评论
打印
HVIDOVRE, Denmark — At first, Eva Christiansen barely noticed the number. Her bank called to say that Ms. Christiansen, a 36-year-old entrepreneur here, had been approved for a small-business loan. She whooped. She danced. A friend took pictures.
丹麦维兹奥勒——起初，伊娃·克里斯汀森(Eva Christiansen)并没有很注意数字。她的银行打来电话说，36岁的本地企业主克里斯汀森女士通过了审批，可以得到一笔小企业贷款。她高兴地叫了起来，手舞足蹈。朋友还给她拍了照片。
“I think I was so happy I got the loan, I didn’t hear everything he said,” she recalled.
“我想我得到贷款时太高兴了，都没听清他到底说了什么，”她回忆道。
And then she was told again about her interest rate. It was -0.0172 percent — less than zero. While there would be fees to pay, the bank would also pay interest to her. It was just a little over $1 a month, but still.
之后，银行再一次向她介绍了利率：-0.0172%——低于零的负利率。尽管需要支付一些费用，但是银行还会向她付利息。每月才刚刚超过1美元，可还是出人意料。
These are strange times for European borrowers, as if a wormhole has opened up to a parallel universe where the usual rules of financial gravity are suspended. Investors lent Germany nearly $4 billion this week, knowing they would not be fully repaid. Bonds issued by the Swiss candy maker Nestlé recently traded in the market for more than they will ever be worth.
对于欧洲的借款人来说，这是一段诡异的时期，仿佛有一个虫洞打开了，通向一个惯常的金融原理都不再适用的平行宇宙。本周，投资者明知道德国人不会全额偿付，还是向该国借出了40亿美元。瑞士糖果制造商雀巢(Nestlé)发行的债券，最近在市场上的总值远远超过其实际价值。
Such topsy-turvy deals reflect the dark outlook for the region’s economy, as policy makers do whatever they can to revive growth, even taking interest rates below zero to encourage borrowing (and spending). In this environment, the simplest of banking tasks have become a curiosity.
这种颠覆常理的交易，反映了该地区糟糕的经济前景，此时政策制定者们为了重振经济增长，运用了各种可能的手段，甚至将利率压到零以下以期鼓励借贷（和消费）。在这种环境里，一些最简单的银行业务也变成了奇闻。
Consumer loans and mortgages with interest rates that are outright negative remain rare, and Ms. Christiansen appears to be one of the few who actually received one while banks mull how to proceed. Some other Danes are getting charged to park their money in their bank accounts.
消费贷款和按揭的利率直接为负的情况仍然很少见，克里斯汀森似乎是少有的几位实际拿到负利率贷款的人，而银行目前还在琢磨业务该如何推行。现在，另外一些丹麦人把钱存在银行帐户里时，银行还会收取费用。
Such financial episodes are taking place all across Europe.
这样的情况欧洲各地都在发生。
To breathe life into Europe’s economy and stoke inflation, policy makers recently resorted to a drastic measure tried by some other central banks. The European Central Bank, which dictates policy in the 19-member eurozone, announced a plan that involves printing money to buy hundreds of billions of euros of government bonds.
为了激活欧洲经济并刺激通胀，政策制定者最近不得不诉诸于其他地区的央行已经尝试过的一些极端举措。欧洲中央银行(European Central Bank)负责为包含19个成员国的欧元区制定货币政策，它近期宣布了一项计划，其中包括印钱买进价值数千亿欧元的政府债券。
Just the anticipation of the program prompted bond prices to plunge and the euro to drop in value. Other countries that do not use the euro were then forced to take defensive countermeasures to keep a lid on the value of their currencies, encourage lending and bolster growth.
单单是推出这项计划的预期，就促使债券价格大跌，欧元也应声贬值。于是，其他不使用欧元的国家就被迫采取防御性的反制措施，以稳定本国货币的汇率，鼓励信贷并促进增长。
Switzerland, for instance, jettisoned its currency’s peg to the euro, shocking markets, and cut interest rates further below zero. Denmark’s central bank has reduced rates four times in a month, to minus 0.75 percent. Sweden followed suit earlier this month.
例如，瑞士放弃了本国货币与欧元挂钩的政策，引发了市场的震荡。瑞士还下调了已然为负的利率。丹麦央行一个月内四次削减利率，现在已经达到负0.75%。瑞典本月早些时候也效仿了这种做法。
The most profound changes are taking place in Europe’s bond market, which has been turned into something of a charity, at least for certain borrowers. The latest example came on Wednesday, when Germany issued a five-year bond worth nearly $4 billion, with a negative interest rate. Investors were essentially agreeing to be paid back slightly less money than they lent.
最深远的变化发生在欧洲的债券市场，至少对一些借款人来说，那里已经变成了某种慈善机构。最近的例子发生在周三，德国发行了总值近40亿美元的五年期债券，利率为负值。投资者实际上等于同意了，德国偿债的金额可以略低于贷款额。
Bonds issued by Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Finland and even fiscally challenged Italy also have negative yields. Right now, roughly $1.75 trillion in bonds issued by countries in the eurozone are trading with negative yields, which is equivalent to more than a quarter of the total government bonds, according to an analysis by ABN Amro.
瑞士、荷兰、法国、比利时、芬兰，甚至面临艰巨财政困难的意大利，发行的债券也都是负利率。欧元区国家发行的大约价值1.75万亿美元的债券，当前的收益率为负。根据荷兰银行(ABN Amro)分析，这相当于政府债券总额的四分之一以上。
One reason investors are willing to tolerate such yields is the relative safety of the bonds, in a weak economy. Traders are also betting that the prices of the bonds will keep going up.
投资者愿意容忍这种收益率的一个理由是，在疲软的经济中，债券具有相对的安全性。交易员们还断定，债券的价格会持续提高。
Even some corporate bonds, which are generally deemed less creditworthy than government bonds, are falling into the negative territory, including some issued by Nestlé and Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. While they did not initially have negative yields, investors bid up their prices after they were issued.
即使是一些企业债券，也跌入了收益率为负的区间，包括雀巢和瑞士制药企业诺华(Novartis)的一些债券。尽管这些债券发行时收益率并非为负，但是在发行之后，投资者推高了债券的价格。通常认为，企业债券的信誉不及政府债券。
“This is obviously a once-in-a-lifetime and once-in-history phenomenon,” said Heather L. Loomis, a managing director at JPMorgan Private Bank, who specializes in bonds, “and it is hard to make sense of it.”
“这显然是一生只有一次，历史上也只有一次的现象，”摩根大通私人银行(JPMorgan Private Bank)专注于债券业务的执行主管希瑟·L·鲁米斯(Heather L. Loomis)表示。“而且这种现象很难理解。”
It can be especially hard for people who are not bankers. Ms. Christiansen, a sex therapist, took out a loan to finance a website called LoveShack that is part matchmaking site, part social network.
如果不是银行从业者，更是难以理解。克里斯汀森是一名性治疗师，她申请贷款是为了搭建一个名为“爱巢”(LoveShack)的网站，一部分功能是牵红线，另一部分则是社交网络。
For her, the full novelty of her loan didn’t sink in until a spokeswoman for the bank called her back.
她起初并没有理解这笔贷款到底有多么新奇，直到银行的一位发言人给她打来电话。
“She said, ‘Hi, Eva, they have contacted us from TV 2’ — it’s a big station in Denmark, one of the biggest — ‘and they would like to talk to you because of this loan,’” Ms. Christiansen said. “Then I was really like, ‘O.K., this is big.’”
“她说，‘你好伊娃，TV2电视台联系了我们’——那是一家很大的丹麦电视台，最大的电视台之一。‘他们想跟你聊聊这笔贷款的事情’，”克里斯汀森说。“那时我才真的感到，这可是件大事。”
She said she was generally aware of what the Danish central bank was doing, but fuzzy on the specifics and had not paid close attention to the issue until she realized she might be asked about it in front of a camera.
她说她大体上明白丹麦央行在做什么，但具体细节并不清楚，而且一直没有密切关注过这个问题，直到她发觉自己可能会在摄像机前被问到这个问题。
“When I was contacted by the television, I was like, ‘O.K., I need to know something,’” she said, laughing, during an interview at her office, where two distant windmills were visible outside the windows.
“电视台联系我时，我想，看来我需要了解一下了，”她在自己的办公室里接受采访时笑着说。透过办公室的窗户，可以看到远处的两个风车。
“So I actually called my bank adviser and said, ‘Can we please have a meeting?’ Because all these financial terms, I’m not used to them,” she said. “If I talk about something, I’d like to know something about it.”
“所以我实际上给银行的顾问打了个电话，问能不能开个会。因为所有这些金融术语我都不习惯，”她说。“如果我要谈一件事，我希望能多少懂一些。”
Some other Danes are facing a related, if somewhat opposite, issue.
另外一些丹麦人面临着一个相关的问题，但具体情况却恰恰相反。
Last month, Ida Mottelson, a 27-year-old student, received an email from her bank telling her that it would start charging her one-half of 1 percent to hold her money.
上个月，27岁的学生伊达·莫特尔森(Ida Mottelson)收到了银行的电子邮件，通知她将开始对她的储蓄收取0.5%的保管费。
“At first I thought I had misunderstood this, but I hadn’t,” she said.
“一开始我还以为我理解错了，结果没理解错，”她说。
Ms. Mottelson is studying for a master’s degree in health sciences, and lives in Odense, a city about 100 miles west of Copenhagen. She said she had been following the news about the central bank, but called her own bank just to make sure she was reading the email correctly.
莫特尔森正在读保健学硕士，居住在哥本哈根以西大约100英里的城市欧登塞。她说，她一直在关注央行的新闻，为了确认读电子邮件时理解对了，还专门给银行打了一个电话。
“I asked him super-naïvely, ‘Can you explain this to me?’ And he tried, but I got the feeling he was like, come on, just move the money and you’ll be fine.”
“我超级天真地问他，‘能给我解释一下么？’对方努力解释了，但我感觉他的意思是，干脆把钱转走不就行了。”
She does plan to move her money to another bank. And there are signs that such practices are spreading to the United States. This week, JPMorgan Chase said it would start charging some institutional clients to hold their money, because of a combination of new regulations and low interest rates.
她的确计划把钱转到别的银行。有迹象显示，这种做法正在蔓延到美国。本周，摩根大通银行表示，将对某些机构客户的资金收取保管费，原因既有新的监管规定，又有低利率。
Economists are now pondering some of the odd things that might occur if interest rates stay negative for a long time.
经济学家现在正在思考，如果利率长期保持在负区间，会发生哪些奇怪的现象。
Companies and individuals may start to hoard cash outside of ordinary banks if the banks start to effectively charge substantial sums to hold deposits. Large savers, for instance, may choose to put their money in special institutions that do little more than warehouse their cash.
如果银行实质上开始对储蓄收取可观的保管费，那么企业和个人就会开始在常规的银行之外囤积现金。举例来说，大额储户可能会将钱放在除了帮他们存放现金之外，没有其他什么职能的专门机构。
“There is some negative interest rate at which it would become profitable to stockpile cash,” said James McAndrews, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He said that economists had speculated that such cash hoarding might begin once interest rates were around minus 0.5 percent.
“负利率达到某种程度，囤积现金就变得有利可图了，”纽约联邦储备银行(Federal Reserve Bank of New York)经济师詹姆斯·麦克安德鲁斯(James McAndrews)说。他表示，经济学家们揣测，囤积现金的行为在利率达到负0.5%的时候可能就会开始。
For most people not poring over the financial pages, it can all seem a bit strange.
但对于不会关注财经版的大多数人来说，这一切可能显得有些古怪。
“I’m not an expert,” Ms. Mottelson said, “but to me it sounds so weird that you have to pay to have your account at a bank.”
“我当然不是专家，”莫特尔森说，“但在我看来，在银行开账户还要付钱，这也太奇怪了。”
