[转帖] [2005.12.20] Percents and sensibility 利率与情感

showcraft

http://bbs.ecocn.org/thread-67709-1-1.html
Personal finance in Jane Austen
简•奥斯丁小说中的个人理财

Percents and sensibility
利率与情感

What did early 19th-century literary characters live on?
在19世纪初的文学作品中，书中人物如何谋生？

Dec 20th 2005 | from the print edition

“TEN thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a lord.” Mrs Bennet's reaction to her daughter Elizabeth's engagement to Mr Darcy is telling. “Pride and Prejudice”, like all of Jane Austen's books, is about sex and money. But Miss Austen's emphasis on each is different from that of today's chick-litterateurs. Her characters never touch, let alone kiss. And their wealth and income are at least as important in the calculus of courtship as personal tastes and sex appeal.

“一年有一万镑的收入，可能还要多！阔得简直像个皇亲国戚。”班纳特夫人闻听女儿伊丽莎白与达西订婚的消息后，其狂喜之情溢于言表。就像简•奥斯丁的其他小说一样，《傲慢与偏见》描述的是性与金钱。但奥斯丁在小说中对性与金钱的描述与现今的鸡仔文学截然不同。在她的小说中，男女主角们连手都不碰一下，更不用说接吻了。他们的财产与收入状况在求爱过程中的重要性毫不逊于他们的个人品味与外貌长相。

Miss Austen was neither mercenary nor a snob. She was a daughter of her times. At the turn of the 19th century, wealth merited much discussion. Landed wealth, which dominated the 18th century, was being supplanted by monied wealth, which came to dominate the 19th. Between 1796, when Miss Austen began “Pride and Prejudice”, and 1817, when she died while writing “Sanditon”, land and money (or “funds” as Miss Austen's peers called their investments) stood in rough and uncomfortable equality. In this shifting balance lay the foundations both of the Anglo-Saxon world's commercial prosperity and much of the drama and humour of Miss Austen's books.

奥斯丁小姐绝非贪图钱财的势利小人，她只是那个时代的一个典型女孩而已。在18与19世纪之交，有关财富的问题理应成为讨论的热门话题。在18世纪，一个人拥有财富的多寡主要是以他拥有多少土地来衡量；而在19世纪，变成了他拥有多少金钱。奥斯丁小姐1796年开始写作《傲慢与偏见》，1817年在写作《桑底顿》时撒手人间。在那个年代，提到地产与金钱（或如与她社会地位相似人们的叫法，将用于投资购买公债的钱称之为“基金”），人们就会认为不够儒雅，让人感到不快。在这种观念转变的动态平衡*之中，打下了大英帝国商业繁荣的基础，也为奥斯丁小姐的小说提供了大量幽默而富有戏剧性的素材。

Lady Denham, the doyenne of Sanditon, laid out the social order of the time:
But heiresses are monstrous scarce! I don't think we have had an heiress here, or even a co-heiress, since Sanditon became a public place. Families come after families, but as far as I can learn, it is not one in an hundred of them that have any real property, landed or funded—an income perhaps, but no property. Clergymen maybe, or lawyers from town, or half-pay officers, or widows with only a jointure. And what good can such people do anybody?

嬁菡女士是桑底顿这个地方的元老级人物，她道出了当时的社会秩序*：
至于继承了大笔财富的女人那可是难得一见！自打桑底顿成了公共领地后，我们这个地方还不曾有过这样的女人，甚至继承了部分家产的女继承人也不曾出现过。这个小镇上迁来的人口是一家接一家，但据我所知，只有不到百分之一的家庭拥有房地产、土地或公债。拥有公债也许能算上是拥有一种收入，但绝对算不上拥有不动产。教士、从伦敦城中来的律师、领取半薪的退役军官和继承了亡夫遗产的寡妇们也许会拥有房地产。但这样一些人又会为本地带来什么好处呢？

There is bitter humour in Lady Denham's dismissal of her author's own class. As the daughter of a clergyman, who spent her later years living on the generosity of relatives, Miss Austen knew all too well that wealth was the only real source of security.

小说的作者通过嬁菡女士的话贬斥了社会地位与自己类似的人们，显得既幽默又辛酸。作为一个牧师的女儿，奥斯丁小姐的后半生依靠亲属生活。她深知财富是生活的唯一真正保障。

Where did that wealth come from? The answer lies in the combination of Britain's growing commercial riches and its government's continuing poverty. There was really only one kind of investment from the South Sea Bubble of 1720 to the railway boom of the 1840s: government debt. British government debt was the only security traded on the Stock Exchange at its foundation in 1801, and remained so until 1822. Thanks to luck and skill, the government managed to finance a century's worth of horrendously expensive wars in a way that not only did not cripple commerce but mobilised commercial resources for new challenges.

但财富从何而来呢？答案是英国商业财产的不断增长与政府收入的持续下降。从1720年的南海泡沫事件*到19世纪40年代的修建铁路大热潮，实际上参与投资的只有政府债券。1801年伦敦证券交易所成立时，参与交易的有价证券只有政府债券。直到1822年，境况依然如此。靠运气与巧妙的运作，英国政府设法为19世纪不断爆发的战争募集到了数字惊人的战争经费。这些举措不仅没有损害英国的商业，而且充分挖掘出了英国的商业资源，使英国能够应对新的挑战。

The key piece of skill was the mechanism of “funding” that secured interest payments. When William and Mary re-established the Protestant monarchy in 1688, Parliament wanted both to shore up the royal finances and establish its control over them. Funded borrowing did both. Parliament passed taxes sufficient to pay interest on a certain amount of debt—just over ￡1m in the first instance—then tacked on a bit more tax to pay down the principal gradually. The monarch could borrow against this “funded” amount fairly easily, but found it hard to borrow more, which gave British debt unparalleled stability. In 1715-70 France reneged on the terms of its debt five times; Britain never missed an interest payment.

这种资金运作的关键是建立了保证投资者利益的政府发行债券机制。当威廉与玛丽在1688年重新建立新教徒的君主制时*，议会既想募集足够的资金以支撑王室的运作，又想获取对这笔支出的控制权。而发行政府债券就能一举两得。议会批准的税收总额刚好能够支付一定数额的政府债券利息——议会批准的第一项税收法案征收的税额为一百万英镑多一点。然后议会又批准逐渐增加一点税额，以偿付债券本金。王室从这笔“基金”中借款非常容易，但要超过基金的总额限制就很难了。通过这个办法，英国政府债务空前稳定。1715~1770年间，法国政府五次食言没有偿还欠债；但英国连一分钱的利息都没有拖欠过。

The big piece of luck was the South Sea Bubble. In order to issue debt more cheaply, the government hit upon the wheeze of tying debt issues to the grant of trading privileges, which cost it nothing but persuaded investors to part with their money at a lower rate of interest. In 1693 the going rate on government debt was 14%. In 1698 the East India Company was prevailed upon to lend ￡2m at a rate of 8% in return for an extension of trading privileges. This understandably appealed to ministers. In 1711, the government raised a further ￡10m from the South Sea Company in return for exclusive trading rights to Spanish South America. Finally, in 1719, the South Sea Company proposed to take over the finance of the entire national debt. The government agreed.

最为幸运的是出现了南海泡沫事件。为使发行的公债更加廉价，英国政府偶然发现，将债券发行与特许贸易权捆绑在一起是一个好办法。通过这个办法，政府可以一毛不拔，但却能让投资者掏腰包，以非常低的利率购买国债。在1693年，政府债券的现行利率是14%。而到了1698年，政府说服东印度公司以8%的利率购买了一千万英镑的政府债券。其得到的回报是延长了特许贸易权。这样的交易条件当然对政府各大臣们非常具有吸引力了。1711年，英国政府又向南海公司举债一千万英镑，交换条件是，南海公司对西（班牙）属南美拥有独家贸易权。到了1719年，南海公司提出买断英国全部国债经营权的计划。英国政府批准了这项申请。



Fortunately for posterity, the directors of the South Sea Company were greedy and incompetent. They promptly began talking up the price of their shares with inflated estimates of the value of their trading and financing rights, which helped to fuel a dotcom-style speculative bubble. After the bust, the government went off the idea of entrusting its finances to a single company. So it set about devising securities that could sell into a broader market.

但南海公司的高管们既贪婪又昏庸无能，这对后代英国人而言真是一件幸事。他们马上开始商议如何提高自己的股份收益。他们采取的方法是夸大南海公司的贸易与国债经营权的估值。这个方法使商业网站型的投机泡沫迅猛膨胀起来。泡沫破裂后，英国政府放弃了由一家公司买断国债经营权的做法。政府采用的新方法是发行面向更大范围购买对象的新国债。

Early flirtations with lotteries and annuities were generally disappointing. So were “tontines”, a sort of group annuity in which many paid into a general pot, and the last few survivors split the income. What did sell, hesitantly at first, were bonds—albeit ones which were often sweetened with “douceurs” like a lottery ticket or two.

英国政府最初试探性地采用了发行年金债券与发行彩票的方法，但效果总的来说令人失望。因而政府又推出了“汤鼎氏养老金制”。这是一种多人共同购买的一组年金债券，但由少数几个最后的生存者分享收益。尽管这种债券如同个别彩票的发行那样，经常使用贿赂的方式来推销，但起初并没有多少人购买。

The government consoles itself
英国政府的自慰

In 1751 Henry Pelham's Whig government pulled together the lessons learnt on bonds to create the security of the century: the 3% consol. This took its name from the fact that it paid 3% on a ￡100 par value and consolidated the terms of a variety of previous issues. The consols had no maturity; in theory they would keep paying ￡3 a year forever.

1751年，亨利•佩勒姆的辉格党政府从以往发行政府债券的失败中吸取了教训，推出了一种世纪债券：年息为3%基金债券。这是一种每一百英镑票面价值能获得3%年息的债券；而这种债券又成了以往发行的一系列债券的偿还基金，因而得名。这种债券没有约定还本到期日。从理论上讲，购买者可以永远获得3%的年息。

Between 1751, when the funded national debt was only a tad over ￡70m, and 1801, when it climbed over ￡450m, the government issued ￡315m of consols. Lord North particularly liked them because they carried a low nominal interest rate. He argued that lower rates were better because “it was the interest that the people were burdened with the paying of and not the capital.” That said, Lord North issued new consols at ￡60 or so, to create a 5% interest rate. Why he thought a discounted 3% bond was better value than a 5% bond sold at par is unclear.

在1751年，通过这个基金偿还的政府债务只有七千万英镑多一点；而到了1801年，这个数字攀升到了4.5亿英镑。在这期间，政府发行了3.15亿英镑的公积金债券。由于这种债券要支付的年息很低，因而诺斯勋爵*对之青睐有加。他声称较低利率的债券更好一些，因为“加在老百姓身上的负担是要偿还利息，而不是偿还本金。”据说诺斯勋爵批准发行了一系列票面价值60英镑左右，年息为5%的基金债券。他认为以票面价值出售，贴现率为3%债券的价值比贴现率为5%债券的价值更高一些，但其理由尚不明了。

William Pitt the Younger, however, discovered the downside of discounted bonds when he tried to reduce the national debt during the lull between the American war and the Napoleonic wars. In theory, the consols could be redeemed by the government at their par value of ￡100. In practice, doing so would have given a windfall to bondholders: nearly double their capital as well as interest payments. Pitt instead created a sinking fund, using tax revenue to buy back bonds in the market.
The sinking fund continued in operation through the Napoleonic wars, though in an increasingly bizarre fashion. By the end of the wars, the government was borrowing all of the money for the fund from the same markets that the fund bought from, in the deluded belief that reinvesting the interest on the bonds held by the fund would yield compound returns sufficient to pay off the whole of the national debt.

然而，当小威廉•皮特*在美国独立战争与拿破仑战争结束的这段时间内试图削减政府债务时，他发现了贴现债券的不利之处。从理论上讲，政府可以100英镑的票面价格收回基金债券，从债券收回溢价中受益。但实际上，这种做法却是让债券持有人发了一笔横财：几乎让他们的本金及利息翻了一番。皮特转而发行一种偿债基金。用政府的年度税收从市场上购回贴现债券。在拿破仑战争期间，偿债基金的机制继续运作，只是方式益发古怪了。当这一系列战争结束时，英国政府为偿债基金所借款项全都来自于购买偿债基金的同一个市场。而且自欺欺人地认为，将利息所得重新投资于偿债基金发行的债券上，就能获得足够偿还国家全部债务的复利。

Clearly, the financial markets of Jane Austen's time were not sophisticated. But they were robust. There were no alternatives to easily tradeable, interest-bearing securities, and lots of people wanted them. Merchants put spare cash into the funds, which, as they would not otherwise have earned interest on the money, boosted their profits and competitiveness. Some landowners traded back and forth between funds and land in search of better returns. Others saw the funds as a new way to maintain their wealth without farming.

简•奥斯丁时代的金融市场很简单，这一点毫无疑问。但当时的金融市场已经非常健全。对于可交换的付息有价证券而言，这个市场是无法取代的，而且为大众所需。商人们将闲置的现金用于购买这些基金。没有这些基金，闲置的金钱就无法生息。通过购买基金生息，英国的商人们获得了盈利，从而提高了他们的贸易竟争能力。一些地主将土地卖掉来购置基金；然后又将购置基金获得的利润用于购买土地。通过这种土地与基金间的反复运作，他们寻求获取更大的回报。而其他一些人则将基金视为在没有可种植土地的情况下保持财富的一种新方式。

From a speculator's point of view, this was a lively market. The fact that early bonds had no fixed maturity date ensured that any change in interest rate was fully reflected in the capital value of the bond. Rates, in turn, fluctuated in response to foreign affairs in general and military ones in particular. When the British won a battle, investors anticipated the day that the government would stop issuing new bonds and turn to buying old ones via the sinking fund. Rates fell and values rose. When British forces lost, investors anticipated new issues coming to market, and the opposite happened. Compounding these movements were poor communications: nobody really knew what was going on in the wars.

从投机者的角度来看，这是一个活跃的市场。早期的政府债券没有约定还本期限，这样就确保了任何利率的变化都能完全体现债券的资本价值。债券利率的变化接着又反映了总的外交形势，特别是军事形势。当大英帝国赢得了一场战争的时候，投资者们就会预期政府将停止发行新的债券，他们就会通过偿债基金购买以前发行的债券，债券的利率就会下降，债券的资本价值就会上升。当英国军队打了一场败仗时，投资者们就会预期政府将发行新的债券，就会出现与前述相反的利率变化。如果利率交替出现这两种变化，人们就无从获得明了的信息：没有人知道战场的形势到底如何。

One officer rushed from Portsmouth to London with forged dispatches proclaiming the fall of Paris and the rout of Napoleon, while at the coffee houses his confederates sold into the rising market and netted about ￡10,000. Even with full information, early markets did not always do what a modern trader would expect. In theory, the prices of various securities should have converged around a general market interest rate. Not so in fact. William Fairman of Royal Exchange Assurance noted that “the very great disparity between the current prices of different funds evidently shows that exact observers among the monied men are not numerous”. There was also a persistent fear that the government might have so over-extended itself with debt that a general failure of markets was inevitable.

一名官员带着伪造的官方报告从朴次茅斯匆匆赶往伦敦，宣称已经攻陷了巴黎，大败了拿破仑的军队。就在政府债券的一片上涨声中，他的同伙此时就在咖啡馆内抛出手中的债券，净赚了约一万英镑。即使获取了完全可靠的信息，早期市场的反映也并非总是如一个今日的交易者所想象的那样。从理论上讲，各种债券的价格变化趋势应该是围绕一个总的市场利率而趋同。而实际上并非如此。皇家交易保险公司的威廉•福尔曼就指出：“不同债券的现行价格存在着巨大的差异，显然，这表明在有钱人中，能够洞悉市场变化的人不多。”投资者也总是担心政府也许会负债过重，因而造成不可避免的市场崩溃。

The despairing and the hopeful, the greedy and those simply too lazy to farm all converged on coffee houses near the Royal Exchange to do business. Thomas Mortimer described the scene in “Every Man his own Broker, or, a Guide to Exchange Alley”:
it consists of a medley of news, quarrels, prices of different funds, calling of names, adjusting of accounts, etc, etc continually circulating in an intermixed chaos of confusion.

绝望者与信心满满之人，贪婪者与那些只是懒于耕作的农夫们都汇集到皇家交易所附近的咖啡馆里进行交易。托马斯•摩帝马在他的《皆为掮客，又名交易港导游》一书中描述了这种场面：
“这里熙熙攘攘，传播着各种消息，争吵声不绝于耳。有各种债券价格的报价声，有点名之声，有喊着买进卖出的声音，等等，等等。混乱不堪的景象昼夜不断。

While trading in the coffee houses was open to all, a booming industry of brokers and bankers arose to serve those who did not wish to brave the hubbub in person. Jane Austen's favourite brother, Henry, started his own bank, though after it failed he reverted to the family business and became a clergyman. In 1801, the Stock Exchange was founded as a members-only institution intended to bring some order to the markets—and in particular to ban from membership those who reneged on their deals.

当咖啡馆中的债券交易向所有人开放后，债券经纪人和银行家开始大量涌现。他们为那些不愿亲自到这些人声嘈杂的场所来进行交易的人们提供服务。简•奥斯丁最喜欢的哥哥亨利也开始创办了他自己的银行。当这个生意失败后，他又返回到家庭事务中，成了一名牧师。1801年，伦敦证券交易所成立了。规定只有交易所的会员才可以参与交易，目的是为了规范交易市场的秩序。交易所特别禁止那些在交易中的食言者获取会员资格。

By the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, the debts of the British government reached ￡745m. But instead of calamity and national bankruptcy, the rise in debt simply brought a hunger for more investments. As the government itself stopped issuing new bonds, and started retiring old ones through the sinking fund, investors turned first to foreign-government securities in the 1820s and then to shares in the new, capital-intensive companies, such as railroads, leading the industrialisation of the 19th century. Both markets were highly speculative, to say the least. Foreign-government debt included bonds from one entirely fictitious country, Poyais, and most of the new industrial ventures failed.

在1815年拿破仑战争的尾声中，英国政府的负债总额达到了7.45亿英镑。这种状况不但没有带来巨大灾难和国家破产的局面，政府债务的增加反而提升了更多人参与债券投资的渴望。当英国政府停止发行新债券，并通过偿债基金回购以往发行的债券时，投资者们在19世纪20年代先是转而购买外国政府债券，然后是购买新兴的资本密集型公司的股份，如引领了19世纪工业化进程的铁路公司的股份。保守地说，这两种市场的风险都极高。投资者们购买的外国政府债券中，甚至有一种完全虚构的国家——博雅斯*的政府债券，而大多数新兴风险企业也都破产了。

By then markets were big enough to absorb the bumps, and their growth has supported a cornucopia of prosperity ever since. Still, one shortage noted by Jane Austen in “Mansfield Park” arguably remains: “there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

但那时的债券市场容量已经具有相当规模，足以消化掉这些损害。而且债券市场还在不断壮大，支持了从那时开始的经济繁荣。尽管存有争议，但此时的债券市场仍有不足。正如简•奥斯丁在《曼斯菲尔德庄园》一书中所言：“世上堪充佳配的丽人虽不缺乏，但可惜的是广有家资的男人却不多见。”




注释1：shifting balance theory 动态平衡理论：
赖特(S.Wright)于19世纪30年代提出的一个进化理论，指处于适应平衡状态的群体，个别亚群体在随机遗传漂变的作用下可以跨越适应性低谷而达到新的适应性平衡状态，新平衡下的亚群体通过个体扩散而使其他亚群体也平移到新的平衡状态。这个过程最终可使一个物种的所有群体平移到新的适应平衡状态。

注释2：Social order 社会秩序
指人们在社会活动中必须遵守的行为规则、道德规范、法律规章，表示动态有序平衡的社会状态，是社会学范畴。

注释3：光荣革命
17世纪中期，英国爆发了全国范围的内战，在交战双方妥协的条件下，1660年查理二世建立了复辟王朝。1685年，詹姆斯二世继位，意图恢复天主教在英国的统治，另外由于王位继承等原因，遭到了英国各个阶层的一致反对。在反对恢复天主教问题上走到一起来的各派代表在1688年共同作出决定，废黜詹姆斯二世，迎立他新教徒的女儿玛丽和其夫荷兰执政威廉为英国女王和国王。1688年11月威廉率军登陆英国，詹姆斯二世出逃法国，1689年2月威廉即英国王位，是为威廉三世。这就是1688年革命。这场革命没有流血即获得成功，因此历史上称之为“光荣革命”。革命后，英国议会颁布包括《权利法案》在内的一系列法案巩固了革命的成果。光荣革命是英国历史上具有里程碑意义的大事件，此后，新教成为英国国教，王权受到了极大的限制，英国初建资产阶级君主立宪制，走上近代国家宪政之路。

注释4： Lord North 诺斯勋爵（1732-1792）。英王乔治三世的宠臣，1770年至1782年出任大不列颠王国首相，是美国独立战争的重要人物。

注释5：William Pitt the Youger，小威廉•皮特。是18世纪末到19世纪初英国政治家，两度出任英国首相。他是英国历史上最年轻的首相，第一次担任首相时为24岁。同时他也是英国历史上任期最长的首相之一，两任首相任期加起来将近19年，仅次于第一位英国首相罗伯特•沃波尔（Robert Walpole）。

注释6：格雷格尔•麦格雷格尔（Gregor MacGregor），苏格兰军人、冒险家、殖民者。曾为南美独立战争而奋斗。他还是一名机敏的骗子。
1820年回到英格兰后，他声称自己是博雅斯（Poyais），一个虚构的国家的主人、并精心打造了一本旅游指南。书上描绘了岛上的环境以及丰富的自然资源。他的精彩骗术吸引了不少投资者和殖民者前往这个岛国，一群群人受骗上当。甚至最后，他还制订了一部宪法，并将自己定为这个共和国的主人。因欺诈罪被审判后，这位骗子还在向欧洲贵族们销售这个虚无国家的土地。