始是不凡人

引用 from mkeyiyun

索罗斯在众议院关于对冲基金监管的发言

今天的重大新闻表面上是道琼斯指数在下跌300点后绝地反击900点，走出大阳线。不过更意义深远的应该是在美国国会众议院举行的关于对冲基金监管的听证会。听证会上发言都得是金融界里包括学术界和华尔街上的头面人物。他们的发言可以在美国国会众议院的网站上下载（http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=2271）。

 

下面是索罗斯的发言稿，其实他还提供了一份更加detail一些的书面报告（http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/dealbook/soros111308.pdf），不过由于是图片格式，无法拷贝出来，有兴趣的同学自己读读吧，比这个简短的报告有意思的多。

 

自己对索罗斯发言的一些肤浅总结：

 

1. 金融市场长期以来，尤其是80年代后期至今，所仰仗的理论基础并不成立。市场并不反映客观条件，市场参与者这种扭曲的观点反过来影响了基本面。

 

2. 监管的放松对金融风暴有很大影响。对冲基金的必要监管是非常必要的。

 

3. 对冲基金在金融风暴后管理的资产将下降50%到75%。

 

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Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Hon. Henry A. Waxman, Chairman
Washington D.C.
Thursday, November 13, 2008

Testimony of George Soros

 

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

 

We are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The salient feature of the crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like OPEC raising the price of oil. It was generated by the financial system itself. This fact -- that the defect was inherent in the system -- contradicts the generally accepted theory about financial markets. The prevailing paradigm is that markets tend towards equilibrium; deviations from the equilibrium either occur in a random manner or are caused by some sudden external event to which markets have difficulty in adjusting. The current approach to market regulation has been based on this theory but the severity and amplitude of the crisis proves convincingly that there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

 

I have developed an alternative paradigm that differs from the current one in two important respects. First, financial markets do not reflect the underlying conditions accurately. They provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in some way or another. Second, the distorted views held by market participants and expressed in market prices can, under certain circumstances, affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect. I call this two-way circular connection between market prices and the underlying reality ‘reflexivity’. I contend that financial markets are always reflexive and on occasion they can veer quite far away from the so-called equilibrium. In other words, it is an inherent characteristic of financial markets that they are prone to produce bubbles.

 

I have originally proposed this theory in 1987 and I brought it up to date in my latest book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. I have summarized my argument in the written testimony I have submitted. Let me recall briefly the main implications of the new paradigm for the regulation of financial markets. The first and foremost point is that the regulators must accept responsibility for controlling asset bubbles. Until now the financial authorities have explicitly rejected that responsibility. Second, to control asset bubbles it is not enough to control the money supply. It is also necessary to control credit because the two do not go in lock step. Third, controlling credit requires reactivating policy instruments which have fallen into disuse, notably, margin requirements, and minimum capital requirements for banks. When I say reactivate them, I mean that the ratios need to be changed from time to time to counteract the prevailing mood of the markets because, contrary to the prevailing view, markets do have moods. Fourth, new regulations are needed to ensure that margin requirements and the capital ratios of banks can be accurately measured. The alphabet soup of synthetic financial instruments (CDOs, CDSs, ETSs, and the like) have made risks less transparent and harder to measure. These new products will have to be registered and approved before they can be used and their clearing mechanism has to be regulated in order to minimize counterparty risk. Fifth, since financial markets are global, regulation must also be international in scope. Sixth, since the quantitative risk management models currently in use ignore the uncertainties inherent in reflexivity, limits on credit and leverage will have to be set substantially lower than those that have been incorporated in the Basel Accords on bank regulation. Basel II, which delegated authority for calculating risk to the financial institutions themselves, was an aberration and has to be abandoned. It needs to be replaced by a Basel III which will be based on the new paradigm.

 

How do these principles apply to hedge funds? Clearly hedge funds use leverage and they contribute to market instability in times like the present when we are experiencing wholesale and disorderly deleveraging. Therefore the systemic risks need to be recognized and more closely monitored than they have been until now. Appropriate regulations need to be devised. But we must beware of going overboard with regulation. Excessive deregulation has inflicted enormous losses on the general public and there is a real danger that the pendulum will swing too far the other way. That would be unfortunate because regulations are liable to be even more deficient than the market mechanism itself. That is because regulators are not only human, but also bureaucratic and susceptible to political influences.

 

It has to be recognized that hedge funds were an integral part of the bubble which has now burst. But the bubble has now burst and hedge funds will be decimated. I would guess that the amount of money they manage will shrink by between 50 and 75 percent. It would be a grave mistake to add to the forced liquidation currently dislocating markets by ill-considered or punitive regulations. I would be happy to expound on these ideas in greater detail in responding to your questions.