Last Wednesday night, David Clark, a London-based banker, received a nasty shock. Reports from Washington suggested the US government would soon impose restrictive new regulation on the derivatives world – a move Mr Clark believes could severely damage financial business in London and New York.
最近一个周三晚上，驻伦敦银行家戴维·克拉克(David Clark)收到一个令人震惊的坏消息。来自华盛顿的报道显示，美国政府将很快对衍生品实行新的限制性管制——克拉克相信，这一行动可能严重破坏伦敦和纽约的金融业务。
He duly prepared a furious statement on behalf of the Wholesale Market Brokers' Association, a lobbying group he leads. But when, a few hours later, he saw the proposals from Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, Mr Clark had second thoughts. “What Geithner has written may not be so bad,” he says, adding there is now “uncertainty” about what will happen next.
他代表批发市场经纪人协会(WMBA)适时准备了一份言辞激烈的声明。批发市场经纪人协会是他所领导的游说组织。但几个小时后，当他看到来自美国财政部长蒂姆·盖特纳(Tim Geithner)的提案时，克拉克却犹豫了。“盖特纳写的或许不那么糟糕，”他说。他还补充说，接下来会发生什么事，目前“尚不确定”。
No wonder. Until recently, the technical detail of derivatives excited only financial geeks. Now it is turning into a political hot potato with potentially big implications for bank profits. After the first wave of policy reforms unleashed by the administration of Barack Obama in response to the financial crisis, focused on short-term crisis measures, such as the “stress tests” of the health of banks, the next frontier is a fight about how the financial industry is structured – and run.
这也难怪。直到最近，衍生品的技术细节还只是金融怪才们的兴奋点。如今，它在变成一块政治上的烫手山芋，对银行利润可能产生巨大影响。巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)政府应对金融危机的第一波政策改革浪潮关注的是应对危机的短期措施，如银行健康状况的“压力测试”，这一波改革浪潮释放之后，下一片疆土将是展开一场事关金融行业如何组织和运行的战争。
And what makes the once arcane issue of derivatives so emotive is that they are not just central to the banks' modern business model, but also cut to the heart of an ideological question about the degree to which financial players should be free to innovate, without state control.
一度神秘莫测的衍生品问题染上了浓重的感情色彩，原因在于，衍生品不仅是银行现代业务模型的中心，而且直捣意识形态问题的核心，即金融机构应当拥有多达的自由摆脱政府监管，实现创新。
A public debate about derivatives is long overdue. For while politicians – and consumers – largely ignored this sector during the first seven years of the decade, an extraordinary revolution has quietly unfolded in recent years.
衍生品的公众辩论来得太晚了。最近10年的前7年中，政治家——和消费者——基本上忽视了这块业务，而近几年，一场不寻常的革命已静静地展开。
When the trading of “derivatives” – instruments whose value “derives” from something else – took off on a large scale three decades ago, it was a marginal corner of finance. By the start of this decade, the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements estimated there were about $100,000bn of outstanding deals. By late 2008 there were nearly $600,000bn, 16 times global equity market capitalisation (and 10 times global gross domestic product).
当“衍生品”——一种工具，其估值“衍生”自其它产品——交易在30年前大规模起步时，还处在金融领域的边缘角落。据总部位于巴塞尔的国际清算银行(BIS)估计，本10年之初约有100万亿美元的未清算交易，到2008年末达到近600万亿美元未清算，是全球股票市值的16倍（全球生产总值的10倍。）