La Vita è Bella Life is Beautiful. La Vita es Bonita. 美麗人生　

242愛的鼓勵 7訂閱站台

當每個國民都背負著65萬元的債務時，政府依然大幅舉債，因為建設會刺激經濟，人民所得會增加，稅收也會跟著增加。同時要減稅，如此消費會增加，就業也就會增加，稅收也會跟著增加。對大企業也要有租稅優惠，因為會帶動相關產業與周遭的服務業的成長，與就業的成長，最後政府的稅收也會增加。要補貼房貸的利息，因為建築業是火車頭工業，會帶動經濟成長....。就如同電視的廣告所說的：「緊握雙手是幸福，張開雙手是奢華的幸福。」－－「斤斤計較收入是幸福，大手筆花錢是奢華的幸福。」

台灣雖然有預算法的規範(根據公共債務法規定，我國中央政府舉債上限為前3年國民生產毛額平均值的40%)，但是政府仍有許多不受預算法節制的預備金，甚至是國營事業的轉投資。供花錢的金庫與藏錢的保險箱都相當齊備，若又在會計上發揮創意與利用衍生性金融商品，那麼可以用的錢更是多的不得了。我們的政府是否也作同樣的事呢？

希臘政府把機場稅的收益「賣」給高盛（Goldman Sachs)，所以從高盛拿到一大筆錢；發行彩券的收益也「賣」了。因為是「賣」，所以不算在「債」裡頭，因此得以符合歐盟的規範(在 1991 年底通過之馬斯垂克條約中即明訂加入歐盟的財政門檻；流量方面，預算赤字占 GDP 不得超過 3 %，超過者必須持續且實質地予以降低；存量方面，債務餘額占 GDP 不得超過 60%，高於此標準者須大幅朝向 60 %調整。)，符合歐元組織的規範。

為什麼華爾街的銀行家可以領如此高的薪酬？有很大的部分是因為他們發揮創意，在僵固的會計規範中，規避了審計與監督，迎合人性與政客的需求。AIG 的credit default swap 與 Goldman Sachs 為希臘政府所量身訂做的種種衍生性商品正是如此。

我應該如何來評價這種情事呢？是企管或策略裡所推崇的創意嗎？creative accounting 的確是創意的表現。還是銀行家與政客們的膽識呢？這種「不入虎穴，焉得虎子」的膽識與「立志做大事」果決！果真是「成大事者，不拘小節。」



Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis        

By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ        
Published: February 13, 2010        

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.        

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.        


Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.        


The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.        




It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.        

Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street’s role in the world’s latest financial drama.        

As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.       

run-up   n.  a period of time leading up to an important event; the preparation for this （重要事情的）前期；準備階段；準備

In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come.        


Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country’s liabilities.        

Some of the Greek deals were named after figures in Greek mythology. One of them, for instance, was called Aeolos, after the god of the winds.        

The crisis in Greece poses the most significant challenge yet to Europe’s common currency, the euro, and the Continent’s goal of economic unity. The country is, in the argot of banking, too big to be allowed to fail. Greece owes the world $300 billion, and major banks are on the hook for much of that debt. A default would reverberate around the globe.        


A spokeswoman for the Greek finance ministry said the government had met with many banks in recent months and had not committed to any bank’s offers. All debt financings “are conducted in an effort of transparency,” she said. Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.        

While Wall Street’s handiwork in Europe has received little attention on this side of the Atlantic, it has been sharply criticized in Greece and in magazines like Der Spiegel in Germany.        


“Politicians want to pass the ball forward, and if a banker can show them a way to pass a problem to the future, they will fall for it,” said Gikas A. Hardouvelis, an economist and former government official who helped write a recent report on Greece’s accounting policies.        

Wall Street did not create Europe’s debt problem. But bankers enabled Greece and others to borrow beyond their means, in deals that were perfectly legal. Few rules govern how nations can borrow the money they need for expenses like the military and health care. The market for sovereign debt — the Wall Street term for loans to governments — is as unfettered as it is vast.        


“If a government wants to cheat, it can cheat,” said Garry Schinasi, a veteran of the International Monetary Fund’s capital markets surveillance unit, which monitors vulnerability in global capital markets.        

Banks eagerly exploited what was, for them, a highly lucrative symbiosis with free-spending governments. While Greece did not take advantage of Goldman’s proposal in November 2009, it had paid the bank about $300 million in fees for arranging the 2001 transaction, according to several bankers familiar with the deal.        


Such derivatives, which are not openly documented or disclosed, add to the uncertainty over how deep the troubles go in Greece and which other governments might have used similar off-balance sheet accounting.      


The tide of fear is now washing over other economically troubled countries on the periphery of Europe, making it more expensive for Italy, Spain and Portugal to borrow.        

For all the benefits of uniting Europe with one currency, the birth of the euro came with an original sin: countries like Italy and Greece entered the monetary union with bigger deficits than the ones permitted under the treaty that created the currency. Rather than raise taxes or reduce spending, however, these governments artificially reduced their deficits with derivatives.        

Derivatives do not have to be sinister. The 2001 transaction involved a type of derivative known as a swap. One such instrument, called an interest-rate swap, can help companies and countries cope with swings in their borrowing costs by exchanging fixed-rate payments for floating-rate ones, or vice versa. Another kind, a currency swap, can minimize the impact of volatile foreign exchange rates.        


But with the help of JPMorgan, Italy was able to do more than that. Despite persistently high deficits, a 1996 derivative helped bring Italy’s budget into line by swapping currency with JPMorgan at a favorable exchange rate, effectively putting more money in the government’s hands. In return, Italy committed to future payments that were not booked as liabilities.        

“Derivatives are a very useful instrument,” said Gustavo Piga, an economics professor who wrote a report for the Council on Foreign Relations on the Italian transaction. “They just become bad if they’re used to window-dress accounts.”        


In Greece, the financial wizardry went even further. In what amounted to a garage sale on a national scale, Greek officials essentially mortgaged the country’s airports and highways to raise much-needed money.       

Aeolos, a legal entity created in 2001, helped Greece reduce the debt on its balance sheet that year. As part of the deal, Greece got cash upfront in return for pledging future landing fees at the country’s airports. A similar deal in 2000 called Ariadne devoured the revenue that the government collected from its national lottery. Greece, however, classified those transactions as sales, not loans, despite doubts by many critics.        

These kinds of deals have been controversial within government circles for years. As far back as 2000, European finance ministers fiercely debated whether derivative deals used for creative accounting should be disclosed.        

The answer was no. But in 2002, accounting disclosure was required for many entities like Aeolos and Ariadne that did not appear on nations’ balance sheets, prompting governments to restate such deals as loans rather than sales.        

Still, as recently as 2008, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, reported that “in a number of instances, the observed securitization operations seem to have been purportedly designed to achieve a given accounting result, irrespective of the economic merit of the operation.”        

        
While such accounting gimmicks may be beneficial in the short run, over time they can prove disastrous.   

       
George Alogoskoufis, who became Greece’s finance minister in a political party shift after the Goldman deal, criticized the transaction in the Parliament in 2005. The deal, Mr. Alogoskoufis argued, would saddle the government with big payments to Goldman until 2019.       

Mr. Alogoskoufis, who stepped down a year ago, said in an e-mail message last week that Goldman later agreed to reconfigure the deal “to restore its good will with the republic.” He said the new design was better for Greece than the old one.

In 2005, Goldman sold the interest rate swap to the National Bank of Greece, the country’s largest bank, according to two people briefed on the transaction.

In 2008, Goldman helped the bank put the swap into a legal entity called Titlos. But the bank retained the bonds that Titlos issued, according to Dealogic, a financial research firm, for use as collateral to borrow even more from the European Central Bank.

Edward Manchester, a senior vice president at the Moody’s credit rating agency, said the deal would ultimately be a money-loser for Greece because of its long-term payment obligations.

Referring to the Titlos swap with the government of Greece, he said: “This swap is always going to be unprofitable for the Greek government.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html?em

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The story was taken from The New York Times.  The copyright remains with The New York Times Company.  The authors and The New York Times are not involved with, nor endorse the production of this blog.