Asian bond markets ：Think global, act local 
亚洲债券市场：全球思考，本地运作
Asia seeks a new home for its hard-currency reserves 亚洲正为自己的外汇储备寻找新的投资场所
A RARELY mentioned irony of globalization is that, whereas developed countries are sending more factories and call-centres East, Asia long ago outsourced its capital markets to the West. Asian countries have amassed some .73 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves, but rather than invest it in their own region, they have parked it abroad, largely in American Treasuries. As a plentiful pool of liquidity, these funds then find their way back into Asia via institutional portfolio flows and foreign-direct investment.
很少提及的一个对全球化的讽刺是，尽管发达国家在东方建立了更多的工厂和总部，但亚洲资源从很久前就开始在金融市场上流失向西方。亚洲国家已经积聚了约2.73万亿的外汇储备，但并不是投资在本区域，而是存放在国外，大部分是在美国的财政部。

Increasingly, Asia's politicians are asking whether this merry-go-round makes sense. South Korea's finance minister, Han Duck-soo, told a conference in London on May 24th that investing the region's foreign-exchange reserves on Wall Street “may not be the most efficient way of using those resources”. Asian finance ministers are planning to discuss where else they might invest excess funds at a summit in Thailand next month. They are most unlikely to heed the advice of Larry Summers, the former American treasury secretary, who suggested in Mumbai in March that countries should let the International Monetary Fund and World Bank help them decide where to put their excess reserves. But they may well share his view that developing countries could benefit by investing them more widely.
亚洲的政治家们逐渐开始怀疑这种旋转木马（注1）是否有意义，5月24日韩国财政部长韩德洙在伦敦一个会议上称将外汇储备投资在华尔街上“也许并不是使用我们资源最有效的方式”。亚洲财政部长们计划下个月在泰国峰会上讨论将多余的资金投往何处，他们很可能不会采用美国前财政部长拉里.舒默3月份在孟买的建议，即这些国家应该让国际货币基金组织（IMF）和世界银行来帮助他们决定将多余的储备投往何处，但他们大概会很愿意分享他有关发展中国家将会受益于储备投资多元化的观点。

Some policymakers have a new destination in mind. Although sudden shifts in capital flows would send the dollar plunging, they advocate gradually developing Asia's bond markets—the most neglected part of the capital markets in a region that has traditionally depended on bank finance and, until the recent stock market tumble, has fallen in love with shares. Local-currency bond markets in most Asian countries are tiny and unsophisticated (see table). The value of outstanding Asian bonds in local currencies amounted to less than trillion at the end of 2005, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). On top of that, Asian governments and companies had borrowed another 5 billion through dollar-denominated bonds, as measured by JPMorgan's Asia Credit Index. This may sound impressive in absolute terms, but it pales by comparison with more than trillion of Japanese bonds and some trillion American bonds.
一些政策制订者已经有了新想法。尽管资金流的突然转变将会打击美元，他们仍鼓吹发展亚洲债券市场――本区域资本市场中最被忽视的一部分，而在传统上往往是依靠银行金融，以及直到最近的下挫还偏爱的股票市场。在亚洲大多数国家本币债券市场规模很小，也很幼稚。根据国际结算银行（BIS）和亚洲开发银行（ADB）的数据，2005年底亚洲本币债券市场价值还不到2万亿美元。在此之上根据JP摩根的亚洲信贷指数，亚洲国家政府和公司已经另外通过美元结算的债券借入1350亿美元，这些在绝对值上似乎给人以很深刻的印象，但与日本超过7万亿美元和美国约22万亿美元的债券市场相比就显得很苍白了。

 Supporters put forward several reasons for expanding local bond markets to provide a home for more of the region's foreign-exchange reserves. They see it as insurance against another financial crisis, such as the one in 1997-98 when Thailand, South Korea and others suffered from an excessive reliance on short-term foreign-currency borrowings and fickle international investors. “At some level, foreign funds are inter mediating our own money back to us. When they get upset or nervous, the money gets yanked and we have to live with that vulnerability,” says Robert McCauley, chief representative for Asia-Pacific at the BIS.
支持者提出了一些发展本地债券市场的理由是为本地区大部分外汇储备提供一个“主场”，他们认为这是防范诸如1997-98年金融危机的一个保障，而泰国、韩国等当时过多依赖短期外汇借款和变化无常的国际投资者引起了危机。国际清算银行亚太首席代表罗伯特.迈克考利说“在某种程度上，外国基金将我们投资的钱又借给了我们自己，当他们担忧或紧张时，资金就被抽走，我们就变得很脆弱了”。

A second boon would be to wean Asian companies off their dependence on bank loans and to persuade private savers to shift cash from bank deposits into bonds. In addition, the arduous path now travelled by Asian money has a frictional cost that should fall if the money is generated and then invested within the region. Asia's capital hungry markets might be more lucrative than feeding the American government. Masahiro Kawai, head of the Office of Regional Economic Integration at the ADB in Manila, believes that infrastructure and social projects in Asia, from roads to dams to schools, may well produce higher returns than are available in Western markets.
第二个好处是切断亚洲的公司对银行贷款的依赖，同时鼓励个人将储蓄从银行存款转到债券上来。另外，如果资金产生后投资于本地区，现在亚洲资金狭窄投资路径的摩擦成本将会降低。投资于亚洲资本饥渴的市场要比供养美国政府有利的多。亚洲开发银行区域经济一体化办公室主任河合正弘相信，投资于道路、大坝到学校等基础设施和社会工程会获得比西方市场更高的回报。

Spurred on by these arguments, Asian countries have made progress since the 1997-98 crisis. According to the Global Development Finance Report, issued by the World Bank this week, East Asia has led the trend among emerging markets for issuing local-currency debt.
在这些理由的支持下，亚洲国家在1997-98年金融危机后就开始取得进展了。根据本周世界银行发布的全球财政发展报告，东亚出现了明显的以本币借债的趋势。

 At the regional level, the BIS, ADB and national central banks have helped by creating two Asian Bond Funds. The second, known as ABF2, started last year, is worth billion and targeted at local-currency paper—though most of this will still come from sovereign rather than corporate issuers. The ADB is doing its part, having raised local currency bonds in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. A few infrastructure projects, notably the operator of China's Three Gorges Dam, have gone direct to the markets.
在地区水平上，国际清算银行、亚洲开发银行和各国央行协助开发了两期亚洲债券基金，其中第二期亚洲债券基金（ABF）去年开始发行，总值约20亿美元，募集目标是本地的资金――尽管其中大部分是由主权国家而不是公司发行者募集的。亚洲开发银行正在做其中一部分工作，在中国、菲律宾、泰国和马来西亚发行本币债券。一些基础设施投资，特别像是中国三峡大坝发电机组项目，已经直接向市场发行了。

There is still much to be done, however. More worrying than the small absolute size of Asia's bond markets is their lack of liquidity and price transparency. The region's buy-to-hold mentality reduces turnover. Foreign investors, with more active trading strategies, would spice things up a bit—at the moment they hold just 1-3% of Asia's local currency bonds. There are also too few good local ratings agencies covering a wide selection of local companies, and too many different tax policies. Once trades are made, they are often cleared and settled in Europe, rather than Asia.
但还有很多事情需要去做，比亚洲债券绝对规模小更需要担心的是其流动性和价格透明度的缺乏。本地区中购买-持有（注2）的心理减少了债券周转次数，而外国投资者拥有更加主动的交易策略，这将会使市场更具活力――但现在他们持有的亚洲本币债券仅占1-3％。同时也缺乏足够多的优质评级机构来对本区域中众多公司评级，而且也有太多不同的税收政策，一旦交易成功后，投资者往往还是选择欧洲而不是亚洲清仓和建仓。
 With enough will, most of these problems can be solved. Far trickier is that, by investing their foreign reserves in each other's markets, Asia's central banks might be concentrating risk. American Treasuries are safe and liquid—as their relative sturdiness during the recent market jitters has shown. Such diversification may be worth the lower returns. Whether Asian bonds yield more these days is questionable, in any case. The Pan Asian Index Fund (a regional bond fund that is part of ABF2 and managed by State Street（注3）), yields 4.75% over four years, compared with 4.95% for a five-year American Treasury note.
只要有意愿，这些问题大多是可以解决的。还可以采取的更聪明的策略是，各国央行通过在彼此市场上的相互投资以达到控制风险的目的。投资于美国财政部是安全和具有流动性的――它的相对稳定性在最近的市场波动中可以看出来。以低收益的代价换取这样的投资多样化也许是值得的，但无论如何，亚洲债券收益是否更高是值得疑问的。泛亚债券指数基金（属于ABF2的地区债券基金，由道富基金管理）4年期收益为4.75％，而相比之下美国5年期记帐式国债收益是4.95％。

The idea of developing deeper, more liquid, bond markets in Asia is a sound one. But Asian countries should see it less as an exercise in patriotism than as good sense. Only if Asia's bond market can become a home for the region's private savings rather than just a vehicle to recycle foreign exchange, will it count as a success.
在亚洲发展更加深入、更具流动性的债券市场是一个合理的想法，但亚洲国家应该基于合理思考而不是将其视作爱国主义的练习，亚洲债券市场只有成为本地区私人储蓄的投资场所而不是外汇储备的周转工具，才能真正算得上是成功。