負利率的歐洲 你借錢銀行倒貼

HVIDOVRE, Denmark — At first, Eva Christiansen barely noticed the number. Her bank called to say that Ms. Christiansen, a 36-year-old entrepreneur here, had been approved for a small-business loan. She whooped. She danced. A friend took pictures.

丹麥維茲奧勒——起初，伊娃·克里斯汀森(Eva Christiansen)並沒有很注意數字。她的銀行打來電話說，36歲的本地企業主克里斯汀森女士通過了審批，可以得到一筆小企業貸款。她高興地叫了起來，手舞足蹈。朋友還給她拍了照片。

“I think I was so happy I got the loan, I didn’t hear everything he said,” she recalled.

“我想我得到貸款時太高興了，都沒聽清他到底說了什麼，”她回憶道。

And then she was told again about her interest rate. It was -0.0172 percent — less than zero. While there would be fees to pay, the bank would also pay interest to her. It was just a little over $1 a month, but still.

之後，銀行再一次向她介紹了利率：-0.0172%——低於零的負利率。儘管需要支付一些費用，但是銀行還會向她付利息。每月纔剛剛超過1美元，可還是出人意料。

These are strange times for European borrowers, as if a wormhole has opened up to a parallel universe where the usual rules of financial gravity are suspended. Investors lent Germany nearly $4 billion this week, knowing they would not be fully repaid. Bonds issued by the Swiss candy maker Nestlé recently traded in the market for more than they will ever be worth.

對於歐洲的借款人來說，這是一段詭異的時期，彷彿有一個蟲洞打開了，通向一個慣常的金融原理都不再適用的平行宇宙。本週，投資者明知道德國人不會全額償付，還是向該國借出了40億美元。瑞士糖果製造商雀巢(Nestlé)發行的債券，最近在市場上的總值遠遠超過其實際價值。

Such topsy-turvy deals reflect the dark outlook for the region’s economy, as policy makers do whatever they can to revive growth, even taking interest rates below zero to encourage borrowing (and spending). In this environment, the simplest of banking tasks have become a curiosity.

這種顛覆常理的交易，反映了該地區糟糕的經濟前景，此時政策制定者們爲了重振經濟增長，運用了各種可能的手段，甚至將利率壓到零以下以期鼓勵借貸（和消費）。在這種環境裏，一些最簡單的銀行業務也變成了奇聞。

Consumer loans and mortgages with interest rates that are outright negative remain rare, and Ms. Christiansen appears to be one of the few who actually received one while banks mull how to proceed. Some other Danes are getting charged to park their money in their bank accounts.

消費貸款和按揭的利率直接爲負的情況仍然很少見，克里斯汀森似乎是少有的幾位實際拿到負利率貸款的人，而銀行目前還在琢磨業務該如何推行。現在，另外一些丹麥人把錢存在銀行帳戶裏時，銀行還會收取費用。

Such financial episodes are taking place all across Europe.

這樣的情況歐洲各地都在發生。

To breathe life into Europe’s economy and stoke inflation, policy makers recently resorted to a drastic measure tried by some other central banks. The European Central Bank, which dictates policy in the 19-member eurozone, announced a plan that involves printing money to buy hundreds of billions of euros of government bonds.

爲了激活歐洲經濟並刺激通脹，政策制定者最近不得不訴諸於其他地區的央行已經嘗試過的一些極端舉措。歐洲中央銀行(European Central Bank)負責爲包含19個成員國的歐元區制定貨幣政策，它近期宣佈了一項計劃，其中包括印錢買進價值數千億歐元的政府債券。

Just the anticipation of the program prompted bond prices to plunge and the euro to drop in value. Other countries that do not use the euro were then forced to take defensive countermeasures to keep a lid on the value of their currencies, encourage lending and bolster growth.

單單是推出這項計劃的預期，就促使債券價格大跌，歐元也應聲貶值。於是，其他不使用歐元的國家就被迫採取防禦性的反制措施，以穩定本國貨幣的匯率，鼓勵信貸並促進增長。

Switzerland, for instance, jettisoned its currency’s peg to the euro, shocking markets, and cut interest rates further below zero. Denmark’s central bank has reduced rates four times in a month, to minus 0.75 percent. Sweden followed suit earlier this month.

例如，瑞士放棄了本國貨幣與歐元掛鉤的政策，引發了市場的震盪。瑞士還下調了已然爲負的利率。丹麥央行一個月內四次削減利率，現在已經達到負0.75%。瑞典本月早些時候也效仿了這種做法。

The most profound changes are taking place in Europe’s bond market, which has been turned into something of a charity, at least for certain borrowers. The latest example came on Wednesday, when Germany issued a five-year bond worth nearly $4 billion, with a negative interest rate. Investors were essentially agreeing to be paid back slightly less money than they lent.

最深遠的變化發生在歐洲的債券市場，至少對一些借款人來說，那裏已經變成了某種慈善機構。最近的例子發生在週三，德國發行了總值近40億美元的五年期債券，利率爲負值。投資者實際上等於同意了，德國償債的金額可以略低於貸款額。

Bonds issued by Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Finland and even fiscally challenged Italy also have negative yields. Right now, roughly $1.75 trillion in bonds issued by countries in the eurozone are trading with negative yields, which is equivalent to more than a quarter of the total government bonds, according to an analysis by ABN Amro.

瑞士、荷蘭、法國、比利時、芬蘭，甚至面臨艱鉅財政困難的意大利，發行的債券也都是負利率。歐元區國家發行的大約價值1.75萬億美元的債券，當前的收益率爲負。根據荷蘭銀行(ABN Amro)分析，這相當於政府債券總額的四分之一以上。

One reason investors are willing to tolerate such yields is the relative safety of the bonds, in a weak economy. Traders are also betting that the prices of the bonds will keep going up.

投資者願意容忍這種收益率的一個理由是，在疲軟的經濟中，債券具有相對的安全性。交易員們還斷定，債券的價格會持續提高。

Even some corporate bonds, which are generally deemed less creditworthy than government bonds, are falling into the negative territory, including some issued by Nestlé and Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. While they did not initially have negative yields, investors bid up their prices after they were issued.

即使是一些企業債券，也跌入了收益率爲負的區間，包括雀巢和瑞士製藥企業諾華(Novartis)的一些債券。儘管這些債券發行時收益率並非爲負，但是在發行之後，投資者推高了債券的價格。通常認爲，企業債券的信譽不及政府債券。

“This is obviously a once-in-a-lifetime and once-in-history phenomenon,” said Heather L. Loomis, a managing director at JPMorgan Private Bank, who specializes in bonds, “and it is hard to make sense of it.”

“這顯然是一生只有一次，歷史上也只有一次的現象，”摩根大通私人銀行(JPMorgan Private Bank)專注於債券業務的執行主管希瑟·L·魯米斯(Heather L. Loomis)表示。“而且這種現象很難理解。”

It can be especially hard for people who are not bankers. Ms. Christiansen, a sex therapist, took out a loan to finance a website called LoveShack that is part matchmaking site, part social network.

如果不是銀行從業者，更是難以理解。克里斯汀森是一名性治療師，她申請貸款是爲了搭建一個名爲“愛巢”(LoveShack)的網站，一部分功能是牽紅線，另一部分則是社交網絡。

For her, the full novelty of her loan didn’t sink in until a spokeswoman for the bank called her back.

她起初並沒有理解這筆貸款到底有多麼新奇，直到銀行的一位發言人給她打來電話。

“She said, ‘Hi, Eva, they have contacted us from TV 2’ — it’s a big station in Denmark, one of the biggest — ‘and they would like to talk to you because of this loan,’” Ms. Christiansen said. “Then I was really like, ‘O.K., this is big.’”

“她說，‘你好伊娃，TV2電視臺聯繫了我們’——那是一家很大的丹麥電視臺，最大的電視臺之一。‘他們想跟你聊聊這筆貸款的事情’，”克里斯汀森說。“那時我才真的感到，這可是件大事。”

She said she was generally aware of what the Danish central bank was doing, but fuzzy on the specifics and had not paid close attention to the issue until she realized she might be asked about it in front of a camera.

她說她大體上明白丹麥央行在做什麼，但具體細節並不清楚，而且一直沒有密切關注過這個問題，直到她發覺自己可能會在攝像機前被問到這個問題。

“When I was contacted by the television, I was like, ‘O.K., I need to know something,’” she said, laughing, during an interview at her office, where two distant windmills were visible outside the windows.

“電視臺聯繫我時，我想，看來我需要了解一下了，”她在自己的辦公室裏接受採訪時笑着說。透過辦公室的窗戶，可以看到遠處的兩個風車。

“So I actually called my bank adviser and said, ‘Can we please have a meeting?’ Because all these financial terms, I’m not used to them,” she said. “If I talk about something, I’d like to know something about it.”

“所以我實際上給銀行的顧問打了個電話，問能不能開個會。因爲所有這些金融術語我都不習慣，”她說。“如果我要談一件事，我希望能多少懂一些。”

Some other Danes are facing a related, if somewhat opposite, issue.

另外一些丹麥人面臨着一個相關的問題，但具體情況卻恰恰相反。

Last month, Ida Mottelson, a 27-year-old student, received an email from her bank telling her that it would start charging her one-half of 1 percent to hold her money.

上個月，27歲的學生伊達·莫特爾森(Ida Mottelson)收到了銀行的電子郵件，通知她將開始對她的儲蓄收取0.5%的保管費。

“At first I thought I had misunderstood this, but I hadn’t,” she said.

“一開始我還以爲我理解錯了，結果沒理解錯，”她說。

Ms. Mottelson is studying for a master’s degree in health sciences, and lives in Odense, a city about 100 miles west of Copenhagen. She said she had been following the news about the central bank, but called her own bank just to make sure she was reading the email correctly.

莫特爾森正在讀保健學碩士，居住在哥本哈根以西大約100英里的城市歐登塞。她說，她一直在關注央行的新聞，爲了確認讀電子郵件時理解對了，還專門給銀行打了一個電話。

“I asked him super-naïvely, ‘Can you explain this to me?’ And he tried, but I got the feeling he was like, come on, just move the money and you’ll be fine.”

“我超級天真地問他，‘能給我解釋一下麼？’對方努力解釋了，但我感覺他的意思是，乾脆把錢轉走不就行了。”

She does plan to move her money to another bank. And there are signs that such practices are spreading to the United States. This week, JPMorgan Chase said it would start charging some institutional clients to hold their money, because of a combination of new regulations and low interest rates.

她的確計劃把錢轉到別的銀行。有跡象顯示，這種做法正在蔓延到美國。本週，摩根大通銀行表示，將對某些機構客戶的資金收取保管費，原因既有新的監管規定，又有低利率。

Economists are now pondering some of the odd things that might occur if interest rates stay negative for a long time.

經濟學家現在正在思考，如果利率長期保持在負區間，會發生哪些奇怪的現象。

Companies and individuals may start to hoard cash outside of ordinary banks if the banks start to effectively charge substantial sums to hold deposits. Large savers, for instance, may choose to put their money in special institutions that do little more than warehouse their cash.

如果銀行實質上開始對儲蓄收取可觀的保管費，那麼企業和個人就會開始在常規的銀行之外囤積現金。舉例來說，大額儲戶可能會將錢放在除了幫他們存放現金之外，沒有其他什麼職能的專門機構。

“There is some negative interest rate at which it would become profitable to stockpile cash,” said James McAndrews, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He said that economists had speculated that such cash hoarding might begin once interest rates were around minus 0.5 percent.

“負利率達到某種程度，囤積現金就變得有利可圖了，”紐約聯邦儲備銀行(Federal Reserve Bank of New York)經濟師詹姆斯·麥克安德魯斯(James McAndrews)說。他表示，經濟學家們揣測，囤積現金的行爲在利率達到負0.5%的時候可能就會開始。

For most people not poring over the financial pages, it can all seem a bit strange.

但對於不會關注財經版的大多數人來說，這一切可能顯得有些古怪。

“I’m not an expert,” Ms. Mottelson said, “but to me it sounds so weird that you have to pay to have your account at a bank.”

“我當然不是專家，”莫特爾森說，“但在我看來，在銀行開賬戶還要付錢，這也太奇怪了。”