Ironic Coda
Alan Greenspan entered government in the 1970s as an apostle of free markets, free trade and deregulation, and for 18 successful years, he remained largely true to these principles. Although he was himself a bank regulator, Mr. Greenspan spoke frequently of the dangers of excessive regulation and its tendency to suppress competition and market discipline.
So some observers were surprised last week when, in what may have been his last official act, he endorsed the "separation of banking and commerce" -- a hoary idea that is used to ward off competition. In the 1980s, for example, the securities and insurance industries cited the separation of banking and commerce to prevent banks from entering their businesses. And now that they are in the securities and insurance business, banks are citing separation to keep the likes of Wal-Mart out of banking.
Why would a Fed chairman -- particularly Alan Greenspan -- climb on this bandwagon? The reasons have to do not with policy or principle, but with preserving the institutional power of the Fed. The Fed has very little jurisdiction over banks themselves; by law, it only regulates state-chartered banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System, and this group has been diminishing in importance in recent years as many of the larger banks have converted to national banks regulated by the Comptroller of the Currency. But the Fed administers the Bank Holding Company Act (BHCA), which requires companies that control banks -- known as bank holding companies -- to obtain the Fed's approval before they can engage in a limited number of activities that the Fed specifies. Since almost all large banks are subsidiaries of holding companies, this authority gives the Fed a powerful lever with which to work its will in banking.
The separation of banking and commerce -- the idea that banks can only be affiliated with a limited number of activities -- is at the heart of the BHCA. Using the BHCA to prevent Wal-Mart's entry into banking is misplaced, however, for an important reason: When Congress enacted the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) in 1999, it enlarged the circle of activities with which banks could be affiliated from activities "closely related to banking" to activities "of a financial nature." This change, which was negotiated by Mr. Greenspan at a time when there was great support in Congress for letting banks into the securities and insurance business, was a neat compromise. It permitted banks to acquire or be acquired by securities firms and insurance companies. But this change in language implicitly abandoned the rationale for separating banking and commerce.
The separation idea was based on the notion that banks, as suppliers of credit, should not be allowed to affiliate with users of credit. The fear was that these banks might lend preferentially to their affiliates, or refuse to lend to competitors of affiliates, or be required to bail out affiliates if they got into financial trouble. The fact is, however, that all these things could happen if a bank were affiliated with a major user of credit such as a securities firm. Once Congress permitted an affiliation with securities firms the separation principle was a dead letter; there is simply no way to say that a retailer like Wal-Mart poses a danger to its affiliated bank but a securities firm like Merrill Lynch does not.
Certainly, someone as smart as Mr. Greenspan understood this at the time, and understands it today. But the institutional interests of the Fed seem to be paramount, and so the chairman has soldiered on, despite the inconsistency between his generally pro-competition outlook and his endorsement of an anti-competitive idea. It all goes to show the timeless truth of the familiar Washington saw: "Where you stand depends upon where you sit."
Nevertheless, the GLBA language has placed the Fed's authority at an impasse. The "financial in nature" compromise requires the Fed to draw a line between "financial" activities and all others. This is a mission impossible, demonstrated by the Fed's failure, after more than five years, to declare whether real-estate brokerage is a financial activity. On what standards could the Fed make such a determination? Securities brokerage is clearly a financial activity, so why not real-estate brokerage? But if real-estate brokerage is a financial activity, why not used-car brokerage? The fact is that there is no line between financial and commercial activities; whatever the Fed decides will be wholly arbitrary and will certainly seem so to the disappointed industry and its supporters in Congress. The Fed now seems paralyzed. At some point, both it and Congress will recognize that authority founded on a false distinction between financial and other activities cannot stand.
So Alan Greenspan's support for the separation of banking and commerce is an ironic coda to an extraordinary government career. He was the most successful Fed chairman in history because, in general, he hewed to logic, principle and a deep belief in free markets and competition. Here he appears to have succumbed to the ever-present occupational hazard of the government official -- shaping his principles to fit the needs of his institution. The irony is that he only bought time.
Mr. Wallison, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was Treasury general counsel in the first Reagan administration. This is the last in a short series on Mr. Greenspan.
一个讽刺意味的句号
满脑子都是自由市场、自由贸易以及政府应减少监管思想的格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)于20世纪70年代进入美国政府工作，近十八年来他在成功的职业生涯中基本上都坚持了这些信念。虽然他自己就是一个银行业监管人员，但格林斯潘常常都会谈到过度管制的危害、及其可能对市场竞争和市场机制产生的抑制作用。
难怪上周一些观察人士会感到惊讶：格林斯潘做了可能是其在任的最后一件事：支持银行和商业分业经营的做法──分业经营是一个阻止竞争的古老办法。20世纪80年代时，证券和保险业就曾援引银行和商业分业经营的概念，试图阻止银行业进入证券和保险业务领域。如今，银行已经进入证券和保险业务领域了，援引分业经营这个概念的就变成了银行业，这成了银行业试图阻止沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)等商业企业进入银行业的武器。
告别格林斯潘时代
? 格林斯潘退休后会做什么？
? 格林斯潘为人们设立了标杆
? 格林斯潘和贝南克的利率之旅
? 再见了，格老！
? 贝南克将接手一个日益民主的Fed为什么一位美国联邦储备委员会(Fed)的主席，尤其是格林斯潘，也要为银行业摇旗助阵呢？这无关政策或原则，只是为了保持Fed作为监管机构的力量。Fed自身拥有的银行监管权有限：根据法律规定，Fed只负责监管联邦储备体系内的州特许银行，近年来这个银行群体的重要性日益下降，许多大银行已转变成全国性银行，受美国通货检察局(Comptroller of the Currency)监管。但Fed也负责《银行控股公司法案》(Bank Holding Company Act, 简称BHCA法案)的执行，该法案要求银行控股公司在参与Fed确定的少数几种业务活动前需要获得Fed的许可。由于几乎所有的大银行都是控股公司的子公司，这项法案使得Fed在监管银行业务方面如虎添翼。
银行和商业分业经营，即银行只能参与有限的业务活动，是BHCA法案的核心。但用BHCA法案来阻止沃尔玛等进入银行业并不恰当，一个重要的原因就是：1999年美国国会通过了Gramm-Leach-Bliley法案（简称GLBA法案），将银行能参与的业务范围从“与银行业紧密联系的业务”扩大到了“具有金融性质的业务”。这项改变就由格林斯潘促成的，当时美国国会中有相当多人支持允许银行进入证券和保险业务，它实际上是一个让步。它允许银行收购证券、保险公司，或被证券、保险公司收购。但这项文字上的改变实际上暗中放弃了银行和商业分业经营的原则。
分业经营概念是基于“银行作为信贷的提供方，不应与信贷的使用方有关联”这样一个想法。担心如果存在这种关联，银行可能就会优先贷款给自己的关联公司或拒绝向关联公司的竞争对手贷款，或如果关联公司出现财务问题，可能就会被要求援助关联公司。但事实是如果一家银行与一个大的信贷使用方、如证券公司有关联的话，这些事情的确可能发生。一旦美国国会允许银行与证券公司建立关联，分业经营实际上就已形同虚设；你不能说沃尔玛这样的零售商会对关联银行有威胁，而美林(Merrill Lynch)这样的证券公司却不会。
当然，像格林斯潘这样聪明的人当时和今天都是知道这点的。但Fed的机构利益似乎是压倒一切的，因此这位Fed主席就明知山有虎，偏向虎山行了，虽然这与他向来鼓励竞争的信念不符。这一切都反映了在华盛顿屡试不爽的一条真理：你支持什么观点取决于你代表谁的利益。
不管怎样，GLBA让Fed的监管陷入了一个尴尬境地。“金融性质”的新规定要求Fed在金融业务和其他业务之间划出一条线。这似乎是一项无法完成的任务，五年多来Fed都未能决定房地产经纪业务是否属于金融业务，就充分说明了这一点。Fed能以什么样的标准来划定呢？证券经纪显然是金融业务，那么为什么房地产经纪就不是呢？但如果房地产经纪归类于金融业务，那么为什么二手车经纪就不是呢？事实是金融和商业活动之间并没有一条清楚的界线；不管Fed如何划定，都将会是武断的，而且感到失望的相关行业及其国会内的支持者也都会这样想。Fed现在似乎陷于束手无策的境地。将来的某个时候，Fed和美国国会终将会意识到，建立在错误地划分金融和其他商业活动的基础之上的监管是行不通的。
因此，格林斯潘支持银行和商业分业经营，这对于其出色的公职职业生涯是一个具有讽刺意味的结尾。他曾经是历史上最成功的Fed主席，因为总体而言，他坚持理性、坚持原则，深信自由市场和自由竞争。但到了公职职业生涯即将结束的今天，他似乎向每个政府官员都会遇到的职业压力屈服了──调整自己的原则，以适应其所代表政府机构的需要。讽刺的是，他也不过是拖延了时间。
（编者按：Peter J. Wallison是American Enterprise Institute的研究员，曾在里根第一届任期时担任美国财政部首席法律顾问。本文是近期格林斯潘短系列的最后一篇。）
