The European Union’s stress tests are designed to restore investor confidence in a battered banking sector, but they are not without a flaw. They assess the resilience of European banking groups to adverse shocks on a consolidated, cross-border basis and shed little light on the health of individual members, treating a group as a single bank. The catch is that there is no such thing as a pan-European purse to foot the bill for a bank failure. Several EU nations learned their lesson hard during the financial turmoil that it falls on an individual nation’s taxpayer to provide the money to keep a bank afloat if need be. Our concerns go beyond the current stress tests.
欧盟(EU)对银行实施的压力测试，目的是使投资者对饱受打击的银行业恢复信心，但这次测试并非毫无瑕疵。欧盟银行管理局(EBA)在合并和跨境基础上对欧洲各银行集团应对负面冲击的弹性进行了评估，把一个集团视为一家银行，因而未能揭示集团内个别成员的健康状况。可问题在于，没有一个泛欧“钱包”之类的东西能为某一家银行的倒闭埋单。几个欧盟成员国在近年的金融动荡中接受了沉痛的教训，即如果必要的话，要由相关国家的纳税人出资以帮助拯救银行。我们担心的问题超越当前压力测试的范围。