经济学人53:逆势而变 The pendulum swings

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　　财经；华尔街的去监管化; 逆势而变（钟摆移位）;

　　The “JOBS” act turns into a battle about America's capital markets.

　　一场由“工作”法案引发的关于美国资本市场的争端。

　　For a brief moment, it appeared that American's fractious politicians and capital markets were all in agreement. House Bill 3606, unofficially referred to as the JOBS act and officially (stretching out the acronym) known as the “Jumpstart Our Business Start-up Act”, sailed through the House of Representatives by 390 votes to 23 on March 8th.

　　在眼下，易怒的美国政治家竟决定要扶持资本市场。3月8号，民间称为就业法案，官方称为“复苏本国商业活动法案”的众议院3606号法案在该院得到390张支持票、23张反对票，顺利通过。

　　It was on its way to a similar endorsement² in the Senate when the unthinkable seems to have happened: someone bothered to read the law. There they found a set of provisions that, depending on your point of view, either open the airways³ of asphyxiated⁴ financial markets or give free rein⁵ to rapacious⁶ companies and banks.

　　人们认为相似的情况也将在参议院上演时，始料未及的事情却发生了：有些人对这项议案感到了厌烦。他们发现依据个人的观点，这一系列的法案既可以解释为为即将窒息的金融市场打开了呼吸通道，又可以解释为将控制权下放给了贪婪的企业和银行。

　　Over the past decade, Congress and aggressive prosecutors—notably New York's former attorney-general, Eliot Spitzer—have responded to various upheavals⁷ on Wall Street, including the dotcom bubble, the collapse⁸ of Enron and the financial crisis, by imposing⁹ extensive regulations. Whether these rules protected investors¹⁰ or improved overall market efficiency is a subject for debate. But they have definitely coincided with a period when the number of public companies in America has dropped in both absolute terms and relative to other countries. Critics charge that the rules have been devastating¹¹ to the ability of entrepreneurial firms to access funding on public markets.

　　过去的几十年中，国会和激进的检察官们——尤其是纽约市前任司法部长，艾略特.斯皮策——都通过执行额外监管条例来应对华尔街的各大变故，包括互联网泡沫，安然公司倒闭以及金融危机。这些条例是否（真正）保护了投资者利益或提高了整体市场效率则只能在辩论中找到答案。但在美国企业数量从绝对指标与相对指标上都落后其他国家时，这些政策显然很合时宜。批评者们却指责道这些政策极大破坏了创新性企业在公共市场上的融资能力。

　　The JOBS act—or the House version of it, at least—is packed with provisions to reverse the regulatory tide. It allows “emerging growth companies” with under $1 billion in revenue, hardly small change, to skip various reporting requirements and internal audits¹². It amends¹³ accounting¹⁴ rules. It loosens compensation constraints¹⁵. And it allows limited online “crowdfunding” by equity¹⁶ investors who are not designated as “sophisticated” (shorthand for being rich). The law also provides protection against often intrusive¹⁷ state regulations and reduces the restrictions¹⁸ on underwriters using public offerings to fund research.

　　工作法案（坊间的版本）——或者至少从众议院的版本看来——囊括了足以扭转当前监管态势的法条。比如允许以10亿美元以下的资金“并购成长型企业”并变革性的免除了各类报告和互联网审计流程。它还恢复会计准则、放宽补偿限制而且有限的允许“经验”（借指财富）不足的资产投资人进行在线“群体投资”。该法案同样提供保护措施，帮助抵御通常被认为有入侵性的国家监管政策，以及减少了针对保险商通过公开上市资助调研的限制。

　　Democrats¹⁹ have belatedly woken up to the act's radicalism²⁰. The proposal's support at first extended to the White House, which has since pulled back and demanded revisions. Opponents have become more vocal²¹: trade unions, professors, regulators and others have lined up to criticise²² it. On March 20th, Harry²³ Reid, the Senate majority leader, voiced scepticism over the link between the JOBS act and job creation. To survive, the bill must pass a vote in the Senate due to take place after The Economist²⁴ had gone to press and then, harder still, win a presidential signature.

　　民主党人没能第一时间认识到这项法案的激进性。白宫曾经加入过这项提案的支持者阵营，但后来却倒戈、要求对这项法案进行修订。反对者们则更有发言权：工会，专家，监管者和其他人都在这一阵营之内。三月二十号，参议院多数党领导人哈里·里德就质疑工作法案是否真能创造工作岗位。在经济学人杂志进行相关报道后，该法案现在必须经由参议院投票，更困难的是，还需通过总统的签署才能生效。

　　The bill is not perfect. A weakening of rules that require the broad dissemination²⁵ of corporate²⁶ information, rather than merely to the wealthy and connected, is its biggest flaw. But the pendulum of capital-markets regulation in America has swung in one direction for so long that when it started to reverse course, it was bound to do so with a vengeance²⁷.

　　这项法案也不完美。条例中的一项弱点：将企业信息公开的范围要求的过大，甚至超过利益相关人的范围，成为了最大的瑕疵。但是美国资本市场监管者已经犹如钟摆般在一端停留太久，当他想要摆向另一端时，甚至不惜过犹不及（……停留太久，甚至准备好了“报复性”地反向运动）。

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