King Fisher

那是11月初。安然公司（Enron Corp.）在越来越多的金融渎职丑闻曝光之际开始崩溃，银行也在为数十亿美元的贷款上钩。花旗集团执行委员会主席、美国前财长罗伯特·鲁宾（Robert Rubin）决定致电美国财政部负责国内金融事务的副部长彼得·费希尔（Peter Fisher）。

承认，他即将提出的建议可能是一个坏主意，Rubin建议对费舍尔表示，他呼叫评级机构并敦促他们与花旗和安然的其他银行家合作，找到即将推移的即将下调的替代方案，这些人会出现几乎暂时的破产能源公司。

An adept risk arbitrageur who had been co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Co., Rubin is a canny executive who made his fortune by being able to read people as well as markets. Presumably, he wouldn't have risked making such a questionable proposal if he hadn,t believed there was a reasonable chance that Fisher , who, though he didn,t have direct jurisdiction over Enron, had considerable sway over the company's fate , would go along with his request.

鲁宾，在这种罕见的情况下，是完全错误的。令这位花旗银行家尴尬的是，费希尔明确表示不接受。20天后，安然被降级，并于12月2日宣布破产。费希尔说：“我没想到会接到这样的电话。”但电话一响，我有没有感到惊讶？但正如他所指出的，在为自己的立场辩护时，“在金融市场上，许多对安然有重要敞口的人都有时间在夏季和秋季进行调整。”

民主党费舍尔现在庆祝在共和党circles as the bureaucrat who rebuffed fellow Democrat Bob Rubi, thus , ironically , sparing the Bush administration potentially great damage on the Enron front. But the more substantial legacy of this fast-rising 45-year-old finance official is likely to derive from three salient circumstances: First, he is the U.S.'s chief borrowing officer; second, as Rubin shrewdly recognized, he is the Bush administration's point person on Wall Street; and third, he is seemingly not at all averse to acting on impulse when carrying out his reformist agenda , market, and sometimes political, sensibilities be damned.

例如，在上任短短9个月的时间里，费希尔通过自发地发行10年期美国国债来扫清市场僵局，然后将美国财政部传统的基准30年期国债抛诸脑后，认为它已经过时了，这让债券市场参与者时而高兴，时而愤怒。一位债券交易员谨慎地表示，他的高压行为“给了费希尔一个向自己的音乐进军的名声。”总部位于纽约的债券咨询公司Wrightson Associates首席经济学家路易斯·克兰德尔（Louis Crandall）指出：“被关注是费希尔做得非常好的事情。说他不拘泥于现状是轻描淡写的，“其他人认为费希尔更像是对市场的直接威胁。”对于取消30年期债券，人们仍有不好的感觉，”康涅狄格州债券交易公司格林威治资本市场（Greenwich Capital markets）的高级市场经济学家斯蒂芬•斯坦利（Stephen Stanley）表示。

一种或他人，债券市场更好地为更多的渔民带来了更好的。他已经开始开展资金拍卖，更有效率，并更新过时但是具有证明实践，例如在他们提交有错误的投标时通知经销商。今年夏天，他有望在布什政府的争议努力中发挥关键作用，以提高联邦债务限额。他还将展示政府当局就改革Fannie Mae和Freddie Mac的争议问题。而Fisher在他拥挤的议程上已经清除了空间，以解决债券市场波动的紧迫问题，缺水和缺失的流动性。

费舍尔在财政部最终通过迂回的route that never passed through Wall Street. He comes from a distinguished family of lawyers. A great-grandfather, Walter L. Fisher, served as secretary of the Interior under president William Taft. Grandfather Walter T. Fisher co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. Peter Fisher's father, Roger Fisher, worked in the Solicitor General's office during the Eisenhower administration and is a scholar of negotiation and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

费舍尔在马萨诸塞州剑桥的学术环境中长大。他挣扎着诵读诵读康复，但参加了Concord学院（他成为同学Caroline Kennedy的朋友），并前往哈佛大学作为历史专业。他的第一份工作毕业后，在一个波士顿咨询公司的AT＆T Corp.分手下班，让他对规定感兴趣。他喜欢经济学，但决定的法律更好地适合他的弯曲。

After getting his degree from Harvard Law in 1985, he joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and remained there until his appointment to Treasury. He received his first assignment in the bank's legal department from his future wife, lawyer Mary Sue Sullivan. He was soon being viewed by his Fed colleagues as something of a wunderkind. Two of Fisher's biggest achievements were cleaning up the repo market and creating liquidity options to tide the market over Y2K. But he's also credited with having prevented a potentially catastrophic market collapse when he encouraged banks to cobble together a $3.65 billion bailout for overextended hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.

除了艾伦格林斯潘，不建议渔夫为财政部工作。当Fisher在联邦公开市场委员会会议上发表时，美联储主席必须了解他。政府希望拥有众多市场的人。“彼得的多年在美联储给他详细的知识和经验，因为我们审查了任何数量的前方的政策举措，”金融秘书保罗·诺伊尔

作为美国财政部的债务管理人，费希尔的主要职责是以最低成本为华盛顿的借贷需求提供资金，美国本财年将支付约1640亿美元的利息，同时维持3.4万亿美元美国国债市场的流动性和效率。他的前任们行事极其谨慎，小心地避免惊吓市场，从而危及对美国国债、基准地位至关重要的稳定。然而，费舍尔毫不犹豫地把瓷器店里的每一个杯子都搅乱了。

拿30年债券。近年来，由于政府赤字变得盈余和债券的供应，近年来，它没有人失去了一些光泽;债券经销商本身讨论了案件来报废30年。仍然是返回联邦赤字职位，9月11日，很少有人预计财政部会立即脱离长期债券。即使要抛弃牧场，贸易商预计费舍尔提供充足的警告。例如，他可能已经提出了与借款咨询委员会的财政部季度退款会议的问题，这是21个杰出的经销商和投资者，劝告财政部，在简单地将其作为完成交易之前。

Cultivating consensus, however, isn,t Fisher's style. He was convinced that the increasingly illiquid 30-year bond was not necessary from a debt management point of view. "We want to make sure that we have a portfolio of liquid instruments on all points of the curve at which we borrow," he explains. "Given our likely borrowing needs over the coming years, the 30-year didn,t fit."

因此，10月31日，在季度退款新闻发布会上，费舍尔宣称，立即有效，财政部将停止发行30年债券。经销商和交易者债券遭遇急剧损失，因为他们飙升近六点，自1987年的股市崩溃以来，由于交易者突然稀缺的债券和职位短阵的人赶紧击退他们。

"Anybody making markets or selling the bonds lost money," says one still-fuming dealer. "Whenever you have a market reaction like that, policy has failed. Those are the situations Treasury likes to avoid. It means a more volatile issuance environment."

Fisher misjudged the delicate politics of dealing with the bond community. "We felt the Borrowing Advisory Committee allowed us to prepare the market for changes, and we thought of it as potential political cover," confides Fisher's predecessor at Treasury, Gary Gensler. "Fisher has yet to see it in this light, and that has probably made his time in the market more difficult."

Angry bond dealers warned darkly that if Fisher persisted in his imperious behavior, Treasury actions would become so unpredictable that they could erode the advantage the U.S. now enjoys over other countries in setting the global standard for pricing debt. "The largest issuer in the market needs to be orderly and predictable. If Treasury adds volatility, people could lose faith in the market," says another dealer. "The 30-year was clearly fumbled."

Of course, as many dealers and traders are quick to point out, uncertainty also means that taxpayers could wind up having to pay more to underwrite the public debt. "The bridge to the markets was broken," declares one trader. "Now Fisher has to rebuild it. He has to strike a balance between predictability and flexibility."

费舍尔试图重建那座桥。在过去几个月的一系列演讲中，他试图阐明自己的债务管理方法，强调自己的目标是“以最低的成本满足联邦政府的融资需求。”，但费希尔也强调，“有效的资本市场是一种手段，随着时间的推移，以最低成本结束借款。”他还努力与债券市场参与者进行更多磋商。然而，从根本上说，费希尔律师仍然是市场的局外人，一个非华尔街人士，一个非贸易者，尽管他在纽约联储公开市场运作了8年。

然而，在一定程度上，由于违约，他已经成为布什政府华尔街的头面人物。与大多数共和党总统不同，乔治W。布什并没有求助于一位真正的华尔街人士，一位来自狄龙公司（Dillon，Read&Co.）的尼古拉斯•布雷迪（Nicholas Brady）或一位来自美林公司（Merrill Lynch&Co.）的唐纳德•里根（Donald Regan）担任他的财政部长。相反，他选择了实业家奥尼尔（O，Neill），他在匹兹堡的美国铝业（Alcoa）经营了14年，这位中西部商人似乎对金融家及其同僚不屑一顾。去年，奥尼尔将交易员描述为“坐在闪烁的绿屏前的人”，这类人“不是那种你想帮助你思考复杂问题的人”

如果有疑问，费舍尔是布什财政部，对金融界的联络，他们在9月11日之后的日期和几周内被删除。当恐怖分子袭击时，费舍尔一直在一个月的时间。他捆绑在一起安全的网站，开始工作手机，试图让市场，尤其是股票市场，再次努力。

在袭击之后，华尔街酋长急于担心，渔民和总统金融市场工作组的其他成员，证券交易委员会主席Harvey Pitt董事长罗杰·弗格森和商品期货交易委员会主席James Newsome , issue a statement indicating that the stock and bond markets would remain closed on September 12. Japan,s markets were due to open in a few hours, and firms needed to be made aware that they couldn,t trade U.S. securities over the counter and expect clearing and settlement. The statement was issued by 5:45 p.m. on September 11.

Early on the morning of September 12, Fisher and Pitt, after conferring with White House officials, hopped an Amtrak train for New York. The White House, concerned about a loss of investor confidence, determined to have the stock market reopen as soon as possible. Fisher had instructions to work with Pitt and New York Stock Exchange chief Richard Grasso to get trading restarted. "Harvey packed a clean shirt and a toothbrush, and I didn,t," recalls Fisher.

While on the train Fisher spoke to major dealers to make sure that the bond market, at least, would be back in action by the following day. "Peter and his leadership were critical" in getting the market going again, says Bond Market Association legal counsel Paul Saltzman, who worked with Fisher that week.

Reopening the stock market proved more challenging. Pitt set up a meeting with major Wall Street firms at Bear, Stearns & Co.,s Midtown headquarters. "It was a very hard meeting," says Fisher, who along with Pitt was pushing to have the stock market reopen on September 13. "The outcome was not to open the equity markets on the next day. I was urging the Street to get up and running as quickly as possible. I am sure that there were some who didn,t like that, who felt I was being too pushy."

Wall Street firms weren,t sure that they had the sheer technical capacity to open and didn,t want to commit to a date. According to participants at the meeting, Merrill chairman David Komansky and Lehman Brothers chairman Richard Fuld were extremely pessimistic about resuming trading quickly: Both their firms, New York headquarters had been damaged in the attack.

"We realized that we had a mix of technology and infrastructure issues and human issues all getting wound up together," says Fisher of the September 12 session. "People didn,t know if they could get into their buildings, if they would have telephone capacity, electrical capacity." Fisher helped arrange a meeting for the following day that brought together representatives from the mayor's office, the governor's office, phone company Verizon Communications, the NYSE and the New York Fed.

这个所谓的基础设施小组于9月13日上午召开纽约证券交易所。它是Fisher的地下零的镜子。“这是一个超现实的经历，”他说。“一旦我们到达宽阔的街道和华尔街的角落，我看到它是在一英寸的泥土下。有军队的人和悍马和悍马驾驶，有人向大楼递给我一个纸面膜。就像在关于一部关于战区的电影里面。“

那天下午，华尔街公司的首脑再次聚集在一起，这次在瑞士信贷第一波士顿公司总部。确保必要的基础设施将到位，他们同意股票市场将在一个测试周末之后重新打开以下星期一。“费舍尔是私营部门的恐怖有效的合作伙伴，”纽约证券交易所首席草地说。

他们在纽约的工作完成，费舍尔和皮特登上了一个傍晚的华盛顿州。皮特看着伪造的渔夫，他穿着同样的衣服，而是到了。“漂亮的衬衫，”他敢说。

白宫对Fisher印象深刻。“他真的在9月11日之后闪闪发光，”国家经济委员会副主任Marc Sumerlin说。“他是获得市场开放的行政的主导人。他做了令人难以置信的工作。人们处于恐慌状态，他非常自信和精确。”当保险公司取消航空公司的责任范围时，苏美兰加入，费舍尔与房子和参议院谈判账单，以保持飞机飞行，“他在两天内完成了这件事。”

然而,费雪的劳动不是,t /。出了corner of his market-attuned eye, he saw trouble developing in the multitrillion-dollar repurchase agreement market. Critical to bond dealers and money managers, which use repos to finance their huge positions, the market had begun showing signs of strain. Were it to have collapsed, the whole bond market would have been starved for liquidity, very possibly triggering a financial panic.

在典型的回购交易中，债券市场参与者通过承诺五年或十年国债作为抵押品，然后在贷款贷款结束时回购债券和略微溢价的押金。

虽然债券和回购市场在9月11日遭到严重喋喋不休，但它们在48小时内恢复运营。但在随后的几个星期内，回购市场展示了一个令人不安的交易模式，其中市场参与者贷款短期金钱无法找到证券以清除交易。紧张的投资者，包括许多在11月11日之后收集安全的许多人，不愿意借给他们的债券。其他债券持有人担心失败的交易，还紧紧抓住他们的证券。失败的连锁反应是建设。

Wall Street dealers reassured Fisher that the situation would improve by the end of September, once the wave of anxiety over the terrorist assaults had subsided. But the number of failed trades continued to climb. "We were hoping that when we got past the quarter end and into October, the fails would decrease," recalls Fisher. "Instead, we saw a building up of fails in both ten-year and five-year Treasury notes during the first days of October."

Fisher felt he had three options: Do nothing; create a repo facility at Treasury that could lend out and repurchase five- and ten-year notes from dealers; or increase the supply of the bonds by "reopening" an issue , that is, issuing additional bonds of the same maturity. Fisher discussed the options with the Borrowing Advisory Committee. Some favored creating the repo facility, but Fisher decided that this would be unfair to investors who wouldn,t have direct access to the Treasury's supply. On October 6, his mind made up, Fisher took the unprecedented step of holding an unscheduled auction of $6 billion in ten-year Treasuries.

It was a bold, even brash, thing to do. But it worked. The number of fails began to decline. Most bond market participants, who ordinarily hate surprises, applauded Fisher's action. "The ten-year took a lot of guts. The market needed that, and it was the right thing to do," says Thomas Connor, head of Treasuries at J.P. Morgan Securities.

但是很难成为债券交易员的英雄。有些人抱怨的是，费舍尔应该拍卖五年的T-键。其他人担心他在市场上引入了新的不确定性，这将是他任职的标志。一些经销商被嘲笑他哈德，T遵循他们的建议并建立一个仓库设施。

尽管如此，但是十年拍卖通常被视为胜利。Fisher的下一个戏剧性的举动，10月31日的30年债券分配，明显诞辰，T。许多人觉得它展示了他脱灾风格的沮丧。

Adding fuel to the fire were revelations that Peter Davis, an independent consultant who had been attending Treasury press conferences for years, was in the briefing room during the announcement that the 30-year bond would be eliminated and, allegedly, leaked that sensitive information to clients. The information was embargoed until 10 a.m., but the long bond rose 1.5 points between 9:30 a.m., the end of the press conference, and 10 a.m.

"Coming on top of everything else, the Pete Davis thing just added to the controversy," says a trader who, like many others, believes the entire episode was badly managed. Indeed, the Treasury violated its own embargo that morning when it posted the news on its Web site at 9:43 a.m. The SEC has reportedly informed Davis as well as Goldman Sachs and MFS Investment Management that it is considering pursuing legal or administrative measures against them. "We continue to believe there is no basis for charges," says a Goldman spokeswoman. MFS will only confirm that it is under investigation.

一些市场人士怀疑，废除30年期国债实际上是费希尔压低长期国债利率的失败尝试，而美联储并没有通过放松货币政策来实现这一目标。他还因在政府面临赤字之际抛售债券而受到抨击。

Still, many traders concede that eliminating the 30-year wasn,t necessarily a bad idea. Fisher's predecessor, Gensler, had already begun curbing issuance of long bonds in preparation for just such a move. "If people had paid attention to what Fisher had said in the past, they would have known it was coming," says John Roberts, New York,based Treasuries head at Barclays Capital. "Maybe there are some sour grapes, but Fisher was doing the right thing for the market at the right time in preserving liquidity."

良好的举动与否，取消30年债券明确讨论声称经销商，贸易商和投资者也是如此。市场刚刚从9月11日起恢复，大财政刺激计划是在作品中，而Fisher只在前几周拍摄了他惊讶的十年债券拍卖。“财政部历史上谨慎行动，故意搬到防止市场被禁止卫队，”纽约米勒塔克＆“米勒塔克公司的首席债券市场战略家”。“渔民通过似乎单方面做事来创造不确定性。他有许多人说保罗o，内尔有的话。他的想法可能是好的，但他们需要更加谨慎地实施。”

渔民出现在所有大惊小怪上面。他指出，债券咨询委员会辩论两年后的30年债券辩论。鉴于发行日历，费舍尔说，他的下一个停止提供非资源的长债券的机会不会又一年。

"The 30-year bond was a dangling participle," he says. "Its liquidity had already been eroded by the reduced issuance and by the market's switch in focus to the ten-year note as the benchmark. I honestly think it would have bordered on the irresponsible to leave it out there any longer. Compared to the instrument people thought it was, its liquidity was so impaired that it was an accident waiting to happen." The bottom line, he adds pointedly, is that "no one has said that it wasn,t in the taxpayers, interest."

The administration's admiration for Fisher has yet to translate into more power. According to a senior Republican congressional aide, Fisher is "seen more as a technocrat than as having a big role in setting policy. He's a team player who is seen as having done well overall, but he's not yet a power broker."

然而，费舍尔将有足够的机会推动敏捷。对于一件事，他需要改变财政部的粘性，以处理盈余而在不扰乱市场的情况下融资赤字。他决心为借款过程带来更大的透明度和效率。“费舍尔是一个现代化器，”巴克莱斯说，罗伯茨说。“旧线路只是不想改变。”依靠继续争议。