通过LIBOR操纵多元化的美元市场似乎在过去四年市场参与者的所有丑闻和不良行为之后的课程。巴克莱咳嗽高达4.5亿美元的罚款，以解决信贷危机期间与其他银行在信贷危机中人工低位留下的银行间率。但除了所有的费用律师肯定会消除丑闻，这个问题的实际后果是什么？我们公司主要管理了20年的基于Libor的投资，所以我们在桌旁有一个有趣的席位。LIBOR应该衡量大银行彼此借用的成本。每天通过假设的平均值而不是实际交易的系统设置的速率，这一功能易于操纵。所涉及的赌注是巨大的。超过500万亿万亿美元的金融资产和负债 - 来自邻居抵押贷款到对冲基金交易的异国衍生品的一切 - 都是利比尔的价格。当利率设置得太低时，储蓄者受益，借款人受益。如果速率是由40个基点，为一年操纵下（如一些人所估计的），理论上储户会受到伤害，以约2万亿$，或者$ 285的每一个男人，女人和孩子在这个星球上的调整。 The complete picture is far more complex, though. It is my belief that lowering Libor, and therefore the price of money, in a crisis is absolutely necessary and beneficial. After all, the Federal Reserve’s first weapon in a crisis is to cut the federal funds rate. But the Fed’s recent actions go far beyond crisis management. James Grant, publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, cited a recent speech in which Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said: “Prices are the thermostat of an economy. They are the mechanism by which the economy functions.” We all know that a thermostat is used to control the temperature, not measure it. So perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue and he meant to say “thermometer.” I’m not convinced of that. What is clear is that the Fed has been manipulating the risk-free rate to a degree never before seen. The front end of the yield curve has traditionally been the area of intervention, but now the Fed is influencing the entire curve. Since May 2007, after two rounds of quantitative easing and Operation Twist, the Fed has seen its assets swell 2.3 times, to $2.8 trillion. That balance sheet is poised to grow even further following the central bank’s September 13 decision to embark on QE3 and buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities a month indefinitely. And the Fed isn’t alone. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank are all in the midst of record balance-sheet expansions. This tinkering with the global thermostat was expected and even welcomed during the crisis, but here we are, four years into the recovery, and, amazingly, the market manipulation seems to be picking up steam. This manipulation — like the “lie” in “Libor” — is sapping confidence in the financial system. Anyone who has the challenging task of allocating capital today is faced with a global state of market manipulation. When the risk-free rate isn’t “free,” our work becomes quite difficult. In addition, we have a fiscal situation that is incredibly frustrating. I have spent 25 years in the leveraged-finance markets talking about spread over Treasuries and spread over Libor. Today those metrics provide a mostly distorted picture of risk and reward. Corporate bonds may be cheap on a spread basis, but is 2 percent the right reward for taking credit risk and interest rate risk? I am seeing single-B bonds getting gobbled up by the market at 5.5 percent. If spread over Treasuries is all you care about, that might be fine, but any seasoned player will tell you that junk bond yields shouldn’t come with a five handle. Such manipulated markets erode confidence and act as a drag on fund performance. Only 15 percent of active equity managers and 11 percent of hedge fund managers are beating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index this year, the worst showing in 15 years for stock pickers. Individual investors are giving up on trying to call the risk on/risk off roller coaster and have been consistently pulling out of stocks for several years, making this year’s 13 percent rally a joyless one. The housing market, while showing signs of recovery lately, has taken years longer to bounce back than anyone predicted. Corporations are sitting on record levels of cash, not because they are earning a great return on it but because they lack confidence. And the unemployment rate remains stubbornly above 8 percent despite all this intervention.
A well-functioning free capital market is a strategic asset for the U.S. and the global economy. Let’s work on getting back to a time when the price of money wasn’t fungible and the value of risk could be clearly assessed. The resulting increase in confidence will do wonders for the U.S. economy.
Mark Okada is CIO of Highland Capital Management, a $20 billion-in-assets, credit-focused investment firm based in Dallas.