常春藤名校生寧願教書不進華爾街

We are witnessing the decline and fall of investment banking as we have known it for the past 40 years.

現在，投資銀行業正在經歷衰退和沒落，難復過去40年間的輝煌。

The evidence is everywhere. The increasing regulations on Wall Street — as required by the Dodd-Frank law and still being written by the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and others agencies in the US and Europe — will require the remaining companies to increase their capital, curb their risk-taking and reduce their principal investing.

投資銀行業陷入困境的證據無處不在。多德弗蘭克法案的制定將使華爾街面臨更爲嚴厲的監管，美聯儲，美國證券與交易委員會，美國商品期貨交易委員會以及其他美國和歐洲金融監管結構也正在醞釀更爲嚴厲的監管方案，這些措施將使得苟延生存的投資公司不得不增加投資資本，遏制投資風險並減少其主要投資。

Aside from the fact that investing principal and proprietary risk-taking per se had nothing to do with the financial crisis — and that the ability of Goldman Sachs Group to make a huge proprietary bet against the mortgage market probably helped save the firm — these new rules will curb Wall Street's revenue and profitability at a time when the business itself is suffering a severe slowdown. (What sunk Wall Street in 2008 was the seemingly more conventional business of the manufacture, packaging and sale of increasingly risky mortgage-backed and other debt securities.)

拋開投資本金和風險本身與金融危機並無關係這一事實，也不討論高盛押寶抵押貸款市場崩潰（這一行爲使公司逃過一劫）——這些新的監管措施將限制華爾街的收益和獲利能力，在商業環境本已如此蕭條的背景下，這無疑是雪上加霜。（製造，包裝，銷售風險日益上升的住房抵押貸款產品以及其他債務證券產品的傳統業務，是華爾街在2008年遭受重創的原因。）

Not being able to make those big proprietary bets when you see them developing — in effect, the closing of the casino that Wall Street has become over the past few decades — will severely limit bankers' money-making opportunities. It will also protect the rest of us when those big bets go wrong or are perceived to be too risky. (For every Goldman Sachs acting brilliantly, there is an MF Global Holdings acting foolishly).

即便發現投資機會，投行也不能激進下注——過去幾十年間造就的華爾街賭場，如今一朝關閉——這一事實會大大減少銀行家的獲利機會。同時，這些限制錯誤投資或風險過大投資的監管措施，其實也是對我們大多數人的保護。（高盛每走一步好棋，全球曼氏金融就會走一步臭棋。）

There is little debate anymore that Wall Street had become highly dependent on its trading operations. Something like 90 percent of Bear Stearns's profits in the years leading up to its March 2008 demise came from its trading and debt-origination activities. At Goldman Sachs in 2010, its traditional investment-banking operations generated only $1.3 billion of $12.9 billion in pretax earnings, about 10 percent.

毫無疑問，華爾街已經高度依賴交易操作。貝爾斯通2008年3月破產的時候，公司90%的收入來源於交易和貸款融資。高盛2010年稅前盈利129億美元，其中傳統投行業務盈利13億美元，僅佔總收入10%。

The slowdown in business, combined with the looming trading curbs, has resulted in job losses across Wall Street. Morgan Stanley recently announced it was firing 1,600 employees. Goldman Sachs has done its usual turn of eliminating the bottom 10 percent of its workforce and a group of its long-serving partners. Bank of America announced that about 30,000 employees would be chopped by the end of 2012, although a number of the firm’s investment bankers lost their jobs in the past month.

業務放緩，加之隱現的交易限制措施，華爾街上颳起了裁員風暴。摩根士丹利最近宣佈裁員1600人。高盛業已完成基層裁員10%，並與一些長期服務的合作伙伴解除了關係。美國銀行宣佈將在2012年底前裁員3萬人，而一些該公司的投資銀行家已經在上個月失去了工作。

Yet those suffering the most are the foreign firms that were trying to break into Wall Street's business. Nomura Holdings has pretty much scuttled its most recent Wall Street experiment (it bought Lehman Brothers Holding Inc.'s European and Asian banking operations) and firms such as Societe Generale Credit Suisse Group and Royal Bank of Scotland Group are all cutting Wall Street bodies.

然而，受影響最大的還是那些意圖進軍華爾街的外國公司。野村控股已經放棄其大多數華爾街業務（該公司曾經買下雷曼兄弟在歐洲和亞洲的銀行業務）。興業銀行，瑞士信貸集團和蘇格蘭皇家銀行等公司也紛紛削減了在華爾街的業務。

In November, Bloomberg News estimated that more than 200,000 people who work in finance had already lost or would lose their jobs this year.

彭博新聞在11月時預計今年將有超過20萬金融界人士失去工作。

The vast sums overpaid to bankers and traders will inevitably continue to fall as well — as many of them are finding out this bonus week. The decline in Wall Street's compensation will mean less tax revenue for New York City and New York State and fewer government services for the rest of us (absent higher taxes).

除了工作，銀行家和交易員的鉅額薪酬也將不可避免的繼續縮水——對他們當中的很多人而言，這個獎金周就會見分曉。華爾街薪酬的降低，意味着紐約城和紐約州的稅收減少，而我們可享受的政府公共服務也將縮水。

The most reliable leading indicator of Wall Street's future prospects is the way recent graduates of Harvard, Princeton and Yale — supposedly our best and brightest — choose to spend their time after graduating. For years, hordes of graduates from those schools beat a fast path to Wall Street. Now the road is far more difficult to travel. There is the prospect of incurring the wrath and scorn of fellow students who make up the various Occupy Wall Street movements — a fact not likely to deter many — and then there are dimmer prospects for a job on Wall Street generally, what with the slowdown in business.

華爾街未來前景最可靠的風向標，莫過於哈佛、耶魯、普林斯頓等名校畢業生的就業選擇。多年來，這些學校的畢業生如過江之鯽涌向華爾街。如今，這條道路變得更加難走。選擇這條道路的人，不但要忍受參與佔領運動的同學的白眼和嘲弄——這並不能阻止他們前行的腳步——即便在華爾街找到一份工作，也還要在不景氣的經濟環境下苦苦掙扎。

According to a Dec. 21 article in the New York Times, whereas in 2006 some 46 percent of Princeton graduates who had jobs lined up after graduation went to Wall Street, four years later that number had fallen to 36 percent. At Harvard, in 2006, a quarter of the class got jobs in finance; by 2011, that number had fallen to 17 percent. At Yale, in 2006, 24 percent of the graduates had jobs in finance and on Wall Street, while in 2010, the number of graduates going to Wall Street had fallen to 14 percent.

根據《紐約時報》12月21日一篇文章中的數據，2006年時，46%的普林斯頓大學畢業生選擇在金融行業就業，四年後這一數字降至36%。2006年時，25%的哈佛大學畢業生選擇在金融行業就業，到2011年，這一數字下降到17%。2006年時，24%的耶魯大學畢業生選擇在金融行業就業，到2010年，這一數字已經下降至14%。

The word around Goldman Sachs, I'm told, is that even those offered a still highly coveted entry-level job at the firm are having second thoughts about taking it. More and more, banks are losing talent to Teach for America, a fact that may turn out to be one of the most heartening consequences of the financial crisis.

目前流傳的一個關於高盛的傳聞：即便高盛公司願意提供入門工作機會，求職者們還是會猶豫該不該進入投資銀行工作。在美國，越來越多的人才離開銀行業投身教育，這可能是經濟危機帶來的最令人欣慰的影響之一。