《多德 弗兰克法》争议为何如此之大?

Jeb Hensarling did not hold back last week, when asked on CNBC about the flaws of Dodd-Frank.

上周，在美国财经新闻频道CNBC上被问及《多德-弗兰克法》(Dodd-Frank Act)的缺陷时，杰布?亨萨林(Jeb Hensarling)毫不客气。

“It clogs the arteries of capitalism in our system. It hurts working people. It hurts consumers. It needs to go,” said the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, about the signature piece of financial regulation of the Obama era.

对于奥巴马时代的标志性金融法规，这位众议院金融服务委员会(House Financial Services Committee)主席表示：“它在我们的体系中堵塞了资本主义的动脉，伤害了工薪阶层，伤害了消费者。它需要废止。”

“You can’t get a healthy economy as long as you have Dodd-Frank on the books.”

“只要《多德-弗兰克法》还在生效，就不可能拥有健康的经济。”

The Republican from Texas is expected to present an alternative set of rules in coming days, one that could undo many of the reforms put in place seven years ago.

这位来自德克萨斯州的共和党人预计会在今后几天提出一套替代规则，可能会逆转七年前出台的许多改革措施。

But is he right? Did the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed in July 2010, go too far by preventing banks from lending?

但是，他的看法到底对不对？2010年7月通过的《多德-弗兰克华尔街改革和消费者保护法》(Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act)，是否走得太远，阻止了银行放贷？

The headline data do not suggest that loans are too hard to obtain. Figures from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation show that gross loans across the US’s commercial banks have grown pretty steadily for at least three years, spread across all categories except home-equity lines of credit and loans to other banks.

整体数据并未显示贷款难以获得。美国联邦储蓄保险公司(Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)的数据显示，至少在三年期间，全美商业银行的总放贷规模稳步增长；除房屋净值信用额度和银行间放贷以外，增长势头涵盖所有类别。

Loans were relatively flat between 2010 and 2012 but the overall stock has risen from about $7.5tn to $9.24tn since then. That is about 6 per cent a year, roughly twice the nominal growth rate of the economy.

2010年到2012年期间贷款规模相对持平，但是自那以来贷款规模已从大约7.5万亿美元增至9.24万亿美元。这相当于每年增长6%左右，是美国经济名义增长率的大约两倍。

“We’re up like everyone else,” said Wells Fargo’s finance chief John Shrewsberry at a conference in Miami last week, noting loan growth of 7 per cent last year.

富国银行(Wells Fargo)财务总监约翰?施鲁斯伯里(John Shrewsberry)上周在迈阿密的一个会议上表示：“我行像其他银行一样出现增长。”他指出，去年该行贷款增长了7%。

“Loan growth remains robust,” said Marianne Lake, his counterpart at JPMorgan Chase, while presenting record annual net income of $24.7bn last month.

摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)财务总监玛丽安?雷克(Marianne Lake)在上月报告该行实现247亿美元创纪录年度净利润时表示：“贷款增长保持稳健。”

Beyond the headlines, there are signs that certain segments have been squeezed.

而在整体数据之外，有迹象表明某些领域的业务受到了挤压。

In products such as credit cards and personal loans, for example, analysts say activity has been damped by fear of censure by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB was one of the agencies spawned by Dodd-Frank; it enforces 19 federal consumer protection statutes covering everything from home finance to student loans, credit cards and banking practices.

比如，分析师们表示，对美国消费者金融保护局(US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)打击的担忧，抑制着信用卡和个人贷款等产品的业务活动。消费者金融保护局是《多德-弗兰克法》催生的机构之一，负责执行19项联邦消费者保护法规——从住房金融到学生贷款，从信用卡到银行业务实践。

Dodd-Frank ordered the agency to look out for “unfair, deceptive or abusive” practices in any financial product or service offered to a consumer.

《多德-弗兰克法》要求该局监管面向消费者提供的金融产品或服务，打击“不公、欺骗或滥用”行为。

That may have caused banks to be wary of customers on low incomes and with thin credit files, says Justin Schardin, director of financial regulatory reform at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He cites a study last year showing that customers with non-prime credit scores were awarded less than one-fifth of new credit-card accounts in 2015, down from 29 per cent in 2007.

两党政策中心(Bipartisan Policy Center)金融监管改革部门主任贾斯廷?沙尔丁(Justin Schardin)表示，这可能导致了银行对低收入和信贷历史较短的客户抱有戒心。他提到，去年的一项研究显示，2015年次级信用分数的客户获准开设的新信用卡账户在此类账户总数中的占比不到五分之一，低于2007年的29%。

In residential mortgages, too, banks and lobby groups complain about the new requirement to determine that the consumer has a “reasonable ability” to repay the loan, based on credit history, income, obligations, debt-to-income ratio, employment status and other information. That has caused a pile-up of paperwork.

就住房抵押贷款而言，银行和游说团体也抱怨称，新规要求综合考虑消费者的信贷历史、收入、现有偿付义务、债务/收入比率、就业状况以及其他信息，以确定其是否有“合理能力”偿还贷款。这导致了一大堆的文书工作。

“You used to walk out with a folder; now you walk out with a binder,” says Sushil Patel, Dallas-based president of State Bank of Texas, which has just broken through the $1bn-in-assets barrier by buying a bust bank in Chicago.

德克萨斯州立银行(State Bank of Texas)常驻达拉斯的总裁苏希尔?帕特尔(Sushil Patel)表示：“你过去带一个文件夹就能出门，现在你得带一个活页夹。”该行通过收购芝加哥一家破产银行，跨过了10亿美元资产门槛。

But Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a liberal think-tank, argues that other factors have had a greater effect.

但是，自由派智库“城市研究所”(Urban Institute)住房金融政策中心(Housing Finance Policy Center)联席主任劳丽?古德曼(Laurie Goodman)辩称，其他因素产生了更大的影响。

Credit remains “extremely tight”, she says, because lenders are worried by the representations and warranties they need to make to Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage buyer, and the high cost of servicing delinquent loans, among other factors. None of that was in Dodd-Frank.

她表示，信贷依然“极度偏紧”，因为各银行对多个因素感到担忧，包括它们需要向政府支持的抵押贷款买家——房利美(Fannie Mae)做出的陈述和保证，以及承担不良贷款的高昂成本。所有这些都与《多德-弗兰克法》无关。

Small-business lending is a mixed picture too. Non-mortgage loans of less than $1m to non-farm businesses peaked at $375bn in 2007, according to FDIC data, and have since fallen to $284bn.

面向小企业的放贷也是好坏参半。联邦存款保险公司的数据显示，向非农企业发放的100万美元以下的非抵押贷款在2007年达到3750亿美元的峰值，现已下降至2840亿美元。

To Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a centre-right think-tank, that is a sign of the extra burdens of compliance.

在中右翼智库“美国行动论坛”(American Action Forum)的总裁道格拉斯?霍尔茨-埃金(Douglas Holtz-Eakin)看来，这是合规带来额外负担的一个迹象。

But other analysts say it is hard to disentangle Dodd-Frank effects from extra caution as banks rebuilt capital; a relatively sluggish economy; and competition from a host of nonbank platforms. Some note that the main piece of Dodd-Frank targeting small-business loans ― which requires banks to collect and report more data ― has yet to take effect.

但是其他分析师表示，很难区分《多德-弗兰克法》与其它因素（银行重建资本期间的格外谨慎；相对疲弱的经济；以及各种非银行平台的竞争）之间的影响。一些人指出，该法针对小企业贷款的主要内容——要求银行收集和报告更多数据——迄今并未生效。

Even if the evidence of Dodd-Frank hurting bank lending is unpersuasive, says Michael Barr, a professor at the University of Michigan, that will not stop Republicans determined to unwind it.

密歇根大学(University of Michigan)教授迈克尔?巴尔(Michael Barr)表示，即便该法妨碍银行放贷的证据缺乏说服力，那也阻止不了共和党人废止它的决心。

Mr Barr, who helped craft Dodd-Frank while at Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department from 2009 to 2010, says talk of helping banks write more loans is a ruse to win support for a package of reforms that favours Wall Street more than Main Street.

从2009年至2010年，巴尔在蒂姆?盖特纳(Tim Geithner)领导的财政部工作期间，帮助设计了《多德-弗兰克法》。他说，帮助银行发放更多贷款的言论是一种策略，目的是赢得对一揽子改革方案的支持，这些改革有利于华尔街，而非普通民众。

He notes that lobbyists are already talking about scrapping the Volcker ban on proprietary trading, and abolishing the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which was supposed to monitor risks developing outside the deposit-taking banks.

他指出，游说人士已经在谈论废除当年沃尔克提出的自营交易禁令，并撤销金融稳定监督委员会(Financial Stability Oversight Council)，后者的职责是监督存款类银行以外蓄积的风险。

None of this has much to do with easing the flow of credit.

这一切都与释放信贷流动没有多大关系。

Mr Hensarling’s Dodd-Frank alternative, known in its first iteration as the Financial Choice Act, is unlikely to bring “changes for the better for the country”, he says.

巴尔称，亨萨林提出的多德-弗兰克替代规则——其初版被称为《金融选择法案》(Financial Choice Act)——不太可能带来“让国家更美好的变化”。

“We really run a risk of rolling back the clock to the eve of the financial crisis and doing it all over again.”

“我们真的面临着回到金融危机前夕、重蹈覆辙的风险。”