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.
歐盟(EU)對銀行實施的壓力測試，目的是使投資者對飽受打擊的銀行業恢復信心，但這次測試並非毫無瑕疵。歐盟銀行管理局(EBA)在合併和跨境基礎上對歐洲各銀行集團應對負面衝擊的彈性進行了評估，把一個集團視爲一家銀行，因而未能揭示集團內個別成員的健康狀況。可問題在於，沒有一個泛歐「錢包」之類的東西能爲某一家銀行的倒閉埋單。幾個歐盟成員國在近年的金融動盪中接受了沉痛的教訓，即如果必要的話，要由相關國家的納稅人出資以幫助拯救銀行。我們擔心的問題超越當前壓力測試的範圍。