美国历史上的国有化重要案例

SuzeOrman

　　为什么国有化不是美国风格？
　　本周，由于总统奥巴马开始推广他的经济复苏计划，而美国新财长和商务部长蒂姆.盖茨那也准备要宣布他针对国家金融机构的拯救策略，关于“银行国有化”的说法再一次流传开来。有很多事情都需要去拯救。美国银行——全国最大的银行——在花旗集团几乎要跌破上个月创造的最低线时，它也看到了二十五年来的股价最低点；即使威尔斯法戈——曾经被认为是大银行中最安全的一个——在过去的六十天里也已经跌掉了一半的市值。很多人都会疑惑，那么还有什么是可以被政府“国有化"的呢？但是这有可能是一个错误的问题。
　　大多数美国人都本能的厌恶国有化这个词——这似乎就是苏维埃或是法国巴黎公社的缩影，这似乎就意味着低效率的工厂，没有能力的经营者，傲慢的官僚作风，长长的队伍和粗暴的服务。简而言之，这不是美国式的作风。
　　但让我们停下来想一下：如果政府在经营银行时做的更差，反驳的话就变成“比谁更差？”银行家自己么？现在要辨清这个问题有点困难。房利美——这个在去年秋天由于飞速亏损而被政府接管的房贷大鳄，作为政府经营的机构，其实在几十年来都运营的相当良好。房利美只是在一场“市场知道谁最好”热爆发的时候，其执照（和实行的支付结构）被折腾了一把，导致了总计达到一家资产负债表得到联邦政府保证的私人公司。在那个时候，运营公司的聪明人们就开始“将股东价值最大化”，他们几百万美元的赔偿金并不是附带得到的，而是由灾难引起的。如果有什么可以让房利美（和他的同伴房帝美）回复到政府机构的状态，这将会是华盛顿在时机到来时做的最明智的一件事。
　　另一个争议就是朝国有化方向走的一个动作就有可能导致私人投资者愿意在不受政府更多约束的情况下，介入并接手银行。但是没有人会计划一个全行业范围的接管，并且陷入最艰难境地的大银行都不仅仅是 “太大太失败”，而是对于私人投资者来说，现在要以合适的价格收购，这些银行太过巨大了。事实上，根据最新的经济预告来判断，我们不应该担心美国最大的银行会不会被国有化——而是当它被国有化时会以何种方式发生。
　　事实是美国在国有化这条路上有着悠长的历史，但是却被忽视了。其实从1789年西北法令和之后2803年的路易斯安那购买条约就已经开始。这两项法令都是在土地远比现金有价值的时候，将大量的美国国土变为公众所有。甚至在今天，美国三分之一的土地都是公众拥有的，正如沿着海岸的大陆架，我们的领空，跟不用说数十万英里的道路和价值万亿美元的其他对我们的私有经济相当重要的公用基础建设。
　　在第一次世界大战时，国家铁路为了支撑战争，成功的国有化了。在上世纪三十年代，复兴银行公司为了拯救6000多家银行，分别在他们那里购买了几百万的股票。在二战期间，政府接管了消费品的整个价格体系——一项比接手几家大银行更加复杂的工作——并且完成的非常好，得到了大部分经济学家的认可。在80年代，为了拯救这个系统，信托公司查封了几百起失败的存贷款。911以后，政府有效的将机场的私有保安国有化，并且用联邦培训服务局的人员代替了他们。
　　这些先例都提醒了我们，在闪避关于银行巨鳄破产“国有化”的前景的议论时，我们都关注错了地方。这不是国有化该不该发生，而是应该以何种方式在何时发生。
　　并且这意味着奥巴马政府的真实选择和罗斯福面对银行，里根和布什面对存贷问题时是一样的：被动和主动的同化，调整勘漏并直接管理；在金融危机最终缓解后法律规范成型，包括什么法规，谁来负责和如何强制执行。
　　我们需要一场辩论——尽快。
　　Talk of "nationalizing the banks" is in the air again this week, as President Obama hits the road to sell his recovery plan and Tim Geithner, the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission gets ready to announce his rescue strategy for the nation's financial institutions. There's plenty to rescue. Bank of America—the country's biggest bank—saw its stock hit a 25-year low, while Citigroup is barely off the bottom it reached last month; even Wells Fargo—once thought the "safest" of the big banks—has lost half its value in the last 60 days. You might wonder, as many are, what's left for the government to "nationalize." But that may be the wrong issue.
　　Most Americans instinctively dislike the sound of "nationalization"—it summons up images of the Soviets, or the French, of inefficient factories, incompetent managers, bloated bureaucracies, long lines, and surly service. It's un-American, in short.
　　But pause for a moment: if government will do a worse job running the banks, the rejoinder is "worse than whom"? The bankers themselves? That's a tough argument to make right now. Fannie Mae—the mammoth mortgage lender the government took over last fall after its losses soared, actually operated quite successfully as a government-run agency for decades. Fannie got in trouble only after its charter (and executive pay structure) was jiggered, in a burst of "markets know best" fever, to create what amounted to a private company whose balance sheet was federally guaranteed. At that point, the smart guys running it set out to "maximize shareholder value" and not incidentally their multimillion-dollar compensation; disaster resulted. If anything, returning Fannie Mae (and its companion Freddie Mac) to straightforward government-agency status may be the smartest thing Washington can do when the time comes.
　　Another argument is that a move toward nationalization right now would drive away private investors willing to step in and take over the banks without further cost to the government. But no one's proposing an industry-wide takeover, and the big banks in the worst trouble are not only "too big to fail," but too big for private investors to buy at any sane price right now. In fact, to judge from the latest economic forecasts, we shouldn't be worrying whether nationalization of America's biggest banks will happen—but what kind of nationalization will occur when it does happen.
　　The truth is that the United States has a long and overlooked history of "nationalization," starting with the Northwest Ordinance of 1789, and then the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Both acts put vast amounts of American territory in the public domain, at a time when land was far more valuable than currency. Even today, a third of all the land in the United States is still publicly owned, as are the continental shelves along our coasts, the airspace above us, not to mention hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and trillions of dollars' worth of other public infrastructure so essential to our private economy.
　　In World War I, the nations' railroads were successfully nationalized to sustain the war effort. In the 1930s, the Reconstruction Finance Corp. bought millions of shares in over 6,000 banks in order to rescue them. During World War II, government took control of the economy's entire pricing system for consumer goods—a more complex job than taking over several big banks—and did quite well at it, most economists agree. In the 1980s, the Resolution Trust Corp. seized hundreds of failed savings and loans in order to save the system. After 9/11, the government effectively nationalized the private-security firms at airports, and replaced them with the federal TSA.
　　What all these precedents remind us is that, in ducking any discussion of the prospect for "nationalization" of our bankrupt banking giants, we've focused on the wrong issue. It's not whether nationalization should happen, but what sort of nationalization will happen and when.
　　And that means the real choices for the Obama administration are the same Roosevelt faced with the banks and Reagan and Bush faced with the savings and loans: passive versus active nationalization; regulatory oversight versus direct management; and the shape of regulation after the financial crisis finally eases, including what the regulations will be, who will administer them, and how seriously and well they're enforced.
　　We need to start having that debate—and soon.