Maga很可能为下一个金融危机奠定了基础

例如，很难通过试图杀死纽约的交通拥堵定价计划来了解特朗普的利益，该计划已经显示出明显的积极成果

The Biden administration is continuing to roll back financial regulations put in place after the 2008 crisis, a move that economists say could increase the risk of another financial crisis.

拜登政府在2008年危机后继续制定金融法规，这一举动说，经济学家说，这一举动可能会增加另一个金融危机的风险。

The administration has already taken several steps to weaken financial regulation, including rolling back the Volcker Rule, which limits banks’ ability to engage in risky proprietary trading, and proposing to ease capital requirements for large banks.

政府已经采取了多个步骤来削弱金融监管，包括撤销沃尔克规则，该规则限制了银行从事风险的专有交易的能力，并建议减轻大型银行的资本要求。

Economists have long argued that financial institutions need to be regulated. Even Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, who witnessed the Panic of 1772, which hit Scotland, London and Amsterdam, argued for significant restrictions on banks.

经济学家长期以来一直认为需要对金融机构进行监管。甚至亚当·史密斯（Adam Smith）也是资本主义之父，目睹了1772年的恐慌，袭击了苏格兰，伦敦和阿姆斯特丹，也主张对银行的重大限制。

The 21st-century financial system is, of course, far more complex than that of the 18th century, although there are some echoes. Notably, “stablecoins,” crypto tokens that can supposedly be redeemed at will for actual dollars, are a lot like the privately issued bank notes of the 18th and 19th centuries, which could supposedly be redeemed at will for gold and silver coins. The main difference is that while bank notes were clearly useful for legitimate business, cryptocurrencies still don’t seem to have any real use case other than money-laundering.

尽管有一些回声，但21世纪的金融体系当然比18世纪要复杂得多。值得注意的是，据说可以随意以实际的美元兑换的“稳定币”，就像18世纪和19世纪的私人发行的银行票据一样，据说可以随意兑换金和银币。主要区别在于，尽管银行票据对合法业务显然有用，但除了洗钱外，加密货币似乎没有其他任何用例。

Did I mention that Howard Lutnick is now the Commerce Secretary? Lutnick has had close financial ties to Tether, which Bloomberg describes as

我是否提到过霍华德·卢特尼克（Howard Lutnick）现在是商务部长？卢特尼克（Lutnick

the stablecoin used by drug traffickers, terrorists and scammers to move money around the world.

贩毒者，恐怖分子和骗子使用的稳定币将钱在世界各地转移。

And crypto aside, the complexity of modern finance makes it even harder for both consumers and investors to assess banking risks, so we need effective financial regulation to avoid or at least limit financial crises.

除了加密货币之外，现代财务的复杂性使消费者和投资者都无法评估银行风险更加困难，因此我们需要有效的金融监管来避免或至少限制金融危机。

Yet the Biden administration is moving to loosen if not eviscerate financial regulation. And it’s doing so at an especially dangerous time.

然而，拜顿政府即使不是不屈服的金融法规，也正在放松。它在一个特别危险的时刻这样做。

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis I, like many economists, became a fan of Hyman Minsky’s “financial instability hypothesis.”

在2008年金融危机之后，我像许多经济学家一样，成为海曼·明斯基（Hyman Minsky）的“金融不稳定假设”的粉丝。

At a time when many economists were arguing that financial markets are generally efficient in the sense that asset prices reflect the best information available, Minsky argued instead that they are driven by cycles of greed and fear.

在许多经济学家争辩说，金融市场通常是有效的，因为资产价格反映了最佳信息，明斯基认为他们是由贪婪和恐惧周期驱动的。

A Minsky cycle looks something like this:

明斯基周期看起来像这样：

In the aftermath of a financial crisis, investors are well aware that markets can go down as well as up. They are cautious about taking risks, and especially about leveraging up — investing with borrowed money. And as a result of this caution, financial markets are calm with relatively few crises.

在金融危机之后，投资者非常意识到，市场可以下降和兴起。他们对冒险，尤其是利用借钱的投资谨慎。由于这种谨慎，金融市场在危机相对较少的情况下保持镇定。

Over time, however, memories of past disasters fade, in part because those who remember bad things retire or move on, replaced by younger traders who have never experienced a major crisis. This eventually produces markets in which prices seem to go in only one direction — up — and whoever is most willing to take leveraged risks wins. Even those who intellectually know better get sucked in because of FOMO: fear of missing out.

然而，随着时间的流逝，对过去灾难的回忆逐渐消失，部分原因是那些记得坏事退休或继续前进的人取代了从未遇到过重大危机的年轻商人。最终，这产生了价格似乎只朝着一个方向朝着一个方向发展的市场，而谁最愿意赢得杠杆风险获胜。即使是那些在智力上知道的人也会因为FOMO而变得更加吸引人：害怕错过。

This manic phase doesn’t just induce many people to take on risks they don’t understand. It also creates what the famed investor James Chanos calls a “golden age of fraud.” (I’ll be posting a long talk with Chanos this weekend.)

这个躁狂阶段不仅诱使许多人承担他们不了解的风险。它还创造了著名的投资者詹姆斯·瓦诺斯（James Chanos）所说的“欺诈黄金时代”。 （我将在本周末与Chanos发表长时间的谈话。）

When it seems as if fortune favors the brave, con men or, sometimes, con women find it especially easy to attract suckers, especially if they can hang their promises on a narrative — say, the wonders of crypto or the limitless potential of AI.

当命运似乎有利于勇敢，骗子或有时骗子的女人觉得吸盘特别容易吸引人时，尤其是如果她们可以将诺言悬挂在叙事上 - 例如，加密货币的奇观或AI的无限潜力。

The New York Times recently ran a heartbreaking story about how the president of a community-owned bank in Elkhart, Kansas fell for a crypto scam, destroying the bank and quite a few people’s life savings in the process. You can be sure that we’ll hear many more such stories once we reach the final stage of the cycle — the Minsky moment, when euphoria-driven asset price surges give way to fire sales as highly leveraged investors desperately try to raise cash.

《纽约时报》最近讲述了一个令人心碎的故事，讲述了堪萨斯州埃尔克哈特（Elkhart）的一家社区拥有的银行的总统如何因加密骗局而跌倒，摧毁了银行，并在此过程中为很多人节省了生命。您可以确定，一旦我们到达周期的最后阶段，我们就会听到更多此类故事 - 明斯基的时刻，当欣快驱动的资产价格上涨时，由于高度杠杆化的投资者拼命试图筹集现金，因此我们可以让销售销售。

Where do regulators fit into all of this? They can’t completely eliminate the Minsky cycle, which is deeply rooted in human psychology. But they can dampen it and limit the damage when the Minsky moment arrives.

监管机构适合所有这些？他们不能完全消除敏捷周期，该周期根源于人类心理学。但是当明斯基时刻到达时，它们可以削弱它并限制损害。

Yale’s Gary Gorton has shown that the extensive financial regulations introduced in the 1930s produced a 50-year “quiet period” in which there were plenty of stock market ups and downs — notably the “go-go years” of the 1960s followed by the very depressed market of the 1970s — but there weren’t any serious banking crises.

耶鲁大学的加里·戈顿（Gary Gorton）表明，1930年代提出的广泛的金融法规产生了50年的“安静时期”，其中有很多股票市场起伏 - 尤其是1960年代的“ go-go go go go go go go go lo Years' 1970年代沮丧的市场 - 但没有任何严重的银行危机。

But politicians are subject to the same mood swings as investors, so they tend to push regulators to loosen up precisely when they should be trying to rein in irrational exuberance. The Fed, which is somewhat insulated from politics and has a relatively long institutional memory — which has traditionally seen its role as being to take away the punch bowl just as the party really gets going (the original quote isn’t quite that snappy, but never mind) — has historically been the

但是，政客与投资者的情绪波动相同，因此他们倾向于促使监管机构在应该试图遏制非理性繁荣时精确放松。美联储在某种程度上脱离了政治，并具有相对较长的机构记忆 - 传统上，它的作用是夺走拳头碗，就像派对真正继续前进一样（原始报价并不是那么活泼，但是没关系） - 从历史上看