Bankruptcy Is Vital to Capitalism

美国正在重温一条古老的经验：失败和破产是资本主义不可缺少的组成部分。对于那些债务负担过重的公司，破产是给它们机会重新开始并决定哪些债权人能获得偿付哪些不能的一个有序的途径。诺贝尔经济学奖获得者斯蒂格里茨(Joseph Stiglitz)曾指出：在市场不能有效配置资本监督其使用的时候，破产是一个应对办法。在情况良好的时候，破产会鼓励人们冒险。毕竟，如果在经济活动中，人人都害怕去尝试可能会失败的事业，那么，这样的经济将陷入停滞。不过，现代美国企业的破产案例最早发生在像今天这样的不景气时期。宾夕法尼亚大学法学教授曾就破产史有过着述的斯基尔(David Skeel)说，十九世纪末，接近20%的铁路属于资不抵债的铁路公司。由于州政府无法处理超出他们管辖范围的铁路，而国会又受制于刻板的宪法释义，债权人只好诉诸法庭。法官提出了一种在众多债权人中间分配资产的办法，后来被写进1898年的一部法规。它的精神一直保留到现在。今天的通用汽车(General Motors)和克莱斯勒(Chrysler)就像十九世纪的铁路公司。他们无力偿还债务，现在，唯一的问题不是债权人是否会受到打击，而是他们将受到怎样的打击。今天的通用与破产法庭上的通用之间的唯一区别是，现在是总统和他的手下在做决定，而不是受联邦法律制约的破产法庭法官。要想避免破产，需征得债权人的同意。哈佛大学商学院教授莫斯(David Moss)说，从理论上讲，企业可以通过在各方债权人之间达成协议实现全面破产 。但实际当中这种做法通常行不通。“通常至少会有某一方不肯配合”。具体到通用而言，这个“不合作者”就是通用债券持有人。“新政”带来的法律调整加大了达成协议的难度。人们的传统观点是，公开的过程和清晰的规则有助于带来公正的结果，而不是偏向于华尔街的结果。从上述传统观点出发，批评奥巴马政府的人认为，政府没有权力去插手通用挑选首席执行长在各利益相关方（汽车工人退休人员供应商和贷款银行）之间分配损失。他们担心，“政治”会带来不公正的不明智的决策，诸如用纳税人的钱保护国内贷款银行和汽车工人，而让在政治上不那么敏感的行业的银行和工人受到损害。但是，“政治”有时候只是“民主”的另一种说法。人们现在难以理解为什么大银行和保险公司得到救助，而通用就得破产。很难让被解雇的汽车工人相信，对于美国经济而言，银行及其提供的信贷就像人体必不可少的循环系统，它比任何其他行业都更重要，即使是庞大的美国汽车业。奥巴马总统知道，为复兴美国的银行业，他基本可以肯定还需要更多的纳税人的钱。民众不会喜欢这一点。如果一项非常公开的避免破产的努力最终失败，他会说：我努力过了，不过没成功。这或许有助于让国会同意向银行提供资金。不过，大型金融机构到底怎么了呢？他们为什么不能像梅西百货(Macy's)和达美航空(Delta Air Lines)那样走破产的路呢？一个原因是，一家零售商或航空公司可以在剥离负债后经营商店或飞机，而金融机构则没有那些有形资产：他们有的就是他们的名号人员和他们短期内借到大量资金的能力。这些东西可能会在法官考虑破产问题的时候立刻消逝殆尽。因此，美国为银行业设计了一个替代破产的机制，那就是由联邦破产担保公司(Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.)在没有法官参与的情况下迅速完成这件事。财政部和美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve，简称：美联储)希望对大型机构有一个类似破产的机制，以避免雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)或美国国际集团(American International Group)的引发的问题再度出现（雷曼兄弟的破产正逢危机开始加剧的糟糕时机，有些人说是雷曼的破产引发了危机。AIG最后倒没破产，但纳税人为此付出了巨大成本）。他们希望下次能有更好的选择，但他们认为常规的破产并不适合。不过，也有人不这么看。斯基尔和西北大学的奥尔特(Kenneth Ayotte)最近写到，当有人提到破产是解决金融机构过失的一种机制时，人们通常的反应是怀疑；那些赞成救助金融机构的人认为破产是个很糟糕的办法。似乎人人都认为破产不会带来任何好结果。他们不同意这个看法，并希望修改破产法来应对金融业的特殊性，以便让规定适用于所有机构，减少财政部长和美联储主席的裁量权。破产并非死亡判决。它更像是一次器官移植。它可以挽救一家公司的生命，但有时病人还是会死亡。破产不是什么好事，而且永远不应该让破产轻松得产生鼓励人们做蠢事的效果。在严重经济危机时期，如果有那么几家知名公司发生引人瞩目的破产案，那将削弱人们对经济的信心，应该尽量避免。但是，要防止过去的错误和债务妨碍未来的经济发展，采取破产或其他有序的方法来分担痛苦是唯一的办法。David Wessel相关阅读原声视频：破产不是死刑(中文字幕) 2009-04-03让通用汽车破产是个好办法 2009-04-01美政府催逼通用和克莱斯勒选择破产 2009-03-31通用汽车和克莱斯勒重组计划未获政府批准 2009-03-30


America is relearning an old lesson: Failure and bankruptcy are essential to capitalism.Bankruptcy is an orderly way to give an overburdened debtor a fresh start and to decide which creditors get paid back and which don't. As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz teaches: Bankruptcy is a way to cope with those times when markets fail to allocate capital wisely and monitor its use.In good times, bankruptcy is a way to encourage risk-taking. After all, an economy in which everyone fears trying something that might fail is a stagnant one. But the roots of modern American business bankruptcy date to bad times like today.At the end of the 19th century, nearly 20% of the railroad track belonged to insolvent railroads, says David Skeel, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who has written a history of bankruptcy. With state governments unable to deal with railroads that stretched beyond their borders, and Congress hamstrung by a narrow interpretation of the Constitution, creditors turned to courts. Judges fashioned an approach to divvy up assets among creditors that was codified in an 1898 law, the spirit of which survives today.General Motors and Chrysler are 21st century analogs of 19th century railroads. They cannot pay their debts; the only issue now is how, not whether, their creditors take a hit. The only difference between GM today and GM in bankruptcy court is that the president and his appointees are making the decisions, instead of a bankruptcy judge constrained by federal law.Avoiding bankruptcy requires consent of creditors. 'In theory, you can do a full bankruptcy through agreement among the parties, but that usually doesn't work,' says David Moss, a Harvard Business School professor. 'You usually have at least one holdout,' in this case GM's bondholders. New Deal changes to the law made cutting deals harder. The view was that an open process with clear rules was more likely to produce a fair result, not one that favored Wall Street types.With that view in mind, President Barack Obama's critics say the government has no business picking GM's chief executive and apportioning losses among auto workers, pensioners, suppliers and lenders. They fear 'politics' will produce unfair or unwise decisions, such as protecting lenders and workers in the domestic auto industry at taxpayer expense while lenders and workers in less politically salient industries suffer.But sometimes 'politics' is just another word for 'democracy.' The people are having a hard time understanding why big banks and insurers get bailouts and GM gets bankruptcy. It's hard to convince laid-off auto workers that banks and their credit are the vital circulatory system of the U.S. economy, more important than any one industry, even one as large as domestic auto makers. Mr. Obama knows he almost certainly will need more taxpayer money to resuscitate the nation's banks; that won't be popular. If making a very public effort to avoid bankruptcy fails, he will say: I tried, but it just couldn't be done. That may help him get Congress to approve money for the banks.What about big financial houses, though? Why can't they go through bankruptcy the way Macy's and Delta Air Lines did? One reason is that a retailer or airline can shed debts and then operate stores and airplanes. Financial institutions have nothing so tangible: They basically have their names, their people and their ability to borrow a lot of money short term. All of that can vanish instantly while a judge ponders the matter. So the U.S. devised a bankruptcy substitute for banks: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does the deed quickly without a judge.The Treasury and the Federal Reserve want a similar pseudo-bankruptcy process for big financial institutions to avoid the problems of Lehman Brothers (whose bankruptcy coincided with a bad turn in the crisis and some say caused it) and American International Group (which didn't go into bankruptcy, at substantial cost to taxpayers). They want better choices next time, and they don't think conventional bankruptcy is practical.Not everyone sees it that way. 'The usual reaction if one mentions bankruptcy as a mechanism for addressing a financial institution's default is incredulity,' Mr. Skeel and Northwestern University's Kenneth Ayotte wrote recently. 'Those who favor the rescue of financial institutions...treat bankruptcy as anathema. Everyone seems to argue that nothing good can come from bankruptcy.' They disagree, and would tweak bankruptcy laws to deal with the peculiarities of finance so the rules are clear to all -- and the Treasury secretary and Fed chairman have less discretion.Bankruptcy is not a death sentence. It's more like an organ transplant. It can save a company's life, but sometimes the patient dies. Bankruptcy is unpleasant and should never be so easy that it encourages foolishness. Headline-making bankruptcies of several brand-name companies at a moment of severe economic crisis can so undermine confidence in the economy that avoiding them makes sense.But bankruptcy, or some other orderly process to share the pain, is the only way to prevent mistakes and debts of the past from hobbling an economy's future.David Wessel