主题：【文摘】美国思想阵营的分野的一个金融窥探 -- jugojl6

在Bloomberg看到这个，很有意思。

可以得到几个初步观点：

1 TARP基本没用——“没用”指在最浅显最起码所需要的金融系统恢复上“没用”。金融系统仍然是瘫痪的，市场利息和目标利息之间鸿沟巨大，只不过在08年10月份这个鸿沟横亘在 银行间利率和美国短期国债反映的目标利率之间，现在则横亘在商业银行间利率和银行向外操作实际经济业务时的利率之间。

2 形势很严峻，O8马很着急。

3 美国的既得利益阶层的雇佣文人（如加里·贝克尔）和中国的宪章派、崇洋派、买办文人一样，继续一条路走到黑。必将遭到美国普通人民的唾弃。

美国有可能再次爆发30年代中期的社会运动。

Banks’ ‘Catatonic Fear’ Means Consumers Don’t Get TARP Relief

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By James Sterngold

Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- As the new owner of $172.5 billion of preferred shares and warrants in 208 U.S. financial institutions, the Treasury Department hasn’t succeeded in thawing frozen credit markets, leaving taxpayers propping up an industry that won’t lend to them.

While inter-bank lending rates have fallen since Congress approved the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program on Oct. 3, most bank lending to consumers remains tight and interest rates high. The average credit-card rate was 14.33 percent on Dec. 16, according to IndexCreditCards.com in Cleveland, almost unchanged from 14.41 percent in October 2007.

That’s prompted criticism from Alan S. Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University in New Jersey and a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, who says the government should take a more active role as a stakeholder in the nation’s banks.

“With the banks in a state of catatonic fear now, they’re just sitting on the capital,” Blinder said in an interview. “I don’t fault the banks one bit, since this shows Wall Street they’re safer, but then this doesn’t get you much improvement. If you’re taking money from the public purse, we should get something in return, and we’re really not.”

Jeffrey Garten, a professor of international trade and finance at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, and a Commerce Department undersecretary during the Clinton administration, says banks should be forced to increase their lending or risk having taxpayer money taken away.

“The government isn’t acting aggressively enough to demand a quid pro quo,” Garten said. “The public good is the key to the private good in this case. It’s not the other way around.”

$8.5 Trillion

Although the government has committed more than $8.5 trillion to energizing the economy, and the Fed cut a key lending rate almost to zero, banks haven’t made it easier to borrow. The Fed said consumer credit fell by $6.4 billion in August, the largest drop in 65 years, and then by $3.5 billion in October, the first time since 1992 that there were two months of declines in a year.

In its most recent quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey in October, the Fed reported that about 85 percent of U.S. banks said they had tightened standards on commercial and industrial loans to companies with more than $50 million in annual sales, up from 60 percent in July. Ninety-five percent said they increased the cost of those loans. About 70 percent said they made it more difficult to obtain prime mortgages, and almost 65 percent said they did the same for consumer loans.

Mortgage Rates

While mortgage rates have declined, they haven’t fallen as fast as bank borrowing rates, meaning financial institutions are demanding more profit for every dollar they lend. Average rates on 30-year residential mortgages fell to 5.14 percent last month, according to data compiled by McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac. That’s down from 6.67 percent in June 2007, before the worst turmoil in the housing market. At the same time, the spread of mortgage rates over the 10-year Treasury bond yield rose to 2.958 percentage points from 1.567.

The spread of rates on so-called jumbo mortgages, those of more than $729,750, is close to a record at 1.6 percentage points above the rate for smaller mortgages that conform to terms of ones Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will purchase, according to financial data firm BanxQuote in White Plains, New York. A year ago the difference was 0.23 percentage points.

High interest rates have angered consumers. The Fed has offered relief in the form of rule changes that allow banks to raise rates only on new credit cards and future purchases, not on existing balances. Banks will also have to give cardholders 45 days notice of changes in terms, up from 15 days. Those changes aren’t scheduled to take effect until July 2010.