Markets' resilience to terror is no reason to relax
You might think that during the five years since the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, financial markets would have shown signs of extreme anxiety. This is especially true since the attacks on the US were followed by others in Indo-nesia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, England, India and Turkey. Many commentators, including me, predicted that governments, citing national security, would go down the road of market-smothering financial regulation. Some of us also believed that the prospect of random violence against critical infrastructure would have created exactly the kind of uncertainty that Wall Street usually abhors. But not only did traders and investors weather the terrorist activities, they thrived; not because of terrorism, of course, but in spite of it. Whether they will continue to do so is another matter.
The US stock market recovered from September 11 2001 within six weeks. After every other major bombing they bounced back much faster. Since 9/11, financial organisations as diverse as HSBC, Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group and the London Stock Exchange all prospered. The overall financial system facilitated exceptional annual global economic growth of 4 per cent to 5 per cent, including buoyant trade expansion of more than 6 per cent a year and record flows of foreign direct investment.
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What accounts for this good news? First, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the US Federal Reserve, other -central banks and securities regulators showed exceptional skill and co-ordination in calming markets, adding to confidence that they could do it again if necessary. At the same time - and less related to terrorism than to general global economic conditions - central banks flooded the world with cheap money and key governments turned on the fiscal spigots by running large deficits. Banks and securities firms used this highly liquid world economy to deepen and diversify their operations. This added to the sense in the financial community that an ever more robust cushion for the capital markets was being established over which to spread multiple risks, -including those relating to terrorist attacks.
A snapshot of how global markets evolved tells all: between 2001 and 2004, daily foreign exchange turnover rose to $1,900bn, a 57 per cent increase, while daily trading in derivatives reached $2,400bn, an increase of 74 per cent. Today, private equity firms control some $800bn (￡428.8bn) in capital, 300 per cent more than five years ago. Hedge funds now manage over $1,000bn, compared with about half that in 2001. Financial institutions also deepened cross-border collaboration, in general and with regard to terrorism in particular. For example, the Basel-based Financial Action Task Force, comprised of senior financial officials from dozens of key countries, has worked to clamp down on terrorists' money laundering.
Individual companies made progress in ensuring business resilience after a disaster. For example: Lehman Brothers has bolstered its operations in New York, London and Tokyo with spare trading floors away from its primary locations. It has established storage capabilities for redundant data for its 10,000 servers. It can now communicate with all its employees in the event of terrorist mayhem.
But no one should think that the past is necessarily prologue. The global economic picture is becoming less accommodating with rising interest rates, slowing US growth and mushrooming trade imbalances that threaten to unleash protectionist policies. While financiers and traders may now be better able to cope with aircraft and train bombings, there is no telling how they would react to a nuclear device that explodes in a cargo container, bringing global commerce to a halt as port operators everywhere shut down their operations to re-examine their own security.
There is no predicting what would happen if terrorists mounted a successful attack on the global cyber-infrastructure, leading to the collapse of the payments system on which global banking transactions depend. Or if terrorists sabotaged a Saudi petroleum field, sending oil prices to $150 a barrel. Or if they bombed the overseas subsidiaries of a number of multinational companies, causing foreign investors to panic. Perhaps the biggest unknown is that the financial system has not been stress-tested for some time. True, only a big financial crisis can do that. But the very factors that may make the system more stable - the gargantuan size, the exponential growth, and the mind-boggling array of high-tech instruments - could cause it to implode if, in a panic, everyone tried to sell assets at the same time. The truth is, the system has become too big and too complex for anyone truly to understand it, let alone know how it would perform in the next major crisis.
Put another way, five years on, the financial markets have done a great job. But no one should exhale.
The writer is the Juan Trippe professor in international trade and finance at the Yale School of Management
警惕恐怖分子的“下一招”
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或许会想，自从世贸中心(World Trade Center)及五角大楼(Pentagon)遭到恐怖袭击以来，金融市场在这5年来应该显示出极度焦虑的征兆，尤其是鉴于印尼、西班牙、沙特、埃及、英国、印度和土耳其随后也遭到了恐怖袭击。包括我在内，许多评论人士都预测，各国政府将以国家安全为由，实行那些会扼杀市场的金融监管办法。我们中间的一些人还相信，针对重要基础设施的随机暴力事件的可能，将催生华尔街通常痛恨的不确定性。但是，交易员和投资者不仅经受住了恐怖主义的考验，他们还做得不错；当然，这些成就并非因为恐怖主义，而是因为人们经受住了恐怖主义的威胁。至于他们能否继续做到这一点，就是另外一个问题了。
美国股市在9.11后，用了6个星期就恢复过来。在随后其它几次重大恐怖袭击之后，美国股市恢复的速度还要快得多。自9.11以来，汇丰(HSBC)、高盛(Goldman Sachs)、黑石集团(Blackstone Group)以及伦敦证交所(London Stock Exchange)等各种金融机构蒸蒸日上。整个金融系统帮助全球经济取得了每年增长4%至5%的好成绩，并且为每年超过6%的贸易增幅及创纪录的外国直接投资提供了支持。
这些好消息应该归功于谁？首先，在9.11之后，美联储(Fed)及其它国家的央行和证券监管机构在稳定市场方面显示出了非凡的技巧与合作，并增加了市场的信心：只要有必要，它们可以再次携手这么做。同时，各央行向全球注入了大量“廉价”资金，而一些关键国家的政府通过增加财政赤字，打开了财政资金阀门（这些与反恐关系不那么大，更多是与全球总体经济情况有关）。银行和证券公司借助高流动性的全球经济，推动业务深化和多元化。这使金融界更加感觉到，金融市场已经建立了一个更为强大的缓冲，可以分散多种风险，包括那些与恐怖袭击有关的风险。
有关全球市场的一些数据可以说明一切：2001年至2004年间，全球外汇日交易额上升了57%，达到1.9万亿美元。同时，金融衍生产品日交易额上升了74%，达到2.4万亿美元。今天，私人股本公司控制着大约8000亿美元资本，较5年前增长了3倍。对冲基金目前管理着超过1万亿美元资金，大约是2001年时的2倍。
金融机构之间也加深了跨境协作，不仅包括普通层面上的协作，而且涉及反恐方面的具体协作。例如，总部位于巴塞尔、由数十个关键国家的高级金融官员组成的金融行动特别工作组(Financial Action Task Force)，就一直致力于打击恐怖分子的洗钱活动。
各企业也在确保灾后业务重建方面取得了进展。例如，雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)在公司主要交易场所之外设立了备用交易厅，为其在纽约、伦敦和东京的运作提供了保障。该公司已为1万台服务器建立冗余存储容量。如果发生恐怖袭击，该公司能够与所有雇员沟通。
但是，大家不应想当然认为未来一定同样美好。随着利率走高、美国经济增长放缓，加之不断加剧的贸易失衡可能滋生贸易保护主义政策，全球宏观经济格局正变得不那么宽松。如今金融家与交易员或许可以更好地应对飞机和火车爆炸事件，但谁也不知道他们将如何应对集装箱内的核装置发生爆炸的事件――此类事件将促使全球各地港口运营商停止运营，重新检查自身安全措施，从而导致全球商务陷入停顿。
如果恐怖分子成功袭击全球网络基础设施，导致全球银行业交易所依赖的支付系统崩溃，抑或，如果恐怖分子破坏了沙特阿拉伯的某处油田，将油价推高至每桶150美元，再比如，他们炸毁许多跨国公司的海外分支机构，导致外国投资者陷入恐慌，我们无法预测将会出现什么后果。
或许，最大的未知因素是，金融体系已经有一段时间未曾经受压力测试。的确，只有一次重大金融危机才能做到这点。但问题是，那些使金融体系更加稳定的因素，包括巨大的规模、指数级增长以及令人眼花的一系列高科技设备，也可以导致金融系统崩溃――如果所有人同时打算抛售资产。事实是，这个系统已经变得过于庞大和复杂，任何人都无法真正理解它，更不知道它在未来的重大危机中将如何表现。
换句话叫说，金融市场过去5年表现出色，但任何人都不应因此松口气。
作者是耶鲁大学管理学院(Yale School of Management)国际贸易和金融学教授
