给你一个次贷危机的论文和权威翻译,值得学习。次贷危机,人人有责记载次级抵押贷款的爆发始末有点像阅读《东方快车谋杀案》(Murder on the Orient Express)。小说中的每个人都被揭露参与了谋杀案,美国次贷危机的故事亦是如此,几乎所有的权力中心都被牵连其中,包括布什政府、美联储(Fed)和民主党。以Ameriquest Mortgage Co.的创始人兼首席执行官罗兰•阿尔诺(Roland Arnal)为例。他的这家总部位于加州的公司2005年至2007年间通过经营次级抵押贷款业务盈利逾800亿美元。这家公司还把自己形容为“美国梦的赞助人”。Ameriquest因违规贷款操作曾多次受到监管机构和法院的查处。最近一次是在2006年,因被证明曾误导借款人,伪造文件,以及向评估人施压,迫使其虚报房屋价值,它同意支付亿美元的罚金。这家此后一直处于停业状态的公司曾向乔治•W•布什(George W. Bush)捐出万美元的竞选献金。阿尔诺本人则成为布什政府驻荷兰大使——他已于去年去世。为了保持平衡,他的公司向民主党捐款157万美元。位于华盛顿的媒体监督机构公职人员廉政中心(CPI)表示,在次贷达到顶峰的2005年至2007年间,排名前25位的次贷发放机构向逾500万借款者提供了总额高达1万亿美元的贷款,其中许多借款者的房屋未如期付款已经被收回。这些贷款——其中许多被认为是掠夺性的——点燃了全球金融体系崩溃的导火索。美联储曾多次以其职责仅限于直接监管银行为由,拒绝加强对这些非银行公司的监管,并告诉国会,提供此类监管的成本过于昂贵。去年10月,美联储前主席艾伦•格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)向一个国会委员会表示:“我们中间那些指望贷款机构的自身利益能保护股东权益的人,特别是我自己,正处于一种不敢置信的状态。”但对监管的抵制比格林斯潘意识形态上的反对更深。去年9月开始的CPI调查显示,上世纪90年代中期至末期,多数次贷发放机构花费了数百万美元游说华府,主要目的是防止将加大次贷监管力度的新立法出台。独立监督机构政治责任中心(Center for Responsive Politics)表示,过去10年,金融业游说华府的支出共计35亿美元,竞选献金共计22亿美元。CPI调查显示,排名前25家次贷发放机构中,至少有21家——它们大多已经倒闭——为问题资产救济资金(TARF)的最主要获得者所有,或受其巨额资金支持,包括花旗(Citibank)、美国银行(Bank of America)、富国银行(Wells Fargo)和摩根大通(JPMorgan),它们同时也是华盛顿最大的政治捐赠者。“美国和欧洲的最大型银行使次贷泡沫成为可能,它们在前端为其融资,以便通过证券化和销售抵押贷款支持证券在后端收获巨额回报,”调查领导人比尔•布森伯格(Bill Buzenberg)表示。“华盛顿在过去10年中多次得到警告称,此类高成本贷款对经济构成了系统性风险。很难相信这些大银行对当时发生的问题或可能造成的最终后果一无所知。”其它次贷主要发放机构还包括New Century Financial Corp。在2007年其破产程序进行中,调查人员指称该公司采取了“激进的行为方式,使风险等级上升到危险水平,并最终达到致命水平”。该公司最大的资金支持者是得到100亿美元Tarp纾困基金的高盛(Goldman Sachs)。富国银行旗下的富国金融公司(Wells Fargo Financial)是少数几家仍在营业的次贷发放机构之一。在2005年至2007年间,该公司通过次贷业务收益510亿美元,同时在选举献金和游说方面花费了近1800万美元——在这里民主党与共和党再次得到了平等待遇。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)是受该公司捐赠最多的个人,得到选举费用万美元。据CPI称,所有帮助促使次贷危机爆发的法规条文仍然保留在美国法律之中。自上世纪90年代末期开始,有多次通过立法来加强行业监管的努力。但每次都遭遇失败。这份报告突出强调了由民主党议员巴尼•弗兰克(Barney Frank)提起的一份新法案,该法案将制定“代理人责任条款”,使得那些将次贷证券化的机构也必须对原始次级贷款中的违规行为承担责任。CPI表示,如果这样的条款早点写入法律,或许次贷危机就根本不会发生了。SUBPRIME EXPLOSION: WHO ISN'T GUILTY? Chronicling the explosion of subprime mortgages is a bit like reading Murder on the Orient Express. As in the novel, in which everyone is revealed to have had a hand in the murder, America’s subprime story implicates almost every power centre – including the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve and the Democratic Roland Arnall, founder and chief executive of Ameriquest Mortgage Co, the California-based company that made more than $80bn in subprime mortgages between 2005 and 2007 and whose company described itself as a “sponsor of the American dream”. meriquest was repeatedly held up by regulators and courts for abusive lending practices, most recently in 2006 when it agreed to pay a $325m fine after it was shown it had misled borrowers, falsified documents and pressured appraisers to inflate home company, which has since closed, gave $263,000 to George W. Bush in campaign contributions. Mr Arnall, who died last year, went on to become Mr Bush’s ambassador to the Netherlands. To keep things even-handed, his company donated $ to the Democratic 2005 and 2007, which was the peak of sub-prime lending, the top 25 subprime originators made almost $1,000bn in loans to more than 5m borrowers, many of whom have had their homes repossessed, says the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based journalistic loans, many of them considered predatory, lit the fuse that led to the global financial meltdown. The Fed, which repeatedly refused to tighten regulation of these non-bank companies, since it is charged only with direct regulation of banks, told Congress it would be too expensive to provide October, Alan Greenspan, former Fed chairman, told a congressional committee: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief.” But resistance to regulation went deeper than Mr Greenspan’s ideological CPI investigation, which began in September, shows most originators spent millions of dollars lobbying Washington from the mid to late-1990s, much of it to prevent new legislation that would tighten restrictions on subprime financial sector has spent $ in the past decade lobbying in Washington and made $ in campaign donations, says the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent CPI investigation shows that at least 21 of the 25 top subprime originators, most of which are now bankrupt, were either owned or heavily financed by the biggest recipients of Troubled Asset Relief Funds, including Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan – also the largest political donors in Washington.“The largest American and European banks made the bubble in subprime lending possible by financing it on the front end, so they could reap the huge rewards from securitising and selling mortgage-backed securities on the back end,” says Bill Buzenberg, who led the investigation. “Washington was warned repeatedly over the last decade that these high-cost loans represented a systemic risk to the economy. It is hard to believe the major banks were unaware of what was going on, or what the consequences might ultimately be.”Among the other top originators were New Century Financial Corp, which was alleged by investigators in its 2007 bankruptcy proceedings to have made “aggressive manner that elevated the risks to dangerous and ultimately fatal levels”. Its largest financial backer was Goldman Sachs, which has received $10bn in Tarp bailout of the few to remain in business is Wells Fargo Financial, which is owned by the bank, which made $51bn in subprime loans between 2005 and 2007 and which spent almost $18m on election donations and lobbying – again almost equally between Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama was its largest individual recipient with $201,000 in election to the CPI, all the laws that helped fuel the subprime crisis remain on the books. Since the late 1990s there have been repeated attempts to tighten up regulation through legislation. But each time it was shot report highlights a new bill, sponsored by Barney Frank, a Democratic congressman, which would create “assignee liability provisions” that would make mortgage securitisers res-ponsible for abuses in the original mortgages. If such a law had been on the books earlier, says CPI, the subprime crisis might never have happened.