2021年经济学人 银行现在盆丰钵满?(1)（在线收听）

Wall Street's banks

华尔街的银行

Topsy turvy

七颠八倒

Have banks now got too much cash?

银行现在有很多钱？

The fates of the economy and banks are normally closely entwined; when customers endure misfortune, loans go unpaid. The summer was marked by a lull in covid-19 cases and recovering economic activity. Winter has brought with it more infections and shutdowns. Yet banks' profits were slender in the summer and, as fourth-quarter earnings released between January 15th and 20th revealed, fattened at the end of the year. What is going on?

经济和银行的命运通常是紧密相连的，当客户遭受不幸时，贷款就无法偿还。今年夏天，新冠病例增长处于平静期，经济活动有所恢复。到了冬天，病例再次增加，商店再次关上了门。然而，今年夏天银行的利润却很微薄，而且，正如1月15日至20日公布的第四季度收益所揭示的那样，银行的利润在今年年底却还在增长。这是怎么一回事？

One explanation is that the trading desks and investment banks housed in most big banks have fared well, thanks to a rush of initial public offerings and booming markets. Profits were sky-high at banks that earn most of their revenues from investment banking and trading. Goldman Sachs made $4.5bn in the fourth quarter, half its annual profits in 2020. JPMorgan Chase's investment-banking profits in the same quarter almost doubled on the year. The firm's total earnings were a record $12.1bn in the fourth quarter.

一种解释是，由于首次公开发行的热潮和市场的繁荣，大多数大银行的交易部门和投资银行都表现良好。大部分收入来自投资银行业务和交易业务的银行利润极高。高盛去年第四季度盈利45亿美元，是其2020年全年利润的一半。摩根大通投资银行在同一季度的利润几乎比去年翻了一番，该公司第四季度的总收入达到了121亿美元，创下纪录。

The bread-and-butter business of commercial and consumer banking also did well. This is, in part, an accounting quirk. When expectations of repayment tumble, banks must write down the value of their assets, which they book as a loss. As a result, many reported slim profits (and in some cases, losses) in the second and third quarters, even though borrowers mostly repaid their loans. Though delinquencies inched up in the fourth quarter, it also contained hope—in the form of a vaccine.

商业银行和消费者银行的基本业务也表现良好。这在一定程度上是一种会计怪癖。当还款预期大幅下降时，银行必须减记资产价值，将其记为损失。结果，尽管大多数借款人偿还了贷款，许多银行在第二和第三季度仍报告利润微薄(某些情况下是亏损)。尽管违约率在第四季度小幅上升，但也包含了希望——以疫苗的形式。

Recovery equals repayment. So America's biggest lenders—Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo—have favourably re-evaluated their loan books. In September JPMorgan expected as much as $33.6bn of its $1trn loan book to eventually go unpaid. By the end of December a little under $1.1bn was written off for good. But the bank also now thinks that around $1.8bn that it had previously expected to be lost will be repaid. These averted hypothetical losses add to profits.

复苏等于还款。因此，美国最大的贷款机构——美国银行、花旗集团、摩根大通和富国银行——已经对它们的贷款账目进行了有利的重新评估。9月份，摩根大通预计其1万亿美元贷款中有336亿美元最终将无法偿还。截至去年12月底，有略低于11亿美元的资产被永久冲销。但该银行现在仍认为，此前预计将损失的约18亿美元将得到偿还。这些避免的假设损失增加了利润。